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5 Tips To Hire Right The First Time

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HR lesson for 2016: Pay attention.

Interviewing and hiring is never simple. Just like loving someone for all the wrong reasons, you can hire — or not hire someone — and err in judgment. Some of it has to do with them, but a lot of it has to do with us. Bottom line: Even if you’ve got the perfect candidate, creating a positive takeaway in terms of interviewing and the hiring process is critical. The first real portal into an employer brand is the recruiting and hiring process. But there are more ways to do it wrong that right.

Here are five tips for getting it right the first time.

1. Consider the employer brand. Keep that as your north star, everything aligned in that direction, and you’re ahead of the talent game. According to a recent study, 69 percent of job seekers would not take a job with a company that has a bad reputation — even if they’re unemployed. Which means keeping not only a positive image, but also the reality of your employer brand well-scrubbed. It is critical for attracting the right talent. It also means taking a hard looking your candidate experience.

2. Sweat the small stuff, and search far and wide. Social media means everyone has access to everyone, which means there’s an incredible amount of information available for the taking and the giving. Note that 84 percent of hires would consider leaving their current job if offered a job by a company with an excellent reputation. This also confirms the old adage of leaving no stone unturned. Pay attention to the micro as well as the macro when it comes to searching for viable candidates — passive or active.

3. Calibrate your hiring to the season. If you’re a startup, get a jump on hiring with a healthy recruiting push in January — when small and hungry may be the message a potential hire looking for a better employer wants to hear. Career resolutions are big for the New Year, one reason the beginning of the year sees a spike in the traffic on LinkedIn’s Job Slots — up some 250 percent. Ditch the challenge of going up against a Goliath and trying to match them perk for perk. Instead, take advantage of the beginning of the year to show off the lean gleam of a new firm with loads of potential.

4. Max out the metrics. As was recently pointed out, we’re living in the midst of a recruitment paradox, in which what we recruit is not necessarily what we want to retain. What constitutes a perfect hire — and how you measure it — has long been the subject of debate. Now is the time to deepen the intelligence of your metrics, and see where the gaps are, such as: qualified applicants, turnover, vacancy rate, declined vs. accepted offers, and the performance of new hires based on the source that generated the lead (a great one to measure).

5. Make it easy to stay. There’s a reason why certain companies win CandE Awards for their candidate experience – and a reason to follow their lead. Bungled interviews, inappropriate questions, talent overlooked for all the wrong reasons; insufficient caretaking and lackluster onboarding is going to prompt that new hire to reconsider his or her options. Once we shift into, “I’m looking for a job” mode, it’s easy to return there; and certainly brief stints have become acceptable within the new work culture.

Make sure the roots set deep with your candidate experience. There are indeed best practices and good etiquette, and best to heed them. The Talent Board noted that only 85.3 percent of organizations sent a “thank you” correspondence to applications, down from 89.5 percent; recruiters who are required to respond dropped nearly ten percent, from 49.3 to 39.6 percent.

No matter how fancy your analytics or social media searching, there’s still one factor you can’t overlook. We are human. As writer, film-maker and perpetual job-seeker Heath Padgett found out when he quit his software sales job and traveled the country in an RV, working a different job in each state, we really are only as good as our hearts and minds. They are still what we need to improve hiring practices. And, yes, relationships are still critical.

A version of this post was first published on Forbes on 12/30/15 

Photo: Nick van den Berg

5 Links between Talent Management and Employee Engagement

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Talent management and employee engagement have become key buzz phrases in business. Each has taken human asset management to a more specific, more integrated level.

Talent management’s definitions are reasonably consistent. Here are valid examples:

Talent management offers value at the revenue end. Customer satisfaction, product development, and marketing innovation all benefit by being accomplished by talented performers. Talent management also contributes to expense reduction. Quality improvement, process redesign and employee retention are results generated when talent works the business.

Among the many, varied definitions of employee engagement, I select this one:

Simply stated: talent management acquires and supports higher levels of skills and knowledge; employee engagement increases the value application of the skills and knowledge. Talent generates revenue and reduces expenses; engagement lets them do that more, do that better.

Businesses now aim to give more attention and action to both talent management and employee engagement. That attention needs to be well-directed; those actions need to be well-developed. Let’s look at five links between talent management and employee engagement. These links promise to increase a company’s success in improving both attention and action.

Better Onboarding Link

A powerful onboarding program introduces talented candidates to the business’ engagement culture immediately. The individual can actually engage in onboarding activities — rather than sitting at a desk and thumbing through a binder. A strong program demonstrates employee engagement as the business lifestyle. Engagement is proven to attract active talent. Opportunities to engage from the start heighten talent’s appreciation…and engagement. What company doesn’t truly want an onboarding process that lets new talent “hit the ground running” and then run even faster?

Competitive Advantage Link

Competition for talent is fierce because talent is a leading factor in a company’s competitive advantage. Recruiting, developing and retaining talent are the tools that build competitive advantage. Talent management starts with recruiting. Stronger recruiting efforts contribute to greater talent acquisition. Employee engagement adds to developing and retaining talent. It demonstrates the company’s appreciation of their value to the company — as it builds their value to the company. What company does not look for every possible way to gain advantage over their competition?

Performance Improvement Link

Talent joins a company appreciating the company and its product. As talent engages more fully in company operations, assignments, projects, that appreciation grows. The greater the appreciation, the greater one’s commitment to performing with quality. An employee — especially a “talent employee” — who has the opportunity to perform in ways which she/he sees as valuable consistently seeks to improve that performance. What company does not want to start with talented employees and then enjoy seeing them improve on their talent?

Customer Satisfaction Link

Customers naturally prefer to experience quality product and quality service. Research says it is the people with whom customers interact that determine the customer’s opinion of that quality. Talent management looks for quality candidates. Employee engagement turns up that quality.  Successful attraction and recruitment combine for the first step. Once talent is hired, employee engagement strategies increase communication and commitment. These are critical characteristics that satisfy customers. What company doesn’t want satisfied customers? What company doesn’t rely on its employees to generate such satisfaction?

Reduced Turnover, Increased Retention Link

If intense effort is made to hire talent, equally intense effort should be expended to retain talent. Employee engagement is a specific element of talent management insofar as it boosts a company’s ability to hold on to talented employees. People stay with companies they value. The more an employee is allowed and encouraged to engage in job, team, and company efforts, the more she sees the value. People stay with managers they trust. The more managers and employees engage in continuous communication about expectation, the more trust develops in their relationship. People stay with companies that offer opportunities for personal, even professional growth. The more your company provides such opportunities — training, mentoring/coaching, community involvement — the more growth the employee witnesses. What company doesn’t want quality talent to stick around?

(About the Author: As an Employee Engagement and Performance Improvement expert, Tim Wright has worked with businesses and national associations of all sizes. His company, Wright Results, offers proven strategies and techniques to help businesses increase employee engagement, improve personnel performance and build a strong business culture by focusing on performance management from the C.O.R.E. For more information, visit www.wrightresults.com or connect with Tim here: tim@wrightresults.com)