Golden Oldies Twofer: Getting and Keeping
by Miki Saxon
Poking through 12+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.
Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.
I read an interesting article from Wharton on the current trend of ghosting by both candidates and employees (more on that later in the week). Today’s Oldies are kind of the yin and yang of finding and keeping people who aren’t likely to ghost.
Read other Golden Oldies here.
Talent in good times and bad (2008)
The people market is tightening (again), and the pundits are arguing (again) over whether there actually is a shortage of qualified people to fill openings across industries, especially high tech.
Is there really a shortage? Does it matter?
If there is a perceived shortage (i.e., jobs aren’t being filled), then companies will continue to fret over finding qualified people and managers will continue to worry that a lack of talent will damage their own careers.
During the most recent downturn there was an abundance of talent available as has happened in the past; for example
- The early nineties, when a typical ad for a software engineer in Silicon Valley drew 100-plus viable responses.
- Post-October 1987, when a financial services ad would easily draw five hundred qualified responses.
- The early seventies, when an ad for a microwave designer ran in the Sunday San Jose Mercury and over three hundred qualified engineers started lining up at 6 AM Monday morning to wait for the company’s doors to open.
It is neither the surplus of talent in a down market, nor the dearth of it in a tight market, that creates a staffing problem. Rather it is the attitude of many managers that if the person is not already working there must be something wrong.
In the Eighties the thought was “There must be something wrong; companies only lay off their deadwood.” In the late Nineties, it was, “There must be something wrong or this candidate would already have a job.”
Frequently the source of such attitudes is managers’ lack of confidence in the ability to make good hiring decisions. By hiring currently employed people, managers unconsciously can validate a positive hiring decision (must be good or she wouldn’t be there) or excuse a hiring mistake (assumed he was good because he was at XYZ).
Why the prevalence of this rarely-discussed-almost-never-admitted lack of hiring confidence? Why is staffing, with all its associated pieces, one of the most disliked of all management tasks?
Simply stated, most people don’t like doing things when they don’t feel competent and it is difficult to feel competent doing an intricate task for which you’ve had little-to-no training.
Staffing involves many tasks
- developing detailed reqs,
- screening resumes,
- doing substantial, time-saving phone interviews,
- creating and mentoring an interviewing team,
- interviewing,
- crafting an offer,
- closing and landing the candidate,
- avoiding post-acceptance pitfalls, and
- a myriad of other details.
Above all is the need to hire correctly; in other words, to hire the right person at the right time for the right reasons. To do it well requires sophisticated, proactive, real world-based training geared specifically to line managers.
Instead, much of the available training is geared to having an HR department or using an outside recruiter; is too mechanical; or is comprised of general psychology information.
When there is an abundance of highly qualified candidates it’s a result of the economy, not of a surplus of people.
Population demographics, baby bust to retiring Boomers, guarantee hard hiring times for a decade at least. To assure their ability to meet the staffing challenges of the twenty-first century companies and managers need to work together to
- create an efficient, proactive hiring process;
- build internal sourcing skills that work in any labor market;
- raise hiring skills to the level of core competency; and
- disseminate them throughout the organization.
The winners of the future will be the companies that can fill their needs from the available labor pool, whatever the size, and the managers whose hiring skills allow them to confidently recognize talent, no matter the source.
Boom Or Bust, People Availability Is Not The Real Problem (2006)
Talent availability goes up and down, up and down all through the town—and the country and the world.
Thanks to a strong global economy and an aging population talent has been in short supply for awhile, so if the economy slows and more talent becomes available staffing should be easier—right?
Not really. It was still difficult during the last recession when all the information channels were saying that there was an abundance of well trained, highly qualified workers available.
A looser talent pool doesn’t mean that it’s easier to hire.
And it sure doesn’t mean that turnover is less costly, because the 80/20 rule still holds true.
The overt costs (20%) during good times include recruiters, relocations, and over-sized salaries/sign-on bonuses and they all but go away during lean times.
But the covert costs (80%), including interviewers’ time, slipped schedules, lost opportunities, lost productivity, and lowered morale, are still present.
Hiring itself isn’t easy, either. In 1999, an ad might generate 80 responses, 90% of which weren’t a fit; in 2002 the same ad generated 500 responses, but 90% still didn’t fit.
Other fundamentals don’t change, either.
- A corollary of Murphy’s Law states, “No matter the condition of the labor market, the specific skills being sought by any given company at any give time will be
a. the least available skills
or
b. the same skills that are being sought by every other company, - No matter how long or hard you work, your organization will not meet its objectives without the right talent.
- A manager’s raises, bonuses, stock options, and even job, depend on the ability to hire the right person, at the right time, for the right reasons.
- Without the ability to hire and retain people in a timely, cost-effective manner, managers are gambling with their own success. After all: You are who you hire.
- People retention is critical, and retention is the result of good hiring practices.
The days of labor famine come and go, but even in days of labor feast, staffing is too costly to ignore good retention practices.
Image credit: Willi Heidelbach
