People are a business’ competitive edge but are businesses really choosing the right talent to fit their current business needs?
People are crucial aspects of all businesses and organizations if not the most important. Every entrepreneur ventures into his or her venture with great expectations and high hopes. However, none can play a solo dance in the business and services arena. You need people to take care of the various tasks connected to the running of your business. They should be able to convert your aspirations into successful day-to-day operations. After all the success of every business or an organization ultimately depends on how every stakeholder in the business plays his or her part effectively in a way contributing to the welfare of the organization. But are our HR practitioners as business stakeholders, getting the right people through the door, ensuring more productivity and promising growth? Do we understand the business requirements enough to add value to bring the right Talent on board?
Best HR Sourcing Practices
Though the number of people searching for jobs is continuously on rise, it is extremely difficult to get the right people to match the various job roles of a given organization. People have various levels of training, talents, interest, dedication and skills. What is the best for a given role might not hold good for another role. The best HR sourcing practice requires improving the skills of the current employees so as to serve the goal of organization in a better way.
As a start, it is imperative that HR practitioners gain a thorough knowledge of a given job role before sourcing people. The engagement with the business owners not only on a job description level but in a holistic way would ensure a thorough understanding of the role, the expectations of success, the team make up, the immediate managers’ style.
Next stop is finding the people with the potential set of talents and skills necessary for that job role, purely from a job description match point of view. While going through various resumes of people, make a vertical as well as horizontal analysis across resumes and also within a given resume. Always broaden your search and source as many resumes as possible for a particular job role. Once you narrow down the list of candidates by eliminating what you deem as unsuitable, you can shortlist them for the selection process. Remember that 79% of the global workforce is actually passive candidates, continual immersion in the candidates’ world is imperative if you wish to hunt down talent and the cream of the crop rather than limiting yourself to the 21% active candidates.
Assessment on soft skills can be via commonly used personality tests but usually an experienced interviewer would be able to pick up basic information sufficient for a first impression through a prior telephone interview. It is good to prepare a set of questions for the telephonic conversation. Let the candidates be brief, specific and good enough to give you a fair idea about the accomplishments and suitability of the candidate for the given role.
Face to face personal interviews can obviously give you and the hiring managers more confirmation about the suitability of a candidate for a given job. The scenario behind every interview is unique. It must take into consideration the requirements of the job role, and the number of candidates you were able to shortlist for the selection process.
The best fit talent for any organization may be found in the remotest of areas. Don’t limit the search for a good talent. In fact, people from small towns and cities should also be given a fair chance to prove themselves. Sometimes, candidates from big schools and colleges lack practical knowledge that could be found in a guy who had received moderate-level education but had grown skills useful for a particular role.
Getting Talent on Board is however only half the story, keeping them is yet another thing.
In a Talent squeezed market, getting that top performing employee on board is a win, but if as an organization, talent management program remains only a buzzword and not a reality, the talent revolving door will just be kept spinning constantly.
Ultimately, the Talent Management Program should address what affects the employee most critically: the compensation and benefits, his/her own career path and his immediate working environment.
Ensuring Employee Satisfaction is very much necessary to ensure persistent and lasting results. Though you cannot always oblige, you can always talk obligingly. Spare enough time to talk to the employees, show real interest in their well-being, add an acceptable degree of personal touch into your business conversations with them and make them feel one with the organization.
Employee Retention rate is one of the most important factor that will add up to the merit of an organization. Making the existing employees perform better is a better way than making a new start by firing them and hiring a new one for the job.
The below shown figure points to a talent management program that can help in retaining the prized employees that HR managers so diligently hired for various kinds of roles.
Some of the most successful HR management practices include offering a motivating atmosphere:
- Awarding, rewarding and appreciating the good work they do
- Making payouts in time
- Attending to their problems and ensuring the ceaseless accessibility to job related information they might require.
What are said so far are just some proven generic tips. However, when it comes to your organization, you know the best approach ideally suitable to your needs and set up. Consulting with a third party could bring to the table best case practices in the industry that might otherwise be missed out upon.
Happy Talent Managing!
