We Need To Fix the Broken Candidate Experience

Every now and then, you read an article that you have to share with others. It’s just too good to keep to yourself.

That’s the case with Anne Kreamer’s recent Harvard Business Review blog post,

“The Rise of the Rude Hiring Manager.” In the post, Kreamer shines a fair and fairly unflattering spotlight on the experiences of several individuals as they undergo the rigors of today’s job search, recruitment and hiring processes.

Kreamer describes how these individuals are put through their paces by prospective employers—often being asked to interview multiple times over the course of months, to take on test “assignments,” and to deliver polished business plans, proposals and presentations as part of the process of applying for an open position. During their ordeals, these candidates also experience administrative incompetence, a lack of timely communication, and just plain rudeness from their potential employers. And the sad fact is these experiences are growing more common.

Although the headline of Kreamer’s post calls out hiring managers specifically, the entire hiring process is actually at fault here. At one point, Kreamer astutely observes: “I can’t pinpoint exactly when the hiring process went off the rails, but I believe it began in the late 90s, when cost cutting became a mania and headcount was slashed to the bone, requiring every employee to do the work of many. With so little margin for error, every hire became a fraught decision, and the fear of making a mistake loomed larger and larger.”

Vetting candidates became increasingly complex and time-consuming, Kreamer writes, and “new hurdles were added until someone interested in a director-level position … is now routinely required to submit the kind of analysis and proposals that were once the province of in-house executives or paid consultants.” Especially harrowing is the interview process, which ballooned from an average of 12 days in 2009 to an average of 23 days in 2013.

Putting job candidates through a reasonable but thorough screening process is just good business. But it appears this process has gone haywire at many organizations, which is just bad business. After all, the candidate experience we provide says a lot about us as employers. It’s the first taste people get of our culture, our work environment and how we treat our employees. If we have any hope of consistently hiring the best talent and building great employment brands, we need to fix the broken candidate experience—and the sooner the better.

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Connect with the individuals and sources highlighted in this post by clicking the links below:
@AnneKreamer
@HarvardBiz

Performance Management Should Begin Before We Hire Someone

When most of us hear the term “performance management,” we think of performance appraisals, mentoring, employee learning and development—all of the things that happen well after we hire people into our organizations.

But savvy employers know that truly effective performance management starts before we hire someone. It starts with finding and recruiting the right people.

Who are the right people? Danny Gutknecht, co-founder and CEO of Pathways, offers this insightful definition: “individuals whose attitudes, behaviors, mindsets and goals are closely aligned with those of your organization.” Gutknecht also advises employers aiming to raise the bar on their performance management to get a clear picture of what makes their best people a great fit for the organization, then hire others like them.

The upshot of Gutknecht’s counsel is clear: hire individuals who are closely attuned to your organization and your best people, and their performance will be in sync with your needs, goals and mission. As a result, your performance management won’t require a lot of heavy lifting—i.e., you won’t need to do extensive behavioral and performance modification or costly replacement of these individuals. The performance management you provide will be largely positive and developmental rather than punitive and correctional.

So how do you go about finding people who are closely aligned to your organization and who match up to your best people? For many employers, talent assessment tools are the answer.

There are a multitude of assessment tools available to today’s employers. Gutknecht’s company, for example, conducts Essence MiningTM to uncover the intrinsic nature and key characteristics of an organization and its people. Harrison Assessments and Shadowmatch USA, among others, focus on behavioral tendencies and competencies to predict performance. Still other tools are personality-based.

Finding the right assessment solution for your organization is, of course, a matter of fit. It has to meet your needs and goals but it also has to suit your company culture.

A recent article on the SHRM website, “Testing for Talent: An HR Case Study,” presents an interesting case study of the Barnum Financial Group and its use of an assessment tool to guide its coaching, communications and teamwork initiatives. The article also offers four helpful tips (which we’ve paraphrased below) to anyone searching for the right assessment tool for their organization:

1.     Be precise about what you want to accomplish.

2.     Forge a rough consensus among management about the tool that best fits the culture of your organization.

3.     Complete the assessment yourself to gauge its accuracy.

4.     Keep budget in mind, as you’ll need to make both an initial investment and an ongoing one.

Without question, performance management encompasses all of the activities we engage in after hiring an individual—conducting performance reviews, providing coaching, delivering developmental opportunities, and all the rest. But if we’re wise, we’ll remember that the most effective performance management actually begins before any of these activities take place. It begins with making the right recruiting and hiring decisions.

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To read more about our thoughts on performance management, click here to download our whitepaper, “From Dread to Moving Ahead — Take the Pain Out of Performance Management.”

The 4 Most Urgent Business Issues Are People Issues

Leadership. Retention and engagement. Reskilling HR. Talent acquisition and access.

Of all the critical issues faced by business and HR leaders today, those four are the most urgent, according to a recent survey by Deloitte Consulting LLP and Bersin by Deloitte. (You can read more about the survey in the report, “Global Human Capital Trends 2014.”)

1. Leadership

The need for strong leadership is, of course, a perennial challenge. But the report makes it clear—this challenge is accelerating “at all levels, in all geographies, and across all functional areas.” The reasons? The rapid pace at which today’s businesses move and change. Globalization. The speed and magnitude of technological change. The list goes on.

2. Employee Retention and Engagement

These issues have never been so prominent (among business leaders or in the media) as they are today. Unfortunately, as the Deloitte report points out, these issues have no clear owner in most organizations, neither within HR nor within the business at large. This creates a dangerous potential for inertia. “Companies should redefine their engagement strategy to move from keeping people to attracting them and creating a passionate compassionate place to work,” the report states.

3. Reskilling of HR

For many of us in HR, this is the issue that hits closest to home. After all, we’ve been working attentively for the past decade or so on transitioning from a largely administrative function to a more strategic one. And the Deloitte report acknowledges this to some degree: “… the HR and talent functions are in the midst of a transformation.” But then it goes on to say: “HR is not making the grade as companies move away from HR as people administration to a focus on people performance. An essential part of this change is the upskilling, reorganization, and transformation of HR and its relationship with business leaders and issues.”

Clearly our internal transformation isn’t complete. We must continue to strengthen our role as a strategic partner to senior and functional leaders. We can do this, in part, by advancing our methods of gathering, analyzing and sharing actionable people data. And we can improve our recruiting and hiring practices so they foster a better quality of candidates and new hires. And we can further develop our abilities to drive passion, engagement and innovation among our workers.

4. Talent Acquisition and Access

As a growing number of analysts have advised, many of our companies will not face a shortage of workers in the next several years. What we will face is a shortage of the right workers—people possess the skills, mindsets, behaviors and goals that truly are in line with our organizations’ needs. Our success depends upon our ability to find these people efficiently. “Tools such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and others are changing recruiting into a strategic function focused on marketing, branding, and new tools and technologies,” the Deloitte report declares. Of course, using the tools to find the right talent is just the beginning. Then we need to develop them and retain them for the long term. And these challenges bring us right back to the three urgent issues covered above.

It’s no coincidence that people issues are our four most urgent business issues—or that these issues are so deeply intertwined. After all, our businesses are built upon our people.

Unless we do a better job of recruiting, managing and developing them for the long term, our sense of urgency will quickly turn to desperation.