Tahsin Alam and Saumil Joshi
I am convinced that nothing we do is more important than hiring and developing people. At the end of the day, you bet on people not on strategies.
Lawrence Bossidy
Introduction
The days of leaving talent recruitment, retention, and professional development to the human resources offices down the long hallway are quickly disappearing. As we enter a time with multiple generations in the workplace, a gig economy, and a workforce eager to be connected to the leader of an organization and/or team, living in the speed of now necessitates that a leader not only be present, but proactively participate in securing, retaining, and developing talent. While history may dictate that we look to someone’s past experiences as evidence of future success, today applicable transferable skills, as well as cultural fit, are quickly becoming equally, if not more important (Rouen, 2011).
Today, in order to be a leader as talent manager, three distinct skill sets are needed: developing an ability to identify the talent needs of an organization and establish a firm recruitment process to secure the talent, being involved in the development and implementation of strong retention policies and practices, and finally, being invested in the professional growth of your employees (Miles LeHane Companies, Inc., n.d.).
Given the competitive nature of the labor force, and with the increase in attention given to skill sets rather than exclusively years of experience, a leader’s ability to recognize and acquire talent will make or break an organization’s growth trajectory (Cohn, 2014). The war for talent is severe and will only grow in the coming decades. As the variety and choices of jobs and careers increase, workers will embark upon multiple careers in their lifetime (Keller and Meaney, n.d.). Today’s 20-somethings may work for 8–12 firms in a 30+year working career. According to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average tenure of workers is 4.2 years as of January 2018, which is notably less than a decade prior (US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2018). A leader’s participation in the recruitment process shows a dedication to the workforce that could set an organization apart from other competitors. For example, today’s organizations are in a race for acquiring, manipulating, and utilizing data to make informed decisions (Singh, 2018). In this context, for example, hiring talented data engineers and data analysts has become a talent arms race. What is particularly interesting about data professionals is that they are somewhat agnostic to the actual subject matter for which the data is being utilized. Simply put, data analysts are the chameleons of industries today, able to move from an engineering company to a software company to a nonprofit while utilizing the same value-added skills. As a result, a leader will likely be interviewing a data analyst who has a multitude of employment options and offers available to them. If a candidate choosing between three jobs has met the leader of either the team or the entire organization through the interview process, it will leave an indelible impression that will help that organization stand out over the competitors where the leaders have not made the time to meet with the candidate. So, in recruiting, participatory leadership has now become critical, especially as the war for talent rages. In the future, it would not be surprising if leaders spend the majority of their time doing recruitment and increasing their social media presence in order to build a brand that can attract quality candidates. As tenure continues to drop, recruitment and talent scouting will become near an ongoing role for a leader, particularly given the expectation by candidates to see a participatory leader during the hiring process.
Given this global economy, it would be a mistake for today’s leaders to consider talent management as a competency that is limited only to the recruitment process. Today’s leader will need to be able to identify varying and evolving skill sets in their existing workforce in order to identify translatable skills in other areas. They also have to be willing to find talent from nontraditional sources and in different “packages.” Often companies have the traditional or standard sources for talent recruitment (e.g., competitors). In the future, they will need to extend their sources to ancillary sources or even unexpected sources in the search for talent. They also will need to consider candidates that may not have the traditional profile and search for those with aligned skills, but also may bring other competencies or experiences. For example, Richard Branson of the Virgin Group is known for moving his successful employees to different areas of his organization, regardless of their history and background with regard to work (Henry, 2018). Brett Godfrey, originally the CFO of Virgin Atlantic relocated to Australia and pitched the idea of building and serving as the CEO of Virgin Australia to Branson. While Godfrey had never served as a chief executive officer, Branson trusted Godfrey with the task and provided all the capital that was needed to build what is now one of Australia’s most successful airline carriers (Aim, 2014).
Retention strategies are an equal partner to recruitment in this competitive landscape. Earlier this decade, retention was becoming misunderstood as perks, (i.e., providing ping-pong tables, volleyball courts, free food, etc. similar to those amenities found at Google offices) became in vogue (Vasel, 2018). Whether that directly contributed to retention is hotly debated; however, what is very clear in today’s workforce is that employees want to see two things: learning opportunities and professional development and growth (Zappe, 2019). A leader involved in talent scouting must also be directly involved in talent retention. Organizations without a learning platform, professional development opportunities, and a clearly articulated career growth trajectory for its employees will lose the talent arms race, even if they have the best recruiting platform available. Today’s leader needs to contend with the mindset of today’s worker and understand fully what motivates the talent to stay in the organization. The ability to understand this, provide such programs, and be involved in evolving these programs over time will become a critical part of a leader’s success.
Talent Recruitment—The Nuts, Bolts, and Strategy
Often referred to as talent acquisition, the recruitment of talent starts with properly identifying your organization’s talent needs followed by finding a way to articulate these needs and recruiting the right people (Lybrand, 2018). Proper identification of the talent needs at hand ensures that everybody, the leader, and the team, are all on the same page as to the needs and skill sets for the vacancy or new position. Without knowing what you need to hire, it is hard to figure out whom to recruit and that increases the likelihood of making an incorrect hire. Further, not having clearly articulated expectations for the position and the new hire will not position the person for success (Heathfield, 2019). As sometimes can be the case, companies scramble to fill vacant positions without proper attention to exact needs, cultural fit, and overall integration with the team. Embarking on an exercise where all these details can be ironed out with an intent to hold the position accountable to success, will ensure that in the medium and long term, the overall team and/or organization will be successful. This is true in any industry. Whether it is the hiring of the right drivers for a Formula One team, identifying the right set of skills for an engineering team, or bringing in a specialized set of skills to a medical practice, agreement on the needs of the position is crucial (Cappelli, 2019).
Internal Talent Identification
The recruitment process, in broad terms, can take two forms. Some organizations, typically larger and well-resourced ones, will develop their own recruitment teams and processes. For example, most major banks have substantial recruitment teams for any position from entry-level all the way to just below the executive (Noel, 2014). A leader needs to be able to assemble a recruiting team and point them in the direction of where the greatest strategic talent needs are for business. In a growing business, a recruitment team will continuously play catch up to fill all the positions needed. But having an internal recruiting team allows for economies of scale where networking becomes a professional expectation and deliverable. The more these internal recruiters are networking in the same space, the more they will know whom to attract. The efficacy of the team, however, depends entirely on the team or company leader providing clear direction on priorities.
Outsourcing Recruitment
The outsourced recruiting industry (i.e., recruiting firms that will help you hire the talent that you need) is a large industry in the United States and poised to continue growing (Joshi, 2020). Recruiting firms will specialize by industry and by position level. Some firms are specialized in technology, banking, pharmaceuticals, etc. while either at the same time or separately, specializing in entry to mid-level positions or strictly for executive positions. These companies are continuously recruiting and as such will provide significant value added to a leader who decides to take this route. With that said, you are less likely to experience the aforementioned economies of scale by using search firms, primarily because they have competing interests with other clients looking for the same talent. Further, this is a very expensive option, but may be the only option for smaller companies. The right mix of using internal recruitment and external recruitment, interspersed with passive recruitment—posting jobs and seeing what comes in—is up to the leader of the organization to prescribe in today’s high labor demand marketplace.
Retention Efforts
Recruitment of talent will feel like a never-ending, thankless effort if not immediately followed by comprehensive retention efforts. In the competitive landscape of today, leaders putting effort only in recruitment, but not in understanding the mindset of the workforce and what keeps them motivated and staying happy in their jobs will result in an effective brain drain of the individuals who have been recruited (Syed, 2017). This is the proverbial other side of the coin; other companies will inevitably take on aggressive recruitment efforts to recruit away your own hard-fought talent. The only real and strategic solution or defense to this competitive landscape is to have strong, deeply personalized retention efforts to keep your talent. To do so requires keeping one’s finger on the pulse of what workers and employees across industries are looking for in the workplace. For example, some easy to answer retention solutions include providing your workforce with the appropriate technology needed to do their job, proper training for your managers so that they manage appropriately and fairly, multicultural sensitivity training since the modern workforce is quickly diversifying and, particularly in the United States context, respectable benefits for all workers. On the latter point, the next level up would be to analyze additional benefits such as extended parental leave above and beyond federal FMLA standards, the option of telecommuting, which is becoming an increasing requirement of many early career professionals and ongoing training and education benefits (Jones, 2017). Many organizations have gone even beyond these measures, as in the case of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, wherein recent years they have adopted unlimited vacation days and providing a stipend to any employee with children (Gillett, 2015). Larger companies such as Goldman Sachs also offer paid childcare as well as many other conveniences for young families. A large part of this stems from the significantly increasing percentage of female workers in the workforce, the source of which can be traced to the massive increase in female college graduates (Flaherty, 2018). All signs show that these demographic changes will continue, and as such, and astute the leader will need to adapt and execute these new retention efforts to keep their players.
A major part of retention today also involves culture. First, while anecdotally leaders might think that the current generation of workers is not interested in being held accountable, evidence shows that workers today need direction and communication of expectations followed by timely and frequent feedback (Tandon, 2019). Secondly, much like creating a culture of feedback, developing an overall inclusive, transparent, communicative, and accessible workplace are all things that today’s talent looks for during the interview stage of any job search (Lever, 2020). Substantial research supports that nowadays individuals will leave a job, not because of salary as the primary driver, but rather poor management and a lack of a transparency culture (Schwantes, 2020). Setting the tone for the culture, expending resources to build and sustain the culture, and maintaining a competitive position are all responsibilities of a leader in today’s organizations.
Professional Development
As covered in this book’s “leader as mentor” chapter, employees today are seeking direction and mentorship for their career and future aspirations. As such, a discussion on talent management is a trait that is critical to a leader’s role as a mentor. In this chapter, however, professional development is referred to as a macro level responsibility of a leader. Much like retention strategies, to which professional development is inextricably connected, today’s leader must invest in overall professional guidance, investment, and growth for all employees in an organization. Today’s workers are looking for a clear path forward, or at a minimum, a clear understanding of what growth potential there will be in an organization. Workers will quickly feel like they are in a dead-end job if leadership has not articulated a future for them connected to the future of the company. There are multiple solutions that can be enacted, all of which however stem from a leader’s investment in an overall professional development structure. In the past, such options were limited to executives or those further up in the organization. Today, sustaining these privileges only for long-term or senior employees will bring on increased turnover rates and an unsupported culture, both of which are a slippery slope toward low-quality talent acquisition.
Key Attributes of a Leader as Talent Manager
For a leader to embody, put into practice and provide a vision for managing talent in an organization or team, we view the following attributes and responsibilities as critical to developing a leader’s talent management competency. While there are a variety of ways in which one can develop a talent leader, these attributes provide a comprehensive answer to how talent acquisition, retention, and professional development can be developed in the hands of a leader operating at the speed of now.
Participatory Leadership in Recruitment
To put it simply, the presence of an organizational or team leader in the interview process for hiring a team member cannot be understated. Evidence shows that candidates are far more likely to accept a job where they have had the opportunity to meet with either the team leader or the company leader overall (Cohen, 2019). Too often, leaders leave this assignment to human resources or other members of the team, particularly when it is not a direct report. Stephen Starr, the leading restaurant owner in Philadelphia with additional restaurants in New York City and Florida, totaling over 30 total restaurants, is well known for interviewing every single hire at every location. Be it servers, hosts, or managers, Starr understands that his is a people-based business and people are the basis of his success (McGrath, 2018).
Critically important in this equation, however, is that a leader also understands how to sell. Often, leaders tend to think of an interview as one sided: the interviewee needs to impress the interviewer alone (Prescott and Cross, 2009). In today’s economy, a leader’s inability to capture the imagination of the interviewee, express the organization’s vision and direction, and inspire excitement will result in losing leading talent. Even if a leader is not extroverted, learning how to create a two-way conversation during an interview and being able to articulate his or her vision is a critical aspect of securing the best talent in the market.
An extension of a leader’s ability to sell his or her vision includes being ready to assist hiring managers or human resources in “dislodging” a hard to get candidate. As discussed later, the best companies will take on proactive recruitment and identify candidates who are perfectly happy in their current jobs. To bring the right talent to the organization, the leader needs to be ready to go the extra mile and that they should be bringing their talents to his or her company. Some high-value candidates need convincing to even attend an interview. A successful leader as a talent manager will see this as an opportunity rather than a reason to claim that will he or she should not need to convince anyone to interview.
Talent-Centric Mindset
Today’s companies that embed continuous talent identification and nurturing across the entire organization are those that are able to attract and keep the best talent (Pandit, 2007). It is critically important for a leader to build a culture where every manager sees it is their responsibility to continuously work and recruit the best people. Furthermore, a recruitment-minded culture unpaired with clearly articulated standards of performance and success could result in an organization hungry for talent but without quality standards. As such, a leader will need to articulate on a regular basis the importance of performance, values, and hiring standards.
To that end, companies today are very quickly heading toward skills and values-based interviewing rather than a history of experience alone. In our high technology world, companies, organizations, and online hiring websites are beginning to put a higher premium on skill set over educational pedigree and immediately applicable job history (Yoh, 2019).
Sharon Koifman, founder and CEO of DistantJob, a recruiting firm specializing in placing virtual employee, and an expert in global recruitment, agrees that “With the rapid advancement of technology and the rise of highly specialized technology-related jobs, it’s safe to say that the IT and tech fields are in much greater need of a strong talent acquisition strategy than other fields” (Jobvite, 2017).
As hiring trends in the twenty-first century evolve, we will begin to see a greater degree of tools and measures to identify the strength of skills. As such, it is incumbent on a leader to begin the mind shift away from looking at talent as strictly a historical valuation, and more based on transferable skills. For example, excellent management skills can translate and transcend industries particularly if the demands of the role are to manage a large group of employees. If an engineering company looking to hire a strong manager does not consider a very strong manager from a pharmaceutical background simply based on subject matter expertise, the engineering company, in the long run, is likely to lose out on the talent needed to succeed. Such skills-based identification of candidates is also a guaranteed way of identifying nontraditional candidates as well as diverse individuals. The job history-based type of interviewing and candidate selection can sometimes be inadvertently exclusionary or limited to only the background of individuals. As such, looking more widely at skills will allow a leader to diversify the workforce both in terms of racial, gender, and age diversity just as much as diversity of thought (McConnell, 2019).
All of the above, though, is predicated on embracing a more proactive recruitment strategy. Leaders of today need to embrace the idea that proactively identifying candidates that fit the company’s needs is going to win more often than lose in the talent war. Whether that is done by outsourcing to search firms or in-sourcing with dedicated recruiters, in today’s LinkedIn era, almost anyone can do the research needed to identify candidates with the proper fit of skills and background. To win the talent battle of the future, leaders today need to start thinking research and proactive outreach when it comes to filling key vacancies.
Cultural Transformation
Setting an organization’s mission, vision, and values and disseminating it across the organization is critical for a myriad of reasons, all closely studied and supported in research and case studies. But the importance of mission, vision, and values bears to be repeated when it comes to talent recruitment and retention. Today’s workers, especially early career professionals, are attracted to organizations that have mission focus and a value system (Pandologic, 2015). As mentioned above, a leader needs to be ready to articulate the vision, mission, and values during an interview. As such, a part of a leader as talent manager involves ensuring that this vision, mission, and values are not only internal anchors of culture, but also an external representation of what it would be like to work at that company.
A very close partner to developing and evangelizing vision, mission, and values internally in an organization is the leader’s disposition and embodiment of transparent and accessible leadership. Woven in with being available for talent interviews is the need for a leader to be transparent and accessible to new hires. Developing a culture where your employees can reach and speak to leaders across the organization will substantially increase retention rates across an organization (Erickson, 2015). While this might be difficult for the leader of a very large company, creating a transparent and accessible culture will result in others within the organization embracing the same attitude. Given that many workers nowadays have begun to rank leadership access as a top reason for staying with a company, a leader’s role as talent manager must include setting an example of leadership that attracts the best talent from the marketplace.
Tangible Benefits for the Modern Workplace
Technology today is allowing workforces to be more and more mobile. While some industries such as agriculture, manufacturing, grocery stores, etc. involve hands-on work to run the business, most other businesses, particularly those that are technology-heavy, are capable of allowing their workers to work from just about anywhere (Vize, 2018). Today’s leaders need to understand with this convenience comes an increase in new hires wanting to take advantage of telecommuting and flexible work arrangements. In particular, early career professionals are increasingly seeing this benefit as an expectation rather than a perk. Companies conducting work capable of being done remotely who do not have any telecommuting policy will most certainly risk attracting and retaining the best talent for their business. It is incumbent on the leader to provide or advocate for flexible work arrangements, even if it is limited. Soon companies without flexible work will be seen as outdated and unattractive by the growing workforce. Kathleen Quinn Votaw, the founder and CEO of TalenTrust states, “I advise clients and executives to Always Be Cultivating by thinking of recruitment as a sales process. If you want A-players on your team, your company must spend as much time and effort attracting and retaining employees as it does on finding and keeping customers” (Jobvite, 2017).
In close connection with the above is a leader’s responsibility to ensure that, with available resources, the workforce is equipped with as good technology as affordable to the company. Companies can sometimes overlook the importance of technology as a recruitment and retention tool. Top talent attracted to a company who subsequently is frustrated by the lack of technological utilities will quickly find a new place to go (Rayome, 2019). At the same time, this point should not be overstated. A leader must balance the technological needs of the workforce with the realities of budget. But to that degree, a true leader as a talent manager will continuously advocate for the most affordable and best technology for the workforce, not just for the sake of productivity but also for the purposes of recruitment and retention will.
With no intention of wading into the political, it is important here to discuss the need for companies to examine their paternal benefits. As previously discussed, the workforce continues to diversify, particularly with an increase in female employees in the workforce. At the same time, there are more dual-income households today than ever before (Miura and Higashi, 2017). From a purely talent management point of view, companies with enhanced paternal leave options will attract more of this changing workforce and keep them for longer. As such, in the discussion of a leader being a talent manager, this topic that holds an incredible amount of decision power for top-performing talent must be considered in order to stay competitive in today’s talent market. There is a multitude of options: from increasing paid leave, to allowing flexible use of leaving the dates, providing a one-time stipend for child care costs, to as much as providing paid child care on an ongoing basis, companies today are adapting to this reality. Such companies are also able to develop a family-oriented culture, which is increasingly important to today’s workforce. Simply put, only doing the federally required minimum will hurt companies more than doing just a little more.
Social Media and Corporate Branding
Companies and organizations today all have a certain degree of social media and public marketing plans in place, if for no other reason than to promote their product or service. Today’s leader must take into account how social media and online presence now equates to a brand image that talent will gravitate toward, or in the absence of an internal cultural brand identity, will gravitate away from. We previously discussed the importance of the mission, vision, and values of the organization. In the current talent market, it is equally important to display and organization’s vision, mission, and values in action on public social media platforms. This gives top talent and insight into the working culture, a top decision maker for accepting or rejecting a job today (Duce, 2019). Workers today spend a significant amount of time doing online research of potential employers before or during an interview process. It is in effect a two-way street: as much as candidates need to impress the potential employer, candidates need to be impressed by what the employer has to offer based on publicly available information. It is incumbent on a leader today to have a substantial marketing strategy in place in order to secure the best talent possible.
In fact, one of the most powerful ways in which to communicate this is by having the leader themselves embrace a social media presence. Sara Blakely, founder and CEO of Spanx, fully embraced as this tactic by openly talking about her personal struggles as a leader and due to motherhood and her belief system on how to run a company (Dool, 2019). In so doing, Blakely gave the public an insight into her leadership style, her humanity, and the culture of the company. Marketing like this cannot be underscored enough—leaders willing to be open, vulnerable, and strategic in sharing information about themselves and their company culture will invariably attract not only top talent but a talent that is preselected itself to having a belief system similar to that of the company.
Succession Planning and Internal Pipeline Growth
Over the past decade succession planning has been considered an important part of any major business or organization. While there are plentiful ways in which this can be done, it is quite surprising to see a number of organizations that do not have a succession plan in place beyond only the CEO (Bernier, 2015). What this creates is an environment of uncertainty for other leaders within an organization. Today’s leaders must institute succession planning and high potential analyses throughout the organization, if not for the majority of positions, then most certainly for business-critical roles. Once again, in the context of talent recruitment and retention, workers today will look for succession planning from the outside and expect to follow through on the inside. A leader’s ability to create, roll out, and execute these plans will increase both their ability to bring in top talent and to keep them.
Similarly, while a succession planning tends to be relegated to senior and key positions, creating career ladders for every level of position starting from entry-level roles will further enhance a company’s ability to attract and retain talent. In particular, organizations that have clear steps of progression throughout the organization tend to be more successful in sustaining motivation and keeping career-driven individuals (Kemelgor and Meek, 2008). In fact, an astute talent manager will make time to have one-on-one career discussions with direct reports as well as skip meetings with employees further down the chain of command. This marries nicely with the points made above about transparency, staying involved in career growth and developing a culture that is attractive to today’s workers. Furthermore, a leader must play the part of cheerleader, where they celebrate career progression within the organization and publicly acknowledge growth within the organization. This is critically important because existing employees want to be valued as much as incoming employees.
Leader as Talent Manager: A Checklist
To provide a starting point, the following is a checklist of actions traits and behaviors that a leader can embody to develop a culture and organization reflective of the points made above:
| Participatory leadership in recruitment | Make yourself available for as many interviews in your organization as possible. Select key positions based on importance but also on distance for your role. Create a “sell sheet” of how to talk about the company and/or team with interviewees. Practice to make perfect. To get the best talent, be ready to make a hard sell, go above and beyond. Fight for the best talent. |
| Talent-centric mindset | Encourage other team members to always be on the lookout for talent. Read “leader as mentor” chapter for additional guidance. Articulate and evangelize standards of hire. Embrace skills-based interviewing instead of only job history as a means of measuring potential. Encourage a higher proportion of proactive, targeted hiring rather than a passive job posting. |
| Cultural Transformation | Socialize your organization’s mission, vision, values as a yardstick for identifying talent. Internally evangelize standards of performance so that managers know the standards expected of new hires. Embrace transparent and accessible leadership. |
| Tangible benefits for the modern workplace | Champion flexible work and telecommuting if possible for your business. Conduct a technology review to identify gaps so that competitors do not have an edge with talent attraction. If you have not already, begin discussions on how to provide supplementary benefits to workers with children and dual-income households. |
| Social media and corporate branding | Work with your marketing team to develop an attractive, consistent, people-centric social media window into your company’s values and inner workings. Develop your own social media presence, prepare to share more about yourself, your value system, and your leadership style. Read “leader as ambassador” chapter for further guidance. Encourage employees to do the same so that they too can become ambassadors for the organization. |
| Succession planning and internal pipeline growth | Develop a clear succession plan for yourself and senior members of the organization. Create career ladders for all classes of employees. Celebrate, publicly, internal promotions and take on one-on-one annual career discussions with a direct report and skip reports. |
Summary
For a leader to be successful as a top manager, they must undertake both aspects of internal transformation, outlook on talent acquisition and retention while also undertaking some very tangible changes to their organization. While automation and artificial intelligence may threaten many classes of jobs in the future, just as many if not more jobs will remain in the workforce for the foreseeable future. With that in mind, of course, every job will be hotly contested and the arms race for talent will continue to elevate. Leaders without both a personal and practical outlook on recruiting and retaining talent will lose out in this battle if they do not take proactive measures immediately. As online job boards and websites continue to proliferate, the market is constantly leveling the playing field for companies in attracting top talent. Therefore, the leader of today and the future will need to continuously be on the cutting edge of what makes them, their company, and their culture competitively different from others. The measures and changes in outlook outlined in this chapter, whether taken in pieces or completely, will begin to give you an edge on the competition.
Key Takeaways
• Being a talent manager today requires participatory leadership in the full cycle of recruitment, retention, and talent development. Workers today expect to see and interact with leaders in each of these steps.
• The hiring world is quickly moving to a skills-based hiring model rather than one simply based on work experience and history. Today’s leader will need to make this pivot as soon as possible.
• Investing in workplace culture is just as important as the effort to hire top talent. Studies have shown that culture and management practices are the leading reason that workers stay with an employer.
• Leaders must invest in their personal presence in social media and branding. Personal brand along with advertising workplace culture will attract talent away from other opportunities.
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