When I went to university, I was taught the strength an economy requires individual interest rates. This approach proved to be highly successful. For the Eurozone, this conviction is gone: the authorities decided one interest rate can be set for all countries. Although the goal remained the same to build a resilient Europe for sustained advantage, the result has changed. We don’t see resilience, we don’t see sustained advantage. We see inefficiencies having led to a crisis. Why is this? Because the sucess factors that make a country strong are not allinged with the sucess factors of the European Union. Intereste rates suddenly do not reflect the strength of a nation anymore. This results in an European crises.
Why is Talent Acquisition damned to be inefficient?
What is going on in the Eurozone compares with what is going on in many companies. The goal is the same: to build a resilient organization for sustained advantage. And most companies do not achieve it, some slide in a crisis.
Conventional Recruitment
Talent Acquisition is considered to play one of the first steps in building such a sustained advantage by putting the right people in the right positions. However conventional recruitment is inefficient in building such a resilient organization for sustained advantage. I will illustrate this with the following example: Let us say our Recruiter George has to fill a vacancy of an Account Manager for the sales department. As our recruiter knows, all interview questions can be assigned under one of the following three headers, so he defines the interview criteria for each header:
What is the qualification? What is the motivation? What is the fit?
Conventional Qualification
Prioritizing the first qualification of a candidate, the Recruiter would search for candidates who fit the criteria “have done the job before”.
Conventional Motivation
In the next step the recruiter would also evaluate the candidate’s motivation essentially by judging the excitement against the salary package: The fix pay, the variable pay, the possibilities of overachieving coupled with a multiplier uncapped. Wow, isn’t that exciting? The Recruiter would lift the candidate’s ego by joining the company of repute. All this looks like a sure motivation when underpinned by the candidate.
Conventional Fit
Recruiting "Talent" is the goal. For sure, the Recruiter would also look out for communication skills, team spirit and flexibility to join the dynamic team. Sounds like a sure fit.
Our Recruiter George found a candidate that matched all the criteria from above. He filled that position and feels to have contributed to the long term success of the company.
In fact, this approach by Talent Acquisition is inefficient. In his recruitment activity George the Recruiter has not contributed in building a resilient organization for sustained advantage.
As a result, this conventional recruitment approach fails. The success factors in recruiting are not the same as in sales. This change of success factors is likely to dissatisfy newly recruited employees and hiring managers alike. It will result in non-sustainable hiring. As a result the new hires will not stay very long and a replacement will be recruited. This will repeat itself and may be one factor to lead to a company crisis.
Efficient Recruitment
How can a Recruiter make Talent Acquisition efficient?
Efficiency is when all team members and departmets are aware and share the same understanding of success factors. This is valid across all organizations. To recruit efficiently, George the Recruiter makes sure that the success criteria in the sales department, evaluating prospects, match the success criteria in recruitment, evaluating candidates.
In sales and recruitment, all questions for evaluation fall under one of the three headings:
Qualification – Motivation - Fit
In the following our Recruiter George matches the success criteria in sales with the success criteria in recruitment. As a result he will end up with a different candidate profile. That profile will be in line with building a resilient organization.
Alligned Qualification
Who qualifies as a prospect in sales? In sales someone qualifies as a prospect who can buy the product. It is irrelevant whether the prospect has bought it before.
The Recruiter now matches this against a candidate:
Who qualifies as a candidate in recruitment? A candidate qualifies who can do the job. It is not of relevance whether the candidate has done the job before.
It is certainly easier to recruit someone who has done the job before. But is someone qualified because she has done the job before? That is an assumption. Efficient recruiting is based on facts not on assumptions.
As a result the qualification profile has shifted from a candidate “who has done the job” to a candidate “who can do the job”.
Alligned Motivation
What unlocks the customer's buying motivation in sales? The standard answer is: a relationship. A relationship is based on sharing the same believes. In other words those customers are motivated to buy from you who believe what you believe.
The Recruiter now matches this against a candidate:
What unlocks the candidate's work motivation in recruitment? A candidate qualifies who believes what the organization believes, what the department believes.
Efficient Talent Acquisition puts the believes in the center of motivation. If the candidate believed what the Hiring Organization believed, that candidate would be willing to work for sweat and tears.
As a result the motivation profile has shifted from a candidate “motivated by salary package” to a candidate “motivated by believes”.
Alligned Fit
What kind of customer is a fit for sales? Satisfying customer needs is not enough. For a long term fit we need something else to lock the customer in long term to stem the tasks together: a joint believe.
The Recruiter now matches this against a candidate:
What candidate is a fit? Recruiting Talent is not enough! For a long term fit, a candidate would qualify who brought in a balance of talent and character/courage for example to stem the job sucessfully long term.
If a "Talent" was hired as a Manager for example but doesn't possess the character or courage to take on big tasks, she will never move forward and accomplish things. Vice versa if the character, ego or courage is greater than the talent, the new employee will take on tasks that are way too big for her to handle.
As a result the fit profile has shifted from a candidate “who is a Talent” to a candidate “who is in balance of talent and character”.
The recruiter George using the efficient Talent Acquisition approach will from now on look at the success criteria in sales and recruitment to help aligning those more in parallel than in opposite direction. Parallel success factors demonstrate parallel thinking. The alignment of the success factors across different departments is a measure for building a resilient organization for sustained advantage. In this case the Hiring Manager from sales alligns the assessment of a candidates with the sucess factors of sales.
Let me summarize the point of my blog with Steve Jobs on what brings an organization a sustained advantage: "Analyze the decision making and embed it in the culture".
