• 
• Training
• Consulting
• Resources
• Events
• About Us
• Store

• » Articles
• › The Official Rules for Hiring Top Talent
• › Newsletters

How to Develop a Talent-Driven Hiring Strategy in Changing Times

By Lou Adler, November 12, 2008

One of our clients asked us to lead a full-day sourcing strategy review session for their recruiting and hiring leaders. The company believed they were moving in the wrong direction and needed to rethink everything they were doing very quickly. The catalyst for all this was the impact of the economic slowdown, the recent elections, and the company's overall strategic redirection and its desire to remain extremely competitive regardless of the current economic cycle.

Following is a quick summary of the ten core areas we discussed. These could be a helpful guide for you if your company's business conditions are rapidly changing. Thinking through the process ahead of time is far better than reacting to across-the-board restructuring edicts from on high.

Read more articles by this author.

Related Topics:

Newsletter, Recruiting

Related Articles:

What is Your Recruiting Strategy?

Is Your Recruiting Department behind the Eight Ball?

Adler's Wild and Crazy Economic Recovery Plan

A Ten Step Program to Develop a Talent-Driven Sourcing Strategy

1. Establish overall goals. Realistic goals and objectives need to be established to start the planning process. Quality per hire and time to fill were critical objectives for the company, since both had strategic implications for them. As part of this, the company wanted to be in a position to continue to hire "A" candidates for all strategic positions (assigned to external search), top 10% for management and senior staff positions, and the top 25% of all other positions. To reduce time to fill, they wanted to implement a JIT sourcing program for 90% of their future hires. All of the subsequent planning revolved around these core objectives.

2. Forecast external hiring needs. The company had to scope out their hiring plans both in the short term and over the next 2-3 years. This included the identification of critical and core hiring needs based on the annual and long-range plans; problem areas, specifically positions with extremely high turnover; the effectiveness of the internal mobility program; the impact of on-going reorganizations, RIFs and division consolidations; and consideration for the on-going succession planning process. All of these areas are being impacted by rapidly changing business conditions, and it was important for the company to get a handle on the big issues.

3. Assess the recruiting team and organizational structure. An optimum structure for the recruiting department needed to be made based on the company's hiring needs and the changing role of HR, recruiting, and hiring managers. Due to short-term concerns the company wanted increased flexibility with more outsourcing, but it didn't want to degrade its core recruiting capability. In addition, there was a desire that hiring managers needed to play a more dominant role in the recruiting and referral process. The company also recognized that it could only retain its strongest recruiters and wanted a program to both assess the whole team and strengthen the high potentials.  (Here's a link to our online free recruiter assessment tool.)

4. Evaluate and upgrade technology. The company was in no position to massively upgrade its technology infrastructure, but it recognized that it had fallen behind the times. Part of the plan involved putting together an assessment of their candidate tracking systems from a usability standpoint and evaluating the use of interim fixes including implementation of Web 2.0 technology, leveraging the use of aggregators, the creation of talent hubs for critical job families, and the building of candidate pipelines on top of a sales automation platform.  (Sign-up for our free sourcing webinars.)

5. Develop candidate profiles by job family. A candidate profile is a comprehensive analysis of the ideal person for the job, and addresses factors like demographics, target companies, associations, networks, interests, alternative titles, and indirect competitors, among a number of other points that would allow us to more easily find and attract the person. Once a rough hiring needs analysis was conducted, it was suggested that the company group jobs by family and source by class of job rather than by individual requisition. The expectation was that this would dramatically reduce job board advertising expenses through the use of talent hubs.  A talent hub is a 2-3 page microsite that is more easily found if it's search engine optimized and more user friendly than a typical job description on a career site. For one thing, rather than forcing the candidate to apply for a specific job, it allows the person to become a prospect just by providing personal data. This reduces the reporting requirements, increases the number of prospects in the pool, and allows recruiters to query candidates about their interest when specific openings become available. 

6. Develop a multi-level sourcing channel program. One size doesn't fit all. The best candidates use a variety of means to find a new job depending on a number of factors. To be effective, companies need to use multiple sourcing techniques to connect with these people. Addressing the differences in candidates and pushing advertising to them is part of the new field of micro-targeting and search engine marketing. Better understanding a person's needs and motivations can help position the ad to be found and create the content to attract the person's attention. Some of these personal factors include security of their current position, industry competitiveness, personal situation (age, family, gender, etc.), career focus, best job boards, current job satisfaction, typical concerns, common interests, and most commonly frequented Internet sites (i.e., blogs, social networks, industry associations). A dynamic grid can then be created from this information allowing companies to position compelling ads based on job class by sourcing channel. For example, to attract software developers you might want to dramatically expand your employee referral program and push project-based ads on a pay-per-click basis to tech blogs. To attract customer service reps in a highly-structured call center you might want to create a search engine optimized talent hub that emphasizes the learning opportunities. 

7. Determine the changing role of the hiring manager. While hiring managers seem to be less involved in the hiring process as companies become bigger, they actually have the most important role. At some companies all they do is open up a poorly written req and expect to see star candidates in a few days. Yet few are very good at assessing competency and fit, and even fewer are good at attracting star candidates to work for them. There is a huge shift now underway with hiring managers taking on a more responsible role in all aspects of the hiring process. Some of this includes defining the job in more realistic terms, creating the employee value proposition, developing sourcing leads including providing referrals, becoming much better at interviewing and recruiting candidates, being more involved at every stage including negotiating the offer, and ensuring the new employee is properly trained and developed once on board. Increasing the role of hiring managers represents a critical shift in thinking and will have a huge impact on every step in the process.     

8. Metrics and reporting. Recruiting leaders need to know in real time how the new processes are working. This is the only way corrective actions can be taken quickly enough to have any impact. Process control metrics like recruiter productivity, candidates interviewed per hire, speed to move candidates forward, sourcing channel and campaign effectiveness, candidate quality by pipeline, and the like, give recruiting leaders insight into what's working and what's not. Creating a comprehensive metrics program is part of a new wave of thinking, viewing recruiting and hiring as a core business process. While tools are available to pull this information together quickly, it's not apparent that recruiting leaders view this information as important. While filling assignments on a timely basis is critical, using metrics properly can ensure they're filled quickly, efficiently, and consistently day after day.

9. Audit the current situation. While goals are important, you need to figure out where you stand now and what needs to change in order to achieve those goals. In this case we developed a comprehensive operational audit program looking at everything including current sourcing programs, technology effectiveness, the interview and assessment process, the career web site, adverting programs, and the hiring manager's ability to recruit the best. Download our 10-factor recruiting department assessment template form to quickly assess your group.

10. Develop and execute the operating plan. Since you can't do everything right away, putting a basic plan in place based on priorities is essential. This is the desired outcome of the planning session. In this case the first steps were to determine how to increase the role of the hiring managers, create talent hubs and implement JIT sourcing for the company's primary job families, move towards the implementation of Web 2.0 using Jobs2Web and SimplyHired.com, evaluate different ways to restructure the recruiting department including an immediate assessment of each recruiter, and begin forecasting hiring needs for all core positions.

A down economy provides the opportunity to rethink and re-plan everything you've been doing. In the process you'll discover a number of things. For one, some of what you're now doing is a waste of time and should be discarded. For another, some of what you're doing now is pretty effective and can be retained with minor changes. But most of all, rethinking the whole process using a blank piece of paper allows fresh thinking to dominate the discussion, rather than relying on a "that's how we've always done it here" attitude. Collectively, starting the rethinking and planning process will profoundly strengthen your competitive position for hiring top talent once the economy recovers.

We're providing a free taste of this planning process in a one-hour online process review. Email info@adlerconcepts.com if you'd like to schedule an online evaluation audit of your existing recruiting and hiring processes. As a minimum you'll discover what you can do, what you must do, and what you should do first.