NEWS

from Don Phin, HRThatWorks:

I recently had the opportunity to speak along with Laura Kerekes, Chief Knowledge Officer at ThinkHR at the recent Talent Acquisition Forum Conference in South San Francisco. Here are some the subjects discussed at that conference:

1. The relationship between HR and marketing – I have encouraged HR executives for many years to pick up marketing and sales books, cross out the word customer or client and insert the word employee. If you do so you’ll learn a lot about how to find, attract, and hire great employees
2. How to use analytics in recruiting – Companies should know what it costs to bring on a new employee. It is not unlike the cost of bringing on a new customer or client. Then you get the opportunity to weigh the cost and time of doing so against the lifetime value of that employee. When you think like a marketer you realize that you’re willing to invest more time and money on the front end because the back end is so profitable.
3. Using assessments to improve the selection process – I am a great believer in personality assessment tools. According to Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Blink, there are some 2,500 such tools in the marketplace. Which means the best one is the one that you use! One of my favorites is www.zeroriskhr.com. At the conference they were also talking about how these assessments are being deployed on more mobile applications.
4. Developing a successful and accurate workforce planning strategy – It is a fact that great hiring is a strategy, a process, a design effort and not simply an event. Unfortunately, most managers hire to get it over with and have very little strategy involved. One of the great roles of HR is to make sure the company brings on great talent. Therefore they have a great responsibility to get it done right.
5. Engaging Millennials – There’s a lot of discussion around how to embrace this new generation. Of course there is a part of us that’s the same no matter what generation we are in.  Namely we all want to be liked, loved, and appreciated. How that happens often varies with the generations. A one-size strategy of engagement does not fit all. Obviously Millennials are going to be attracted to your online technology. Your use of engaging video on the job page, the quality of your online interactions with the candidate, the quality of the onboarding process. To the extent you can bring gamification to the process you’ll be light years ahead of your competition.
6. Engaging and paying contract workers – Due to quickly changing business needs, as well as influences such as the Affordable Care Act, there is a rapidly growing contingent workforce. Companies not only have to make sure they don’t cross legal boundaries but also make sure that they fully engage these workers.

There were additional workshops surrounding hiring veterans, onboarding programs, use of big data, recruiting scorecards, interviews for cultural fit, using internal search firms, drug testing, and managing your online reputation.

Laura and I concluded the conference talking about why we don’t make good hiring decisions and follow the advice set forth in conferences like this. Of course, the reasons why have nothing to do with common sense…or we would be doing it. We dived into the emotional blockages, including desperation, infatuation, baggage, recommendations, and more. If you’d like to get a copy of our handout, please click here.