The way you execute hiring decisions can make or break your business.  Many companies have handed off this responsibility to third party companies.  I would assert that outsourcing your recruitment function is on the same level as outsourcing sales.  Bringing talent into an organization and moving it around should be a core business competency.  I do believe that niche providers in certain areas may be needed such as those that provide scalability and/or a technology backbone.  Business leaders must master to ensure business continuity in boom and bust times.  They can do so if they drive execution in the following areas.

The Past Will Set You Free – History holds vital keys to your decision and relationship patterns.  You should analyze your past hiring and firing patterns to find out key areas of success as well as areas for improvement.  This logic holds true for candidates as well.  Search out efficient and consistent ways to document past performance and use this as a criteria in your hiring decisions

Don’t Get Too Testy With Candidates – Personality tests have their place and that place is usually with a psychologist or in a clinical environment.  You would be best served to find a tool that matches the roles you need candidates to play with their preferences and ability to fill that role.

Respect the Art and Science – Do not throw out the all important interview because it has been reported as inconsistent.  If you make sure to add structure and apply some selection science (panels, behavior based, etc.) to your interview process, you will not only make the process better but you will make your managers better at this key job element.

Be Lean and Mean – I am not a DMAIC zealot, but I do respect the advantage one has when the tool belt is full.  You should use all available and relevant tools to  ensure your Talent Management process meets all “customer” (user, payer, and stakeholders) requirements.  These same tools will also be applied to make your process lean and and minimize rework.

I recently had a very revealing chat with a chap that has been out in the job market for some time.  This individual is one of the most talented and diversely skilled professionals that I know.  He would easily be a fit for leadership within a support function (ie. HR, Payroll, etc) or more “close to the action” (ie. sales, operations, general management).  This individual had kept the job search very broad by pursuing both support and P&L roles.  He was very open to going in either direction and those that approached him articulated that not only was he a very appealing candidate but that the support and line roles were “core” and critical to the organization’s success.  The hiring managers also asserted that they look for talent that can contribute broadly as opposed to just filling a position.  As time progressed, the actions of the organization’s revealed many things but mostly, separated the valued roles from the pack.  It also became apparent that none of the support roles that were deemed as core had actions that supported this assertion.  This list below is a summary of the actions that candidates can use to determine if a company really values the role as core and/or values you as “talent”.

1. The hiring organization is mostly concerned with job/role fit as opposed to checking off if candidates match the job profile to the letter.
2. The company has urgency around filling the role – the process moves very fast (you either have an offer two weeks from your first conversation or you know you are not a candidate).
3. The organization will over hire for the position and beef up the role to fit the candidate
4. The hiring manager is driving the process, not HR

There are no absolutes but rest assured that if a company’s actions are opposite of those listed above, you have reason to be weary.

I recall a time when I was running Corp EE Benefits for a major manufacturing firm and was tasked with leading a workstream to identify gaps in HR service delivery, devise a mitigation strategy, and then implement.  One of the mitigation strategies was to design and implement an HR Shared Services unit.  This unit was to offer the organization many benefits, one of which was to take transactions off the desks of the HR Generalists so that they could focus on delivering services that were more business specific.  This was also one of the steps needed in the miraculous transformation of an HR Generalist into an HR Business Parnter.  After one of the transition sessions with the field HR folks, I was called to the side for a one on one meeting with one of the HR Generalist.  In this meeting, I was confronted with thier misunderstanding of what the new role was to be.  She asked “What the h$!! does an HR Business Partner do”?  I was quick to articulate and expound upon the talking points that we had devised and went into the competencies that an HRBP should master.  This was all well and good but it did not answer the question.  I could have went straight into politics because I sounded more like I was testifying before congress than giving a collegue direction.

When I was  an hr specialist, I often wondered just what does an hr generalist/business partner do?  When I became an hr business partner, I often wondered why don’t managers do this themselves?  When I moved on to become a general manager and business development executive, I wondered why would I ever need an hr business partner?  This HRBP role has many shapes and sizes but based on my experience, it is not clearly defined in most organizations.  I would assert that there are very few that have this role defined clearly and even fewer have trained and aligned resources in the organization to deliver on the promise of the “strategic hr business partner”.  To this day, the question remains… is this a “real job”?

I was conversing with a fellow senior HR professional today (who will remain nameless).  We were talking about the state of the job market and how it is affecting candidate and HR behavior.  He went on to bemoan the tons of useless paper that HR departments were getting in response to job postings.  He blamed this mostly on a lack of self discipline in the candidate population and stated that they are not “taking adequate time and care to make sure they qualify for the job”.  The first flaw in this assertion is that job postings are written accurately and have enough information in then to make that determination.  More importantly, self discipline goes out of the window when someone is trying to feed and clothe the family.  When we are in the position to make these judgements on candidates we often forget the critical role that work plays in our lives (Mainly, as a means of sustaining our families and providing for thier care and well being).  Work is not meant to be the social experiment that many of my I/O buddies have made it out to be.

I am not so quick to dismiss candidates that are not a perfect fit as I have been on both sides of the table.  I have always tried to counsel folks to look for talent first and to make technical requirements more accurate and slim them down to what is core. We should be careful not to describe an ideal candidate so narrowly that they could not possibly handle any other role (present or future) except the role that we have posted.  When we are in the position of hiring manager, we must sift down to what is “truly” a core requirement and get back to putting some real athletes on the field.