8
“But I think that no matter how smart, people usually see what they’re already looking for, that’s all.”
—Veronica Roth, author of Divergent series
We have talked about all that we can do to build engagement after we hire talent. But, how can we do a better job of hiring already-engaged talent? Our candidates come from a market that is primarily fed two obtuse messages. They go something like the following:
• During economically good times, when there is more competition for great talent, we will treat candidates and employees better.
• During economically bad times, when talent is plentiful, we will treat candidates and employees like they are expendable.
When we examine much of the turmoil in our culture today, a great deal of it is centered around people feeling like they have been marginalized and certainly this is a reflection of some of our worst moments of organizational behavior. In the midst of this landscape, how many of us have sacrificed our standards to get or keep a job—any job? Let’s couple that scenario with all of the hiring managers who have never been trained on how to interview, select, and onboard highly effective talent. It helps to also recognize that candidates have been fed such negative messages during the last few years that it doesn’t take much to trigger bad feelings. Unfortunately, when we leave candidates feeling fear of survival in the hands of managers with inadequate hiring skills, all bets for the right fit vanish quickly.
Years ago, I asked a friend who was still in love with her husband after 40 years, “What is the single most important thing for me to know about having a wonderful relationship?” She looked me in the eyes, grabbed my hand, and ordered me simply, “Marry well.” Who we pick as our spouse represents one of the most important factors of whether or not we are going to be happy. In a similar fashion, whether or not we are going to be happy with our work depends on two critical factors:
1. The right fit.
2. Who will be my boss?
In the end, I believe that most anyone who wants a job and anyone who is looking to hire a new employee are looking for a good “marriage.” We want the partnership to be effective and also pleasurable. We want to grow from the experience. We want to look forward to working together. We want to be eventually grateful for the good decision we both made to enter the partnership.
A good boss can take what reads on paper as a mediocre job and spin that into a transformative career opportunity. On the other hand, a terrible boss can ruin the best job opportunity in the world. Time and time again, I have witnessed how one bad employee can poison engagement and team productivity. However, that “bad” employee will often turn into a star when moved to an appropriate environment. Fit matters.
Right fit is an extremely critical aspect of engagement and overall productivity. So why does it get mucked up so routinely? Well, it usually begins with a CEO or business owner who doesn’t lead the culture. Why would an Engagement CEO stand idly by while hiring managers make anything less-than-right-fit hires? Why would someone allow candidates throughout the market to be treated with bad or sloppy manners? An Engagement CEO builds a culture that becomes a privilege to join and the invitation to join that culture’s tribe must be earned and celebrated. When this is done really well, everyone will be grateful and likely thrives in the environment.
Employers spend approximately $3,500 every time someone is hired, a figure incidentally that represents three times the amount typically spent annually on training and development. Little, if any, of these training funds are ever allocated toward creating better hiring managers. Developing managers who are savvy with interviews, who recognize their bias, and who are better able to make sound talent acquisition decisions, represents some of the greatest potential improvements we can bring to our organizations. It also supports fully engaged cultures.
Instead, hiring managers continue to sacrifice right fit to bias. Many of them define needed technical skills but fail to define necessary soft skills or “courage” skills and capacities such as personality types, morals, values and work ethic. Many never really think about the importance of manners, presentation, demeanor, demonstrated ability to change, resiliency, enthusiasm for innovation, thoughtfulness, and persistence. Therefore, they are making choices based on incomplete information. Still other hiring managers rely on even more seat-of-the-pants style thinking, such as, “I’ll know it when I see it.”
When I ran staffing operations in past roles, consultants would come to me upset and with the conviction that they had the right candidate for one of our positions but, alas, another candidate was offered the job. I would typically just laugh and say, “They hired a family member.” At other times I might say, “When he called to tell me they hired the least likely best candidate, maybe the last one added to hit the quota, he just said, ‘There was something about her’ or some such nonsense.” Without thinking, they were picking a family member. How many of us came from healthy, fully functional, loving, and smart families? How many of us come from families that role modeled what it means to have a great career? Though there are quite a few, they are not the norm. We typically go with how we were raised. We do what our tribe did. I was a little kid when Lady Bird Johnson was promoting a program to clean up and beautify America. Our rather mean school-teacher was standing in front of our classroom screeching, “When you see trash by the side of road what do you think of?” A kid in the back of the room said, “Home.” We tend to go with home. We go with what makes us comfortable
Employee engagement begins with how well we attract, select, and hire talent. Organizations routinely spend fortunes filling jobs, but they don’t think to invest in training their hiring managers to give masterful interviews, to make more skilled decisions, and to provide highly effective onboarding. Many hire employees based on characteristics that have nothing to do with the job at hand. This lack of thinking continues, and the reason it goes on is that top leadership is divorced from upholding their standards as employers.
Timothy Wilson, professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, states, “You’re faced with around 11 million pieces of information at any given moment. The brain can only process about 40 of those bits of information and so it creates shortcuts and uses past knowledge to make assumptions.”1
Harvard University researcher Mahzarin Banaji distills the point:
Most of us believe that we are ethical and unbiased. We imagine we’re good decision makers, able to objectively size up a candidate or a venture deal and reach a fair and rational conclusion that’s in our, and our organization’s, best interests. But more than two decades of research confirms that, in reality, most of us fall woefully short of our inflated self-perception.2
When a hiring manager interviews, assesses, and eventually hires new talent without any formal skill training, we must work doubly hard to build engagement in our organizations, and we unknowingly whittle down our most optimal futures. One of the central new revolutions in talent acquisition is big data and artificial intelligence. We are reaching the stage in which technology will be able to predict the candidate that is going to be the most successful in a job. The emerging technology introduces the possibility of cutting through bias and filters so that we can more effectively find the candidate most likely to succeed. Can big data become the solution for prejudice and diversity? Well, one thing is clear: it will not happen until we produce greater awareness in our managers.
Train your managers! Give them the tools to make better decisions. For relatively modest up-front costs, you will save fortunes in mismatched talent, turnover, and other engagement challenges. Give your managers the resources to evaluate candidates before the interview. Assessment instruments can give them important insights and reveal nuances about candidates. Even the smallest employer can purchase an assessment from Amazon or other providers. Also bring other managers or colleagues into the interviewing process as appropriate. Several points of view can be quite helpful in making gains and avoiding mistakes in building the bench strength of your organization.
Skills for Tomorrow
In the modern change-driven workplace, there are several new skills we ought to be looking for in all candidates. First, find people who have a strong ability to grow relationships and a track record of active learning. Look for those able to sell their ideas and concepts to others. They will demonstrate a natural curiosity about other people’s needs and expectations. They are enthusiastic networkers and connectors. They see the big picture and can make a good case for people to work together. They keep track of where the world is headed. To them, active, continuous learning represents the keys to the future. They are constantly searching for new information that is relevant to their lives and their work. They take responsibility for their actions and never blame others. Their word is golden. They don’t engage in negative gossip. They know how to make friends. They build support systems naturally. Many have strong sales and presentation skills. They are receptive to feedback. They praise others generously and accept praise graciously. These are often the very workers that will teach and inspire other employees to change. Many will become great mentors who will sustain, strengthen, and grow your culture.
The last war for talent was at its peak between 2004 and 2007. As we go back to war, the game has changed so thoroughly that we need to revolutionize virtually every aspect of finding and onboarding talent. Ten years ago, our definition of right fit was very different than it is today. We fixated on such fading things as loyalty and long-term commitment. Today, we need a more sophisticated and far more candid treatment of right fit in any setting. It starts by acknowledging that things will be quite different from our past best practices.
The New Fit
The very notion of what right fit means needs to be completely transformed. Quite simply, employers that continue to operate with the notion of requiring loyalty in return for temporal jobs are not living in reality. In fact, this myth very often begins a cynical facade with employees acting as if they expect to be there for decades. Our old definitions of what right fit looks like must be traded in for a revolution in hiring practices and a new context for employment. What is the new context? Strength through diversity, and by that we are implying much more than a cross-section of race and gender. We must pursue diverse personalities and points of view. The underlying common thread doesn’t need to be extraordinarily complicated. Recall that I have already mentioned that at Inspired Work, we only hire brilliant and loving people. Those two standards have more than served us well, but they also leave room for diverse skill sets, backgrounds, ethnicities, and age groups.
During the course of interviews and evaluations, we need to make every attempt to define what is motivating each candidate. Why do they want the job? What are their expectations? What drives them? The answers give us critical information and lends critical objectivity to how we populate our organizations. Ditch the loyalty and try these new employee types on for size.
The “Born to Do Its”
Every one of us has the capacity to find the work that comes to us most naturally and powerfully. It is the work that brings meaning and purpose to our lives. The “born to do it” workers have a core purpose that doesn’t change. However, they consistently reinvent the way they deliver work as the world changes around them. These are the individuals that bring unique gifts to the organization, and that produce innovation and change when needed. They are not particularly loyal to their employer, but they are loyal to their particular gifts. Grow them or lose them. Identify this through their narrative as well as how they answer questions such as:
• Do you have a unique gift? If so, how would you describe it?
• What do you want to accomplish in your career?
• If we were to hire you, what would be the ideal way to package and use this gift of yours?
These individuals provide the foundation for their employer’s brand.
The “Grew Into Its”
The rate of change today indicates that we can literally grow into another person rather quickly. A growth-oriented individual takes a job to accelerate their learning and to become more valuable. This person will regularly outgrow what they do and how they do it. The “grew into it” individuals are creative, ambitious, and adaptable.
I previously mentioned working with a large bank in the early 1990s. They were breaking down and thousands of employees were coming through our Inspired Work programs. The chief human resources officer asked for a meeting. She opened it with the question, “What is our biggest human capital problem?” I responded, “It has already taken place. The consulting firm working with the CEO has introduced one alienating concept after another. As a result, your creative and adaptive employees are gone. They pulled out their Rolodex and started calling friends. They said, ‘Get me out of here. This isn’t fun anymore.’ The rest are hanging on for dear life.”
Creative and adaptive professionals course through all of our “fit” types. These are the very people you want to treat so well that they stay and help everyone else change also. “Grew into its” use the enormous rivers of information to grow quickly. Their knowledge doubles every few years.
A few questions to get at this:
• How did you get from point A, your graduation, to point B, today?
• You seem to be eager to learn. What do you want to learn next?
• How would you bring this commitment to continuous learning to our team?
“Grew into its” are the individuals who bring growth and innovation to workplaces.
The “On My Ways”
When someone defines what they truly want to do in the world, it can trigger the realization that this doesn’t align with the individual’s current job. Some of my colleagues would call this a “lily pad” employee. Many employers are afraid that if they help someone realize their purpose, the individual will simply walk out the door. That might be true to a degree in the traditionally disengaged workplace. But, when we make it safe for our employees to discuss their true ambitions, we are also given the very information that allows us to be more supportive of them as we leverage what they bring to the table. This kind of culture also helps us identify individuals that are actively pushing disengagement.
Give these “on my ways” the room to work towards their dreams. Help them connect their progress at your organization to the progress they need to see in the big picture. If you do, your organization will become known as one that supports people and their growth, wherever that may lead. People desire and respect such employers.
A few questions for these types:
• Why do you want this job?
• How does this position fit into your long-term career plans?
• What do you really want to do with your life?
• Let’s get this out on the table: if this is where you are headed, how could this opportunity give you the fuel to get there?
This worker represents the bread and butter of the workplace and often brings great value.
Some managers take “on my ways” and set up the circumstances for future aspirations to manifest without them having to move on out. I know a learning and development executive who works for one of media’s most iconic organizations. Every year, she hires a new assistant. On the first day she tells them, “You have one year to either promote up to a new position or leave the company.” Although this is a pretty bold, even frightening, proposition, the organization is filled with producers, directors, managers, and creative professionals who began their careers in that assistant job. Consider how this expectation likely changes their engagement level on the first day. We need more of this—creating environments with such high expectations and genuine opportunities that our people excel and push themselves beyond their own perceived limits.
The “Happy With What I’ve Gots”
These employees tend to be loyal no matter the circumstances. They require our acknowledgement and praise. They are reliable and dedicated. Often, they are the individuals who take on projects without asking. They love routine, and they don’t generally desire or pursue change. Unfortunately, these are often the workers who are shown the door during periods of downsizing. This sizeable portion of the work-force will need the guidance and mentoring to move with change, build institutional knowledge, and become more aware of the critical need to build the courage skills. But they are also solid in many ways.
A few questions for these folks:
• You spent 16 years at your last company. Why did you stay and what did you contribute while you were there?
• Please tell me what you are doing to grow your skills and your network.
• What are the most valuable skills you have learned in the past few years?
Remember we want segments of our talent to bring stability to the workplace. The “happy with what I’ve gots” provide this naturally. However, we must be keenly focused today more than ever before on hiring individuals that understand the need for change and continuous learning.
Employer Brand, Culture, and Tribe
For hundreds of thousands of years, human beings have been conditioned to look for, belong to, and live by the rules of their tribe. Tribal alignment is embedded in our DNA. As a result, it is useless to try to run any organization without developing a strong tribal ethos, which by modern definition is known as our employer brand.
Fortune magazine’s 2015 “100 Best Places to Work” studied employers who had consistently remained on the list for more than 10 years and found these employment role models to have one common ingredient: they foster strong and rewarding relationships among their workers.3 It’s not so much about the perks themselves. The reason many employers provide high-quality dining is that eating together builds relationships. Going to the gym together helps employees bond with one another.
Strong relationships within an organization represent one of the fundamental muscles of engagement. Strong employer brands are developed through these strong relationships that consequently build engagement, unity, support, innovation, performance, learning, and growth. We have observed the phenomenon in our own engagement processes. When intact team members discover each other anew, they also become more engaged with their work and their customers.
What happens when we don’t take the initiative to build the brand? We will mostly get people who view work as “just a job.” BMW hires driving enthusiasts. Southwest Airlines hires “fun.” Apple hires creative mastery. But it is useless to pursue employer branding unless the organization is willing to walk the talk. Any real employer branding initiative must be rooted in truth and authenticity. We buy products, employers, and services through faith. Without consistency, there is no faith. Without truth there is no consistency.
Here are a few elements that nourish any successful employer brand.
1. The tribe is thoroughly defined and communicates with such transparency that outsiders looking in get a full sense of what it is like to work there.
2. The brand is based in truth so that leaders and employees can support it without adopting inauthentic and temporary behavior.
3. The organization is continually improving its efforts in pre-boarding, on-boarding, developing, and retaining employees.
4. The employer brand is developed by all leaders and consequently embraced by everyone in charge.
5. The brand attracts the very people who fit into the tribe.
America’s best workers look for organizations that deserve their faith. They look for organizations that pique their interest. They research the hell out of them. The rest—the individuals who are still rooted in survival and predictability—will blindly walk in the door and engage in the dance of mediocrity. So spend the time and effort to do right by your employer brand. Employees win, new candidates win, and the organization also wins.
The Great Pre-Boarding Failure
As we will discuss in the interview excerpts that appear later in this chapter, pre-boarding and on-boarding workers have become tony business processes. But the vast majority of employers are doing a terrible job of presenting their brand and creating goodwill during the hiring process. Many of my individual clients are looking for new jobs and they bring back war stories that are simply jaw-dropping. One senior executive with solid skills applied to and interviewed with 11 organizations. He made it to the final rounds with five of the companies. One got back to him with an offer. The others didn’t send notes or return calls. In two cases, he had invested about 10 hours of interview time and only found out later that he didn’t move forward because he called the recruiter. In another case, a senior executive was rounding up offers. The one she most wanted led to a verbal offer from the man who would have been her boss. She accepted the position and never heard from him again.
As you will hear from our many talent management executives, these are not unusual stories. Speak to virtually anyone who has gone through the interview experience in the last five years, and he or she will give you the name of the many companies whose treatment lacked even a modicum of respect and perhaps only one or two organizations that provided a superior experience, whether or not they got the job. These impressions are lasting and create a word-of-mouth reputation that ranges from positive to poisonous. For those candidates who do get hired, know that they will be bringing those bad experiences with them into their early days of employment. So much wasted opportunity.
Employer brands rely on an underpinning of professionalism and respect throughout the hiring process. Without kindness and consideration, we dilute, weaken, and corrupt our employer brands. A good engagement philosophy is based on the premise that employers treat their workers with the same degree of respect with which they treat their customers, and that means potential customers as well, which all candidates are before they get hired. Talent acquisition isn’t much of an honorable profession if we find ourselves treating people like cattle.
Predictive Analytics
The well-known story of the Boston Red Sox has become a big shot across the bow of the talent acquisition profession. In early 2013, the team was coming off of a disastrous season, so bad that sold-out games became a thing of the past. Ownership had shed $270 million worth of payroll by trading superstars such as Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford, and Josh Beckett to the Los Angeles Dodgers. General manager Ben Cherington could have easily gone after more superstar players, but instead he used predictive analytics to identify unheralded players like slugging first baseman Mike Napoli, outfielder Shane Victorino, backup catcher David Ross, and relief pitcher Koji Uehara.4
The predictive analytics industry touts the Red Sox phenomenon as evidence that it can solve virtually every problem in business. While analytics has the potential to transform workforce planning, candidate selection, and employee development, the talent management leaders in our interviews suggest that we should not put our necks on the line with analytics just yet. But given a few years of development, big data could transform the practice of selection and hiring.
Predictive analytics has the potential to essentially remove hiring bias in a very short period of time. The process of accumulating vast quantities of data to predict which candidate is going to be most successful in a particular job offers a future where we make a big leap forward with right fit decisions.
Voices From the Front Line
We put the elements of employer brand, right fit, and the attraction/selection process in front of several talent management leaders, and they had much to share about the new world and how it plays into the game of employee engagement. Our interviews revealed the following insights from this impressive list of professionals:
• Angela Gardner, partner, Heidrick & Struggles. Angela currently leads assignments across the consumer markets and media, entertainment, and digital practices. Formerly, Angela built a sophisticated, from-the-ground-up talent acquisition organization for Fox and led executive recruitment for Yahoo.
• Kim Shepherd, CEO, Decision Toolbox. Recognized as a pioneer in the virtual workplace, Kim leads one of the world’s most innovative recruitment firms. A noted public speaker and author, Kim is active in a variety of philanthropic and entrepreneurial professional associations. Her firm has received the Alfred B. Sloan Award for Excellence in the Workplace three times. In 2013, Kim was named the National Association of Women Business Owners (or NAWBO)–Orange County’s Innovator of the Year.
• Jackson Lynch, president and founder, 90consulting. A human resources executive with an extensive background in growing organizations and leading human capital efforts during mergers and acquisitions, Jackson brings expertise from PepsiCo, Nestle, and Clearwater Paper Corporation. Over the years, Jackson Lynch has become a sought-after human resources executive who manages to link the best of human capital with profit performance. He is the founder of 90consulting, which provides human capital support to CEOs and equity investment groups.
• David Yudis, PhD, CEO, Potential Selves. As vice president of talent management, learning, and development at Disney Consumer Products, David developed an array of successful C-level executives. A highly polished professional, David integrates advanced education in psychology, business, and learning to build talent and leadership. He has led talent acquisition and talent development initiatives in a wide variety of environments.
David H.: How would you describe the current state of hiring and the changes that have hit this particular wheel-house, especially compared to what was happening over the last 10 years?
Kim: In today’s landscape, it is time to assume nothing in the hiring process. One size no longer fits all. Eight years ago, this was a candidate-driven market. For seven years, it was an employer-driven market. Now, the market is driven by technology.
David H.: What do you mean?
Kim: Today’s savvy candidate has instant access to real-time information about an employer. They go to Glassdoor to hear from the employees. Yelp provides a voice from customers. They get the truth from CareerBuilder. Supply and Demand provides full information on your real worth in any market. Employers live in a world of total transparency.
David H.: If that is the case, why are so many hiring practices mediocre to terrible?
Kim: It is another example of the extreme disengagement that filters through much of the workplace. According to our research, over 70 percent of employers create ill will during the hiring process. It is at their own hands.
David Y.: In the last few years, I have led talent acquisition initiatives and I have also been a candidate, so I’ve been on both sides of the fence. As a candidate, I’ve been appalled by experiences with many employers. There seems to be an attitude among many organizations that if you are a candidate, you are just a commodity. They are so stretched with resources that communications are thin to say the least. I was stunned at how impersonal many of the contact points were within organizations during what is, for the candidate, a deeply personal experience. These bad experiences leave deep impressions.
Kim: Most employers need to take a course in good manners. It takes a moment to send an email to every single person that contacted the company. There is a very simple standard to follow in building a strong and seamless hiring process: “Do unto others [as you would have them do unto you].”
Angela: I’m in complete agreement with David and Kim. The lack of effective pre-boarding and on-boarding processes turn many people off before they even begin. If you treat people with disrespect, you increase the probability they will not respect their jobs. At Fox, we created a seamless hiring and non-hiring process. We began by surveying the people we hired and didn’t hire to examine the perceptions we were creating in the market. The employer brand we create during the talent acquisition experience isn’t a functional issue. It is a matter of culture.
David H.: Angela, whenever you use the word “culture,” it seems you are signifying something that needs to come from the CEO or owner.
Angela: Absolutely. A lackadaisical attitude towards the employer brand from the CEO sentences the organization’s employer brand to mediocrity. When the person in charge makes employer brand and culture [the] number one [priority], everyone else works on the directive with intention. Develop the culture and the tribe until you can clearly articulate it to everyone and anyone. Not thinking it through is one of the most common business mistakes and the results will be brutal. Everyone knows! Everyone sees it.
David Y.: I don’t believe that many companies intend to create bad experiences in the interview process. The problem stems from CEOs who believe the employer brand and the culture is someone else’s job.
Jackson: Every company is going to have a culture, so the notion that you should passively let it happen to you doesn’t make sense to me. If a CEO is trying to only drive short-term profits, they are unlikely to invest in building culture, and as such, the strength of engagement will be weaker almost every time. The company, however, will still have a culture. It just won’t be the one that attracts people who are committed to and passionate about enterprise success. We have lived with this model of short-term profits for a long time and the results continue to be mediocre. I am in agreement with everyone at the table and yet setting strategies and policies that offer seamless and effective talent acquisition will require soul-searching for a variety of CEOs. Walking the talk will require many organizations to change their rewards systems. Many compensation packages are in direct conflict with building value. When we send a message through an organization that no matter how well you do, no matter how much value you bring to the table, you can be gone in a moment, why would anyone engage?
Kim: A simple and common-sense approach for employers is to answer the questions, “Who do you want to be? Is it intentional?” When I became the CEO of Decision Toolbox, I was looking for singular works and standards to drive the culture. I selected the word “respect.” All types of culture qualities came out of the word. For example, we live by the ethos of “on time.” Everyone is expected to be on time with clients, candidates, team members, and meetings. A second late is not acceptable. When we have a meeting, 200 team members around the world are expected to be on time. If we start a webinar at 11, I can log on at 10:59 and see every single member of the team is ready to go....”
David H.: In the last 10 years, what skills have become much more important across the board?
Jackson: I’m always looking for active learning skills. Jobs become so obsolete so quickly that we need employees who recognize the need for continual learning, who have curiosity and take personal responsibility for staying competitive.
David H.: How do you find that?
Jackson: Ask the right questions:
• Give me a learning experience. Now, apply that experience to a current problem.
• What was the last book you read?
• How did that book make you a better CEO?
Angela: I agree, but we also need managers who recognize the need for learning, who lead personal change. Work environments and expectations can change in a millisecond. Today, expectations are much more fragile. If the managers are not especially communicative, if they are not role models in personal learning, half the team can have a foot out the door.”
David H.: Kim, I wince every time I hear the words “soft skills.” It requires more courage to become a good communicator and relationship builder than learning a new software package. The words “soft skills” have often been used in a rather dismissible manner.
Kim: I’ve noticed that, but it doesn’t let them off the hook. One of the most important questions virtually every employer ought to ask is “How effective is this person at developing relationships?”
Jackson: Engagement begins with the relationship you have with your manager. Anyone in a leadership capacity needs the skills of developing strongly effective bonds with their workers. We’ve all heard the airline pilot say, “I know you have a choice of airlines, so thanks for flying ours.” When was the last time you heard your manager say the same thing about working for your company?
David H.: As well as the ability to change oneself?
Jackson: Of course, but that ability is just starting to reveal its importance.
David H.: We’ve discussed employer brand and the initial talent acquisition process. We have been finding that one of the single biggest breakdowns is with the hiring managers. Many have never been taught how to conduct an interview. Many hire with bias and are not even aware of their bias. What are your thoughts?
Kim: Fortunes in recruitment time and costs are lost every day because managers are often lousy interviewers. In most cases, the problem can be resolved with a little bit of training and coaching. However, the vast majority of employers don’t offer this to their managers and, in smaller organizations, few take the initiative to get trained. Unfortunately, smaller employers need this the most because they don’t have much wiggle room with hiring mistakes.
David H.: What about bias?
Kim: It goes on every single day and undermines good hires. I would suggest that we replace the word “bias” with “ignorance.”
David Y.: As I have developed high-potential executives for C-level positions, getting them to understand bias and how it influences their selection and development of talent represents a fundamental shift in their ability to lead.
Jackson: It isn’t enough to have a strong recruitment team while still having a mediocre onboarding process. Consider talent acquisition as a seamless supply chain. Then, find the truth about the strengths and weaknesses in each link. If we find that our managers have big shortcomings with their hiring decisions, train them to do better or enable them to rely on data rather than gut feel.
Angela: It is helpful to train hiring managers to do more than just conduct a good interview. When we had larger recruitment projects, we would actually create war rooms and bring hiring managers to work on the recruitment process. We showed them how to find candidates on LinkedIn and create a more vital kind of outreach. As we develop managers to make good hires, it is wise to give them understanding in generational differences and finding out what people really want.
David H.: Predictive analytics have the potential to eliminate much hiring bias and help managers make much better hiring decisions. Are we there yet or does this resource require more development?
Kim: Of course it requires more development, but we love it. We use analytics to drive candidate flow, to help identify top candidates as well as formulating compensation for each team member.
David H.: Compensation?
Kim: Our analytics measure a wide range of performance factors with each team member. A few, for example, include time to filling position, accuracy with candidate selection, customer satisfaction, and repeat business. These are the drivers behind Decision Toolbox’s growth.
Angela: For hiring decisions, not one company is close to using it effectively out in the real world.
David H.: Are you saying technology has yet to develop intuition?
David Y.: Predictive data is not an answer in itself, but it offers a means to refine our decisions. Consequently, it saves cost, time, and effort. Ultimately analytics could help us with bias because hiring managers continue to represent the biggest breakdown in talent acquisition.
Jackson: Every year brings so much more capacity to analytics that we need to pay close attention to innovations. I use it widely, but doing so requires that I’m educated in today’s limitations. However, the impact of big data will only grow.
Jackson: I also agree with definitions of right fit. But the vast changes that have happened in employment only elevate the need for us to coach our managers in how to identify right fit for their team. We need to locate the skills needed to do the job. We need to evaluate their raw talent for the future. We need to make sure the candidate’s motivations align with the organization. We need active learners. The change is great enough that many managers have a new bias from simply being rooted in the past.
David Y.: I am in complete agreement with Jackson. I am always looking for culturally adept candidates. There needs to be a work and role fit but it can’t stop there. We need to ask the question, “Can you be one of us?”
David H.: During a leadership program at Disney, one of the executives asked me what I felt the Disney employer brand was. I blurted out, “Disney is all about creating magic at great profit in the midst of chaos.” A collective gasp rose from the room and then laughter. If you happen to love generating a lot of money-making magic with chaos around you, you will want to be there forever.
David Y.: That is a great example. Each tribe has its own look, feel, dress, rituals, hours, and mission. Will this person fit in? Disney has a highly developed and unique culture. It is so strong that individuals who leave often have a difficult time letting go of it.
Jackson: Back to our managers. Don’t just hire what you like. Hire people who push you out of your comfort zone. Hire people who are smarter than you. Hire people who have the ability to become great.
Kim: I am also in agreement with David’s four types of right fit. The discomfort that I have is there is no “one size fits all” approach to employer brand and right fit.
Angela: Much of this conversation is about skill-building. The new workplace doesn’t thrive on black and white anymore. For example, analytics can help us, but we can’t afford to absolve ourselves of finding out the very real truth of each person we evaluate for our team. It requires that we assume nothing about the employer brand in our organization. This entire discussion is about becoming more skilled in surrounding ourselves with the people that fit our mission. That is the big payoff from this work.
Their contributions left me with the thought that when we really get the game right, when the attraction, selection, and development process falls together, we get to work with people like Angela Gardner, David Yudis, Jackson Lynch, and Kim Shepherd. This is the big payoff, colleagues who make us bigger, who demand the best from us and give us their all.