For a business, particularly a flourishing one, finding and recruiting the right talent is an arduous yet vital task for the HR and talent acquisition team. Simply put, talent management is all about placing the right talent with the right skills in the right place and at the right time.
With the competition to recruit and retain top performing employees booming, talent management is something that has gripped HR leaders and managers all over the globe. With the fierce and volatile business ecosystem of today, it’s never been more crucial to evolve your talent management techniques and practices to meet the demand of recruiting and retaining the best of the best.
This article expounds on three modern talent management hacks you must know to stay ahead of the competition.
1) Better Applicant Tracking
I cringe when I see an organization recruiting online and the job-posting takes me to a PDF file to print and email. Not only do you send the message to potential applicants that your company is behind the curve in technology, but you are making life terribly difficult for your HR professionals. Trust me, I talk to them all day… they sigh with exasperation at all the time wasted making multiple job postings, printing, collating and reviewing applications and then trying to keep track of those mounds of paper associated with each candidate record. Do the HR Manager a solid and invest in a decent applicant tracking system. It doesn’t have to be expensive… they are scalable to your needs.
2) Use “Smart” Technology Assessments
The first “no-brainer” is you should be using behavioral assessments that are validated for selection to help you hire better performing employees. But don’t just use any old assessment. You need one that tells you how candidates think, what behavioral preferences they will exhibit on the job and what they are passionate about. Not many assessments combine the ability to assess a candidate’s cognitive abilities along with behaviors and interests. It’s really too bad, because studies have shown that the single most effective way to predict success on the job is matching cognitive ability to job requirements. The next greatest predictor of success – behaviors most closely associated with job fit. So make sure to find an assessment that evaluates these two important factors, and find one that uses adaptive testing. The difference between a good pre-employment assessment and a GREAT one – the great ones use adaptive technology to maximize scoring precision and minimize test time. With adaptive assessments, like the PXT Select, you won’t find an answer key online like you may see with more conventional assessments tools. Because the assessment adapts to the responses of the candidate and pulls from a broad question pool, the experience for each candidate is different while still determining the essential information you need to know to make better hiring decisions.
3) Turn the Tables on Interviewing
You have less than an hour to uncover everything you need to know about someone you are going to bring into your work family. Someone who will represent your organization to customers… someone you will trust to work well with others, align themselves with your mission and give their all, every day to help achieve it. This is one important conversation! To make it successful, you must be able to discern the attributes of that individual. You have to ask deep level questions… not the typical “Tell me your greatest strength and your greatest weakness.” Please… how many times have you had a candidate try to sell you on their “perfectionist” or “workaholic” weaknesses?
There is hope for elevating yourself out of interview hell… First, ask behavioral questions. Put candidates in scenarios where they must imagine themselves in a situation and describe how they problem-solve. Look for candidates who go beyond giving simple answers and provide the thinking and reasoning behind their actions. To get the best results in this process, ask well informed behavioral questions that are very specific to each candidate. You need questions that will expose their individual strengths and challenge areas for closer examination. Pulling out their relevant attributes is next to impossible unless you have help. You need a behavioral assessment (Like PXT Select) that recommends a list of very direct questions based on job-matching criteria.
It is too important to leave to simple impressions. The more you know, the better you interview… the better you hire!
