In
an article published on HR.BLR.com®,
recruiting expert Miranda Nash emphasized the importance of long-term staffing
and provided 5 tips on how to handle it effectively.
Nash
is the president of Jobscience and has worked as a hiring manager,
entrepreneur, and C-suite executive, positions that have given her a thorough
knowledge of the art of recruiting.
For
most HR professionals, Nash notes that hiring is primarily a reactionary
effort: A position opens up, and it’s time to get to work filling it. If you’re
lucky, you have the luxury of a 2-week notice, a month-long notice in advance
of retirement, or preplanning ahead of new department expansions or other new
hiring needs.
But,
in most cases, many HR teams can only dream of having time to plan ahead for
hiring. They’re simply too preoccupied with other responsibilities, like
benefits administration, compliance training, tracking personnel time off,
payroll coordination, and other duties.
Unfortunately,
this quite often puts the organization behind the eight ball, with no way to be
strategic in their hiring efforts, writes Nash. This means the company could be
at a severe disadvantage when it comes to finding the best talent at the right
times to fill critical positions.
In
order to prioritize and plan ahead, recruiters instead must take a more
strategic, forward-thinking approach to hiring. By looking beyond immediate
vacancies to longer-term staffing needs, HR pros can anticipate needs, maintain
a full pipeline of candidates, and give their organization a more strategic and
agile competitive advantage for recruiting new employees.
Here
are Nash’s tips for your long-term staffing:
1)
Assess each position based on its strategic vs. tactical value.
Most
organizations make the mistake of treating every job as though each is of equal
importance to the organization. Certainly, we all know intuitively that this is
not the case, but from an HR perspective, this is how they’re handled: An
opening emerges and we seek to fill it with the best-qualified candidate that
we can afford.
But,
this focused approach ignores the importance the role plays within the larger
organization. Instead, start by examining every position within the
organization, from the C-suite to entry-level, and determine whether each job
is strategic or tactical—whether the role is to lead the organization with
vision, creativity, and insight, or to implement and execute those strategies.
Identifying this distinction will help build a foundation for a more-strategic
approach to staffing prioritization.
2)
Identify the ideal candidate.
Of
course, each job will have specific qualifications and skills requirements that
any worthy candidate must possess. But, beyond these qualitative factors,
finding the right fit for the job is only half the battle.
You
must also find candidates who fit with the company culture, values, and
principles. Candidates who “look good on paper” and are otherwise equal in
skills and qualifications may be very different in their “soft skills” that
determine whether they’re truly a good fit for the organization.
Just
as sales professionals know they have to go beyond demographics to the
qualitative details that are the hallmark of their ideal customers, HR teams
should also identify the personality characteristics and nuances that the ideal
candidate for any job role should possess, both for the entire organization—but
most importantly—for those strategic positions.
3)
Conduct supply and demand research.
Here
again, intuition often guides HR pros in knowing what types of jobs will be
most in demand and how this will impact their hiring efforts. But, it’s
critical to conduct formal, early-stage research on the supply and demand,
especially in the most highly competitive industries.
Each
year, the strategic HR team should identify in-demand positions and the
competitors who are also looking to fill them, and plot these on a competitive
matrix. Visualizing the challenge can help you see more clearly how difficult
or easy it may be to fill those positions. Tools and research are one way to
gain access to this real-time labor market intelligence.
The Pipeline and
Millennials — Part II:
4) Build a
pipeline.
Taking another page from the sales professional’s
playbook, strategic HR teams know that building a pipeline of qualified ideal
candidates is critical to meeting long-term staffing needs. Don’t make the
mistake of waiting for vacancies to occur before starting the process of
filling them.
It’s flat-out impossible to cram 4 to 6 months’ worth of
work into just 4 to 6 weeks. By building relationships with potential
candidates now, you can establish yourself as the employer of choice, promoting
your superior company culture and value proposition. This makes your
organization attractive even to passive candidates who may not actively be
looking for a job right now, but could be lured away from their current
employer by the right opportunity.
5) Plan for
Millennials.
The majority of this newest generation of jobseekers have
never lived in a time without the Internet, cell phones, and 24/7 access to
media—social and otherwise. They search for jobs in new ways, want different
things from their careers and employers, and are more concerned about having a
purpose vs. just a job than their predecessors.
Long-term strategic HR planning requires that you meet
their needs, regardless of how you or your organization may feel about them.
Engage them over social media, as a real person and not just a corporate
identity, and offer a motivating atmosphere with a career path that both
challenges and helps them feel as though they’re making a difference.
The Bottom Line
In modern business, it isn’t just the IT, sales, and
product departments that need to be agile and strategic. In order to compete
for the best talent in a tight marketplace that favors the jobseeker, HR must
also adopt this new approach to recruiting.
When the day-to-day responsibilities prevent the internal
HR team from developing and adopting this strategic approach, it may be a great
time to consider partnering with a staffing firm to provide added support.
This added assistance can enable the internal team to
either outsource the tactical aspects of recruiting and hiring or provide
expertise to develop and execute a solid strategy, freeing up internal
resources for the tactical work. Either way, the additional support will give
the company a strong advantage in a tight job market.
From this solid foundation, the next step is to build an
ideal candidate profile, especially for strategic positions, and build a solid
pipeline of prospects that captures even the passive candidate. This
comprehensive approach allows savvy HR pros to be proactive—rather than
reactive—and attracts the best talent faster and more cost effectively, giving
them a much higher strategic value for the entire organization.
Source:
HR Daily
Adviser: Part
I – Part II
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