December 6, 2011
Contradicting a 2004 study showing that using the Internet to look for work prolonged unemployment, a new study has found the better job boards, improved site design, and enhanced technology have dramatically improved the job seeker’s ability to identify positions, make application, and secure employment using the Internet. Also noted by the researchers was the percentage growth of unemployed individuals using the Internet—up from 25% in 1998/2000 to 74% in 2008/2009. In addition to the formal services, the Internet was cited as a valuable “networking” tool where the unemployed could communicate with family, friends and professional colleagues, thereby extending the reach of their searches. Enhancements to job site “user friendliness” were also cited as having an impact on their growing popularity.
University of Colorado-Denver news release:
http://www.ucdenver.edu/about/newsroom/newsreleases/Pages/Study-shows-using-Internet-to-find-work-cuts-unemployment-time.aspx
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hiring process | Tagged: competitiion, Employment, hiring best practices, HR, Human Resources, job descriptions, job posting, strategic employer | 
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Posted by Richard Yadon
August 17, 2011
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Make recruiting a process that is structure and tracked
What would you think of a farmer who decided to skip all the plowing and sowing and jump right into harvesting? You’d think the farmer was deluded and crazy? How can a crop be harvested if the seeds were never sown? How can crops grow if the soil isn’t plowed and watered? It would be insanity to think a farmer could go straight to harvest without doing all the things necessary to cultivate their crop.
This is how many organizations approach recruiting. They have a critical opening and suddenly they want to harvest top talent. Like the farmer they too need to cultivate the talent pool and sow their employment brand long before they start to harvest. This means that recruiting has to be a process that is incorporated into the overall company culture . It has to be an ongoing activity that is measured and tuned.
Here are some simple ways high performing organizations sow seeds and cultivate a healthy crop of top talent:
- Promote their company as a highly desired place to work
- Create relationships with potential employees as early as high school
- Advertise their jobs to attract top talent rather than screen out applicants
- Profile key jobs
- Establish an ongoing relationship with a niche search firm
Of course, there are variables specific to every organization. But the faster companies begin to cultivate their talent pool, the faster they’ll have the right people to hire.
Leave a Comment » | hiring process | Tagged: assessment testing, Employment, health career professionals, hiring, hiring best practices, HR, job benchmarking, job descriptions, performance base hiring, selection, strategic employer | Permalink
Posted by Richard Yadon
July 13, 2011
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A few weeks ago I took an extended trip with my family. The first morning I woke up before everyone else to go for a run. As I dressed I suddenly realized I had forgotten my running cap. That might not seem like a big deal, but it makes a real difference in the quality and enjoyment of my run. I always run with that cap, it keeps the perspiration out of my eyes, provides a shield from the sun, and has a safety reflector quality to it. When I got into mile two my eyebrows didn’t work as well as that cap. I spent the rest of my run annoyed and wiping my eyes . In the haste of packing for the trip I forgot to include a small detail that created a consequential impact.
The same is true when a company is trying to hire a key player. The small details have a consequential impact. Forget to create a performance profile? Than all you have is a job description. Forget to write an attraction oriented job posting? Than all you have are ‘B’ and ‘C’ level people applying. Forget to profile the job? Then all you can do is validate a resume. Missing just one of these details causes companies to make costly hiring mistakes.
If I had used a packing checklist I might have remembered my running cap. Likewise, companies that use structured hiring process make much better hiring decisions.
Leave a Comment » | hiring process, role analysis, Top talent | Tagged: employee turnover, hiring best practices, Human Resources, job benchmarking, job descriptions, performance base hiring | Permalink
Posted by Richard Yadon
May 6, 2010
Now that the economic recovery seems to be advancing, health care executives have to turn their attention to attracting and retaining professional talent. Many key company employees put off retirement or career transitions until the economy improved. Strategic leaders should ask themselves what steps have they taken to protect and transfer the departing corporate intelligence to new people? What retention strategies are you implementing to avoid loosing even more?
Business and Human Capital pundits hypothesize that in a recession-altered workplace, employees are often adrift, without well-defined roles and accountability or managers who have a grasp on how to actually execute the business leaders key strategies and metrics.
Employers who need to drive more profitability, who need to maintain and sharpen their competitive edge recognize that it will be their people who create the differentiating factor. This is especially true in our global economy. The old way of recruiting people, interviewing, selecting, and retaining doesn’t work any longer. In fact, it turns off the very top talent you seek. Strategic leaders recognize the available workforce will actually shrink by 15% or more over the next 10 years. Companies need to be more careful about who they hire because there will be fewer of them to choose. Talent strategy then becomes a revenue generator. Executives have to take their corporate talent strategy to a new level.
Here are ten ways to supercharge your talent acquisition, selection, and retention strategies:
1. Throw out old job descriptions and create performance profiles for each key contributor role.
2. Benchmark your best performers in each job and create Key Performance Indicators.
3. Re-engineer your interviewing process to ask the RIGHT questions.
4. Make Organizational Development & effective Recruitment a priority.
5. Alter the objectives, roles and accountability of HR Management.
6. Hire the right people who shared common values and purpose.
7. Establish an on-line employment presence flaunting their EVP.
8. Implement a top grading culture.
9. Make rewards personable and customized.
10. Provide employee development, mentoring and coaching for high impact employees.
Don’t waste time; implement some or all of these TODAY. If you haven’t started by now you are already behind.
Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Tagged: boomers, employee engagement, employee motivation, employee retention, employee turnover, hiring, hiring best practices, HR, job benchmarking, job descriptions, keeping good people, performance base hiring, retention, selection, turnover | Permalink
Posted by Richard Yadon
March 30, 2010
I came across this post on Mike Morrison’s blog and wanted to share it with our subscribers and clients. Mike makes some very good points. You can’t create an employee engagement or talent management strategy if you don’t understand the issues. So often companies charge head with well-intentioned plans that fall short. Instead of motivated, engaged employees they end up with a skeptical and jaded workforce. Much of this can be avoided if companies strategically hire people. In short…
1) Understand the kind of people you need to grow profitably and competitively
2) Quit interviewing to validate resumes and start interviewing for performance predictability
3) Survey to understand the “real” workforce issues
5) Create a talent and retention strategy the accounts for generational issues and with an eye toward the future
Thanks Mike for the good info here ….
http://rapidbi.wordpress.com/2008/11/23/employee-engagement-the-solution-in-difficult-times/
Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Tagged: assessment testing, competitiion, employee, employee engagement, employee motivation, employee retention, employee turnover, hiring best practices, job descriptions, keeping good people, multi-generational workfroce, performance base hiring, reduce turnover, retention | Permalink
Posted by Richard Yadon
February 26, 2010
This question was recently addressed on LinkedIn. Here’s how I answered it…
Performance Management is necessary when you have the wrong people in the wrong job. If companies continue to use a job description and continue to interview to validate resumes they will never know who they really hire. The wrong fit always creates performance issues.
A better way is to first truly understand the job. This means digging into the Key Performance Indicators, developing the kinds of performance behaviors that will be successful, and then Benchmarking the top people in the job. This information is then coupled with a solid performance and behavioral based interviewing process to match the person to the job. When you have a good match you don’t need to “manage” performance, you just need to let the employee do what they do best.
How would you answer this question? You can see other answers at this link: http://www.linkedin.com/answers/management/organizational-development/MGM_ODV/637145-6126809
Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Tagged: hiring best practices, job benchmarking, job descriptions, keeping good people, LinkedIn, selection | Permalink
Posted by Richard Yadon
February 24, 2010
Do you have a Hiring Combine?
“Speed, strength, and the inability to register pain immediately.” ~Reggie Williams, when asked his greatest strengths as a football player
Each year the NFL hosts its annual combine. It is the annual job fair for prospective new NFL players. For six days, players are put through a series of drills, tests and interviews with more than 600 NFL staff including head coaches, general managers and scouts. These coaches and scouts assess every aspect of athletic performance. They measure the hopefuls in strength, speed, aptitude, and position specific skills. Teams will make multi-million dollar investments and they want to know what they are getting. There is more at stake than just winning games. Superstar players drive team licensing, merchandising, and advertising revenue. Management doesn’t make players into household names out of the goodness of their hearts. This is an important business decision. If not assessed correctly the first time, it could become extremely costly.
What would you think of an NFL team if they had a short telephone interview with the young player, making up the “probing” questions a few minutes before the call? Maybe, on the basis of that call, they will “like” the athlete and fly him in to visit them at the team offices. Suppose the player meets with the coach and a few assistant coaches. But since everyone is so busy they have the towel boy to take him to lunch and then on to the airport afterwards. The next day a few of the coaches swap some email comments about the player or maybe stop in the hall to ask the highly inquisitive question “What did you think of so and so?” Based on this exhaustive process, the coach calls the player, makes a multi-year, multi-million dollar offer and the player accepts. Later they are astonished to see the player fail. I wonder why the NFL doesn’t do it this way.
You wouldn’t think much of an NFL team who hired players like that. Yet companies make multi-million dollar hiring decisions every day in just the same way. Maybe if companies approach hiring top talent with the same rigor as the NFL they’d find more “superstars” – and profits.
Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Tagged: assessment testing, health career professionals, hiring best practices, job descriptions, NFL, selection, strategic employer | Permalink
Posted by Richard Yadon
February 3, 2010
An appreciative “Thank you” to Vincent Vanderbent for recognizing my answer as being the best in response to his LinkedIn question
“Employee retention: why do you keep inefficient managers and staff?”
It is a great question and the answer has eluded countless organizations. You can read the full question and my answer at the following link:
http://www.linkedin.com/answers/management/labor-relations/MGM_LBR/625840-23470066
Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Tagged: hiring best practices, job benchmarking, job descriptions, performance base hiring, retention, turnover | Permalink
Posted by Richard Yadon
December 18, 2009
We are finding that many companies have hired below their standards over the past several years and need to upgrade people in their organizations. While this might sound harsh, it is a disservice to any employee to keep them in a job for which they cannot, or will not, excel. Other employees suffer as well when they see underperformance tolerated, or worse, when they have to take up the slack. As things tighten on businesses your competitive advantage will be the people you employ.
When you look at your employee pool what do you see? To you see a flock of eagles or a pond of ducks? How do you even know? Most businesses are too weighed down by bureaucratic momentum, lack of time, or lack of resources to objectively analyze their workforce. It is tough to say if you have eagles if you don’t know what one looks like. If you are still interviewing to validate a resume then you aren’t making objective decisions about who you hire. There is, however, one simple step any business leader, department manager, or supervisor can take that will help you determine which roles need some upgrading.
To understand what an eagle looks like you must profile your key jobs; those that have the most impact on your productivity, profitability, and quality. Job Profiling is a systematic way to analyze the needs and competencies that the A-level, player, the eagle, must have in the job. You want to objectively understand what an eagle should look like in any key position. Once you have the Job Profile you can establish a performance-based interviewing process that more accurately predicts success of a candidate.
If you need to upgrade now is the time to do it. Health Care Reform will likely be a reality in 2010 and its impact will be felt across all industries. Your business can’t afford to wait to put the right people in the right roles. Start upgrading and looking for your eagles today.
Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Tagged: health career professionals, hiring best practices, job descriptions, multi-generational workfroce, performance base hiring, strategic employer | Permalink
Posted by Richard Yadon
July 27, 2009
Have you read any of the jobs posted on job boards or company career pages? Most of what I see doesn’t really describe the job at all. What is does is describe the person the company wants to hire. There is a real problem with this in that often times the person you really want to hire won’t fit the description!
Strategic Employers need to set a goal of only hiring high performance employees. To maintain competitive edge and profitability they have to attract, select, and retain the best people. With or without a recession, it will be getting harder to find these people. One reason is the labor pool of top talent is shrinking. Another is that top talent is rarely looking for your jobs. They will not see your job description and, if it is like most of the stuff posted, it will not entice them to respond.
A Strategic Employer attracts superior people by defining superior performance – not a set of selection criteria. Results, which should be the main concern of a Strategic Employer, comes from performance, not skills and qualifications. You want to find people who are competent and motivated to get the results you want. They may not always match the skills and qualifications you list. Ask yourself if you’d rather have a person who can get the job done with superior results or would you rather have a person who matched a set of skills and qualifications? If you must compromise, do so with the skill match not on the performance.
When you write a job description to attract top performers, write about what they get to do. Write about the performance expected. Don’t focus so much on what they need to “have”, focus on the “results” they need to get. Top performers will not want your job because they match the qualifying criteria. They want the job because they get to do new and challenging things and achieve a higher level of results.
Strategic Employers know that they can’t attract, select, and retain the old way. Attracting top talent means being focused on performance instead of qualifications. When you change to this approach you’ll increase the quality of talent you attract.
1 Comment | Uncategorized | Tagged: health career professionals, hiring, hiring best practices, job descriptions, job posting, performance base hiring, retention, selection | Permalink
Posted by Richard Yadon
