Recruitment and Talent Acquisition

Talent analytics, is application of analytics to people data resulting in better decisions for an organization. HR analytics not only control payroll costs but, can proactively manage workforce talent, also. From predicting future top performers and early flight risks to grooming successors for key positions and identifying internal threats before they strike, today’s workforce analytics are powerful tools for employers.

The functions of talent analytics includes

• Analytics of Hiring: provide insights into prospective hires by analyzing their skills. It also guides the company into making an impartial decision based on the data
• Analytics of Ongoing Feedback: focuses on the existing workforce, determining whether the teams in the company are performing well, whether they have the right skill set and the right talent in the right places.
• Analytics of Workforce Optimization: combines the data and predictions from hiring analytics and ongoing feedback analytics to ensure the company has what it needs to make its internal processes as robust as possible.

Talent Acquisition is the process of finding, acquiring, assessing, and hiring candidates to fill roles that are required to meet company goals and fulfill project requirements. Talent Acquisition also ensures that newly hired employees are effectively and efficiently acclimated to the organization, enabling the organization to rapidly and fully benefit from their capabilities.

Talent Acquisition is one of the key human capital processes and includes:

• Recruiting
• Talent assessment
• Talent selection (hiring)
• On boarding

Each key process like Talent Acquisition contributes to the achievement of organization goals (for example, a 10% increase in sales or a 15% reduction in costs) and talent outcomes (for example, a 5 point increase in employee engagement or a 2 point increase in the retention rate). Often, some of the talent outcomes are top-level goals of the organization on par with an increase in sales or a reduction in costs. Other times, the talent outcomes are viewed as intermediate goals in support of achieving the top-level goals.

Designing the talent acquisition strategy is a critical first step in allowing leaders in the HR function to get that crucial alignment. These are the key, seven steps we followed and can be used as a template for own efforts:

• Look at the key skills required to ensure business objectives are continuously met, and regularly review them. As the pharmaceutical industry evolves so do the skills required within any business. Companies work in a variety of therapy areas which often change, therefore the required specific therapy expertise can also vary. You don’t want to be hiring ‘key’ people only to see their expertise become redundant within a matter of months.
• Do a skills gap analysis to show where you are exposed. As the business portfolio evolves there is often a need to bring new skills, techniques or areas of expertise into the organisation. Identifying those gaps early is vital. It helps HR professionals map the market to determine where that talent currently sits, how big a potential candidate pool there is and where the potential obstacles might arise, e.g. location.
• Develop an internal mobility and succession plan to ensure good people are being utilized optimally. Having a succession plan in place is a crucial component to any company’s workforce plan. It not only acts as a great motivator with existing key people but also acts as a retention tool.
• Plan for attrition. Again, this is a very important element in workforce analytics for presenting to business leaders. By forecasting future leavers it helps leaders plan accordingly for any skills gaps and back-fill appropriately, and in good time.
• Analyze company demographics to ensure diversity objectives are met. Diversity is no longer optional. It has become absolutely essential within any business as, in our opinion, it drives creativity and innovation. From gender to ethnicity, it is important to get the balance right. One of the biggest problems in almost all industries is that women in senior leadership roles remain rare. At Pfizer, although we always chose the best person for the job, we made a concerted effort to ensure diverse candidate short lists were always provided to hiring teams.
• Determine gaps and therefore external recruitment needs. Once the internal skills have been identified and succession planning has been implemented, any clear gaps can be determined; what’s going to be critical in the near future and what’s needed for the longer term.
• Define and develop an external sourcing strategy. After more than a decade each in corporate recruiting we know that strategies and tactics used to recruit active jobseekers are quite different to those used for ‘passive candidates’. These are people who are currently quite happy where they are working but might be open to the idea of a move – if it’s the right one, proposed and presented well. In the past, when companies were operating in a comparatively ‘steady state’, a big corporate brand was often enough to produce a good candidate roster. In our former roles, we became accustomed to hearing “Why wouldn’t they want to work for us? We’re Pfizer!” Today, corporate brands have a limited shelf life and should not be over-relied on. Only a compelling, personalized and value-led employment proposition will attract the best people.

Recruitment

Recruitment refers to the overall process of attracting, selecting and appointing suitable candidates for jobs within an organisation, either permanent or temporary. Recruitment can also refer to processes involved in choosing individuals for unpaid positions, such as voluntary roles or training programs.

Recruitment may be undertaken in-house by managers, human resource generalists and/or recruitment specialists. Alternatively, parts of the process may be undertaken by either public-sector employment agencies, commercial recruitment agencies, or specialist search consultancies.

The use of internet-based services and computer technologies to support all aspects of recruitment activity and processes has become widespread.

Internal recruitment refers to the process of a candidate being selected from the existing workforce to take up a new job in the same organization, perhaps as a promotion, or to provide career development opportunity, or to meet a specific or urgent organizational need. Advantages of this approach include the organization’s familiarity with the employee and their competencies (insofar as they are revealed in their current job), and their willingness to trust said employee. It can also be quicker and can have a lower cost to hire someone from another part of the same organization.

A temporary internal appointment for a period of a few months sometimes occurs, after which the employee would normally be expected to return to their previous job. This is known as a secondment; someone on a secondment is said to be seconded to the new team. Secondments may also take place between related organizations.

Recruitment Process

Job Analysis – In situations where multiple new jobs are created and recruited for the first time, a job analysis might be undertaken to document the knowledge, skill, ability, and other personal characteristics required for the job. From these the relevant information is captured in such documents as job descriptions and job specifications. Often a company will already have job descriptions that represent a historical collection of tasks performed. Where already drawn up, these documents need to be reviewed or updated to reflect present day requirements. Prior to initiating the recruitment stages a person specification should be finalized to provide the recruiters commissioned with the requirements and objectives of the project.

Sourcing – Sourcing is the use of one or more strategies to attract or identify candidates to fill job vacancies. It may involve internal and/or external advertising, using appropriate media, such as local or national newspapers, specialist recruitment media, professional publications, window advertisements, job centers, or in a variety of ways via the internet. Alternatively, employers may use recruitment consultancies or agencies to find otherwise scarce candidates who may be content in their current positions and are not actively looking to move companies. This initial research for so-called passive candidates, also called name generation, results in a contact information of potential candidates who can then be contacted discreetly to be screened and approached.

Screening and Selection – Suitability for a job is typically assessed by looking for that are required for a job. These can be determined via: screening résumés (also known as curriculum vitae or CV); job application; Biographical Information Blanks which is an assessment that asks for a more extensive background than an application; or a job interview. Various psychological tests can be used to assess a variety of KSAOs, including literacy. Assessments are available to measure physical ability. Many recruiters and agencies use applicant tracking systems to perform the filtering process, along with software tools for psychometric testing and performance based assessment. In many countries, employers are legally mandated to ensure their screening and selection processes meet equal opportunity and ethical standards.

In addition to the above selection assessment criteria, employers are likely to recognize the value of candidates who encompass “soft skills” such as interpersonal or team leadership, and have the ability to reinforce the company brand through behavior and attitude portrayal to customers and suppliers. Multinational organizations and those that recruit from a range of nationalities are also concerned candidates will fit into the prevailing company culture.

Lateral Hiring – “Lateral hiring” refers to the hiring of someone into a position that is at the same organizational level or salary. It could mean hiring someone from another, similar organization, possibly luring them with a better salary and the promise of better career opportunities. An example is the recruiting of a partner of a law firm by another law firm. A lateral hire may also refer to an employee moving from one position to another within the same organization.

Recruitment Approaches

There are a variety of recruitment approaches and most organizations will utilize a combination of two or more of these as part of a recruitment exercise or to deliver their overall recruitment strategy. There are six common models:

• In-house or human resources personnel may in some case still conduct all stages of the recruitment process. In smaller organizations, recruitment may be done by individual managers or recruiters. More frequently, whilst managing the overall recruitment exercise and the decision-making at the final stages of the selection process, external service providers may undertake the more specialized aspects of the recruitment process.
• Social Media Recruitment is the new trend which can implement in the current recruitment process. Social media helps to drive passive candidates and indirectly helps to create brand awareness about the company. A few tools commonly used by social media recruiters are LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc.
• Outsourcing of recruitment to an external provider may be the solution for some small businesses and at times for large organizations.
• Employment agencies are established as both publicly funded services and as commercial private sector operations. Services may support permanent, temporary, or casual worker recruitment. They may be generic agencies that deal with providing unskilled workers through to highly skilled managerial or technical staff or so-called niche agencies that specialize in a particular industrial sector or professional group.
• Executive search firms recruit for executive and professional positions. These firms operate across a range of models such as contingency or retained approaches, and also hybrid models where advertising is also used to ensure a flow of candidates alongside relying on networking as their main source of candidates.
• Internet recruitment services include recruitment websites and job search engines used to gather as many candidates as possible by advertising a position over a wide geographic area. In addition, social network sourced recruitment has emerged as a major method of sourcing candidates.

Employee Value Proposition

Employee Value Proposition (EVP) is the balance of the rewards and benefits that are received by employees in return for their performance at the workplace.

Minchington (2005) defines an Employee Value Proposition (EVP) as a set of associations and offerings provided by an organization in return for the skills, capabilities and experiences an employee brings to the organization. The EVP is an employee-centered approach that is aligned to existing, integrated workforce planning strategies because it has been informed by existing employees and the external target audience. An EVP must be unique, relevant and compelling if it is to act as a key driver of talent attraction, engagement and retention.

It has become closely related to the concept of employer branding, in terms of the term EVP being used to define the underlying ‘offer’ on which an organization’s employer brand marketing and management activities are based. In this context, the EVP is often referred to as the Employer Brand Proposition.

Employee Induction

The purpose of an induction procedure is to assist a new employee in the “settling down ” process.  Starting a new job is a stressful experience, due to new situations and demands plus fears of looking silly. During the settling – in period, a new employee is unlikely to be effective or fully productive and may even leave if the feelings of unease are strong enough.

It is therefore worth spending time on effective induction, as real cost savings can be made on avoidance of accidents caused through unfamiliarity, rapid achievement of full productivity and avoidance of costs incurred in unnecessary recruitment to replace lost employees.

Inducting Successfully – To achieve successful induction, a systematic plan should be followed. This is to enable records to be kept and thus ensure that information is not missed out. A check list of points to be included in induction is attached.

Although induction is of vital importance to new employees, anyone who is promoted or transferred from one job to another should also be inducted.

In general, the aim of induction should be to convey a clear picture of the working of the organisation.