You DO Hire Humans, Don’t You ?
Posted Sunday, September 27th, 2015

Raise your hand if you think we are better off with the benefits of technology.

Soon, you may be reading this on your way to work while your car is doing the driving for you.

Technological breakthroughs are changing our life daily. Businesses operate at a much faster pace thanks to many amazing technological developments. While technology helps facilitate and accelerate business, true growth is directly impacted by acquiring and hiring the right talent.

With the changes in the marketplace, what are a few examples of the impacts of technology on the field of hiring?

A job seeker can now press one button on a smart phone LinkedIn app and apply for a job. In a few minutes, that job seeker can apply for 20-30 jobs. In short order, an employer can have electronic files of numerous candidate resumes.

Within minutes, an employer can insert key search words and surface all of the resumes that are a match.

Predictive analytics and on-line psychological assessments are widely available to instantly deliver candidate results to an employer.

Through job boards and on-line postings, an employer can be in receipt of hundreds of resumes after only some simple clicks and a credit card.

Without question, the business community is always seeking the most efficient and fastest path to complete a function. The more time saved, the more valuable the “time saving short-cut”.

While there are cases where the technologically assisted hiring event has resulted in an employer hiring the “right talent”, aren’t these shortcuts making hiring too much of a robotic event and taking more of a departure from an interactive process?

Aren’t the technological advancements merely tools that should be pieces of an integrated recruiting process?

As a CEO or hiring manager, it is critical to your business that you hire the “right talent”. By default, it is a logical outcome, that to hire the “right talent”, you have to regard the talent itself as a very important part of the process.

If you were buying a robot, you would have most of the information you needed by reading the “fact sheet”. Are you hiring your critical talent from a “fact-sheet”?

After all, aren’t you hiring a human? Last time I checked, the human is complex and complicated. Hiring the “right one” can help your business grow and solve your critical business problem. Hiring the wrong one can move your business growth backwards. Your next great hire, the talented human is also evaluating your company.

 

They are asking:

– “Do I understand the business problem that I would be hired to solve?”

– “Do I have the skills and experience to solve the problem”?

– “Is this the type of company I want to work for and will I be working for the type of person where I will want to solve their business problem?”

 

If your hiring effort involves simply creating a sanitized “fact-sheet”, what are your chances of acquiring the “right talent”? Ask yourself if you would enjoy being a candidate in your company’s hiring effort. Also, ask yourself if you have a first-hand awareness of each step a candidate goes through to become hired by your company.

 

Getting back to the candidate’s third question of “Is this the type of company I want to work for….”

The third question is about chemistry or cultural fit. Robots don’t need to fit the culture of our business. People do need to fit. Hiring the right fit usually means getting it right for both the business and for the newly hired talent.

 

Getting it wrong today is disruptive to your business and expensive. Some studies have suggested that the cost of a failed hire to the company is several multipliers of the terminated employee’s annual earnings. For example, the failed hire of a $300K Vice President may cost the business $300K x 3 = $900K in lost overall performance and lost productivity.

 

Tools are wonderful as long as they are not being used to replace a process.

 

It is a competitive, changing business landscape.

As a CEO or hiring manager, are you taking the lead role to acquire your critical talent?

Do you implement a hiring process or are you relying simply on tools?

Are you investing the time today to get it right or are will you be spending unproductive time later to correct a hiring failure that was the result of a point and click effort?

 

What type of CHANGE are you embracing?

 

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About Boxwood Strategies

Bert Sadtler is the President of Boxwood Strategies and is a thought-leader for best practices recruiting, performance-based compensation and the shift in the changing paradigm toward acquiring critical senior level talent.

 

Boxwood Strategies is a management, consulting and recruiting firm located in the National Capital region. As   a dedicated, consulting resource to CEO’s and hiring managers, Boxwood develops   strategies for organizational growth through a focus on performance, as well as the evaluation and acquisition of critical talent.

To help companies meet numerous business challenges, Bert has co-founded the Alliance of Independent Managers, a group of diverse and accomplished senior-level professionals who are available to companies on a consultative and project basis. The focus of this group is to take “AIM” at a company’s challenges and opportunities, clearly defining it’s challenges, and deliver cost-effective solutions by using experienced, professional consultants instead of hiring full time employees. Market     sectors include: SATCOM, Space, Government Contracting, Communications and Technology.

 

Bert can be reached at: [email protected] and at BoxwoodSearch.com