From Pears to Plums: The Changing Employment Landscape

• Author: Anna Kassulke
• Posted: June 12, 2007
• Category: Profiling
• Tags: Center of Excellence, Performance Staffing, Profiling, STREAMline Training, Training
• Comments:

The Right Fit: Profiling In Relief, Part 1
 
Mapping our planet - its continents and oceans - was an indistinct science for centuries. But mapping is now a skilled scientific process that involves the use of specific symbols, which we use to analyze our landscapes, guide us, and identify salient features. We have come a long way with the evolution of satellite imagery and other scientific applications.
 
Contrasting the advances made in modern cartography, 99% of organizations continue to inadequately map their employment landscapes.
 
The employment landscape has changed. People no longer expect jobs or careers for life; they are surfing and job-hopping, expectant of recognition and environments that nurture success. Many organizations rely on outdated plans and practices to navigate through the choppy seas, so the talent signs up for, and stays with, the competitor’s crew. Why would we continue to rely on navigation tools that provide us with vague (or even incorrect) profiles of the talent we seek to have on board? Just as Columbus once conceived of the world as pear-shaped, we continue with traditions that lead to pear-shaped practices and bad hires.

Talent management should be your destination, your objective. You need to set up initiatives so that you have a ready and constant supply of the right people before the pool dries up. But you should avoid relying on gut instinct or subjectivity to source and hire quality staff; it is preferable (although it is often easier said than done) to have provable, sustainable processes in place.

The first and most critical process is profiling.

Having a hazy silhouette or an indistinct, broken line hopefully representing land mass, does not help us achieve our objective. Profiling affects each and every process in staffing, and without it there can be no effective branding, sourcing, screening, assessment, selection or retention. Excellent talent management involves putting a strategic system in place, so that growing your workforce becomes calculated, smooth sailing; you follow a consistent, repeatable and tactical process. With it, your organization will be able to ensure that it has a readily available talent pool at its fingertips.

First we need to come to grips with the fact that the employment market has radically altered in the last decade or so - and there is no turning back. Countless organizations either do not realize this or are paddling hard in an attempt to catch up. So what exactly has changed? The employer/employee paradigm: candidates are in control of the rudder. According to Deloitte Research, “Jobs are no longer static. Individuals need greater flexibility in their career paths and organizations need greater flexibility from their employees. Firms must offer more than a good paycheck. In the face of such challenges, traditional approaches to managing talent fall short.”

Candidates have also changed the way they seek and apply for work. They are using the Internet to their advantage, and are able to target ‘employers of choice,’ knowing that there is a dearth of talent. Today we are at virtually full employment in just about every sector, industry and region. As a consequence, the best people are well aware that they are the scarce resources that you need. But chances are you haven’t changed the way you map the talent that you are chasing. As a consequence, you, along with a significant proportion of other organizations, may be hiring the wrong people.

SHL/Future Foundation research found that the U.S. wastes a staggering US$105 billion each year due to poor people management.

Let’s be clear about this. The cost of selecting a candidate is not excessive. What hurts most are the costs involved in working with the poor performers that we actually hired. This is a situation that we must address if we want to move forward.

How do you capture the best talent, retain them, and enable them to succeed when your competitors are chasing the same talent? You go out to the market equipped with a scientifically produced map or profile that helps you weed out the bad and cultivate the best. Those who are unique, competitive, and position themselves correctly in the job market are those who hire and keep the best.

According to industry estimates, there are over 100 million resumes available today on several thousand job boards, niche sites and other online sources. It seems as if everyone is monitoring the employment market. We believe there is no such thing as a passive job seeker, at least in the conventional way that the term has been used. According to the 2005 U.S. Job Recovery and Retention Survey released by CareerJournal.com and the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), 76% of all employees are actively or passively searching for new employment opportunities. The majority of those in the workforce are dissatisfied with their current positions, as well as their managers. And what’s more, just about everyone has access to the Internet. The Pew Internet and American Life Project’s data indicate that the average day sees 94 million adults in the U.S. logging onto the Internet, and of those, 6,580,000 used the Web to look for information about a job.

Where does that position you and your organization? Are you in your desired applicants’ line of sight? Traditionally when you advertise, whether in print media or on the Internet, you are hoping that some connection will occur and that the talent will spot you, at a precise moment in time, amidst the employment noise. This is like casting off into treacherous waters during a blustery storm with nothing but a candle. Chances are you will not be able to get the bait on your hook, much less the big fish, especially if you are not willing to re-evaluate recruitment processes that may well be pear-shaped.

In the upcoming series of posts we’ll take a closer look at the whole business of profiling and why it makes so much sense. So stay tuned!