It's not about hiring alone. It's about engagement!
Peter Capelli’s article in the Harvard Business Review about the state of modern hiring, “Your Approach to Hiring is All Wrong” spurred much conversation in the hiring space. It’s one of those pieces that gets constantly shared and reshared and we find ourselves thinking about it periodically when the latest recruiting trends show up on TikTok or LinkedIn.
It’s worth a read if you haven’t already, but here's the TL;DR: hiring has gotten harder and has become more expensive and slower. But there's an undercurrent to the article we think gets overlooked, and it's about engagement.
In the rush to solve the cost and speed problems, organizations have basically lost sight of the goal of getting the very best hires. A slew of so-called solutions arrived, and hiring practices changed dramatically and rarely for the better. It is also hard to track the success of these new hiring practices, and worse, most organizations aren’t even trying. As the article states, “It’s impossible to get better at hiring if you can’t tell whether the candidates you select become good employees.” We think that most of the flaws in the current system can be summed up as a lack of engagement.
But that's not all.
A smaller funnel of better candidates is far superior to cramming a funnel with poor candidates. It seems obvious. This is one metric that is easy to measure, yet doesn’t result in better hires. Recruiters should be looking for ways to engage meaningfully with potential candidates, to find out who will be a good fit.
HR departments have been asked to do more with less for too long. In exchange for fewer headcount, they’ve been given inadequate tools to face the new hiring challenges. In the rush for more candidates, HR professionals have let true engagement efforts slide, because it has traditionally been more time- and effort-intensive and there hasn’t been a good way to improve or track engagement on a large scale.
Candidates are more than keywords, and recruiters need better data and more authentic connections with them. The same holds true for employees. HR needs better ways to build relationships and connections with their employees if they are going to retain them.
Retention matters more than ever. Finding out if an employee is engaged and satisfied at work is the first step in retaining them. The author tells us to reconsider the focus on retention, but then doesn’t explore it. Instead of waiting for a good employee to give notice, why not ask what they want at their current job? This is a missed opportunity. If career advancement is the reason they are looking elsewhere for employment, shouldn't employers prioritize advancement opportunities instead of having to worry about backfilling? What tools are they using to keep employees engaged? How are they measuring it? By the time you find out they’re interviewing elsewhere, it’s often too late.
Yes, active and passive candidates are different. For the most part recruiters don't have enough data to know what motivates candidates - active or passive - and the recruiting practices pendulum swings wildly based on current trends. But we shouldn't engage with candidates the same way en masse - they are individuals with unique needs, interests, and requirements - and a recruiter who understands this and who capitalizes on it will place people more successfully.
The proliferation of less than effective tech tools. The deluge of tech tools, from machine learning to platforms of dubious quality can overwhelm recruiters and become counterproductive. The author has a healthy skepticism here. But we think he’s glossing over the fact that the right tools, not only built to adapt, but built to meet the recruiter’s new needs, can make a difference.
This is such a great conversation for recruiters to have - and one we’re engaged in. The challenges they faced in 2019 (when this article was written) have changed again. It’s not just that hiring practices have changed - the expectations and priorities of the current workforce have changed drastically since the pandemic. Recruiters and their organizations need to do what they have always done: adapt. That starts with finding the very best hires for the organization, as quickly and as cost-effectively as possible, and retaining them. Solving today’s hiring challenges requires stepping up the engagement game at all levels. To do this, employers need to find out more about their candidates and employees, and what drives them. This is the work that inspires us.
We want to hear from you. What are your thoughts on the hiring model? Is your employer doing it right? What is on your wishlist to change? Let us know in the comments.