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Archive for December, 2009

“Seven Deadly Sins of Waste” in Recruiting – Preview

Thursday, December 17th, 2009

I found an excellent report on Lean (Toyota production Systems – TPS) by Wharton and the Boston Consulting Group called, “Rethinking Lean: Beyond the Shop Floor.”

It provides excellent examples of how you can apply the principles of waste elimination and process efficiency within service organizations (including healthcare and financial service industries). 

As I read the report, it became evident why implementing the principles of waste elimination, worker involvement and continuous improvement within the recruitment/hiring process can be so successful.  

While the principles of waste elimination, worker involvement and CI haven’t changed much since TPS was created 50 years ago the results are very impressive.

In January, we will discuss eliminating the “seven deadly sins of waste” in the recruitment process.

If you are interested in how we use the principles of lean, materials release planning, and supply chain optimization to answer the age old question, “What is the acceptable number of requisitions per recruiter?” check out our published white paper on the subject.

I hope you have a great “pre-holiday” week!

Some snippets that I found particularly interesting from the report are outlined below:

  • “Do you understand your customer segments?” Can you serve the most valued customer more effectively?
  • Companies should always begin their lean efforts by asking, “What are you trying to achieve?” “It doesn’t begin with a rule. And it’s not about isolating one piece of the business and deciding its fate.  It’s about rethinking every business process.” “It’s not about cost cutting across the board,” he says. “It’s about judicious investing. It’s not about starving. It’s about building muscle, trimming fat.”
  • Many companies struggle to align lead times, inventory and other data to financial measures, even with performance metrics in place.  This is probably because they are not measuring the right things. Instead of coming to a better understanding of your organization and how to improve it, “Many die a death of a thousand metrics.”
  • “When people think about lean, they often associate it with reducing the workforce,” Faber says, “But the cost is not in the line labor; it’s in the overhead.”
  • A key part of Lean involves looking at the business differently. You need to have metrics on moving applicants through the staffing supply chain. That requires sourcers, recruiters, coordinators, HR business partners, and hiring managers engage in a collective dialogue around ensuring efficiency.
  • In manufacturing no one sees how things get made. They probably don’t care. But in staffing/hiring – customers see the process and it is extremely personal.  So if your service doesn’t track customer dissatisfaction you might never know what people thing about your organization.
  • Lean initiatives begin with identifying and standardizing a process. “Try to think of your business as repetitive. Once you have that identified – think of how long someone stays in that process, the waste being created, the dissatisfaction occurring, and the impact of that person staying in that process. Next, measure performance.
  • TPS is a way of life. A continuous improvement process that never stops. TPS wasn’t implemented just once. Its constant improvement, constant innovation and constant elimination of extra steps. The most important principle is that this is not a four-month project. You will see benefits, but you must do it continually.
  • Key principles of lean ask the following questions, “What is important? What matters to the customer? What delivers value?”
  • Lean is not new or rocket science. It’s like your diet. You know what to eat and how much to eat but old habits are hard to break. That is why behavior modification, measurement, accountability, training is so important.
  • “Lean works best as a balanced top-down and bottom-up effort.” Christian Terwiesch, a Wharton professor, remembers trying to talk with hospitals about lean initiatives several years ago. “They thought I was evil. They said ‘We’re doctors. We help people.’ Now these same institutions have chief medical officers saying, ‘We want to run this place like Toyota!’”

Posted in Bradley Savoy, David, David Szary, Elite Recruiters, Just-In-Time hiring, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Training, Strategic Business Partner, Talent Aquisition, Time Management, Transactional Recruiter, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Best Practices in Moving to a Management by Fact Culture

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009

McKinsey recently released results of a study of practices of 230 companies across the globe.

The firm’s primary goal was simple – what makes companies perform well?  For the sake of this post, I’ll hone in on one key point:

“Executives, in their search for ways to make organizations function more successfully, frequently adopt simplistic solutions.   A new analysis of more than 230 global businesses shows that combinations of carefully selected actions can be far more effective than one-dimensional interventions.”

McKinsey makes an interesting point here.  In some cases adopting the simple – or easy – solution is not always the best approach.  Unfortunately in many instances the decisions are made through a high degree of subjectivity and then tempered with a small depth of objective criteria (data).

Over the last 20 years, management concepts such as the balanced scorecard, process management, key performance indicators (KPI’s) and strategy deployment have prompted many executives to revisit their measurement systems.   Practices such as Management by Objective (MBO) and Management by Fact (MBF) have become increasingly popular. 

Successful companies strive to combine real world management experience with the objectivity of data.  This is not to negate the subjective experience of a tenured executive, but to aid in their arsenal of decision making tools. 

As a result, many companies are adopting objective based measurement systems.   These systems ensure objective data measurement is added to uncover the missing elements, or facts, needed to make key decisions.

So if you’re aiming to launch a new measurement system to shift your culture to one of Management by Fact, here are my top three best practices to consider:

  1. Tie your measurement criteria to the goals of the business.   Each business unit or department of your company must provide input related to their specific business goals, and the needs of their customers.  During this exercise the synergies of various departments will come to light.  For example, customer loyalty could exist across multiple departments, and the overall company strategy.  If that is the case, customer loyalty then becomes a key indicator of performance across the various departmental stakeholders.  In this example, an overarching measurement criterion may be customer retention or customer satisfaction. 
  2. Ensure adoption and accountability at the right levels.  Those parties responsible for this new way of thinking must have the knowledge and authority to manage the performance of new processes.  Establishment of a core team of metrics and process owners representing critical functions of the organization is critical to ensure the mind shift is successful. 
  3. Communication is key.  Development of a comprehensive communication strategy is critical to ensure broad understanding and acceptance.  All employees need to understand the importance of the new philosophy and their roles within this process.  Care should be taken to ensure that each employee is able to answer the question, “What’s in it for me?”  Each employee needs a clear understanding of how they, as an individual, can impact key metrics.  Creating communication aids such as learning maps and utilizing executives to act as personal communication channels can increase acceptance of the strategies as the goals of the organization are achieved.

If you’d like to lean more and see a great example of utilizing the Management by Fact approach, check out David’s article on why requisitions per recruiter is not a great method for resource planning.

Companies will achieve success by ensuring that the management measurement solutions they create tie to core business objectives and are accepted, adopted, and communicated effectively by all stakeholders of the process.

Posted in Bradley Savoy, Changing Role of the Recruiter, David, David Szary, Elite Recruiters, Just-In-Time hiring, LEAN recruitment, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Top Gun, Recruiter Training, Recruiting Buzz, Relationship Recruiter, Strategic Business Partner, Talent Aquisition, Time Management, Uncategorized | No Comments »

What every Recruiter Can Learn from Spaghetti Sauce

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

I was introduced to this great video clip by Malcolm Gladwell the other day. Malcolm Gladwell is the best-selling author of “The Tipping Point” and “Blink”. In this talk, he explains what every business can learn from spaghetti sauce.

As I watched it, I realized not only what every business can learn from spaghetti sauce but also what recruiters can learn from spaghetti sauce.

A core message (amongst many) in his presentation is the concept of “embracing the diversity of human beings”.

He shares how back in the 70’s, spaghetti manufacturers like Ragu and Presto were all trying to make the “perfect spaghetti sauce”. What they failed to understand is that there is no “perfect spaghetti sauce” because all of us have different tastes, likes, etc.

This core message applies to candidates. I think all too often organizations spend too much time and money trying to come up with a core brand image or theme of why individuals should work for their organization. They are trying to create “the perfect image” which will entice everyone to want to work for their organization which as Malcom illustrates . . . is not possible.

With that said, I find most recruiters spent way too little time embracing the diversity of candidates and identifying and understanding what is truly important to a specific candidate and then communicating how their organization can (or cannot) meet those objectives/needs.

Outlined below are some simple questions you can ask (we embed these in our Candidate Pre-screen/Interview process) to help identify a candidates true motives, needs, wants, concerns, etc.

What is the biggest concern you have in your position right now in relation to your future?

  • On scale of 1 to 10, how satisfied are you in your current position? What would have to change to make it a 10?
  • Have you spoken to your manager about making these changes?
  • What are going to be your 3 most important criteria you will use in your decision to accept or not accept a position?
  • (Depending on the answers above) What would a new position have to offer you that would get you to leave your current one?

The information gathered by asking these questions is critical for:

  • Developing rapport with your candidate
  • Ensuring your organization (as well as the position) is a great match for their needs
  • Gathering the intelligence critical to successfully “closing the candidate”

If you are not spending at least 5-10 minutes understanding “what type of spaghetti sauce they want or like”, your probability of luring top talent to your organization is greatly diminished.

The other point I believe recruiters can take from this video is that people (and in this case, hiring managers) often don’t know exactly what they want. Malcolm made this point by revealing that when interrogated about their spaghetti preferences, no one ever said “Extra Chunky” and yet, what do you think is the most popular type of spaghetti sauce? That’s right – Extra Chunky! Often we, as recruiters and HR Managers, expect the hiring manager to tell us what type of candidate they’re seeking for a certain position. The truth is, most hiring managers don’t know! The better question to ask is, “What needs to get done?”

We all know that people with different sets of skills and different backgrounds can be successful in the same types of jobs, yet we continuously try to narrow the scope of candidates we review to the point that we are certainly passing up people who could be excellent. Too often the discussions between recruiter /HR manager and hiring manager focus on personality traits or soft skills instead of the business problems to be solved with the hiring of this new individual. The hiring manager will spend a lot of time talking about the fact that they want someone who is energetic, driven, dedicated, etc., etc…..sometimes to the point that they say, “I’ll know it when I see it!” While personality traits are certainly part of the hiring process, in the end it’s all about results. Our job as recruiters/hr managers is to guide the hiring manager through their thought process to determine the necessary experience/skills the candidate needs in order to get the job done and then quantify each aspect so that we understand the level of expertise needed for each. Some sample questions we like to ask hiring managers include:

  • What isn’t getting done currently because this position hasn’t been filled? (i.e., what precipitated the need for the position?)
  • How will you know if the candidate has the right level of experience with… (I ask this question regarding every skill or type of experience the hiring manager states as a requirement. They often haven’t thought through this yet and this is a wonderful question to help them start formulating the questions they’ll want to ask in the interview. I also ask them for sample questions I can use in my screening to make sure I’m able to gauge whether or not the candidate has the right level of expertise in each area.) I follow this question with, “And how will the individual be using this skill/experience in the job?”
  • We all know that you can have two candidates with the same number of years of experience and one is very good while the other isn’t. What will the right candidate need to have accomplished in their past position(s) to give you the confidence they can succeed in this position?

Working through these questions with the hiring manager helps all involved to get away from envisioning just one type of candidate (spaghetti sauce!) that can fill the position and be open to the fact that there may be several candidates from a variety of backgrounds who can get the job done (and maybe even bring some new perspective to the company!)

While the video of Malcolm is a little lengthy (18 minutes), I think it is a great one to watch!

I hope you had a nice holiday weekend!

EMBRACE THE DIVERSITY OF HUMAN BEINGS!

Posted in Bradley Savoy, Candidate Pipeline, Candidate types, David, David Szary, Elite Recruiters, Just-In-Time hiring, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Sales, Recruiter Training, Sourcing, Strategic Business Partner, Talent Aquisition, Transactional Recruiter, Uncategorized | No Comments »