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Stemming the decline in the quality of new hires
03.06.2011 11:09

With high unemployment rates and layoffs still fresh in everyone’s minds, senior leadership and hiring managers often believe that professional talent is a buyer’s market.

But the perception that hiring should be easy is actually a false one. In reality, quality of hire has declined significantly over the past year. Budget and staffing cuts over the last few years, coupled with increasingly large numbers of often ill-suited applicants, has left recruiting functions struggling to deliver results.

Against this landscape, organisations' talent needs have become more complex and navigating the labour market more difficult. According to recent research undertaken by The Corporate Executive Board's Corporate Leadership Council, 70% of recruiters report working on requisitions where requirements change considerably through the course of the hiring process. And while the number of applicants has increased by 128% in the past four years, the right applicants are getting even harder to find, with 83% of recruiters stating that fewer than half of applicants are qualified for the role they have applied for.

Organisations have also been slimming down their recruiting functions. Seventy per cent of recruiting organisations report that their budgets have continued to shrink this year to a level below that of 2009 and nearly 60% of organisations expect recruiter requisition loads to increase as talent takes on a new strategic importance in the eyes of senior leaders.

Despite the importance senior leaders are now placing on talent, CEB research has found that only 35% of hiring managers believe that their recruitment function effectively influences business decisions. This trend presents an additional challenge for recruiters and leadership teams.

In order to overcome this challenge, recruiters must transform how they are viewed by hiring managers if the wider organisation is to execute its growth strategy.

Part of the solution lies in identifying what the best recruiting organisations look like and how they are getting the right candidates in the right roles more quickly.

Many line managers continue to view in-house recruiters in the context of "order takers". In contrast, at best-practice companies the CEB research found that recruiters' profiles are best described as "talent advisers", who have both an acute knowledge of the strategic needs of their organisation and a deep understanding of the nature of the external labour market.

According to CEB research just 19% of recruiters today are proficient as talent advisers and have the skills needed to secure the kind of new hires required to propel the business forward.

The key difference between order takers and talent advisers is this: while order takers trust hiring managers' assumptions to fill requisitions effectively, and are driven to satisfy the hiring manager, they use only their knowledge of the firm wide talent strategy and firm specific business acumen to meet demands.

In contrast, the 19% of recruiters that CEB has identified as talent advisers, challenge hiring managers' assumptions to frame requisitions strategically, drawing on their knowledge of the labour market and the organisation. This in turn gives them greater influence over hiring decisions and enables them to develop a strong pipeline of talent, and as a result, enables them to create a greater impact on the success of the business.

To achieve this, best practice organisations are taking the following steps to sculpt their recruiters into trusted advisers:

Focusing recruiters on influencing hiring decisions not just filling orders - clarifying the impact and importance of advisory and pipeline management capabilities, and embedding measures of strategic impact into recruiter scorecards

Providing development that closes the knowing-doing gap - making sure that advisory training and development of recruiters are blended with day-to-day work to increase development impact

Leveraging managers to accelerate talent advisor capabilities - highlighting the importance of development to recruiting managers and equipping them with the tools and capability to effectively develop their teams

Especially when it comes to development interventions CEB research has found that exposure to high impact on the job experience, paired with reflection on those experiences has a 31% greater impact on recruiters' talent adviser capabilities than low exposure with no reflection, and it is this kind of experience that helps recruiters to demonstrate their capabilities in order to win the respect of hiring manager.

Together these interventions are enabling recruiters to bring the voice of talent strategy to hiring decisions, ensuring that their organisation is building a targeted pipeline of talent based on their acute knowledge of both the organisation's strategic talent needs and deep labour market expertise.

Christoffer Ellehuus is managing director of Corporate Executive Board's Corporate Leadership Council

http://www.hrmagazine.co.uk