Cutting back
Sure enough, present circumstances are forcing many Managers to make drastic cut backs, with news of fresh redundancies now being announced by the day. And it looks like things will get much worse before they get any better.

Many Managers are faced with a pressing need to take a hard look at their teams, identifying those who are least performing and letting them go NOW. Many will sadly be forced to take matters a stage further and let go of good performers – highly capable people who are victims of wrong time, wrong place.

But be careful. For there’s always a danger that cut backs end up going too far until eventually the realisation dawns that the skills and experience left within the business are not best placed to help you navigate your way through these turbulent times.

For the simple truth is, the quality and calibre of your people will ultimately determine how well your organisation gets through all this; the quality of the decisions reached; the speed and success with which these decisions are implemented. Managers need to be sure, therefore, that they don’t just cut back on staff in order to take out the most cost; they need to be certain that those who remain have the right combination of skills and experience to ensure the company’s survival and growth.

A time to hire
Which is why, if past experience is anything to go by, many an employer will end up recruiting a short time after (if not at the same time) as they let people go. How long this takes depends on how forward thinking or ruthless (take your pick) they are about this.

A silver lining for employers is that, amidst all this gloom, there are now a significant number of very good people on the market – talent that only a few weeks ago seemed as rare as hen’s teeth. Hard questions, therefore, need to be asked of those who are left. For example, are the finance team strong enough to keep a tight control over costs? Can they provide those vital KPI’s and supporting analysis to help Managers make informed decisions quickly? Are the sales team capable of opening the doors and landing the deals on the scale and in the timescales required? Department by department, stark questions need to be asked of everyone.

The correct response may simply be to let some people go whilst keeping the rest on board. Sometimes it may mean taking matters that step further and, for example, letting two people go whilst hiring in another with the skills to perform both roles at less cost.

In any event, now is not the time for Managers to make do with what they’ve got and hope for the best, when they know deep down that what they’ve got is not the answer. There is now enough real talent on the market who could potentially offer a more effective solution, and in the current climate, should be more than willing to talk to you!

But a word of warning...
Just because good people are out there in numbers not seen for some time; employers shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking it’s a buyers market where low ball offers, a slow recruitment process and haphazard communication will still land them that quality hire.

The fact is, the vast majority of talent are still in employment and always will be. In uncertain times, candidates are less likely to change jobs, not more so. So whilst undoubtedly the volume of applications may well soar (presenting its own problems) and high calibre talent will almost certainly be amongst the mix, the job of finding them may be a tad easier, but attracting and hiring them will be just as difficult – unless candidates are absolutely desperate. In which case, they’ll soon be off again once the economy improves and better offers present themselves.

So my advice...
Look dispassionately at the performance of each member of your workforce and be sure to make the necessary cut backs quickly. But be mindful not to cut back too far in the desire to reduce your wage bill, only to discover the people you’re left with are not good enough to meet the challenges ahead.

Be sure to take advantage of the high calibre talent that’s now coming onto the market, but don’t act as though (as the employer) you now hold all the aces. Hiring Managers will still need to roll out the red carpet if they’re to attract and hire the best that’s out there. Some things never change and rightly so.

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Comments

All too often, however, recruitment = filling a vacancy. That's it. No more, no less. But in my experience successful companies don't just fill vacancies - they hire talent.

Now, for many companies this way of thinking is way "off-piste" - for them it's much more about filling vacancies quickly and cheaply. The talent thing may be a nice to have but "cloud cuckoo land" in practice. And one should perhaps sympathise (a little bit) with where they're coming from.

Nevertheless a really important attitude shift takes place when an employer thinks in terms of hiring talent rather than simply filling vacancies.

I've worked with companies (very few mind!) that really do appear to have it sussed. In these companies, everyone I've come into contact with - from first impressions of the receptionist onwards - all have had a visible passion for the company and are respectful of the value and contribution each other brings. And this impression hits you every time you come into contact with any one of their people.

Now it should be possible for companies to make a start in this direction by at least identifying and then separating those roles where they should be thinking solely in terms of hiring talent, as opposed to simply filling a vacancy. An interesting debate amongst colleagues should thus follow as to where the cut off point or threshold presently is and where it should be in the future?!

Once employers' start to think in terms of hiring talent rather than simply filling vacancies, two things should happen:

1. Hiring should become more strategic and specific; recognising the wider skills and experience necessary to make a lasting rather than just an immediate, short term contribution, should now be given higher priority. Hiring managers should recognise more clearly the overall value to the business of getting it right and (just as importantly) the cost of getting it wrong.

2. How and where a company attracts talent and the recruitment methods employed - these are key decisions which will almost certainly affect the calibre of person ultimately hired. Does an organisation do it itself, or get someone external in to do it for them? The quality of the recruitment process; the time, resource and cost implications; the impression given to candidates (and if an external solution is used, the impression they make!) All these considerations should be discussed and their importance agreed beforehand in order to decide the best recruitment method to hire the best candidate.

Whereas previously "filling vacancies" often meant simply recruiting in the cheapest way possible - "hiring talent" should encourage proper consideration of these wider aspects, taking a more holistic view of the hiring process chosen.

Once it becomes widely accepted that sourcing talent is absolutely key to a company's success; how an employer goes about recruiting talent and the impression the recruitment method adopted makes on candidates - these are key considerations which need to take precedence over simply doing it in the cheapest way possible.

In my experience the employer offering the highest salary doesn't necessarily have the pick of the best candidates. Far more important from the candidates' point of view is how well they're managed. Starting from the first moment of contact, the quality of care and attention (or lack of) and the speed of service ("Why are companies/agencies always so slow to get back to me - or never at all?" must be the most frequent complaint candidates make) will impact there ultimate decision far more than salary, company name, job title or location.

So, deciding beforehand the right balance between quality (of the hiring process) and value for money (cost) is absolutely paramount in my not so humble opinion. For to paraphrase Aldo Gucci, son of the founder of the House of Gucci: "Quality [of service] will be remembered long after the price has been forgotten."

It's a simple truth... companies aren't successful; the people within them are.

Liam Dowds is a Director of CIRCLe, the Executive Search & Selection firm behind CIRCLeRecruiter: the online executive selection service which combines the service principles of traditional Search & Selection with the power of the Internet to provide a professional yet low cost alternative to agencies, search & selections firms or recruiting direct.

Comments

For the truth is, recruitment is not something many people look forward to getting involved in; nor is it an industry held in particularly high regard. Yet still it remains a vital activity; the process of attracting and then successfully bringing in talent into an organisation. Everyone has need of the service at one time or another: either in our role as an employer or as a candidate. Recruitment, therefore, impacts everyone - personally! So why - if all of us have a vested interest in making recruitment work - does it so often fail to do so?

Consider some of the following:

Service
I think that whilst we may all want to receive good service, we don't always give it! It may be because we're too busy and we lack the time and resources. Yet, if we're honest, too often we fail to give recruitment and the people involved in it, the attention it needs and deserves.

Whether we're the Line Manager, the HR or Recruitment Manager, the candidate or the recruitment consultant; bottom line we don't give each others' interests enough consideration and attention. Usually, we're easily convinced our recruitment problems lie with the other party, rather than with ourselves.

We're all candidates, aren't we?
In particular, not enough consideration is given to where candidates' are coming from; their issues. And this is where a lot of recruitment goes wrong.

It's as if recruitment can only be employer-centric or candidate-centric, but somehow it can't be both.

In most cases, the recruitment process will be skewed towards the needs of the employer, with the candidates' interests often overlooked. This can result in needlessly negative candidate experiences: failure to acknowledge receipt of CV, unexplained delays, a lack of feedback etc. As well as causing unnecessary anxiety to the candidate, it inevitably affects their perception of the company; both as an employer and as a future customer for their goods and services. Not a smart move, in an age when it's increasingly recognised that a company’s "brand values" should be core to everything they say and do.

And it's not as if we don't know that this is what's going on out there; all we need do is look to our own experience as a candidate to recognise it's true!

In fact, if we look at it another way: isn't an employer really only a candidate who happens to be recruiting? Shouldn't all of us, therefore, be treating candidates the way we'd like to be treated as a candidate?

Yet all too often it appears we forget what it's like being a candidate once we're the employer. Forgetting that recruitment is very much a two way process; candidates choosing employers every bit as much as employers choosing candidates.

Treat candidates like customers
Employers, if they're to recruit more successfully, should try to manage their candidates with the same skill, care and attention as they lavish upon their customers. For, as with customers, candidates are no different in that they'll prefer to go where they get the best service.

Simply put: the quality, style and speed of the recruitment process and the message it sends out to candidates, can often be just as important as the salary and job opportunities on offer.

It's a competitive marketplace
Some employers may overlook the fact that they're in a competitive marketplace; competing with other employers, often for the same candidates.

Before an employer can make the choice as to the best person to hire, they must first attract candidates to apply to their vacancy. But that's only the start; since it's likely these same candidates will apply or have already applied to other vacancies with other companies as well.

Important therefore, but often forgotten, is continuing to attract those candidates all the way through the recruitment process. Otherwise, a candidate risks being lost to the competition and the process repeated all over again at great cost both in time and money.

Conclusion
There are many past wrongs with which candidates, employers and recruitment agencies can legitimately use as reasons for blaming each other for the current mess; but it doesn't solve the problem of trying to turn recruitment into a more pleasant experience…for everyone.

However, no matter how galling it may be for those employers previously wronged, it is they who remain best placed to influence everyone else's behaviour - perhaps more so than they realise.

For, ultimately, it is the employer who appoints an agency to act on its behalf and it is the employer who pays their fee. And, as always - money talks!

Employers, I'm convinced, really can exert greater influence than they do. Ensuring the level of service delivered in their name is of an acceptable standard and rigorously enforced. If an employer recruits directly, they need to be confident that the appropriate processes are in place to ensure each party receives good service; both internally between Line Managers and the HR/Recruitment team and externally between the employer and the candidate.

Finally, I don't for a moment suggest these issues are for employers' to resolve on their own. It's also abundantly clear that recruitment agencies as well as candidates need to get their act together and be more honest with each other and with employers'.

However, I'm certain we'll never break the cycle of poor recruitment experience without employers' taking the lead, since they're the only ones with any real influence. For ultimately, it's the employer who calls the shots in terms of deciding strategy, who to use and who to pay! They really do have more influence than they may think.

I'd encourage them, therefore, to take a lead which the rest of us follow; using their influence to promote and reward the giving of good service...to everyone.

Only then will all of us be more confident of receiving (nay, insisting upon!) good service in return.

Liam Dowds is a Director of CIRCLe, the Executive Search & Selection firm behind CIRCLeRecruiter: the online executive selection service which combines the service principles of traditional Search & Selection with the power of the Internet to provide a professional yet low cost alternative to agencies, search & selections firms or recruiting direct.

Comments