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Guest Article
Contributions by experts working the real world of online screening and assessment.
Hiring in the Next Job Boom: It’s Easier to Do Better This Time
By Mark C. Healy, MA
There’s a lot of chatter going on about the next hiring boom, and speculation on just when it will hit or if we are in the midst of one. Much of what organizations need to know about hiring in the next economic boom can be found in the history of the last good economy, loosely between 1996-2001. While that was scarcely a few years ago, it often feels like a much different time, since so many companies spent the better part of 1999 preparing for their servers to explode when midnight struck on 01/01/2000.
For those preparing to fight the next war for talent, here are some thoughts.
- What will stay the same: a common-sense mix of the latest technology, valid hiring tools, and straightforward project management.
- What will change: the increased opportunity for organizations to acquire talented employees and leaders. Simply put, anyone in charge of hiring now will have a greater chance of being successful than they did during the last war for talent.
Hiring Boom or Talent Shortage?
Numerous predictions of a mass talent shortage due to an improved economy coupled with baby-boom retirements in large numbers have been looming for years. Hiring managers appear to be increasing the volume of openings as well as broadening categories of positions, similar to the late 90’s. But the prospect for increased hiring demand is mixed, with some industries - such as service and information technology - reporting increased demand while others - such as manufacturing and government - reporting job losses. Each organization will be required to handle their specific needs.
Answer this question: when your number of job openings increases from five to 50, do you significantly alter your assessment tools and processes for qualifying, screening, assessing and hiring job candidates? Think back to the last job boom. Successful companies employed a mixture of tried-and-true hiring strategies and new technologies that enabled a timely response to snag the best candidates.
Note the phrase “tried and true hiring strategies”. Regardless of the economic climate (or job market for a given occupation), the best techniques and tools for hiring the most qualified employees are virtually the same. Hiring tools and decision-making aids that measure the competencies required for success in a particular role aren’t modified by fluctuations in the job market but by changes in the nature of the job itself. At least, they aren’t supposed to change. Whatever form they take, the most appropriate and valid hiring tools for a position should reflect the behaviors expected of an employee in that role, not the number of qualified candidates. And organizations that realize the value of valid hiring tools (whether paper- or computer-based) will continue to be more effective at acquiring talent than those that don’t.
Nonetheless, many aspects of personnel selection will require renewed attention, and hiring professionals are in a much better position to handle this millennium’s first significant, positive job growth than we were way back in `99. The trick is to maximize the benefits of three factors that influence your ability to leverage the advantages of valid recruitment, applicant tracking, and assessment tools. These aspects of hiring can be turned into strengths when faced with weakened talent pools for key positions and stiffer competition for the most qualified applicants.
Factor One: Technology is Your Friend Now
The first improvement over the late 90’s is in the technology available for the effective sourcing, screening, and assessing of job candidates. From the greater knowledge of IT staff, to the enhancement of database management and bandwidth, to the ubiquity of web browsers, we are in a much better position to deploy non-paper-based systems to address hiring needs.
Though this may be a curse for a first-time buyer wading into the staffing technology world, there are more providers ready and willing to support your hiring strategy than at the end of the 20th century. Whereas a number of pretenders and low-quality options remain on the market, a broader choice, arguably, is superior to the drudgery of dealing with a couple of high-priced dominators. Overall, it’s now much more possible to find a good fit between an online assessment firm and your hiring demands. With so many choices, organizations may even indulge their subjective feelings about cultural fit and aesthetic appeal and make a good rational decision at the same time.
Fortunately for the corporate consumer (but to the consternation of vendors), the cost of entry into the online hiring and assessment world has plunged due to this proliferation of choices. Clearly, some organizations are quite effective at playing hardball with vendors and demanding more favorable investment options. Others suggest that it is more than acceptable to simply ask for a discount when acquiring any hiring technology. While I’m not suggesting that to be a successful buyer one must extract significant discounts from vendors (some of whom know where I live), we couldn’t be experiencing more of a buyer’s market than we are now and in the immediate future.
Another ongoing improvement in hiring technology is in the breadth of tools and content available. Until now, a number of technology products have simply migrated conventional paper-and-pencil tools, such as personality inventories, application forms, and assessments of specific technical knowledge, to a software-based or online environment. But the next few years will bring a greater proliferation of high-fidelity work simulations and personalized, interactive assessments, not just the same old (but still valid) questionnaires.
Factor Two: Improving Candidate Communications
The next factor affecting hiring success may not be improved, overall, in the next competitive job market, but it is something that will more greatly distinguish –for better or worse - an organization than ever before: Communicating and following up with job hunters. In a tight job market, it’s imperative to use the right tools AND expeditiously sort through qualified candidates. It turns out that the latter may be more difficult than the former.
Well-known to anyone who’s sought employment is that, throughout the hiring process, a job seeker typically initiates most communication with the hiring organization. This is necessary whether it’s emailing or calling to check the status of their application or following-up with decision-makers after a day of on-site interviews and assessments. Most job hunters do not expect an organization to follow-up with them in an expedient manner, and experienced candidates are familiar with the benefits of communicating (and selling themselves) beyond the normal boundaries of the hiring process.
HR departments and related hiring organizations often suffer from the “inch deep and a mile wide” syndrome: Too many job candidates and hiring projects with not enough accountability to quickly complete the process for any of them. Moreover, employees and managers often develop a built-in hierarchy of response and obligation to inquiries from leaders and co-workers, and the mysterious applicant from the general public has little chance to get called back before a vice president’s needs are addressed. So one day since the interview becomes two, days turn into weeks, and good candidates find other opportunities.
Fortunately, the Six-Sigma and ISO 9000 trends have driven many hirers to embed their contact with job candidates into process outlines and accountabilities, thereby institutionalizing reasonable follow-up times with candidates and overall faster progression through (or elimination from) the assessment system. Another well-regarded approach is establishing the recruiter as a primary contact for the job candidate and removing busy line managers from the communication chain. The key is to track and evaluate the speed of the hiring process with special attention paid to following up with candidates and moving them through your selection hurdles.
In addition to the obvious benefit of placing your most desirable candidates into roles in your organization, there are numerous fringe benefits to a faster hiring process. The organization that responds to candidates more quickly may appear more competent and organized than other similar companies. And on the organizational side, the WHOLE hiring process is more efficient when communications are exercised as quickly as possible.
An Aside: Dot Com Hiring Bomb
What of the go-go world of the Dotcommers in all of this? Didn’t they play some role in getting us to where we are today? Whereas it is true that the symbol of the late 90’s boom, the high tech start-up firms, were perhaps better than any industry sector at filling positions fast, this, ironically, led to many of their failures. Not only did they call people back quickly, but they often developed the habit of offering a candidate a job on the spot. Hiring needs were often so broad and urgent that little in the way of actual qualifications were taken into account. This was partly due to the perceived need to growing the business quickly (often from just a handful of employees to 100 or more in a matter of weeks), and, relatedly, the influence of venture capital firms, who often provided a cash infusion that had to be spent in a specified period of time. (In a related and twisted historical development, startup technology firms were actually less likely than conservative Fortune 500 companies to use sophisticated computer-based hiring tools.)
Factor Three: The New Century’s Leadership Challenge
The final determinant of hiring success in the next big hiring boom will be how well an organization staffs managerial positions and plans for leadership succession. As with the rise in the affordability and usability of hiring technology, the opportunity to build a cohesive leadership development and succession planning strategy is greater than it was in the late 1990’s.
In the space of just a few years, organizations have become much more likely to heed calls for systematic staffing of leadership positions. There are a number of trends responsible for this. First, there is much wider recognition that choosing the right leaders is comparable to mission-critical objectives such as building the right product, selecting the best location, and proactively handling pressing financial matters. To be sure, selecting appropriate and talented leaders is often portrayed as more critical than selecting non-managerial staff. Together with a cult of personality surrounding a few famous (and infamous) leaders (e.g., Jack Welch), the focus on leadership effectiveness, especially with top executives, is greater than ever. Overall, there is much more widespread acknowledgment that certain characteristics of leaders directly affect an organization’s success and that best practices for filling leadership roles involve carefully assessing individuals in order to acquire or promote leaders with these special qualities.
A potentially more critical impetus to select qualified managers is a growing acknowledgement that the level of leadership effectiveness in an organization acts as a ceiling on the contributions of talented non-managerial employees. A measurable impact of good leaders, and the downfall of many ineffective ones, is their influence on employee retention and the individual contributions of their staff to company performance. Once an organization focuses on systematically bringing in good employees, they have an obligation to maximize their impact. Poor managers get less performance from employees, and potentially more effective talent is often only marginally more effective when directed by under-qualified leaders. Moreover, during a labor shortage, good talent is less likely to remain in the organization; this is even more likely to occur when a weak leader attempts to manage strong talent.
Again, a look at the case of the high tech start-up firm reveals positive and well-meaning but less effective efforts to lead a company to success. If one defines leadership as the ability to motivate employees and ensure they contribute as much as they can to an organization’s success, the tech world opted for strategies unrelated to developing effective leadership and management. Free hot dogs and a B-52’s concert in the parking lot may have had a short-term effect on morale and – and I’m being generous here – motivation. But whereas many high tech startup employees were screaming for a rendition of Rock Lobster at the company picnic, they were crying out for competent leaders every other day of the year.
The quality and appropriateness of an organization’s leadership – whether entry-level supervisors or senior executives – has been and will always be critical to success. But now, more than ever, companies are more likely to dedicate greater resources to this need, and there is much less available justification to cut corners when staffing managerial roles. Hiring managers will find less of an uphill climb to convince their superiors to implement leadership development and succession planning strategies and adopt valid assessment tools.
Conclusion
Leveraging technology, expediting communication with job candidates, and emphasizing the importance of critical leadership skills when hiring managers and executives was just as important in 1998 as it is today. Thankfully, it’s easier now. But perhaps the greatest benefit of all is that an effective hiring strategy for a hiring boom is appropriate for all business cycles, leading directly to gains in employee and organizational performance no matter what the economic climate.
About the Author
Mark Healy speaks to professional groups several times per year on topics including interviewing and hiring, 360-degree feedback, and leadership development. He has published articles in professional journals including Personnel Psychology and Human Performance and presented research at the conferences of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Decisions Sciences Institute, and the American Psychological Association. Mark independently drives a comprehensive research program on providing feedback to leaders and is currently authoring a book for college graduates on avoiding negative leadership behaviors. He can be reached at .