Read an Excerpt
Best Practices: Hiring People
Recruit and Keep the Brightest Stars
Chapter One
Star Search: Attracting Top Performers
Filling your ranks with good people has never been more important. That's because your people represent your company to the public; and they're the ones who will create your success.
If you can get the right people onto your team, and if you then give them the freedom to think and be creative, they can work magic. Yet good people are in short supply. Although universities and business schools around the world are churning out tens of thousands of MBAs every year, the imminent retirement of a whole generation—the 76 million baby boomers—means a wave of positions will be vacant. The competition for the top talent is already stiff. Within the next ten years, it will become even more intense.
Whether the person you're hiring is a junior software developer or a senior project manager, a civil engineer or a newsletter editor, a hotel maid or a registered nurse, getting a star performer to notice the position you want to fill, to come in and talk to you, and to choose you over other companies demands increasing skill.
Smart managers need to develop every possible resource. They need to build networks of good people they can tap into when they have jobs to fill. They need to develop skills among interns. They need to raise their firm's visibility so that people will come to them. They need to discover talent in every corner of their communities, focusing on groups of people who may be underemployed—among them women, many of whom drop out of the workforce at some point in their careers andsubsequently find it difficult to return. Managers need to create a diverse workforce to benefit from the competitive edge that results when diverse approaches to problems and diverse points of view are adopted.
Having invested so much time in developing talent pools, smart managers will need to figure out how to bring these stars in house. They'll need to respond quickly to applicants via phone calls, run intelligent interviews, and learn to sell the candidate on their company.
Searches are expensive, both in time and money, not to mention the productivity lost while a job sits vacant. So you need to do whatever it takes to make your hiring process quicker and more effective. It's simply good business.
The journey from deciding to bring the best possible people on board to actually making the hire can be long and difficult. It is punctuated by challenges: writing a clear job description, choosing the most effective (and most cost-effective) advertising medium, and crafting your listing so that it appeals to the kind of individual you hope to find. Although some people wait until they have a job opening to pursue candidates, it's a good idea to be on the lookout year-round. You may want to do some active recruiting, for instance. You will definitely want to build a list of people you might some day want to work with, so that you'll have a roster of people to interview as soon as the need arises.
Describing the Job
Let's suppose that you're losing a key member of your department. Or perhaps you've met a talented young person who you'd like to find a way to bring on board. One of the first things you need to tackle before you set the hiring process in motion is the job description.
If you're starting with an existing position, pull the most recent description of the position held by your departing employee and determine whether it accurately describes the functions of the job. If the text hasn't been updated for a while, it may well need dusting off, especially if your company has had any reorganizations since it was last revisited.
Give careful thought to what the person in that position actually did, day in and day out. What were the key tasks that the individual performed? What are your expectations as to productivity and quality? Is this a back-office kind of job, offering little contact with the public, or does the person in this job interact with customers, clients, or vendors outside the company?
What experience and skills are required to do the job? What training and education? What are the challenges and opportunities the job offers? Enlist the help of your departing employee or another employee in the same role when gathering all this information.
If you're going to add to your head count, brainstorm the many tasks and roles you anticipate that an employee may undertake in this new job. Again, consider your productivity and quality expectations.
It's vital to have an accurate job description so that you and your new employee have a shared understanding of what's expected of him or her. Moreover, writing a job description helps you clarify your thinking, set pay ranges, plan interview questions, and—after you have made the hire—evaluate the new employee's performance.
When you craft the job description, you may also become aware of other job descriptions in your department that need revision.
The Basics of Job Descriptions
A good job description covers all the parameters of the position. It is detailed and specific, but also loose enough to allow the employee to grow with the job. Be concise and use language that can be readily understood by the general public. Don't use idiosyncratic terms specific to your organization, or mention internal divisions that change frequently or wouldn't be readily recognized outside the organization.
The job description should include these elements: the title of the position, a job summary, a list of key responsibilities, a statement of the minimum job requirements, certifications or licenses needed, physical requirements, a disclaimer, and details of hours and salary ranges.
The job title you post should ideally be a shortened version of the actual title—"graphic designer," as opposed to "graphic designer for educational book division." You can fill in the details later in your ad. The title should also reflect the various duties of . . .
Best Practices: Hiring People
Recruit and Keep the Brightest Stars. Copyright © by Kathy Shwiff. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
