As the Baby Boomer generation exits the workforce steadily
over the next 10 years, sourcing new candidates will become a tenuous task.
Companies that understand the impending scarcity of candidates and can retool
their process will have a marked advantage in acquiring talent.
One key to properly retooling will shift the current focus
from experience to talent. This fundamental change will be precipitated by the
need to develop talent as opposed to hiring experience. The experienced
candidate will become a product of a supply and demand marketplace. There will
be more demand with less supply which leads to increased wages. The highly
successful, extremely experienced candidate will be able to take a free-agent
approach to their job search. They will be able to select from multiple offers
and leverage the best overall package.
There is nothing new in this market-driven scenario except
for one item. The supply will be greatly diminished which will put incredible
pressures on the compensation packages. However, companies will have an
alternative to the bidding war – hire for talent and develop for strength.
This shift in hiring focus will require an “outside the box”
approach to candidate screening. The first step will be to wean the process off
of the 20th-century approach of placing an ad, receiving and reviewing resumes
and qualifying candidates with a face-to-face interview. This 3-step process is
riddled with vulnerabilities.
First off, the sheer number of responses will surely
decrease let alone the quality of the applicants. Gone are the days of simply
placing an ad in the Sunday edition of the local newspaper and collecting the
overwhelming responses. Some online ads return volumes of resumes, but the
applicants’ qualifications are often completely misaligned. Properly written
online ads provide fewer responses but a higher quality of fit to the position.
Second, the majority of resumes (some statistics state
>75%) contain embellishments of some form. Using these embellished,
sometimes fictional documents to sort applicants is similar to building your
house on shifting sands. The entire premise is flawed from the start. The
resume elicits experience-based decisions which are less than reliable. The
applicants’ embellished industry experience is weighted grossly higher in
comparison to their true talent and abilities.
Finally, face-to-face interviews are needed in any hiring
process, but again, they tend to be used out of sequence for an effective
process. Society of Human Resource Management studies have shown that
interviewers make candidate decisions within the first 7 minutes of the
in-person interview. We are all susceptible to internal biases and blind spots.
No interviewer is completely objective.
The aforementioned hiring approach was widely followed in
the last century. The onslaught of the Internet, decreasing worker populations
and exploding job productivity requirements have made successful hiring the key
component of the 21st century.
Retooling a complete hiring process requires a company to release
outdated, stereotypical approaches and embrace the tactics needed in today’s
market. There are 3 steps all companies can integrate into their process today
to begin the shift towards a reliable and repeatable hiring strategy.
Phone Screen. This article discusses new approaches to
hiring and then leads off with a retro tool! Perhaps we should consider the
phone screen a lost art. Oh, but how effective it is. In our own practice, we
do not assist companies in hiring salespeople without using the phone screen.
In fact, we use some variation of it for all positions – it is that effective.
This approach removes many biases that naturally occur in a face-to-face
meeting. An effective phone screen can be accomplished in 15-20 minutes which
allows for many more to be completed in a day versus the traditional 1 hour,
in-person interview.
The phone screen allows the hiring manager to get a better
understanding of the applicant’s thought process, composure, communication
ability and even, to some extent, their fit to the position. This tool is
vastly more effective for pre-screening candidates than sorting resumes into
yes and no piles.
Job Rewards. Remember the days when newspaper ads were
riddled with acronyms and abbreviations to save on cost? There were literary
artists who could describe an engineering job in 50 words or less. Those days
are gone, yet we still see the occasional online ad written in that manner. One
might as well place “dinosaur” in the ad's title.
Today’s young job seekers value balance in their work life.
Their rewards are less centred on material wealth accumulation. They still work
to earn money, but they are greatly influenced by the job’s rewards. How will
they personally grow in the position? What skills will they develop? How would
you describe the company culture? These topics can easily be added to any
online job posting since space is no longer a fiscal limitation. The candidates
who respond to this information will have a strong interest in learning more
about the role and typically will have a reinforced skill set that matches the
position’s needs.
Objective Assessments. There are amazing tools available in
the market today that will measure intrinsic traits in a candidate that not
even the most skilful interviewer can ascertain. As previously stated, all
interviewers bring biases to the process. Two techniques to limit these biases
are the incorporation of objective tools and the delayed introduction of an
interviewer’s bias into the process.
Candidates should be assessed before an in-person interview.
The EEOC encourages this approach in all hiring processes. A validated
assessment tool given to viable candidates provides a strong insulator for any
hiring process. The tests do not introduce biases and generate objective
information.
A secondary, powerful benefit to using assessments before
interviews is that it changes the focus of the in-person interview. The
interviewer now has reliable data about the candidate that can be explored
within the context of the interview. The interview is shifted from the
candidate mindlessly regurgitating previous work experience to an exploration
into their talent areas and potential vulnerabilities in direct relation to the
position for which they have applied.
Most companies have seen a significant shift in hiring
that has occurred with the advent of Internet-based technology over the past 10
years. This fundamental realignment has already rooted itself in the economy.
The next seismic shift is already underway as the Baby Boomer generation begins
its exit from the full-time workforce. Companies that adjust their hiring
process and adapt to the changing landscape will ensure their success in the
evolving 21st-century marketplace.
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