MARCH
1999
There’s
a Vacancy to Be Filled: What Next?
IMELCRITICAL
JOB OPENINGS, like dental cavities, scream for attention –
begging to be filled. When the tooth hurts, of course, it’s
off to the dentist for help. But when a job opening occurs,
organizations face a bewildering array of choices.
Among
the options on a typical company’s platter are transfer
or promotion from within, employee referrals, unsolicited
resumes and leftovers in the personnel files, job fairs, Internet
searches, direct recruitment advertising in a wide variety
of media, third-party advertising via resume-screening firms,
company recruiting and external recruiting (or search). That’s
not to mention the possibility of using contractors for non-recurring
tasks or outsourcing some kinds of positions – for example,
to a service provider skilled at running mail rooms or cafeterias.
One thing
is for certain: no one size fits all. The organization, for
instance, that always advertises or always turns to the Internet
does itself as much of a disservice as does the organization
that looks to recruiting firms to fill all vacancies.
Nonetheless,
it’s hard to get rid of bad habits. In a late 1998 survey
of almost 2000 employers, a trade publication called The Fordyce
Letter found that 92 percent of them "regularly"
advertise to fill positions, despite the fact that satisfaction
with results rated only 2 on a scale of 1 (low) to 5 (high).
Outside recruiters received the highest rating of any hiring
method – but were used on a regular basis by only half
the sample.
Evaluating the Options
The choice
of hiring methods all too often boils down to a budgetary
decision, as opposed to a realistic needs assessment.
Transfer
or promotion from within costs only a salary increase, advances
someone’s career and normally bolsters organizational
morale ("the system works"). The flip side is that
it can lead to inbreeding and predictable solutions to problems.
Employee
referrals (generally of relatives or neighbors) are probably
ok for task-important jobs but are unreliable when more subjective
factors (such as leadership or management skills) come into
play.
If your
company is a magnet for job-seekers, chances are that the
HR department has scads of resumes on file – or can
generate them through print or electronic advertising. There
are several problems, however, with passive recruiting:
- First,
the ideal candidate may be happily employed and not looking
for work.
- Second,
those seeking employment often apply for anything, whether
they are qualified or not. (The resumes in your files are
also in the files of countless other companies and computer
job banks.)
- Third,
resumes are a notoriously poor source of accurate information
and reveal little about the personal attributes of the candidate.
- Fourth,
while sophisticated enterprise resource software can organize
and to some extent screen resumes, it still takes human
beings to evaluate the senders – a time-consuming
task that overworked HR departments may be hard-pressed
to complete.
The use
of search firms becomes, in effect, a way to outsource the
recruiting function, have it conducted by skilled specialists,
improve timeliness and identify those candidates who are happily
and productively employed. While seemingly costly, the use
of outside firms can actually save companies money by filling
the job promptly, eliminating advertising dollars and reducing
staff expenditures.
But of
even greater importance, a top-flight search firm can add
value to the recruitment process by asking the kinds of questions
that otherwise may go unasked. (Continued on other side.)
Taking the Guesswork out of Search
About
five years ago, Sanford Rose Associates tackled a problem
that is endemic to the recruiting process – the trial-and-error
nature of filling most positions based on standard job descriptions.
In far too many cases, the job candidate who looked great
on paper failed to look so great in person, or wasn’t
what the client was really searching for.
To alleviate
trial-and-error recruiting, SRA created a proprietary process
called Dimensional SearchÒ , which matches a candidate’s
skills to specific job requirements, past accomplishments
to future job needs and personal management (or operating)
style to the specific work environment (or culture) –
the three dimensions of successful search.
When
position openings were analyzed according to the Dimensional
Search process, it also became apparent that the relative
importance of the three dimensions varies by position opening.
Some
positions, for example, are heavily skills-dependent -- with
successful on-the-job performance based primarily on the utilization
of those skills to complete assigned tasks (such as equipment
operation or computer programming). Other positions call for
specific past experience to address a particular need (such
as union avoidance or improved plant productivity). Still
others blend both skills and experience with the need to lead
or manage others in a particular kind of work environment
(which might or might not, for instance, value team effort
above individual creativity).
Traditional
job descriptions are usually great at describing duties but
lousy at addressing the other kinds of variables above. When
duties are paramount (as in the case of an accounts-payable
clerk, process engineer or production scheduler), an employer
might feel comfortable as a first step to search its resume
files, advertise in the newspaper or post the position on
the Internet – assuming there are readily available
candidates with the skills required.
In many
kinds of positions, however, duties fail to describe success
on the job. An example would be the multi-plant company, with
a generic plant-manager position description, that is seeking
to solve a unionization or productivity problem at a particular
plant. Here, the use of a professional search consultant to
ask the right questions plays a more evident role in identifying
the type of individual whose past accomplishments will match
the company’s needs.
And when
is the last time you saw a job description or advertisement
for a division general manager that said, "Must be able
to improve employee morale, make peace between the manufacturing
and marketing departments, restore profitability and regain
the confidence of the Board of Directors"? It requires
considerable powers of observation, question-asking and diplomacy
to piece together such an analysis – and even greater
skills to identify the person who would consider that kind
of situation to be an opportunity.
Let the Buyer Beware
Two recent
trends have sparked considerable controversy in the executive
search profession.
One concerns
the use by certain firms of Internet job registries as an
acceptable substitute for the direct recruitment of "mid-level"
(i.e., $60,000-120,000) positions. The other concerns the
use of third-party classified advertising by the recruiting
firm to promise the employer a guaranteed number of "qualified"
candidates. Neither constitutes full-service executive search,
even though the costs may be comparable. And not only is the
employer paying for a substandard search, it is also subsidizing
the expansion of the provider’s database.
Clearly,
not every position opening warrants the assistance of outside
recruiters. But when the needs of the position are so specific
and so important that superficial matches won’t suffice,
seek out a full-service firm with the expertise and commitment
to conduct a true custom search.
Beware
if all a recruiter wants is the job description and salary
range in order to send you candidates. The time you save today
will be wasted many times over.
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