BY MICHAEL CRUZ
Despite the national data on unemployment,
most people in this region are more
concerned with not finding the people they
need. If you want better employees, then
there are some things you need to do. Often,
we do not find the right people because we
think about hiring only to fill needs.
Hiring to fill needs misses the issues of
culture. And that leads to picking people that
do not share our values. And that may lead us
to miss-hires. Miss-hires cost us money, time
and all too often customers. The wrong people
disrupt the workplace, waste valuable training
time and eat up a lot of your time trying
to fix the problem. We must change the way
we approach looking for people to help our
businesses grow.
So the first step is to:
1. Hire the right people. This might seem
obvious but recruiting organizations tend to
focus on finding the technical skills and experience
they need to do a job. It is rare that
there is any assessment of a candidate’s values
and behavioral preferences relating to work.
Attention must be paid to understanding:
• How the candidate will impact customers.
• How will they work with current employees?
• Does the candidate share the organization’s
values?
• Will this candidate grow and contribute
as the company grows?
In my experience, most recruitment campaigns
focus solely on assessing candidates
“eligibility” for a position (eligibility is the
education, skills, qualifications and relevant
experience a candidate has). Eligibility is
determined, easily enough, by scanning a
candidate’s resume.
What is often overlooked is a candidates
“suitability” for a position (suitability is
interests, work preferences, work values, interpersonal
skills, attitudes and motivations).
Suitability is not easy to determine from a
resume and needs to be accurately assessed
and measured.
Most of the time, people trying to “fill” a job
make no effort to assess candidates “suitability”.
If suitability assessments are attempted,
they are often done using inaccurate, or invalid
processes. On occasions, it may only be
done through the “gut feel” of an interviewer.
There are reliable and accurate measuring
systems that can help accurately assess
candidate suitability. These assessments are
relatively inexpensive and quick to use, when
considered against the cost and disruption of
making a poor recruitment decision.
Recruitment of any new position, internal,
or external, should use an accurate, reliable
and valid assessment process.
2. Find the right recruitment process
for your organization. You should have
a formal recruitment process. This makes
the process repeatable and reliable.
The key
points are:
• Offer an attractive but realistic employment
package.
• A consistent approach to interviewing and
hiring across the organization.
• A recruitment approach that looks for
cultural fit, not just technical skills.
Of course, this again looks like common
sense, but again many owners and managers
find it hard to do. They may lack the necessary
skills within their own business to organize
and manage a recruitment process. All to often
our preparation for the interview starts only
after the candidate arrives for the interview.
3. Make development a key part of
working for your organization.
• Make learning part of you culture.
• Development of employees supports
growth in your company.
Once you have recruited a person, to keep
them you have to develop and help them grow.
This doesn’t mean expensive external training
courses, it means allowing employees the
opportunity to learn and grow doing their job
and working with others. Every day provides
learning opportunities.
Do organizations take advantage of this?
Simple and effective coaching & guidance
works well in this context. All development
activity must be based on a clear business
need and build capability to innovate and
serve customers. It can also build engagement
and support staff retention. Remember
that cross training can reduce the impact of
absence and holidays. Companies can also use
strategic projects as an opportunity to develop
key talent and high potential employees.
Think about your future leadership! If the
recruitment process measured an employee’s
values and behavioral traits, then important
traits can be developed and re-tested. This
is low cost and effective development many
organizations miss the opportunity to harness.
4. Develop management capabilities.
This is essential for long-term business health.
Inexperienced, or poorly trained managers
can impact staff engagement and business
performance negatively.
Gallup suggests that 70 percent of engagement
is directly attributable to the direct
supervisor. Too many businesses pick managers
because of their technical capabilities
and ignore their suitability for leadership and
management. It’s not luck that determines
whether your employees have a good manager
or not.
Selecting managers for their values and behavior
are key. To be suitable, personal values
must match those of your organization. An
excellent recommendation that I agree with
100 percent is the creation of dual succession
routes. Doing this means the best technical
people don’t feel they have to become managers
to further their career.
5. Look to your future talent. Finding
the right talent in the market place is becoming
harder. With some thought, planning and
support businesses can do this for themselves.
• Home-growing the future workforce.
• Succession planning.
A clear business rationale is needed when
doing this. It has to be linked and related
to recruitment so that development plans
can be started when hiring new employees.
Under the right circumstances hiring young
inexperienced people can support long-term
productivity and competitiveness.
In the area of succession planning, business
owners must ask some questions: What new
skills will our business need in the future?
What would we do if any of our key managers
or technical people left? What potential do we
have in our current staff? It’s too important
to leave these questions unanswered until it
is too late.
Business owners must manage the longer term
health of their company as well as meeting
today’s customer orders.
There are some excellent recommendations
that owners must address. Leaders need to
be more strategic in hiring and managing
people. When recruiting, the candidate’s soft
skills are more important than their technical
qualifications. Proper recruitment, selection
and people development is an investment with
high returns, if done correctly. Management
development is key to building a stable and
prosperous business. Long term people planning
is a necessity.
Cruz is president of Lighthouse Advisors
LLC, a business advisory service based in
Queensbury.
Photo Courtesy Lighthouse Advisors LLC