Recruitment & Selection - August 2006

We are living at a time when skill shortages are becoming a problem in most places in the world. It seems that every newspaper or journal has an article about recruitment, retention or skill shortages.

There are a lot of figures in every area of the world to show that the issue is a major problem. A recent report from KPMG stated that over 60% of employers in London are facing skills shortages and at the same time an estimate was showing that the average cost of filling a vacancy is £4,800.

In the USA I was given some statistics showing that 40% of the workforce in US will be of retirement age by 2010 and a fifth of large US companies will loose at least 40% of their top talent as executives reach retirement age.

Further statistics show that 68% of people blamed poor selection and promotions as the cause of lower productivity and 66% said it resulted in lower productivity. In UK four out of five employees surveyed said they do not feel ‘engaged' in their work and this could equate to £46 billion in lost productivity and working days!

At two management conferences I have attended in the last quarter, the main subject to the management team has been, how to deal with skill shortages, recruitment and retention.

All this is happening against a backdrop of an emerging attitude from the new generation that has a different attitude to work and their careers. Two trends that have come out in the last year point to the average university student having 3 to 5 careers in their working life and changing jobs every 2 to 5 years!

So what is needed is a different way of looking at the problem or retention and certainly recruitment will need to change significantly.

Over the next year we will revisit the issue of retention, recruitment and the development of people as I research this in more detail. For this month in my Thoughts on Leadership, I am asking you what you are doing as an organisation to deal with these issues?

Is it left to HR to deal with or, is it something that the Board is taking an active interest in? Do you have a ‘Strategy' for recruitment? I don't mean an approach, but a strategy as to how you plan to deal with the recruitment of people over the next 3 to 5 years.

The recruitment strategy should be aligned to the business plan and come out of the business plan.

Over recent years we have heard the expression, ‘recruit for attitude and train for skills'. Yet I find that most organisations do not take this approach. Worse, I find that organisations think they have to pick from the applicants they receive instead of looking to find the right person.

The most progressive organisations I have come across are so clear about the attitude they need that they are even working with recruitment agencies (and even schools) to help develop people that are ‘employable' in the future.

If you download the audio or video version of this months Thoughts on Leadership, you will get some ideas that may help you in your thinking about recruitment. In the meantime I ask you to think about the following questions:

• Do you and your organisation have a clear strategy to recruitment?
• Is recruitment seen as an investment in your business or as a necessary job that detracts from the day-to-day business?
• How are you measuring your current recruitment process?
• Do you recognise when it works well and learn from when it doesn't?
• Are your management fully engaged in the process?
• How good is your induction process to compliment the recruitment? Is induction seen as an investment in the business or another process that needs to be completed?
• Do you rigorously monitor the person to make sure that they are having the right impact on your organisation or do you leave it until it is too late and then you have to deal with the person through disciplinary?

Thanks again to all of you who have sent me an email with your thoughts and comments. Please listen to the audio or video version of Thoughts on Leadership and get the added value of what comes out of that format.

A special thank you to all of you who answered my questions last month. That has been very helpful in some research we are doing at the moment and of course I will share that with you when it is completed. If any of you would like to participate in the research by answering the questions, then contact me on

Have a great month and I hope you remain profitably busy.

Best Wishes

Paul

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