Hiring Smarter During Tough Times
By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
The hiring process in most organizations is broken– it is like much of America today– processed, pasteurized and homogenized into no little value except to give nimble competitors a huge advantage.
Here’s what usually happens.
A manager submits a job specification to HR and it is written into an ad and/or put out to recruiters, retained or contingency, who run around trying to fill the job.
Managers then interview with dumb questions that do little to evaluate or truly assess. They re-evaluate the spec in their mind but never communicate changes
to the people, both internal and external, who are beating the bushes to support them.
All the while, they are asking questions that come from some industrial psychology playbook but ultimately involve looking someone in the eye and guessing whether they can do the job and fit into the organization.
Meanwhile, candidates can search Google, watch YouTube videos, buy my books (or almost any job search book), hire a coach like me, and defeat what most employers are trying to find out about them. As a matter of fact, many websites offer the answers to many professional questions that your firm is probably asking.
Hiring? You’re Missing a Huge Skilled Market
I could go into this diatribe with examples galore from what I have heard from managers who complain about the process instituted by HR and from HR professionals who complain about interview incompetence by hiring managers.
Does this all make a lot of sense to you? Continuing with systems like this sure doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. The solution doesn’t involve throwing out the system except those that are required for government compliance.
There is a simple to implement solution that will allow your managers to hire with greater certainty and hire people with more drive and motivation.
What can a firm to do, particularly during recessionary times?
Contract-to-hire or Temp-to-perm.
According to a survey I read a few years ago during recessionary times, there were six job applicants for every available job. In the next year, your leverage with potential hires will probably return.
By offering them a contract-to-hire or temp-to-perm offer (I differentiate a contract-to-hire as being a skilled professional; a temp-to-perm is someone who might be an administrative role) you will have a very motivated worker who will have to prove themselves prior to being hired and your firm will be protected against a bad hire.
If the person doesn’t perform, let them go! A client told me about a mistake they hired recently who just couldn’t deliver what they said they could. The employer is now are on the hook for unemployment insurance and have to start from scratch interviewing.
With a contract to hire, they could have continued to interview as a fallback, just in case.
Plus you can put them on the payroll with one of your existing consulting vendors and let them make a few dollars free. They’ll love you for it. Just make sure there is no conversion fee when you switch them to staff!
Ⓒ The Big Game Hunter, Inc., Asheville, NC 2009, 2022
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ABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a coach who worked as a recruiter for what seems like one hundred years. He is hired to provide No BS Career Advice globally. That can involve job search, hiring staff, management, leadership, career transition and advice about resolving workplace issues. Schedule a discovery call at my website, www.TheBigGameHunter.us
He is the host of “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” the #1 podcast in iTunes for job search with over 2500 episodes.
I do a livestream on LinkedIn, and YouTube (on the JobSearchTV.com account) Tuesdays and Fridays at 1 PM Eastern. You can send your questions about job search, hiring better, management, leadership or to get advice about a workplace issue to me via messaging on LinkedIn or in chat during the approximately 30-minute show.
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