Top Recruiting Priorities For 2017

Research conducted by the Corporate Executive Board (CEB) identifies Recruiting as the second most critical area of focus for HR leaders.

As we enter the latter half of 2017, that field is getting still more challenging. Heads of HR are preparing for critical talent shortages as mid-sized companies face fierce competition from larger organizations.  As they gear up, HR leaders have ranked the following priorities as critical when it comes to recruiting:

Building Pipelines for Critical Positions (48%)
Building a pipeline takes time as you know. An easy place to start is assessing your own bench of talent and then developing them. Next, tap into your employees to have them help build the pipeline. Network within industry respected organizations to find out who they believe the best of the best are. If you do not have the time/resources to do this, outsource it to a firm to build out your pipeline.

At Cornerstone Nashville, we do this for our clients quite often and provide them with an average of 178 targeted candidates on each completed search. This gets narrowed down to 4 or 5 finalists. In essence, we help our clients build a pipeline on each and every search.

Improving Hiring Manager Effectiveness (41%)
Hiring does not fall squarely on the shoulders of HR. HR is the bridge to connecting the talent to the hiring manager. Too often, hiring managers leave things to chance or go with their gut. For further reading on the importance of preparation check out Cornerstone President Larry Shoemaker’s excellent blog post “The Five First Steps in Recruiting Top Talent” as well as Lisa Quast’s insightful Forbes article “4 Ways To Improve Your Hiring Process”.

Improving and Communicating an Effective Employment Brand (37%)
Before a client engages us for a search, we have to get excited about their brand. If they cannot engage us with their brand it is impossible for us to get candidates excited about going to work for them. Why do employees stay? Why do they leave? Why would they choose you over thousands of different options? If you do not have a compelling brand story to tell, go straight to Marketing and develop one today!!

Great examples of not having a brand story to tell can be found on one of my favorite shows, “The Profit”. A recent episode highlighted Zoe’s Chocolate Co. They have a great product but the company’s owners failed to connect their story to the product. It is the same philosophy when it comes to recruiting top talent…connect your story to the job offering!!

Upgrading Selection and Assessment Capabilities (31%)
Today we have access to more types of assessments than ever before…some really good ones and some bad ones. Don’t fall into the trap of using an assessment to be the only criteria for hiring someone. Use them to complement your hiring process as these are not pass/fail “tests”.

Whichever assessment you choose, make sure everyone involved in the hiring process understands the assessment. Benchmark your top employees to give you a good baseline to use. Continually adjust these benchmarks over time…remember, hiring is art and science!!

Building/Improving New Hire Onboarding (26%)
Years ago I was involved in a leadership workshop that was focused on improving employee engagement and retention. Our company had developed a world class onboarding program. This program measured the new employee’s career from day one and had check points throughout the first year and well beyond.

It was during this workshop that one of my peers made a profound statement. Onboarding starts the very first time a candidate comes in contact with your brand. So, it really starts before the employee ever begins in his/her career. The first year is critical to the long-term success for any employee…get the onboarding right!!!

If you need an outside partner to guide you, give me a shout…we assist clients all over the world.