Decision Toolbox Blog: Blog/News

Wikipedia: Talent Management (TM) refers to the process of developing and integrating new workers, developing and retaining current workers, and attracting highly skilled workers to work for a company.   The dirty truth: as noble and intuitive as that sounds, many companies do it very poorly.  Why?

1.  Short-term focus:  Stock performance,  executive bonuses and many spending decisions are heavily tied to quarterly earnings.  Money flows first to things that can have an immediate impact on revenue and is cut from programs (like TM) when cash is tight.

2.  Intangible nature:  The benefits of many TM initiatives are harder to quantify than other parts of the business.

3. Lack of loyalty:  Layoffs have caused most employees to feel very expendable.  In turn, employees look for back-up plans and keep their options open.  Which leads to higher turnover.   Companies become less interested in investing in people that will likely leave or be asked to leave in a short period of time.

4. Carrot versus stick employee motivation:  Carrots costs money.  Sticks are free.  It’s also easier to observe what’s wrong and try to correct it, than to praise what’s right and encourage more of it.

HR executives will always have an uphill battle to keep Talent Management initiatives funded by the Execs who run their companies.  Never give up, never surrender!

This ancient practice stemmed from the belief that the head contained “soul matter” or life force, which could be harnessed through its capture.  Today, headhunting is slang for recruiting, which relies much more on “attracting” candidates than “capturing” victims.

Go back just 20 years and headhunting/recruiting was a much messier and stealthier business than it is today.  Not surprisingly, it had the sex appeal of a tribal headhunter.  There wasn’t Linkedin, networked computers or even electronic resumes for the most part.  And finding candidates relied on your willingness to hunt down the right person, sometimes in the parking lot of their employer because they rarely had voicemail or email.

I love the tools we have today.  And although we aren’t gathering “soul matter”, soul does matter.   It’s the invisible force that often determines whether a candidate calls back, whether they give you the time of day to hear your story and, ultimately, whether they believe in you and the true value of your offer enough to impact one of the most emotional decisions in their life.

How do you entice talent to consider your opportunity?

You’d probably consider a CEO of a $112B company, recently hailed as one of the “TopGun CEO’s”,  as a passive candidate and highly sought after.  Then when you learn he was just ousted last week from HP for sexual-harassment charges and “expense-account irregularities”, maybe not.  By definition this candidate is now active, but you won’t find him on Monster or CareerBuilder.

And therein lies a dilemma: is active versus passive truly an indicator of candidate quality?  It’s true that some A+ candidates will easily progress through their entire career without ever posting a resume on a job board.   But if quality candidates are what you’re after, then carefully build a diverse and winning sourcing strategy.  One size doesn’t fit all.  It should vary greatly depending on job type, geography and industry.    Underused sources: associations, targeted email campaigns, online groups, blog searches and well crafted Boolean searches.

Where do you find your best candidates, and how do you adjust for job type, industry and location?

From the beaks of my tweets.  Employment trends, odds & ends:

Since 2007, 26% increase in hourly wage of US man with postgraduate degree.  16% decrease for high school dropout.

Tarantism: an urge to overcome melancholy by dancing.

Aging workforce: “Decellerating careers” will be common in the future, where older workers will delay retirement but demand less work hours.

Every person has a unique tongue print. If you could read tongue prints, many would say “brush me, and quit pressing me against strangers”.

Recent corporate exec comment: “We are positioned for survival”.   New definition of a healthy company!

Chance a Silicon Valley’s tech company started since 1995 was founded by Indian or Chinese immigrants: 1 in 3 (Migration Policy Institute).

There is a fine line between the sane and the insane. I walk that line. Walk with me.

As a trailing baby boomer who’s had more jobs than Larry King’s had wives, I’ve been fortunate to experience first hand some of the best and worst moves in corporate recruiting and staffing: Cisco Systems, HP and Cadence to mention a few.

1. Cisco Systems

Brilliance:  CEO John Chambers led breakfast meetings monthly where he solidified a new hire’s decision to join Cisco (greatly impacting retention), encouraged new hires to ask the toughest questions (gather new hire fresh perspectives) and reinforced corporate culture straight from the top.  It was an impressive commitment that was one of many company culture examples that helped us recruit top talent.

Mistake: After cutting staffing from 700 people to a dozen during the dot com bust (a necessary step), years later tried to replace senior recruiters with inexpensive, inexperienced outside contractors.  Lesson: Can’t hire the best talent with junior recruiters.

2. Cadence Systems

Brilliance: VPHR that cared more about the business than HR.  I wasn’t surprised that Tim Unger’s career progressed from VPHR for Cadence to CEO for numerous companies.  He seemed to understand Cadence’s business more than many of the execs running their own departments.  For staffing, he helped us justify the funds to build an amazing research and sourcing department to feed our internal recruiters (back in the 90’s when sourcing functions were unheard of).

Mistake:  Company was unprepared for abrupt resignation of iconic CEO at the time.  Lesson: Always have a backup plan!

3. HP

Brilliance:  “The HP Way” became the #1 taught management style at the time and created more recruiting pipeline than one could handle.  Getting in deep with academia allowed HP to cherry pick the brightest students.  And their “business casual” dress code was attractive to students and employees alike when everyone else was still wearing suits.

Mistake: Decision by consensus culture turned many inspired individuals into bored drones who dreaded the endless decision-by-committee meetings.  Lesson: empower individuals to make decisions and keep meetings small and short.  Holding “stand up” meetings would have greatly reduce meeting times!

4.  Hire.com

Brilliance: Rebel culture.  This Austin-based start-up taunted, “we don’t need no stinkin’ resumes”, and made their mark by nurturing talent pools and improving candidate experience.  They were the first to have a “Chief People Officer” and “Talent Ambassadors”.

Mistake:  They used VP of Sales for target practice, firing them quicker than a disgruntled JetBlue flight attendant.

5. Decision Toolbox

Brilliance:  The best recruiters earn first choice of  recruiting assignments based on several weighted criteria: passion/attitude, written/verbal communication, consultative posture, sourcing skills, talent/niche and KPI’s (time to present winning candidate, client survey score,…).  And there’s a company culture that drives over the top service in unconventional ways.

Mistake:  Flying under the radar.  Being overly concerned that competitors will steal the secret sauce can lead to missed opportunities to shout from the rooftops about something one’s passionate about.

What have you learned from your staffing journey?