GE’s Bill Conaty: Secrets of an HR Superstar
- Author: Amitai Givertz
- Posted: March 30, 2007
- Category: Business Matters
- Tags: No Tags
- Comments: 6
This week BusinessWeek publishes a swan song of sorts for General Electric’s departing HR honcho Bill Conaty. In Secrets of an HR Superstar former Chief Executive and BusinessWeek columnist Jack Welch says, “He has enormous trust at every level. The union guys respect him as much as the senior managers,” adding, “The guy is spectacular.”
The article pays tribute to Conaty’s 40 years at GE with the last 13 years as Senior Vice President of Corporate Human Resources. He is credited with creating a new breed of HR and talent management machine that produces leaders, the next generation who will continue to drive the GE’s business strategy, performance and succession plans.
So what are Bill Conaty’s Secrets of an HR Superstar?
- Dare to differentiate
- Constantly raise the bar
- Don’t be friends with the boss
- Become easy to replace
- Be inclusive
- Free others up to do their jobs
- Keep it simple
Easy enough to be like GE, wouldn’t you say?
John Lynch succeeds – literally – Bill Conaty as the top-dog in GE’s HR organization.
The “SMART Organization” Defined
- Author: Eric Jackson
- Posted: March 29, 2007
- Category: Talent Management, Business Matters
- Tags: Center of Excellence, Leadership Training, Performance Management, Succession Planning
- Comments: 1
Following up from last week’s post Building Smart Leadership, today I want to outline the key factors that can help you determine whether or not you are building an organization with “SMART Leadership.”
We have all seen successful software organizations that have their day in the sun. Earnings are up, maybe there’s a hot new space that’s attracting a lot of VC money, or there’s a category-killer technology that is generating a lot of buzz. The CEOs in these organizations are typically splashed across the covers of major business magazines, and are given ample opportunities to outline in Inc., Red Herring, Fast Company, and CNET the reasons why they have been successful.
Alas, in many of these situations, the excitement does not endure. A couple of missed quarters. New competitors emerge with an even more interesting gizmo. Larry Ellison said famously that over two-thirds of software companies will be out of business or consolidated within the next 5 years. Where is the Second Act for these organizations?
Defining Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO)
- Author: Amitai Givertz
- Posted: March 28, 2007
- Category: Talent Management, Recruitment Solutions, Business Matters
- Tags: No Tags
- Comments: 1
There has been a lot of talk lately about RPO being this and RPO being that. CEO Mike Moore lays it all out bringing pie-in-the-sky back down-to-earth:
A Measure of Success: Getting Started, Part 2
- Author: Scott Biggerstaff
- Posted: March 28, 2007
- Category: Recruiting, Performance Staffing
- Tags: No Tags
- Comments: 0
Which metric is most important? Where should I start? Here’s one that makes everyone cringe: Quality of Hire. The common thinking is we’ll have to create an assessment, wait for the first year’s evaluation, compare them with other hires and consult an I/O psychologist to validate our results. It will take at least a year to get results and by then we’ll have moved on to something else. Not so, I say.
I think Quality of Hire is one of the most important metrics and it should matter to you. I also think it can be one of the easiest metrics to get started. It will require some work and a little interaction with your hiring managers.
“OH NO!” “Did he say we’ll have to work with the hiring manager?”
Yes I did. Collaborating with the hiring manager is the most important part of successful staffing and consultative recruiting. Finding ways to measure and foster that interaction will make you more productive.
Quality of Hire can be as simple as a few questions to the hiring manager about the new employee. In 30 to 60 days, go to the manager and try some of these…
- Do they have the skills needed to do the job?
- Is the new hire meeting expectations?
- Would you hire them again?
- On a scale of 1 to 5, how would you rate the Quality of the Hire?
With the answers to these questions, you can refine your next search to try and move the quality scale up a notch. Now you can start to create a Quality of Hire metric to improve upon or show your already well-honed recruiting skills.
But what just happened here? You got a chance to see how well you and the hiring manager as a team, filled the open req. This can be the first step in a consultative recruiting process and increased quality of hire. The focus here should be on Quality of Hire and did we match them with the requirements needed to do the job.
Some additional reading and resources that you might find helpful:
- An older article on ERE by Dr. John Sullivan proving some things improve with time, Quality of Hire: Why You Should Measure It, Part 1 and Part 2
- There is an excellent synopsis on the Performance Staffing site that summarizes a white paper also by Dr. John Sullivan with Master Burnett, Quality of Hire: Does Source Matter? Measuring Quality of Hire - The Ultimate Recruiting Metric. If you want a copy of the white paper, let me know and I’ll lend you mine.
- While you’re there check out Recruiting Economics: The Real Costs of Human Capital Acquisition by John Sumser.
- Quality of Hire: How Companies Are Crunching the Numbers on Workforce.com talks about 11 different ways to measure.
One of my favorites, Kevin Wheeler, answers a question which I am asked all the time in our Performance Staffing seminars (John Sullivan obviously hears this a lot too!): Quality of Hire: Does Source Matter? Next time we’ll talk about that. I believe source of hire is one of the basic building blocks for the rest of your metrics. But remember, GIGO. More next time.
Previously posted in this series:
A Measure of Success: Getting Started, Part 1
Recruiting Brain Surgeons & Other “Minorities”
- Author: Amitai Givertz
- Posted: March 26, 2007
- Category: Recruiting, Sourcing Strategies
- Tags: No Tags
- Comments: 3
It seems the word “Minority” used to describe a distinct group of candidates is going out of vogue. Sadly, in our efforts to be “correct” with our use of language we sometimes throw the baby out with the bath water, missing opportunities to explore non-traditional recruitment communications and sourcing strategies.
To the extent that “minority” might imply subordination to a majority – such a negative word when we think in terms of people defined by their race, creed, ability, orientation, vulnerability or disadvantage – then it is easy to understand why some would prefer to jettison the word in favor of something that sounds more “inclusive.”
Conversely, to the extent that the word by definition means “the smaller in number of two groups forming a whole,” it is quite proper to describe brain surgeons as a minority in exactly the same way as women in technology and Black engineers are truly minorities too.
So, why the semantics?
Building Smart Leadership
- Author: Eric Jackson
- Posted: March 22, 2007
- Category: Talent Management, Business Matters
- Tags: Center of Excellence, Leadership Training, Performance Management, Succession Planning
- Comments: 5
At the beginning of 2005, Morgan Stanley Lead Director, Miles Marsh, thought that the performance of the white shoe investment bank was on-track. “Performance had turned up,” he said, as earnings per share rose 18% in 2004 and the firm was #1 in stock underwriting. He and his fellow directors would no doubt have been surprised to learn that, just 6 months later, Chief Executive Philip Purcell would be ignominiously forced to resign his post after an unprecedented number of complaints from employees, ex-employees, and shareholders, putting a cloud over the entire board.
It turned out that - despite several positive financial indicators - there were many warning signs that Morgan Stanley was headed for trouble. These signs went unheeded. The public and private battles, high-level executive turnover, and demoralized culture were not inevitable; it was through lack of attention that they became so.
In our research we have found that Morgan Stanley is not the first - nor likely will it be the last - highly successful organization that sowed the seeds of its own demise.
Based on six years of research that went into the writing of the 2003 book Why Smart Executives Fail, as well as more recent research, we have identified the key organizational patterns that differentiate between high-performance organizations (like Morgan Stanley) that later fail in large part because of their success (what we call “Not-so-Smart Organizations”) and other successful companies that have been able to maintain and grow their market dominance.
We call the latter, “SMART Organizations,” and, in this article, Sydney Finkelstein and I outline the key factors that can help you determine whether or not you are building an organization with “SMART Leadership.”
Over the next few weeks I will be posting excerpts and would love to get your feedback.
Slugging Through the War for Talent
- Author: Amitai Givertz
- Posted: March 19, 2007
- Category: Talent Management, Business Matters
- Tags: White Papers
- Comments: 5
One of the problems with surveys and white papers commissioned by marketers whose purpose is in posturing it seems is that the content often falls short in substance and general usefulness. Slugging Through the War for Talent — put out jointly by DDI and Monster — seems to me to be one of the more obvious attempts to hype the “war for talent” rather than hypothesize any original thinking for those who are embattled in it.
Call-outs like:
THE WAR FOR TALENT HEATS UP
Staffing directors overwhelmingly reported that competition for talent had increased since 2005. Moreover, 79% expected it to heat up even more in 2007. The war for talent is hot and getting hotter.
…and statements like this one:
Employers won’t be able to attract the best job candidates if their messages fail to address their target audience’s interests. You can’t lure the right fish if you don’t use the right bait.
…make me wonder who the authors imagine are reading or what readers are expected to do with the information.
Don’t misunderstand me; there is nothing wrong with publishing surveys and white papers — or blog posts for that matter — that serve to market and promote a provider who is otherwise shamelessly selling stuff. More, if that research and know-how serves the needs of people who are not being asked for anything in exchange, then I suggest we might need more good content to choose from.
Then again, perhaps I have been spoiled, my expectations set too high. Comparing Slugging Through the War for Talent with these DDI offerings for example, I don’t think it is unfair to say it falls short:
- The CEOs Guide to Talent Management
- Nine Best Practices of Effective Talent Management
- The New People Leader Imperatives
Potential customers are no different from the potential hires we seek to attract and engage in much the same way. So here is some helpful advice — I hope — for would-be marketers whose purpose might be too self-serving, obvious:
Vendors won’t be able to attract the best clients if their messages fail to address their target audience’s interests. You can’t lure the right fish if you don’t use the right bait.
That’s my two cents-worth. What do you think?
Workforce Planning: Crying, “Wolf!”
- Author: Amitai Givertz
- Posted: March 15, 2007
- Category: Workforce Planning, Business Matters
- Tags: No Tags
- Comments: 5
An article appeared in the Boston Globe yesterday titled, Shortage of Workers May Stretch Many Employers. Two things make this an important article:
Important thing number one: When you look at the number of published papers, articles, blog posts, reports, and so on that are similarly titled — Shortage of Workers May Stretch Many Employers typically unimaginative for the alarming content — well, at some point you turn off, don’t you? You begin to assume, “Seen that, read that, done that, what’s new?”
True, at some point we have to attenuate the constant drone about talent shortages, create the quiet space we need to think through possible solutions and understand how we might turn lemons into lemonade.
This article reports:
American businesses are largely unprepared for a seismic workforce change that will get underway in the coming decade, as tens of millions of baby boomers retire and far fewer new employees arrive to take their place.
Hmmm. Nothing new there but the Globe goes on:
… the conclusion of a study being released today by Boston College’s Center on Aging & Work… which surveyed 578 companies and other organizations, finds that only 12 percent have planned in-depth and more than a quarter have failed to plan at all for the changing demographics projected to create a worker shortage.
Important thing number two: The real and pressing issue that makes this innocuously titled article so important that we must pay attention to it, is the startling report that so few employers have taken steps to tune in and wake up. It seems that 25 percent of employers are sleeping through the late-hour alarm call with the rest just tossing and turning, dozing off again.
Have we pundits, thought-leaders, salespeople, marketers, commentators and assorted boys-in-trees lulled everyone to sleep with our “buzz” about the shortage of talent? As a society, have we failed to wake up even now, now that there is a wolf at the door?
Travel & Succession Planning: Trippin’ In Washington
- Author: Amitai Givertz
- Posted: March 14, 2007
- Category: That's Life, Business Matters
- Tags: RCI, Succession Planning, Talent Management Consulting, Workforce Planning
- Comments: 1
I am pulling together some material for a presentation next week. That in of itself is unremarkable especially when you consider the meeting is in Washington, DC and the topic for discussion is succession planning. That kind of thing is big in some Washington circles, you know.
No, what is remarkable is that instead of rummaging through CEO Mike Moore’s desk looking for the stuff he has asked me to print out for him — twice — both of us will now have a place where we can easily find the stuff we know we had somewhere but somehow lost in the shuffle. That place, ladies and gentlemen, will be right here on our site.
For me I can now “tag” documents and find them with a quick search. For Mike, he’ll know that if his hard copy is missing it had nothing to do with my searching high and low, a replacement copy simple enough to print.
Best of all, Mike and I get to share with you the stuff that other people have shared with us:
If you are in DC or around the Beltway, I’ll be in town from Tuesday, March 20 to Friday, March 23. If you think we should meet we can talk about your succession planning or anything else that relates to your recruitment and retention interests. Please email me and let me know what you have in mind.
Recruiting Operating Room Nurses with Surgical Precision
- Author: Amitai Givertz
- Posted: March 14, 2007
- Category: Recruiting, Sourcing Strategies
- Tags: Print Media, Sourcing Strategy, USA TODAY
- Comments: 0
Recruiting nurses in the face of the ongoing shortage of candidates is a problem that impacts everyone, showing no signs of letting up. For example, the number of nurses is projected to shrink just as the demand is projected to increase with an aging population. And if the shortage of nurses wasn’t problem enough, in many places the rising cost of living makes recruiting in some markets nearly impossible.
No doubt some of these issues will be topics of much discussion at the 2007 Association of PeriOperative Registered Nurses (AORN) Congress to be held in Orlando, Florida, this week. Not only are these specialized nurses among the hardest to recruit but finding new ways to reach them can be just as challenging.
The AORN CareerCenter is an obvious place where employers and recruiters can post their jobs to attract nurse anesthetists, operating room nurses, scrub nurses and so on. But posting on the AORN site assumes a number of things which may not help in an effort to reach the best available passive candidates, the top professionals in their field who are gathering at the AORN Congress.
Strategies like the one published in USA TODAY this week are designed to target this type of skill set and demographic with pinpoint accuracy. This and other creative strategies are becoming increasingly popular alternatives for recruiters who need to connect with a national audience of passive candidates at a local level. This type of advertising can also help smaller hospitals with their employer branding as USA TODAY delivers a strong brand of its own.
You might think this is a strategy worth checking out. In the same way as USA TODAY is being used to target specific skill sets in nursing it is being used in the exact same way for diversity candidates in engineering, truck drivers in Madison Wisconsin, and even Gen Y’ers following their college team to the Final Four.
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