Coping with talent needs amidst exponential growth.
In this day and age, businesses work and grow at a fast pace, backed by technology and shaped by globalisation. In this article, we share tips on how companies who are growing exponentially cope with their talent needs—in recruiting fast and accurately—as well as ensuring talent stays. James Mendes, Managing Director, Asia Pacific, Alexander Mann Solutions shares his insight on some of the key issues.
What would you say are the three most important criteria in recruiting in a fast growing organisation?
1. Understand who are your target candidates to ensure you get the right people
People are the foundation for success. By recruiting the right people at the right time, companies provide a firm foundation for further growth, and create a high-performance culture which in turn supports rapid growth and expansion.
Too often companies fail to do any location assessment to determine if their talent requirements can be met prior to making investments.
For businesses in developed economies today, 70% of total costs are people costs–with such a high proportion of costs being allocated to people, it is absolutely essential to bring the right people into the organisation, and make best use of the people investment.
The recruitment process is the very first point of contact with the future staff of your organisation, and provides the best opportunity to make a reasoned decision about the contribution that they can make to your organisation, and conversely the contribution your organisation will make to their career.
The hiring managers and recruiters who make the decisions about the people who will enter your organisation need to be fully trained and equipped with the skills needed to identify and attract the very best talent for your organisation.
2. Keep track of costs and requirements
It’s easy for companies to turn to executive search and recruitment agencies when they need staff, and need them quickly. However these sources incur high costs, with agency fees often running into the tens of thousands of dollars, recruitment costs quickly build and can have a significant impact on cashflow and the company bottom line.
We find that organisations that have a heavy reliance on high-cost sourcing channels tend to be recruiting reactively—the staffing requirement is driven from an existing vacancy. Recruitment works most effectively in a proactive manner—sourcing talent ahead of the requirement, identifying where talent exists and market mapping.
By forward planning and understanding what staffing requirements the organisation will have in the next three, six or twelve months, recruitment teams can proactively recruit for roles and ensure that they utilise low-cost and diverse sourcing channels rather than being overly reliant on recruitment agencies.
3. Build and promote your employer brand
Branding is an incredibly powerful tool in candidate attraction. Google, for instance, does not advertise externally for candidates, yet their employer brand is such that they receive over a million applications annually, and recruit the absolute best talent in the market.
There are innumerable benefits to employer branding, not least of which is the ability to generate candidate pipelines and talent pools. With an applicant tracking system implemented in conjunction with an employer branding program, organisations are able to build proprietary databases of active, pre-qualified candidates which can be drawn upon on-demand. This in turn reduces reliance on high-cost sourcing channels, and helps enable forward planning.
Where should fast expanding organisations look for their talent needs across their offices worldwide?
Local experience wins out time and again, recruiting in remote offices is no different. While organisations can look internationally for talent, especially when they require specialist skills and experience, it’s often more cost-effective to do a deep search locally or leverage less frequently-used channels to reach non-active local talent.
Internal referral programs are especially effective, as the staff inside the organisation have a much better ability to identify potential candidates, and they can also access pools of qualified candidates who may not necessarily be looking for work. It’s surprising how often internal referral programs turn up ideal candidates in unusual locations.
Another channel which is increasingly utilised by organisations active in multiple countries is that of returning expat talent. Many countries see increased levels of returning nationals seeking the familiarity of home and trading earning potential for lifestyle. Such candidates boast world-class experience and exposure, are well-connected in their ‘adopted’ country, and are a great source of knowledge for rapidly growing companies. For specialist skills and experience we have seen an increase in global sourcing—local hiring. Increased global mobility and the slow down in European and US economies have resulted in this being an effective channel when attracting international talent.
What are the key challenges organisations tend to face in recruiting quickly but accurately, and how they could best overcome them?
Recruiting quickly requires workforce planning, a seamless, solid and reliable recruitment process, well-trained hiring managers and HR communities, and a good pipeline of candidates. There is inherent risk in rapid turnaround recruitment if it is not performed in a structured manner; errors in the process could result in poor candidate selection, a poor fit between skills and requirements, dissatisfied unsuccessful candidates, and higher cost of hire. Hiring errors often result in accelerated attrition costing the company time and money.
When looking for a very specific skill set, there are additional pressures as the candidate market tends to be tighter, and talented candidates even more difficult to find. In these situations, the hiring community need to be aware of the constraints of the recruitment team and be as flexible and proactive as possible when raising vacancies.
AMS work to overcome these risks and challenges by identifying them during the implementation phase of our solutions. We work with the hiring community to determine specific requirements, then engineer a bespoke and repeatable process which forms the core of the solution, supporting critical KPIs and the hiring strategy. In areas where quick turnaround is required, the process is implemented in conjunction with a strategy to generate pipelines and talent pools of pre-qualified candidates.
In buoyant times, one of the most important issues in talent management is that of retention and keeping the best employees. How can a fast expanding organisation do this?
Key to retention is employee engagement, and recruitment is the start of employee engagement. The experience that a candidate has during the recruitment process sets their opinion of the company. Organisations who are serious about attracting and retaining the very best talent must ensure that all candidates have a consistent experience throughout the recruitment process, which follows on to their experience with the company.
When AMS partner with a client to provide recruitment services, we do so using the client’s branding and systems so as to provide a seamless service to the candidate—the candidate is unaware that the recruiters who have had contact with them during the recruitment process are in fact employees of another company. This differs from the experience for candidates that are recruited via agency, as the relationship is far more direct and presentation of the organisation far more objective.
One of our clients, ANZ, considers that all candidates are not only candidates but potential customers, and should be treated as such. The focus of the recruitment team at ANZ (aside from getting the best candidate for the role) is on making the candidate experience so positive that even unsuccessful candidates actively promote the experience to other potential candidates. Those candidates who are successful in their application for a role are already familiar and comfortable with the organisation when they reach their desk on their first day.
Exit interviews are often a good indicator as to why employees are leaving your organisation, it is surprising how often employees leave managers rather than organisations. It is essential to have well trained management, invest in training and development for your workforce and actively promote internal career opportunities to increase retention.
What do you think are the top three mistakes organisations that are growing at an exponential rate often make in their talent management?
1. Poor planning / management info
Poor planning and lack of management information can cost companies dearly in operational flexibility, in cashflow, and in talent acquisition. Many organisations have difficulty in identifying the true cost of recruitment as it is not a centrally-controlled function. Centralising recruitment and providing accurate management information gives better clarity to the true cost of recruitment, provides a benchmark from which to work and plan from, and most importantly enables the setting of a recruitment strategy which aligns with the business growth strategy.
2. Right vs. right now
It is easy for hiring managers in organisations to be overly hasty when selecting a candidate. In many cases it is better to delay a hiring decision by several weeks in the anticipation of a stronger candidate, than it is to hire a candidate ‘right now’. Looking at the longer-term growth and stability of the organisation it is important to get the right candidate at the right time rather than the wrong candidate, right now.
3. Reliance on traditional recruitment channels
Too often companies are overly reliant on traditional recruitment channels. A diverse sourcing strategy and utilising diverse sourcing channels opens up new candidate pools and allows you to tap into both passive and active jobseekers. Companies need to use advanced methods to source the best candidates not the best available candidates. Well managed employee referral programs continue to offer significant value as well as utilising the companies brand at the forefront of attracting talent, this also ensures you remain the proprietary owner of the data and can build a candidate pool. Whilst many companies use traditional press and online job boards to attract candidates, those looking to reach non active jobseekers have an increasing presence on social networking sites, second life and industry specific websites.
We understand that certain sectors like Finance and Banking are experiencing talent shortages for specific skills e.g. IT. What can be done to alleviate this situation and how can solution providers help HR managers?
Realistically there isn’t a simple solution to the shortage of IT skills in any market due to the supply and demand factors—it’s a global shortage which is created by the uptake of IT across many industries and in many capacities. Companies can look to source qualified IT staff from other areas—not just from their competitors, but from other industries where similar skills are in use. Using emerging technologies which search multiple lists, databases and websites, and searching talent through online communities is an effective method of identifying candidates who are not actively searching for roles.
AMS has an extensive consulting group who leverage industry experience and best practice to help our clients identify and attract candidates. A well managed recruitment function supported by best in class people, processes and technologies will give companies a significant advantage over their competitors in the highly competitive war for talent.
How has globalisation affected the recruitment process?
Globalisation has had a major impact on recruitment—organisations are identifying and moving talent throughout the world. It’s not uncommon to see graduate programmes cycling new staff through multiple roles, locations and countries to better equip them for a career which will involve greatly increased contact with other countries and cultures.
Many organisations are seeing growing interest from their workforce in global mobility programmes and secondment opportunities. I believe it’s a real benefit to organisations to be able to both source and move staff globally.
What other factors influence the recruitment process in fast expanding organisations?
Strategy, culture, and engagement. We often see recruitment (and HR as a whole) treated as the poor relation in strategic planning; either it is not considered to be an important segment of company strategy, or it is not involved in a timely fashion.
Company culture affects recruitment; the internal culture of the organisation—attitude towards risk, the autonomy in which departments can operate—has an impact on the ability of the recruitment function and hence process.
Engagement with the organisation is also key—a well-engaged and connected recruitment function acts in partnership with the business units that it supports, aiding proactive recruitment in line with business requirements.
How different is the recruiting process in Asia compared to more mature markets?
Recruitment practices in Asia are advancing quickly but still lag behind those in Europe and the US. We see a higher reliance on traditional recruitment channels in Asia and on the whole companies in Asia have made limited investments in their employment brand and have not invested in the tools, systems and infrastructure required to tackle their recruitment challenges.
Many organisations in Asia have been battling high attrition rates and rapid growth plans coupled with the entry into new markets which has resulted in largely reactive recruitment functions. We are also seeing greater usage of advanced assessment tools and techniques in more mature markets.
How can Recruitment Process Outsourcing deliver more business value to companies and organisations in Asia?
RPO allows operational flexibility, provides ongoing cost savings, ensures that organisations get the best talent on the market, assists in workforce planning and strategy, and helps develop employee engagement through a positive recruitment experience.
Paul Arkwright
Publisher
