Recruiting - The Blackbox

Facts about how “Right” talent impacts your Top Line in the long run are spread all over the internet. However how do you Reach-out, Attract (Market), Assess and On-board this talent is a mystery which all leaders have opinion on but don’t understand fully

In today’s article, trying to open some layers of this “Blackbox” and see how it works.

Reach-out — This is a complex problem considering facets of Organisation’s brand value, industry it operates in, role being hired for, and last the available supply. From a layman perspective, this is what you will do to source applications (mind you we are still talking about Reach):

• Job Boards / Portals
• Social Media (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram)
• Referrals — Direct / In-direct (Will organisation pay referral fee to someone unknown if they refer a perfect hire?)
• Consultants — Executive Search / Lateral depending on Role
• Careers Page (For organisations which have a good brand)
• Existing Database (Most under-utilised source for most organisations)
• Campus hiring (requires atleast 12 month advance planning)

Attract (Market) — When we share the “Job Description” with candidates, do we talk about KRAs / KPIs or we talk about Product Vision? Where do we lay more emphasis — Individuals’ skills and capabilities or the showcasing Teams candidate is going to work with? While we talk about transparency in organisation culture, are we comfortable sharing compensation range for the role in public (or is it based on candidates?)

Remember, when you sell a product (Organisation) you talk about it’s features, uniqueness and price point, not about it’s consumer’s (Candidate) capability to afford it. This basic principle is often forgotten when we are hiring

Assess — Assuming you have solved for Reach and Attract, and you have enough applications in your pipeline, assessing these applications well is equally critical. Let’s see how some of these processes happen today:

• A recruiter spends average of 30secs to review a “Resume” and takes a call on individual’s capability
• The “Shortlisted” candidates are then made to go through technical evaluations and sometimes
• HR comes into process and does “Culture” assessment and offer negotiation

Why can’t all of this be streamlined with use of technology, where so called “AI” and assessments can help you filter through haystack and give you “top 10” against each position — Assessments today can cover for technical, cultural, behavioural and Soft Skills with an accuracy of as high as 90%. Human Intervention is needed for the remaining 10%

In addition, ensuring clarity of each step in process — Timeline, stakeholders involved and kind of discussions that will happen goes a long way in enhancing candidate experience and build brand

On-boarding is a journey in itself, seeds of which are sown during the interview process and fruits harvested at about 90days after the candidate has started. Thus will cover this part as a separate topic.

Question though: Are there technologies which solve for all of above seamlessly at an affordable price? (excluding #OracleFusion #Workday #SuccessFactors). Please share your comments if you are aware of any such platforms