The Importance of Talent!

To remain competitive in the current business climate, you must attract, develop, nurture and inspire talented employees to ensure they remain within your company to meet current and future demands.

It is no longer enough to identify talent once they have been hired and worked for your company for a period of time.   

Identifying talent must begin with the detailed assessment of applicants during the selection and recruitment phase. It is at this time that desirable competencies and skills such as the ability to influence, divergent thinking, problem solving abilities and a strong motivation to learn and be successful will become apparent.

Talented individuals are driven. They want to achieve the best results in the most efficient way possible and often view challenges as opportunities to think more innovatively. Top performers are motivated by others like them, leading to stronger collaboration and higher-functioning teams. This fosters a bolder vision for your organisation and will impact the bottom line in a beneficial way.  Imaginative ideas which facilitate business growth and customer satisfaction will create enhanced productivity and profitability. This underscores the importance of attracting talent. If you can match such desirable qualities with the right position and align a team of like-minded thinkers, business outcomes will improve exponentially. 

First step! Discover what engages high performers so you can create an environment that is aligned to their needs and elicits their best qualities.

Research has found the factors which impact high performers the most are:

•             Employee autonomy
•             Risk Taking
•             Tolerance of mistakes
•             Open Communication
•             Good supervisory relationships
•             Education and training opportunities

Second step! Identify the organisational factors which influence an organisations ability to retain top performers. Research has highlighted that factors associated with retaining talent are:

•             A change driven organisation culture

•             High degree of organisational flexibility

•             Agile and innovative work culture

•             Strong leadership and vision

A final remark! It is possible to train an employee on any product or service. You cannot train someone to have integrity, resilience, self-confidence and work ethic!  So consider how you might assess the presence of such attributes reliably and objectively during the recruitment process. 

The two most favoured approaches are via interview or personality assessment, but with them emphasis on reliably and objectively, it may be more defensible to gather such data as strong hypotheses via a personality assessment and then validate these competencies via structured interviewdo yourself and your business a favour and start incorporating personality assessment into your recruitment strategy. The benefits of gaining talented employees will help your organisation stay aligned and to the organisations strategic mission!  

As in the organisation may well have decided what competence achieve success and set it apart from competitors, whilst the HR strategy might be to align a competency based HR approach with the corporate strategy.

The Art of Job Posts!

The first impression a potential candidate may have of your organisation is your job post! Therefore, it is important to write a job post that grabs the applicant’s attention, creates a good first impression, and outlines the important information in an attractive and succinct way.

Follow the following 4 steps to attract the ideal candidates:

Maximise your impact

Unlike traditional ads, you are no longer constrained by a maximum of 30 words to adequately describe your job position! This gives you the opportunity to describe the necessary requirements, competencies, traits, skills, background, education, experience, training, highly desirable features and even some "nice to haves."  

Be Specific and Descriptive

To get the most value from online job postings, avoid generic job titles and entice the job seeker to read on! Ensure the job description is clear and succinct. The text should quickly and explicitly capture the one or two features most appealing about the career opportunity. You need to put yourself in the seeker's shoes and think about what will grab their attention.

Entice your reader 

Times are changing! Many job seekers are interested in the values of the organisations they intend to apply for. Remember to include a sound, responsible description of the company and its goal statement, management style, advancement policies, status in the industry, prospects for the future, geographic distribution, history, and so on. You can accomplish this by setting up links to your corporate home page.

Be Relevant

The location of your workplace is also be an important factor for job seekers. Include a description of the job's physical location and perhaps an enticing few sentences about the community you work in ‘Eg seaside community surrounded by many local shops- the ideal place to work!’

Remember to include details such as salary, benefits, where to send the resume, the contact person, where to discover more about the company, whether the job is full time or contractual, the target start date, whether your company will relocate the appropriate candidate, whether you sponsor international Visas and other details that will help the job seeker determine whether to submit a resume.

 

If your job description is clear, high-impact and enticing you are well on your way to attracting the right candidate for the job! Remember- the more detailed and specific you can be of the job position and requirements, the less full your inbox will be of job seekers who do not fit the criteria. So spend the time crafting the perfect job ad as it will pay off in time saved and hopefully- the right candidate for the job!

If looking for examples of job postings which are succinct, detailed and attractive- send an email to Career Exchange and we can assist you with any advertisement needs. 

Filling the Talent ‘gap’- Recruiting tips that matter in 2016

Can you guess what the recipients of Fortune’s ‘100 best companies to work for’ 2015 award reported as their single biggest focus for 2016?

Employee development - the ability to hire the right people for the job (think innovative thinkers with a tolerance to ambiguity) and to be able to work with their abilities, skills and talents to develop them into valuable, driven and productive employees.

In most companies today, where job responsibilities, KPIs and work priorities vary so frequently, the difficulty of recruiting and retaining staff is receiving increased recognition amid this shifting scene. Additionally, the needs of employees (especially Millennials) are changing, and employers must respond. It all adds up to a bigger, more complex role for a company’s human resources function than has ever been seen before.

Attributes such as innovative thinking and the ability to produce work that hits the mark, increasingly relies on collaboration and high level cognitive thinking. According to a 2015 World Economic Forum study, half of employers globally expect their business performance to suffer due to gaps in talent. 

The following tips when you are considering hiring individuals with the aim of ‘filling’ the talent gap should be kept in mind.

Soft skills are important.

Consider candidate’s soft skills like their interpersonal effectiveness, communication skills, thought processes and emotional intelligence. Remember if you hire them you will have to work with them!

Check social media profiles.

How that person behaves on social media is a good indication of what kind of person the individual is and how the candidate might fit into your company's culture.

Ask the right kinds of questions.

It’s important for you to get a feel of how the candidate responds to a variety of questions - do they blame someone else for leaving their past organisation or give short one-word responses throughout the interview? Their degree of professionalism when responding is a good indicator of how they will act in your workplace. 

Let candidates interview you, too.

Don't be the only one to ask questions. To help determine if your prospective candidate has the right personality for your particular job, it's important to help that person understand the company's work environment.

Don't judge a book by its cover. 

It's easy to write off candidates based on their appearance, but it's more important that you consider how well they can do the job and if they're a good fit in other ways. John Schwarz, CEO and founder of workforce analytics company Visier comments:
"I have had the experience of hiring kids from school who were disheveled, unpresentable [and] inarticulate, but who had a very strong visceral commitment to what they were doing and passion for what they wanted to be," Schwarz said.

Above all, take the time to really think about what kind of person would be a good match for your organisation. Consider their skills - both hard and soft, experience, online presence and their personality when making your decision. What value can they bring to you and your company in today’s competitive and innovative global market? 

Working with Millennials

The millennials joining your workforce now are employees born between 1980 and 2000 and they come with a fresh mindset, can-do attitude and seek leadership, friendship and feedback within their work places.

Read these 10 tips By Susan M. Heathfield (Human Resources Expert) on how to manage millennials:

(Amusing video on how to deal with Millennials)

Provide structure. Reports have monthly due dates. Jobs have fairly regular hours. Certain activities are scheduled every day. Meetings have agendas and minutes. Goals are clearly stated and progress is assessed. Define assignments and success factors.

Provide leadership and guidance. Millennials want to look up to you, learn from you, and receive daily feedback from you. They want “in” on the whole picture and to know the scoop. Plan to spend a lot of time teaching and coaching and be aware of this commitment to millennials when you hire them. They deserve and want your very best investment of time in their success.

Encourage the millennial's self-assuredness, "can-do" attitude, and positive personal self-image. Millennials are ready to take on the world. Their parents told them they can do it - they can. Encourage - don't squash them or contain them.

Take advantage of the millennial's comfort level with teams. Encourage them to join. They are used to working in groups and teams. In contrast to the lone ranger attitude of earlier generations, millennials actually believe a team can accomplish more and better - they've experienced team success.

Not just related to age, watch who joins the volleyball match at the company picnic. Millennials gather in groups and play on teams; you can also mentor, coach, and train your millennials as a team.

Listen to the millennial employee. Your millennial employees are used to loving parents who have scheduled their lives around the activities and events of their children. These young adults have ideas and opinions, and don't take kindly to having their thoughts ignored. After all, they had the best listening, most child-centric audience in history.

Millennial employees are up for a challenge and change. Boring is bad. They seek ever-changing tasks within their work. What’s happening next is their mantra. Don’t bore them, ignore them, or trivialize their contribution.

Millennial employees are multi-taskers on a scale you’ve never seen before. Multiple tasks don’t phaze them. Talk on the phone while doing email and answering multiple instant messages – yes! This is a way of life. In fact, without many different tasks and goals to pursue within the week, the millennials will likely experience boredom.

Take advantage of your millennial employee’s computer, cell phone, and electronic literacy Are you a Boomer or even an early Gen-Xer? The electronic capabilities of these employees are amazing. You have a salesman in China? How’s the trip going? Old timers call and leave a message in his hotel room. Or, you can have your millennial text message him in his meeting for an immediate response. The world is wide, if not yet deep, for your millennial employees.

Capitalize on the millennial’s affinity for networking. Not just comfortable with teams and group activities, your millennial employee likes to network around the world electronically. Keep this in mind because they are able to post their resume electronically as well on Web job boards viewed by millions of employers. Sought after employees, they are loyal, but they keep their options open – always.

Provide a life-work balanced workplace.Your millennials are used to cramming their lives with multiple activities. They may play on sports teams, walk for multiple causes, spend time as fans at company sports leagues, and spend lots of time with family and friends.

They work hard, but they are not into the sixty hour work weeks defined by the Baby Boomers. Home, family, spending time with the children and families, are priorities. Don’t lose sight of this. Balance and multiple activities are important to these millennial employees. Ignore this to your peril.

As always, when I characterize a group of employees based on age, or any other characteristic, some employees will fit this description; some employees will fit part of this description; some employees will not fit this description.

Yet, I believe that, if you heed these tips, you will steer your organization forward, more times than not, with a positive approach to managing your millennial employees.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities - What is the Difference and is it Important?

Knowledge, skill and abilities are the three essentials to any employee, employer and organisation. Recruiters seek out specific knowledge, skills and abilities during the hiring process, managers consider the knowledge, skills and abilities of certain employees when suggesting individuals suitable for promotion and organisations are constantly referring back to the core knowledge, skills and abilities they believe are necessary to thrive and survive in the business environment.

These three important terms are often used interchangeably. Even though the difference between them can be subtle, it is imperative to know the difference in order to understand what you expect of your current and future employees.

Knowledge is the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject. For example, an employee might have knowledge of a particular model used in instructional design. This doesn’t mean the employee knows how to be an instructional designer. It means they know the model.

Skills are the proficiencies developed through training or experience. Using the model design example, the employee has demonstrated skills in applying the model when designing training programs. Skills are usually something that has been learned. So, we can develop our skills through the transfer of knowledge.

Abilities are the qualities of being able to do something. There is a fine line between skills and abilities. Think of abilities such as organization and prioritization as attributes that can help an employee develop their instructional design skills.

In business we often refer to the ‘skills’ gap and if your organisation is trying to fill this gap, then we must be clear on what exactly needs a solution- is it employees knowledge about a particular product? Or do their skills in how they sell the product need fine tuning? Or do they need to work on their ability to prioritise and better manage their time?  

Understanding the subtle differences between the terms can make obvious improvements to your work force!

Polite Reminder of your most important New Year's Resolutions

Here are six effective ways of ensuring your employees New Year’s resolutions were not along the lines of ‘start looking for a new job.’

 

Put employees first. 

The customer may still always be right but for your employees to be able to deal with customers effectively to ensure they return to your business, it is up to you to set the standard of the customer experience.  When an organisations’ people are appreciated, prioritised and looked after with the same level of care extended to customers then employees will naturally take better care of their customers.

Open lines of communication. 

There is nothing worse or more damaging to employee morale and focus then the rumour mill. Establish trustworthy and open lines of communication within your organisation so that employees know who to ask for information or further clarification.

Treat employees like they are capable of doing the job.

Employees were hired in the first instance because you presumed or they demonstrated the capabilities necessary to do the job advertised. Avoid dictating how, when and where they go and what they do and allow employees enough breathing room to take ownership of their work and to let new ideas flourish. They might even come up with ways to do things more efficiently which will positively impact your bottom line.

Treat employees like they have a life outside the job. 

Ask your employees what they need to make achieving their targets, KPI’s or outcomes more achievable. Changes don’t need to be expensive. Just demonstrating that you are willing to be flexible and are aware of other pressures outside the job will motivate employees to give back more to the organisation.

Embrace employees for who they are.

Hiring employees from diverse backgrounds is only useful if they are able to express their diversity and don’t feel pressured to conform to historical cultural norms. Ensure that opportunities for promotion are firmly based on employees merit and skills.

Let employees know they matter. 

Ensure each employee understands the important role they play in achieving your organisations mission. Posting the organisation’s mission on walls around the staff room is not enough. Communicate and engage with your employees to ensure they are aware how their efforts at work are helping to achieve the big picture goal.