Get the Right People - E-Book

7/28/2019 Get the Right People - E-Book

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WHITEPAPER

Get the Right Peope:9 Critica Desig Questios

for Securig ad Keepigthe Best Hires

Steve Ht & Ssa Va Kik


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SUCCESSFACTORS / WHITEPAPER

GET THE RIGHT PEOPlE: 9 cRITIcAl dESIgn quESTIonS foR SEcuRIng And KEEPIng THE bEST HIRES

Get the Right Peope:9 Critica Desig Questiosfor Securig ad Keepigthe Best HiresThe most important decision a company makes about employees is the decision to hire them. Whether a

company succeeds or ails ultimately depends on whether it hired the right people to eectively execute its

strategies.

Despite the strategic importance o hiring, many companies have historically treated recruiting as a largely

administrative process. Rather than ocusing on the business value associated with hires, recruiters have

ocused on increasing the number o requisitions processed and reducing time-to-ill. This relects a lopsided

approach to recruiting that greatly emphasizes eiciency over eectiveness. As one person put it, Talent

departments that spend all their time talking about number o hires instead o quality o hires might as well

measure their eectiveness by the gross tonnage o people brought into the organization.

Fortunately, the world o recruiting is undergoing a massive change in ocus rom quantity to quality o hire. This

is the result o several actors including:

Scarcity of skilled talent. Despite the recent recession, there continues to be a shortage o highly skilled, high

perorming talent, and its growing. There may be more people available in the job market in general, but that doesnot mean they are the right people needed to support a companys strategies.

Cost of labor. As the supply o skilled labor decreases, its cost increases. Companies cannot aord to make hiring

mistakes given how much it costs to bring people into the organization. There is also the more insidious problem o

mistakenly hiring marginal perormers and having them stay.

Importance of human capital. The last thirty years have seen a steady shit rom a resource based to a knowledge

and service based economy. In todays market, competitive advantage depends less on what companies own, and

more on who they employ.

Recruiting, once seen as a back office function that could easily be outsourced, is becoming a key differentiator in

the emerging war for talent. Winning this war requires rethinking key questions around what makes a good

recruiting process. This paper

1

is based on the authors collective experience designing processes for hundredsof companies, ranging from small start-ups to large, global corporations.

This paper is organized into three sections. The irst discusses undamental changes in how companies are

thinking about recruiting and the growing emphasis on creating more collaborative, quality-ocused recruiting

processes that balance hiring quality with hiring eiciency. The second section discusses eight key questions

that need to be careully considered when designing a recruiting process. There is no one best way to do

recruiting, but the best recruiting processes all address these questions thoroughly. The last section discusses

dierent levels o recruiting process maturity that can be used to guide the creation o a long-term roadmap or

achieving recruiting excellence.

1 This paper is written primarily or recruiting organizations that ocus on hiring employees or skilled positions. Some o the concepts in the paper are less

appropriate or recruiting processes that ocus on stafng less skilled, entry level salaried and hourly positions.

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Reriti t Spprt bsiess ExetiFrom a strategic business perspective, the goal of recruiting is not to simply hire people into the organization,

but to reliably and efficiently place and retain the right people in the right roles to effectively support a companys

business strategies. This is a significant change from how some recruiting departments traditionally viewed their

role within the company (See sidebar, Processing, Placement, or Performance.) Organizations that approach

recruiting with a strategic mindset are distinguished by the emphasis they place on four key principles:

Quality o hire is much more important than speed o hire.

Recruiting is more about maintaining and leveraging relationships than advertising job postings.

Hiring managers should play a central and highly active role in the recruiting process.

Recruiting is only one part o an integrated talent management system.

Quality of Hire. Even slight improvements in the quality o hires can have a massive inancial impact onorganizational perormance (Hunt, 2007). Recruiting organizations oriented towards business execution

understand this. They review every step in the recruiting process rom the perspective o how it will impact the

companys ability to attract and select the best perormers. Recruiters are evaluated primarily on the

perormance and retention o the employees they help bring into the company. A quick way to assess whether

a recruiting organization has a quality-o-hire based mindset is to ask recruiters the ollowing question. How do

you know i you eectively illed a position? A quality-oriented recruiter will talk as much or more about

measuring how candidates perorm ater they are hired and less about the eiciency o methods used to

source and screen candidates during the pre-hire phase.

Relationships and Networking. The most eective recruiters use a variety o methods to ind job candidates,

but know that the best candidates tend to come rom networking. In todays world, this includes using social

Processig, Pacemet or Performace: a Etreme Short Histor of Recruitig

The past 30 years have seen signiicant changes in the ield o recruiting. Prior to the advent o the

internet, much o what recruiters did was associated with basic identiication and processing o

candidates. Recruiting tended to be a highly administrative unction largely ocused on placing want ads,

scanning job applications, and setting up candidate interviews. Some companies also tasked recruiters

with handling on-boarding paperwork as well. The internet reed recruiting departments rom much o this

administrative burden and allowed them to signiicantly streamline the recruiting unction. But recruiting still

tended to be judged on process metrics such as time-to-ill and number o hires. Staing departments

were rarely held accountable or the perormance o new hires. Nor were they expected to challenge

managers on whether it made more sense to ill positions internally vs. externally.

The advent o integrated talent management systems is shiting recruitings ocus rom hiring eiciency to

an emphasis on staing eectiveness. Recruiting departments are still held accountable or eiciently

processing and rapidly placing candidates. But the dierence between average recruiting departments and

exceptional ones lies in the ability to ill positions with the best perorming candidates at the lowest cost.

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4

technology such as LinkedIn, Facebook and other such sites, which have changed the game when it comes to

networking. There are several reasons why networking is so successul. First, managers and employees are

likely to recommend better quality candidates since they dont want to work with people they view as

incompetent or unmotivated. Second, the best candidates tend to already be employed elsewhere. Because

these passive candidates already have jobs, they are less likely to take notice o job postings, but they will

respond to an inquiry about a job opportunity rom someone they know. A third beneit o networking is it

doesnt take a lot o money, unlike job postings, which can be associated with hety ees.

Networking is particularly valuable when hiring or experienced positions where people have extensive networks o

proessional colleagues. As one successul recruiter explained, When hiring or a skilled position, very oten the

best candidates already know the hiring manager and/or one o the hiring managers proessional colleagues.

Hiring managers are rarely more than two degrees o separation rom the best candidate. Recruiting

organizations oriented towards business execution embrace social relationships or inding and attracting the best

candidates. They invest in tools to help recruiters build and maintain pools o qualiied candidates they can

leverage or uture hires. The best recruiters do not try to ind candidates on their own. They leverage the

networks o line o business managers and other employees in the organization. The networking approach

includes providing line o business employees with tools, techniques, and rewards or inding high quality talent.

Elevating the role of the hiring managers and line employees in the recruiting process. One common

problem in recruiting is a tendency or hiring managers to distance themselves rom the actual recruiting

process. Rather than collaborating with recruiters to ind and select the best candidates, some hiring managers

assume that they can give the recruiter a job requisition and that two weeks later they will be presented with

the perect candidate. This approach might work reasonably well or buying a tailored jacket, but not when the

goal is to ind and hire the best employee.

Organizations ocused on recruiting or business execution emphasize the concept o recruiting as a team

sport. They put an emphasis on keeping hiring managers and other key line employees actively engaged

through the recruiting process through the use o collaboration tools. These tools allow managers to compare

candidates on key criteria, get a sense o the quality ound in the available talent pool, and exchange thoughts

and opinions with other members o the team. This can help managers determine i they should expand,

reduce or otherwise redeine the scope o the job based on the talent available. Emphasis is also placed on

setting up interview processes that allow all the stakeholders in the hire to eectively evaluate the candidate.

This ensures that hiring managers and other involved employees have a strong sense o conidence and

ownership around the inal decision on whether to make a job oer to a particular candidate.

Integrated talent management. Recruiting tends to be something people only think about when there is a job

vacancy that cannot be illed by existing employees. Hiring is treated as an isolated event that lives outside o

the ongoing talent management process. Recruiting organizations oriented towards business execution actively

campaign against this limited view o recruiting. They see recruiting as a key part o a broader integrated talent

management approach (see Appendix 1. Business execution, integrated talent management, and the role o

recruiting). In this regard, recruiting is like succession management. It may not be something thats done every

day, but it is something that needs to be kept constantly in mind, particularly during times o large scale

company growth or change.


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Two concepts are particularly important to consider when viewing recruiting as part o an integrated talent

management approach:

Balancing internal vs. external hiring

Recruiting activities that are integrated into a broader talent management ramework are driven by a

clear strategy and set o metrics that balance the relative merits o internal vs. external hiring. Staing is

a seen as a means or career development and succession management, not merely an exercise in

external talent acquisition. Open positions become opportunities to build the capabilities o existing

employees through promotions as well as a chance to bring in new skills rom outside.

Workforce planning and job design

Taking an integrated approach toward recruiting requires ongoing discussions between staing

department leaders and business leaders to clariy how the companys strategies will impact uture

hiring needs, orecast likely turnover or existing jobs, and discuss the creation o new jobs and

organizational structures to ensure the company will have the talent it needs to sustain business

operations and growth. Recruiters cannot passively wait or line mangers to come to them with open

requisitions that need to be illed. They need to engage line managers to plan or vacancies beore they

happen.

The our themes o hiring quality, recruiting through relationships, manager involvement, and integration with

broader talent management strategies should be reinorced throughout the design o recruiting processes.

Keeping these themes in mind will decrease the risk o creating recruiting processes that, while eicient,provide questionable value or business execution.

Busiess Eecutio ad Itegrated Taet Maagemet

Running a successul business consists o three challenges:

Defining strategy. Figuring out what needs to be done to succeed.

Managing assets. Securing the capital and resources required to support the strategy.

Driving business execution. Building and managing the workorce so it eectively leverages company assets

to achieve strategic objectives

Business execution requires ensuring that the right people are doing the right things the right way to

support the companys current strategic objectives. Sustainable business execution requires doing these

things in a way that osters the right development so people acquire the capabilities the company will need

in the uture. Because business execution is about employees doing what the company wants them to do,

the best way to improve business execution is to improve employee perormance and development.

Higher levels o job perormance lead directly to stronger business execution overall. So the irst step to

improving business execution is developing a clear understanding o what drives the perormance o

individual employees.

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Figure 1 illustrates the basic components o job perormance. They are divided into three categories:

Goals describe the business outcomes that are supported by an employees job (e.g. achieving sales

quotas, minimizing accidents, maintaining productivity levels, processing documents). Goals define the

reason why a job exists. People are hired to do something and goals clarify what it is they are supposed

to do.

Competencies describe behaviors that employees are expected to display on the job. They include

things like building relationships, planning and organizing, solving problems, and other activities that

make or break success in a job or relect important cultural values o the company. People oten

distinguish goals rom competencies using the concept o what vs. how. Goals deine what a

person is supposed to do in the job, and competencies describe how they are expected to do it.

Attributes are characteristics o employees that are associated with job success. They include

qualiications (e.g. job experience, education, certiications), aptitudes (e.g. personality and ability

traits), and interests (e.g. career aspirations, salary preerences, work schedule expectations).

Attributes deine who employees are in terms o their knowledge, skills and abilities. The attributes

employees possess inluence the competencies they display, which determine the goals they can

achieve.

Figure 1. Integrated talent management means that the right people are doing the right things in the right

way in a manner that develops the right capabilities over time

Who you are How you act What you achieve

Right PeopleStaffing , Promotions &

Workforce Planning

Right WayPerformance Management,

360 & Compensation

Right ThingsGoal Management,

Collaboration &Compensation

Right DevelopmentSuccession, CareerDevelopment, 360,

Learning, & Collaboration

Attributes(Skills, Aptitudes

Interests)

Competencies Goals

Create learning through experience

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The relationship between attributes, competencies and goals can be summed up as who you are

(attributes)determines how you act (competencies)which determines what you achieve (goals). When

designing talent management processes it is important to recognize both the dierences and the inter-

dependencies o goals, competencies, and attributes. High levels o job perormance occur when

companies:

1. Clearly identiy and communicate the goals they want employees to achieve, and then measure and reward

employees against these goals. This is the ocus o goal management.

2. Defne the competencies employees must have to achieve their job goals and evaluate, coach and reward

employees based on the degree to which they demonstrate these competencies. This is the primary ocus o

perormance management.

3. Sta positions with employees whose attributes match the demands and requirements associated with job

goals and competencies. This is the primary ocus o recruiting and succession planning.

4. Create a work environment that helps employees develop attributes that support the competencies that drive

goal accomplishment. This is the primary ocus o career development and succession management.

Integrated talent management requires creating processes that tie these our dierent types o activities

together.

O these our undamental processes that make up an integrated talent management system, getting the

right people through eective staing has the greatest initial impact on business execution. Whetherpeople are able to do the right things in the right way undamentally depends on whether they have the

skills, knowledge and aptitudes needed to perorm their jobs. But staing should do ar more than just

support talent acquisition. Staing can be used to increase productivity by reallocating the workorce into

dierent internal positions based on changes in the organizations goals. Staing also plays a critical role in

employee development by placing high potential talent into jobs that will enable them to acquire new skills

and experiences. Staing can even signiicantly inluence development o business strategies by

highlighting how talent supplies will constrain or enable business growth. When viewed rom an integrated

talent management perspective ocused on enabling business execution, it is readily apparent that staing

involves a lot o activities other than just hiring employees.

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critia reriti esi estisThere is no one best way to do recruiting. What works extremely well or a regional healthcare organization may

be disastrous or a multinational sotware company. Processes that are appropriate or hiring new college

graduates are much dierent rom those used to hire senior executives. But companies that have the most

successul recruiting processes do have one thing in common. They have careully thought through a series o

critical recruitment design questions. The answers to these questions will vary rom organization to

organization, but ailure to adequately address them will almost always result in a lawed recruiting process.

Here are the questions.

1. What tpes of jobs are we hirig for?

Table 2 provides a description of four broad categories of jobs and discusses how each one might influence

recruiting process design. Recruiting for pivotal jobs where small differences in performance have significant

business outcomes requires much more aggressive strategies for sourcing and selecting talent. Staffing critical

jobs that requires specialized skills that are in short supply often emphasize a long-term recruiting process where

candidate relationships are developed years in advance prior to actually hiring candidates into specific jobs. High

volume jobs that require filling large number of positions year after year tend to requires highly efficient, repeatable

recruiting processes. In contrast, operational jobs that have sporadic staffing requirements require recruiting

processes that can be quickly scaled up or down based on shifting hiring demands. Large organizations may find

it necessary to have several distinct recruiting processes to support the variety of jobs they must fill.

TyPE OF JOB ExAMPlESRECRUITInG PROCESSES FOR THESE

TyPES OF JOBS TyPICAlly EMPHASIzE:

Pivotal jobs where small dierencesin perormance signifcantly impactcompany proftability

Strategic leadership roles such asCEO or other senior executive

Key operational roles such asmanuacturing plant managers ortechnical experts in sotwarecompanies

Aggressive strategies or sourcing talent

In-depth processes or screening andselecting the best candidates

Critical jobs that are necessary tomaintaining company operations andwhere there is a signifcant shortageo talent

Jobs requiring specialized skills suchas nurses in healthcare ormaintenance specialists in utilitycompanies

Identiying and developing candidates earlyin their educational career, oten yearsbeore they are qualiied as hires

Creating strong employee value propositionsto attract qualiied candidates

High volume jobs where thecompany hires large numbers oemployees each year

Hourly, rontline retail jobs

Entry level college graduate jobs suchas engineers in a large aerospacecompany

Eicient, repeatable methods to attract,select, and onboard candidates

Operational jobs that are necessaryto maintaining company opera-tions but are not a key source ocompetitive dierentiation or theorganization

Shared services jobs such asadministration, security, or acilitiesmanagement

Recruiting processes that can be quicklyscaled up or down since the company mayonly hire or these positions intermittently

Table 2

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2. How ma peope wi we eed to hire ad whe wi we eed them?

Recruiting organizations can be characterized in part by how they engage with line leaders. Reactive recruiting

organizations view their jobs as mainly responding to requests rom hiring managers as quickly as possible.

Proactive recruiting organizations must continue to be highly responsive to manager needs, but also reach out

to hiring managers to orecast uture job needs and ensure talent is available when needed. I a company is

trying to sta hard-to-ill jobs with high perorming talent, then it is wiser and more eective to adopt a proactive

than reactive stance (See sidebar, The Dierence between Time-to-Hire, Time-to-Fill and Time-to-Start and

Why It Matters .)

The only way to eectively shit rom a reactive to proactive recruiting stance is to make a serious commitment

to workorce planning. This means establishing processes where staing leaders and business managers work

together to anticipate the companys uture staing needs. It is beyond the scope o this paper to ully discuss

what is involved in eective workorce planning. But at a minimum it involves created structured processes and

collecting hard data to accomplish the ollowing:

Agree on likely business growth scenarios extending at least three years into the uture. Looking more than three

years out is desirable because the labor market trends that impact recruiting unold over years, not quarters.

Determine what sort o talent will be required to support dierent business scenarios. This involves analyzing the

kinds o jobs required to support various business strategies and determining what skills and experience candidates

will need to perorm these jobs.

Analyze the skills and experiences o the current workorce and orecast the likelihood o losing employees with

particular skill sets due to turnover, retirement, or movement within the organization.

Calculate the gaps between the employees currently in the organization and the ones likely to be needed over the

next several years. Use these gaps to guide the development o staing processes to ensure the company will have

the talent it needs when it needs it. This may involve external hiring, internal employee development, succession

planning, the use o contingent workers or a mixture o all three. The possibility o addressing workorce deiciencies

by increasing the productivity o current employees should also be considered.

Moving to proactive recruiting shits recruiters rom an administrative orientation ocused on responding to

hiring managers requests to a strategic orientation that involves actively working with business leaders to igure

out what sort o people the company should be hiring and when they will need to be hired. To be eective,

staing departments need to be both reactive and proactive, but it is through being more proactive that staing

has the greatest opportunity to become a true competitive dierentiator or business execution.

The Differece betwee Time-to-Hire, Time-to-Fi ad Time-to-Start ad Wh It Matters

Time-to-hire is one o the most requently used metrics or evaluating recruiting perormance. Usually

measured in days, time-to-hire reers to the total elapsed time required to sta an open position. Despite

its wide use, time-to-hire is among the most poorly understood metrics in the ield o staing. (The others

are job perormance and candidate quality.) The irst thing to acknowledge about time-to-hire is that it is

primarily a measure o process speed. It is not necessarily associated with candidate quality. Because

there is little value in making bad hires quickly, the emphasis time-to-hire places on time over quality

signiicantly limits its value as a measure o staing perormance.

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Time-to-hire also suers rom poor deinition. Some organizations measure time-to-hire starting with the

initial approval o a requisition, while others do not start measuring time-to-hire until a requisition has been

assigned to a recruiter or posted to a career site. One o the most critical dierences in time-to-hire

deinitions is whether to stop measuring when an oer is secured rom an approved candidate or to

include time that elapses ater a candidate accepts an oer but beore they actually start the job. These

metrics are more appropriately reerred to as time-to-ill and time-to-start.

Time-to-ill relects the elapsed time between the initial approval or posting o a requisition and the inal

acceptance o a job oer rom an approved candidate.

Time-to-start relects the elapsed time between the initial approval or posting o a requisition and the actual daywhen the newly hired candidate begins work in the position.

Many actors that aect time-to-start do not aect time-to-ill and vice versa. For example, company

policies restricting employees rom moving into new internal positions until replacements are ound or their

current roles may radically lengthen time-to-start, but could have little eect on time-to-ill. There are even

situations where a company may intentionally increase time-to-ill while simultaneously taking steps to

decrease time-to-start. Although such staing strategies may seem contradictory, they make sense when

time-to-ill and time-to-start are analyzed independently instead o being lumped into a single time-to-hire

metric. The ollowing case studies illustrate reasons why time-to-ill and time-to-start should be treated

independently.

Increasing time-to-fill to increase the chances of a better candidate applying. A ew years ago I

wrote about a company that analyzed the impact hiring technology had on its ability to hire candidates

with certain rare qualiications2. These star candidates generated extraordinary levels o revenue or the

company. It wanted to hire them all the time, but there were rarely enough available at any given time to

meet the companys operational staing needs. A key inding rom this study was that there are situations

where it is advantageous or companies to purposeully increase average time-to-ill.

To understand this inding, it is important to remember that star candidates are by deinition rare, and

receiving applications rom star candidates is a relatively inrequent event. Companies that ocus on

minimizing time-to-ill are not as likely to hire many star candidates simply because they did not wait

around long enough or a star candidate to apply. So how long should companies wait or star candidates

to apply beore they decide to close a requisition? The answer to this question will depend on the job and

labor market. But in this particular study the organization determined that i they intentionally waited 5 days

beore illing positions they would receive an additional $300,000 per year by hiring better quality

candidates. O course these gains had to be oset against costs associated with leaving positions unilled

or ive days. Is this trade-o worth it? It is hard to say. But the potential to make $300,000 simply by

waiting a ew days beore making a hiring decision certainly seems worth exploring.

Decreasing time-to-start to zero without impacting t ime-to-fill. Companies that recognize the

dierence between time-to-ill and time-to-start may adopt unique staing strategies to ensure time-to-

start remains near zero. These strategies allow the company to avoid disruptions in company operations

caused by vacancies while avoiding the risk o lowering hiring standards just to ill a position.

2 S. Hunt (2004). Understanding Time To Hire Metrics. Electronic Recruiting Exchange (www.ERE.net)

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For example, the staing department in one retail organization made a commitment to keep their store

manager jobs 100% staed at all times. This meant reducing time-to-start to less than a day. To achieve

this goal, the company decoupled the process used or hiring new store managers rom the process used

to place newly hired managers into speciic store positions. It then intentionally over-hired so that within a

given region there were always slightly more store managers than store manager positions. Ater initial

on-boarding, newly hired store managers were provided with additional in-store training until a vacancy

occurred in their region. They were then transerred into the vacant position immediately to minimize any

discontinuity in store operations.

In addition to increasing operational continuity, these changes led to improvements in the process used to

hire new store managers. Recruiters eel constant pressure to keep the pipeline illed with good candidates

and minimize time-to-ill, but they are no longer under the gun to sta a speciic position in a speciic store

as ast as possible. Recruiters are able to hire in a more systematic and measured ashion, ocusing on

candidate quality instead o constantly responding to the hiring crisis o the moment. They are not

pressured to lower their hiring standards just to get someone in the door, and can scrutinize candidates

without worrying about the added pressure to sta an existing vacancy.

Decoupling the concept o time-to-ill rom time-to-start represents a bold and innovative approach toward

staing. But these examples illustrate what can happen when staing leaders take the time to critically

analyze staing metrics and processes and ocus on hiring quality and not just hiring speed.

3. What sort of peope do we eed to hire? What attributes do cadidates eed to become

high performig empoees?

The ultimate objective o recruiting that is ocused on business execution is to hire employees who will deliver

higher levels o job perormance. To achieve this objective it is critical to clearly deine job perormance and

understand how it relates to dierent candidate attributes. What speciic business outcomes does the

company want to achieve by recruiting new employees? Is the goal to improve employee retention, increase

productivity, provide better customer service, achieve higher sales revenue, or to impact some other outcome?

Every staing process should start by asking hiring managers to clariy the business goals they want to support

through hiring new employees. This necessitates making decisions that emphasize certain outcomes over

others. Employees attributes that positively impact some outcomes oten negatively impact others (See

Sidebar No one is good at everything.) For example, a common tradeo when evaluating candidates iswhether to ocus on productivity versus stability. The most highly productive employees are oten the irst to

leave to pursue new opportunities. These employees are usually driven by a desire to move to increasingly

challenging positions, tend to have more job opportunities elsewhere, and may quickly tire o jobs ater they

master them. While there is value in having highly productive, short-time employees, there is also value in

having a stable workorce. The inancial value o maximizing productivity vs. maximizing retention varies

substantially depending on a companys business model. Discussing the relative value o dierent business

outcomes such as these is an important part o designing a recruiting strategy that will deliver the best results.

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no Oe Is Good At Eerthig: The Importace Of Job Aasis Ad Defiig Cadidate

Quaificatios

When talking with hiring managers about candidate qualiications or a job, recruiters should keep in mind

there is no such thing as a single type o ideal candidate. Candidates that excel at some aspects o a job

will invariably be less eective in others. Eective recruiting requires making choices between the relative

importance o dierent candidate attributes. There are some candidate attributes that are probably

universally counterproductive across virtually every legitimate type o job (e.g. dishonesty). But it is hard to

envision a candidate attribute that is always desirable, regardless o the job. Attributes that are strengths in

some jobs are usually weaknesses in others. For example, being highly agreeable may be a desirable trait

when applied to things like ostering teamwork and getting along with others, but can be a weakness orjobs that require taking a irm stance on an issue or holding others accountable or their behavior.

Candidates with the strongest levels o experience and technical capability typically cost the most to

employ.

It is important to work closely with hiring managers to determine which attributes are the most important

or job success, and agree on areas where it may be necessary to make certain trade-os. Recruiters who

dont will end up looking or candidates that dont exist.

Developing a clear understanding o what drives job perormance in a certain role can be harder than expected

When managers are asked, What makes a great employee? they tend to answer in vague generalities about

passion, dedication, and can do attitude. These characteristics sound good, but they reveal next to nothing

about what makes high perorming employees noticeably dierent rom average or poor employees.

Fortunately, there are many job analysis techniques available to quickly and accurately deine the employee

behaviors and characteristics that drive job perormance. Job analysis is not an overly complex discipline to

master, and there are many books available that cover the dierent job analysis methods. Any worthwhile job

analysis method will require direct involvement rom hiring managers, current employees, or other subject

matter experts amiliar with the job being staed. Most methods require subject matter experts to clariy

speciic tasks perormed on the job. Subject matter experts might also be asked to provide examples o things

current or ormer employees have done on the job that illustrate eective or ineective behavior.

A well conducted job analysis provides a clear picture o the unctions ulilled on the job and the employee

attributes that are required to perorm the job successully. This includes having clear deinitions o the ollowing

6 categories:

Job Title. A job title that external candidates will understand so they can tell whether they are interested in and

potentially qualiied or the job.

Job Tasks, Responsibilities and Objectives. The goals people in the job are expected to accomplish or the tasks

they will need to perorm (e.g. maintaining customer service levels, building new products, achieving sales quotas).

Job Requirements. Credentials or licenses candidates must possess to be eligible to hold the job regardless o

their other qualiications (e.g. U.S. citizenship, licensed degrees).

Relevant and/or Minimum Qualifications. Skills and experience that candidates are expected to possess to be

considered qualiied or the position (e.g. years o experience, job-relevant training and coursework).

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Job Competencies. Behaviors people are expected to display on the job (e.g. supporting team members,

planning and organizing, thinking analytically).

Conditions of Employment. Things people must accept in order to perorm the job (e.g. work hours, job location,

physical job requirements/ADA requirements, travel schedule, pay).

Clearly deining these categories will provide clarity and ocus or subsequent decisions concerning what sort o

candidates to source, how to select among dierent job applicants, and what actions will be required to

on-board newly hired employees. All o this inormation can also be used to create more eective perormance

management and career development processes to maximize the productivity o employees ater they are

hired.

4. What roes wi hirig maagers, recruiters, co-workers, ad cadidates pa i the hirig

process?

The ability to ind, select, hire, and on-board employees transcends the role o any one individual or

department. When designing recruiting processes, careul attention should be placed on determining the

involvement o our key stakeholder groups at dierent stages o the recruiting cycle:

Recruiters and/or Human Resources: Individuals who are ormally tasked with managing processes to support

sourcing, selecting and onboarding new employees.

Hiring managers: The person responsible or overseeing the budget and salary associated with the new hire; the

ultimate decision-maker on whether to hire a candidate.

Co-Workers: People who will have input into the hiring decision other than the hiring manager; typically co-workers

or managers rom other departments who will work with the candidate i hired.

Candidates: individuals being considered or the job. They may be external applicants or internal employees

seeking a new position.

Recruiter!

Hiring Manager!Interviewers! Candidates!

Maximize productivity!

Engaged in hiring process!

Streamlined feedback! Real-time apps!

Approvers!IT !(onboarding)!

Employees!

Operations!

Comp Analyst! Legal!Agencies!

Background !Checkers!

Access to opportunities!

Figure 2. Rather than take sole responsibility or hiring the right candidate, the recruitershould orchestrate the eorts o all the key stakeholders.

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STAGE RECRUITER ROlE HIRInG MAnAGER ROlE CO-WORKER ROlE CAnDIDATE ROlE

Deining jobrequirements &

candidatequaliications

Provide tools to deine jobcompetencies, skills, andqualiications

Work with recruiter todeine job requirementsand candidatequaliications

Sourcecandidates

Provide tools and guidanceto hiring managers andemployees on using socialrelationships to indcandidates

Maintain talent pools with

potential candidates. Use job postings, search

tools and other methods toind candidates

Leverage personal socialnetworks to indcandidates

Recommend potentialtalent sources torecruiters

Leverage personalsocial networks toind candidates

Recommendpotential talentsources to recruiters

Respond to jobopportunities

Screencandidates

Screen out clearlyunqualiied candidates.

Recommend qualiiedcandidates to hiring manageror review

Review qualiiedcandidates or suitability.

Provide eedback torecruiter on why certaincandidates were or werenot selected

Providenecessaryinormationrequired toevaluatequaliications

Select

candidates

Provide interview guides tohiring managers andemployees

I relevant, administer andinterpret advanced selectiontools

Communicate to candidateswhy and how selection toolsare used; answer candidatequestions

Conduct interviews andother assessments toevaluate candidates

Provide inormation onthe quality o candidates

Conduct interviewsand otherassessments toevaluatedcandidates

Provide inormationon quality ocandidates

Completenecessaryassessments andinterviews

Sell candidateon the job

Engage qualiied candidatesto keep them interested inthe job

Sell candidates on thebeneits o the company asan employer

Communicate tocandidates about theopportunities o the job.

Treat candidates withappropriate respect andcourtesy

Communicate tocandidates aboutthe opportunities othe job

Treat candidateswith appropriaterespect and courtesy

Ask questionsabout the joband expresscareerpreerences

Continued on next page..

Table 3: Recruiting Process

Table 3 provides an example o how these our stakeholder groups might be involved in dierent steps o a typica

recruiting process. It is particularly important to emphasize the role and responsibility o the hiring manager. The

responsibility or hiring high perorming talent into a company ultimately lies with hiring managers, not recruiters.

Recruiters are there to support hiring managers, but recruiters who allow hiring managers to shit responsibility or

making good hires to the recruiting unction are doomed to disappointment and ailure. Most experienced

recruiters can tell stories about being blamed or not being able to ill a position when the real problem was a

hiring manager who never ully deined what constituted a top candidate, or was unresponsive when asked to

review and meet with the candidates the recruiter recommended. To maximize the eectiveness o recruiting

processes and minimize risks o inger pointing over recruiting problems, the role the hiring manager is to play

during the hiring process should be documented through a service level agreement or similar ormal agreement.

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STAGE RECRUITER ROlE HIRInG MAnAGER ROlE CO-WORKER ROlE CAnDIDATE ROlE

Make thehiring decision

Provide advice on strengthsand weaknesses ocandidates

Take ownership or theinal hiring decision.

Explain to recruiters whycandidates were or werenot consideredacceptable

Provide advice onstrengths andweaknesses ocandidates

Accept or declineoer

Onboardnewly hiredemployees

Provide guidance tocandidates and hiringmanagers on steps requiredto bring a new employeeonboard.

(Optional) Manage certainnew hire administrative tasks

Ensure steps are taken sonew employees canquickly get up to speed

Engage newemployees; makethem eel welcome

Participate inon-boardingprocess

Track post-hireperormance

Collect data on perormanceand retention o candidates

ater they have been hired. Evaluate eectiveness o

recruiting methods based onperormance and retention onewly hired employees

Provide data on theperormance o newly

hired employees

5. How wi we source cadidates?

You cannot hire the best candidates or the job i they never apply in the irst place. Sourcing candidates is one

o the key dierentiators o a highly successul recruiting process. Companies that excel at inding and

attracting the best candidate not only improve the productivity o their own workorce, they also deprive their

competition rom inding and securing top quality talent.

There are a wide variety o approaches or sourcing candidates. Table 4 lists several o these approaches and

their relative strengths and weaknesses.

SOURCInG

METHODSTREnGTHS WEAKnESSES

TEnDS TO BE MOST EFFECTIvE

WHEn:

Employer

Branding

Impacts large numbers ocandidates

Attracts candidates thecompany might not otherwisereach

Can integrate with andsupport other companybranding eorts

Takes a long time

Marketing costs can be signiicant

Impact is hard to track; does nottie to individual hires

May attract large numbers opoorly qualiied candidates

Hiring large numbers ocandidates over many years

Seeking to create awarenessamong certain candidate pools

Building Talent

Pools

Critical or creating talent

pipelines and shortening timeto hire

Builds strong relationshipswith key groups o candidates(internal or external)

Expensive to maintain

relationships over time. May be diicult to pre-qualiy

candidates or inclusion in talentpools

Can be a challenge to maintainthe quality o talent pools

A tendency or preerence or

hiring candidates rom the samesources exists

There is a strategic ocus onhiring candidates with certaincommon characteristics (e.g.demographics, educationalcredentials)

Job Posting

Quick and easy way to reachlarge number o candidates.

Jobs can be posted on sitesvisited by very speciic typeso candidates

Oten some o the bestcandidates are already employedand do not look at job postings.

Can be expensive depending onthe site

May attract large numbers opoorly qualiied candidates

Hiring or jobs with very clearlydeined qualiications and hiringcriteria

Hiring or jobs in a certainspecialized area where there arecareer-speciic, technical job sites


Continued rom previous page...

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SOURCInG

METHODSTREnGTHS WEAKnESSES

TEnDS TO BE MOST EFFECTIvE

WHEn:

Proessional

Recruiting

Leverages seasonedproessionals who may haveextensive networks ocandidates and strongrecruiting skills

Expensive

Outside recruiters may be moreocused on illing positions thathiring high quality employees

Hiring or specialized technicaland leadership positions wherecandidates tend to be scarceand/or already employedelsewhere

Social

Networking

Taps into proessionalnetworks maintained bycurrent employees

Attractive because best hiresoten come rom employeereerrals

Relatively inexpensive

Only works i existing employeeshave contact with the kinds ocandidates desired

Can be time consuming

Hiring or technical or industry-speciic positions where the bestcandidates are probably one ortwo degrees o separation romexisting employees

Career Pathing

Creates a talent low withinthe organization.

Usually less expensive andmore successul than externalhires

Increases retention within thecompany

Best candidates may notnecessarily be current employees

Creates vacancies within theorganization due to moving talent

Requires investing time andresources into developing internaltalent

Hiring or positions where thereare clear career paths within thecompany

Hiring or positions whereamiliarity with the company iscritical to job success

Employer branding uses marketing techniques to build a companys reputation as a good place to work

among a large segment o potential candidates. For example, companies interested in hiring engineers might

sponsor events at university engineering schools or place ads in engineering trade journals that reinorce the

beneits o working or the organization. There are many techniques or building an employer brand, but the

most successul employer branding campaigns tend to have two things in common:

1. The company has clearly defned the brand message it wants to convey based on the kinds o

candidates it wants to attract. A good employer brand will uniquely dierentiate why someone would want to

work or one company vs. another that hires or the same types o jobs at the same basic salary.

2. Careul thought has gone into which candidates to target with the branding message. The goal is not to

encourage all job candidates to apply. It is to encourage qualifed candidates with certain characteristics to

apply, while possibly even actively discouraging candidates whose attributes might not be a good ft.

Building talent pools involves maintaining relationships with groups o potential candidates or uture jobs.

Talent pools may consist o students, job seekers, and/or current employees who possess certain skills or

experience desired by the company. These pools serve as a irst source o candidates when there is an

opening. One o the major actors to consider when building talent pools is how much ocus to place oninternal versus external candidates. Many companies overlook their existing employee population when

sourcing talent, although internal employees are oten the best source o candidates.

Job postings are advertisements that communicate job opportunities via online job boards, websites, or

newspapers. There is usually a ee or posting jobs on speciic sites.

Professional recruiting reers to using ull-time, proessional recruiters to actively seek out potential

candidates. Proessional recruiting may be supported by in-house recruiters or external, contingency-based

recruiting organizations.


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Social networking means inding candidates by leveraging peoples personal relationships. Networking

increasingly uses technology such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook to communicate job opportunities to potentia

candidates, and it is rapidly becoming a dominant method or sourcing candidates. There are several

advantages to this approach. First, most people in proessional or specialized roles get hired into jobs based on

personal reerrals. Second, networking tends to result in the hiring o individuals who are already known and

trusted by people in the company. This helps create a stronger social bond within the company and tends to

decrease turnover, since people like to work with colleagues whom they also consider to be riends.

Career pathing reers to helping existing employees develop skills so they can assume jobs within the

company that provide increasing levels o responsibility. This includes succession management, the process o

identiying and developing high potential employees within the company to assume leadership positions.

The sourcing strategies that make the most sense or any given situation vary depending on the type o jobs

being illed, the size and location o the hiring organization, and the depth o the recruiting resources available.

No single sourcing strategy is the best. The most eective recruiting processes leverage a mixture o sourcing

methods to maximize the probability that the right candidate will apply or the right job at the right time.

That being said, it is important to consider the preerred communication medium o the candidates being

targeted, which may dier signiicantly based on candidates ages. (See sidebar, Generational Dierences and

Recruiting.) Its also important to consider how much emphasis will be placed on ill ing positions with internal

vs. external candidates.

Geeratioa Differeces ad Recruitig: Saig the Same Thigs Differet

Considerable energy is spent discussing dierences between generations and how this aects recruiting.

This is not new. As long as there have been adults and children, one group has been emphasizing how

dierent they are rom the other.

There are signiicant research challenges to iguring out whether generations truly are dierent when it

comes to jobs. Apparent generational dierences may simply be due to dierences in the liestyles people

have at dierent ages. What people want rom work when they are 20 and single tends to be dierent rom

what they want when they are 40 and married with two kids. Apparent generational dierences could also

be due to changing economic conditions. Employees currently in their 20s may act dierently rom how

older workers acted when they were in their 20s simply because when older workers were in their 20s the

labor market and the economy were much dierent.

Some o the more rigorous research on generational dierences and employee behaviors suggests that

what people undamentally want rom a job has not changed much over the years. Regardless o

generation, most workers are looking or jobs that provide some sense o challenge and career growth, air

compensation, a reasonable level o work-lie balance, and some degree o stability. What does appear to

change considerably across generations is how people communicate. In particular, there are big

dierences in candidates preerences and expectations or using the telephone, e-mail, social media, or

some other method to interact with employers. Even i a companys recruiting message remains constant

across candidates rom dierent generations, the way it is communicated may signiicantly inluence how

candidates rom dierent generations interpret that message.

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PHySICAl ExAMS

Drug screens Use medical screening procedures to detect whether candidates have used illegal or

controlled substances (e.g. urinalysis, analysis o hair samples).

Physical Abili ty tests Requi re candidates to per orm physical tasks such as li ting weights, complet ing

cardiovascular exercises, or demonstrating lexibility.

BACKGROUnD InvESTIGATIOnS

Criminal Record Checks Search public records and private databases to determine i applicants have any prior

criminal convictions.

Social Security Verifcation Search online databases to ensure that a candidates social security number is valid.

Reerence Checks Collect inormation rom ormer employers or academic institut ions to veri y previous

employment status (and possibly job perormance) as well as educational credentials.

Credit Reports Contact credit reporting agencies to obtain inormation about a candidates inancialhistory.

RESUME SCREEnS

Electronic Recruiting Agents Search the web or qualiied candidates based on keywords ound in resumes posted on

internal or external career boards.

Resume Capture & Reviews Evaluate candidates based on the content o resumes they submit directly to the

company or resumes posted to web-based job boards.

InTERvIEWS

Unstructured Interviews Evaluate candidates by having a discussion with them about topics that seem relevant to

the job.

Structured Interviews: Motivational

Questions

Evaluate candidates by asking pre-deined questions about interests, career goals, and

plans.

Structured Interviews: SituationalQuestions Evaluate candidates by asking how they would respond to hypothetical situations similarto those they may encounter on the job.

Structured Interviews: Behavioral

Questions

Evaluate candidates by asking them to describe experiences and accomplishment that

relate to things they will have to do on the job.

Table 5


6. How wi we seect cadidates?

The staing assessment methods used to determine who should receive a job oer are central to increasing

quality o hire. Table 4 lists a variety o tools that can be used or candidate selection. Which methods should

be used will vary depending on the nature o the job and the depth o the hiring companys resources. In most

cases, investments spent to improve the accuracy o selection decisions will generate signiicant ROI as a

result o increased post-hire productivity and retention. Even small increases in hiring accuracy can pay o in

major rewards over time.

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SElF-REPORT MEASURES

Pre-Screening Questionnaires/Weight-

ed Application Blanks

Ask very direct questions to candidates to determine i they possess speciic skills,

experiences, or credentials needed to perorm a job (e.g. Are you willing to work

weekends? or Have you ever used MS Excel).

Personality Questionnaires Ask candidates a series o sel-descriptive questions about their l ikes, preerences,

behaviors, and past experiences that relect personality traits associated with job

perormance.

Integrity & Reliabil ity Tests Ask candidates about belies, preerences, and experiences that relect a propensity or

counterproductive behavior.

Biodata Inventor ies Ask quest ions about previous lie exper iences and accomplishments that show statisticalrelationships to job perormance.

Culture & Work Environment Fit

Inventories

Ask questions about job preerences, values, belies, and desired work environment to

predict organizational commitment and job satisaction with a speciic job or company.

KnOWlEDGE, SKIll & ABIlITy TESTS & SIMUlATIOnS

Ability Tests and Measures o Problem

Solving Aptitude

Predict ability to solve problems and interpret inormation by asking applicants to solve

questions that require processing inormation to arrive at logically based conclusions.

Knowledge & Skills Tests and Mea-

sures o Past Learning Achievement

Assess amiliarity and mastery with regard to speciic types o inormation or tasks (e.g.

knowledge o accounting rules, ability to use certain sotware programs, typing skills).

Job Simulations, Assessment Centers,

and Work Samples

Use audio, video, computer simulations, and/or human actors to recreate actual job

situations and then assess how candidates react to these scenarios.


One selection method used in virtually every recruiting process is the interview. Given the prevalence o

interviewing, companies can reap signiicant beneits by inding ways to maximize the eiciency and

eectiveness o the interview process. There are many ways to do this, ranging rom designing pre-set

interview questions to providing manager training on how to conduct an eective interview. The ollowing are

two o the simplest and most impactul ways to improve the interview process:

Support collaboration and coordination among multiple interviewers. Most candidates are interviewed by severa

people within the organization. It is important to coordinate interviews so candidates are not asked the same

questions multiple times by multiple people. There should also be an eicient way to collect and collate interview

results to ensure a ully inormed inal hiring decision.

Structured interview guides. Considerable research demonstrates the beneits o using structured interview guides

to systematically assess candidates. With this in mind, it is useul to create structured interview tools that ensureinterviewers are asking the right questions about the right topics (and avoid questions that might put the company at

legal risk).

The last area to be addressed when designing selection methods is determining what data will be used to

evaluate the accuracy o selection tools over time. Many companies assume the hiring process ends shortly

ater an employee accepts a job. A better practice is to extend the hiring process so it includes new employee

tracking or a year or more ater the hire. I an employee is ired or quits within the irst year, it is usually not a

matter o bad management. It is probably the result o hiring someone who never should have been given the

job in the irst place. With this in mind, it is valuable to think through the ollowing questions to ensure you have

a method in place to steadily improve the accuracy o your hiring decisions.

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What data will be collected on employees post-hire to ensure they are perorming at or above an expected level?

How will retention o newly hired employees be tracked and used to improve hiring perormance?

Will this tracking include noting whether these employees are ultimately promoted to position with greater levels o

responsibility?

7. How wi we get ew hired empoees up to fu productiit?

Companies initially lose money on newly hired employees. It can oten take several months beore they know

the ropes well enough to make a real contribution. They are certainly not adding value to the company i theyare spending their time iguring out where to sit, who their team members are, or how to ill out their healthcare

beneit plans. It is thereore important to make the on-boarding process as quick and eicient as possible. High

perorming employees in particular ind the on-boarding phase rustrating. They want to get up to speed and

contribute to the company as ast as possible. I it takes too long to become productive, they may even quit.

There are three basic categories o new hire on-boarding:

Administrative on-boarding ocuses on the tactical details associated with establishing new employees

in a companys payroll structure, beneit plans, oice environment, and computer systems. While these

actions are purely administrative, they can be a source o considerable rustration and ineiciency i they

are not done well.

Technical on-boarding ocuses on ensuring employees have the training, knowledge, and tools neededto perorm their job. Depending on the job, technical on-boarding may take less than a day or more than a

year. Companies that have extensive technical on-boarding requirements may want to link their recruiting

technology to career development and learning management system technology.

Social on-boarding ocuses on welcoming employees into the corporate community so they eel part

o the broader corporate culture. It helps new candidates get to know the other people they work with in

terms o their interest, experiences, and history. This is probably the most overlooked aspect o on-

boarding, but it is very important or several reasons. Strong social ties with work colleagues play a major

role in driving employee engagement and retention. Social networks also orm a oundation or enabling

eective teamwork, particularly in work environments characterized by high levels o change and role

ambiguity. Fortunately, social technology tools now exist to help companies support social on-boarding in

a consistent, scalable ashion.

Best in class staing organizations recognize that the hiring process is not inished until the new employee is

ully up to speed as a contributing member o the organization. Fully eective staing processes to do not leave

the employee on-boarding process to chance. They clearly prescribe and monitor actions to ensure newly

hired employees quickly become ully productive and engaged members o the workorce.

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8. How wi we keep empoees after the are hired?

It is extremely expensive or organizations to go through the process o hiring candidates only to have them qui

early into their tenure. Candidate turnover within the irst year should probably be considered a ailure in the

staing process, since something about the job and candidate clearly did not match. Retention ater a year is

more a unction o how employees are managed and the career opportunities they see within the organization

rather than staing. Nevertheless, staing organizations should also pay attention to the reasons why

employees leave later in their careers and see i there are ways to impact longer-term retention levels through

changes in the hiring process.

High perorming employees are o special importance in this regard. Some o the main reasons they quit are:

perceived lack o career growth opportunities within the company

a sense o inequity around pay, promotion, and staing decisions

a general sense o misit between their personal interests or work preerences and the characteristics o their

manager, job or company culture

Staing organizations should actively work with the leaders o other talent management processes such as

compensation, employee development, perormance management, and leadership development to ensure that

the employer brand being promised to candidates during the recruiting process is ulilled in the treatment o

candidates ater they are hired.

9. How wi we measure our success ad improe the process oer time?

Although this question is listed at the end, it could easily be considered as the irst and most important or

designing an eective staing process. Its impossible to know i a hiring process is truly eective unless thecriteria that will be used to measure staing success have been deined. How do we know i we have made a

good hire? How can we tell i our hiring process is eicient over the long term, and not merely in terms o time

to hire? Answering these questions lies at the heart o creating a staing process that is truly ocused on

business execution.

Table 5 lists several metrics that can be used to measure staing eectiveness. These metrics should be

reviewed with stakeholders and customers associated with the staing process to decide which are most

important, how data will be collected, and what actions will be taken based on the results. The metrics that are

most important rom a business execution standpoint are shown in red. All o these directly relect how staing

programs impact workorce productivity.

PRE-HIRE METRICS

Number o Hires

Applicant Volume

Applicant Source

Time-to-Hire

Time-to-Fill

Cost per Hire

Applicant Quality

Applicant-to-Hire Ratio

Oer-to-Acceptance Ratio

Applicant Demographics and EEO Statistics

Applicant Reactions

POST-HIRE METRICS

Productive Perormance

Counterproductive Perormance

Tenure

Time and Attendance

Hiring Manager Attitudes

Employee Attitudes

Training Perormance/Time-to-Competence

Turnover Costs

Employee Demographics and EEO Statistics

Internal Promotions and Transers

Turnover Reasons

Table 6

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Reriti Press MatrityBuilding a world-class recruiting process can take years. It is important to approach recruiting process design

as a continuous improvement journey rather than a one-time event. In particular, creating a strong employer

brand or developing large pools o qualiied candidates takes months or years, not weeks. Creating a recruiting

process thats truly ocused on business execution requires adopting a deliberate, systematic long-term

approach toward process design.

Figure 3 illustrates the maturity phases organization oten go through as they develop their recruiting processesrom a reactive illing o positions approach to a proactive maintaining a steady supply o high perorming

talent approach.

LEVEL 1: Filling open positions. The irst level o maturity is to establish eicient methods or illing

open positions. This involves establishing methods to eectively create and track job requisitions and

eiciently process candidates as they move through the hiring process. Achieving level 1 provides a

stable platorm to support the next levels.

LEVEL 2: Selecting high performing candidates. Level 2 ocuses on implementing tools to improve

the accuracy o hiring decisions. This may include integrating more sophisticated selection tools into

the hiring process, but at a minimum should emphasize more eective interview processes. Level 2

orces companies to deine what kind o candidates they wish to hire, which is a necessary

requirement or getting to Level 3, building talent pools.

Figure 3.As companiesmature, their approach

to recruiting becomesincreasingly proactive andstrategic, as opposed to

being purely administrative.

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LEVEL 3: Building talent pools. This level ocuses on creating internal and external pools o

candidates that can be used to ill uture positions. A key part o achieving level 3 is creating tools that

provide the staing organization with clear visibility into talent ound within the company as well as

outside o it.

LEVEL 4: Forecasting future talent needs. While level 3 provides a general sense o the amount o

talent available to ill dierent types o jobs, Level 4 ocuses on deining the gap between the talent

that exists within the company and the talent that will be needed in the uture. This is where workorce

planning becomes critical.

LEVEL 5: Maintaining talent pipelines. Level 5 is the pinnacle o staing based on businessexecution. At this level companies are able to ocus on providing just in time staing where positions

are illed within days due to active orecasting o talent needs and pre-identiication o qualiied

candidates. This is where staing becomes a signiicant competitive dierentiator or driving strategic

success.

CocusioThis paper has described the attributes that characterize a recruiting process that is ocused on business

execution. It also includes questions and ideas that will help in designing the most eective staing process or

a particular organization. While there is no such thing as the best hiring process, there are similarities across

the recruiting processes discussed in this paper that truly impact business success. Careully considering the

questions, concepts, and suggestions laid out in this paper will help in creating such a process.

i Hom, P.W., & Salamin, A. (2005). In search o the elusive U-shaped perormance-tenure relationship: are high perorming Swiss bankers more liable to quit?

Journal o Applied Psychology, 90, 1204-1216.

ii Brannick, M.T., & Levine, E.L. (2002) Job Analysis: Methods, Research, and Applications or Human Resource Management in the New Millennium. Thousand

Oaks, CA: Sage.

Gael, S. (1988). Handbook o job analysis or business, industry, and government. New York: Wiley.

iii Hunt, S.T. (2006). Using metrics to guide stafng strategies across dispersed workorces. Journal o Corporate Recruiting Leadership, 2, 3-17.

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