Recruitment Planning as Business Strategy

We have seen the growth of small corporate into big corporations in the last two decades. E.g. Reliance, HCL, Dabur, Sunpharma, Piramal Group, new economy Companies like Infosys, Polaris, Mastek. These corporation are having smart recruitment strategies. They are also Reinventing In New People Management. In order to cope with the post liberalization competition Indian corporations are thinking recruitment as Prime Business Strategy for achieving High Business Goals.

As, Chairman Pepsi tells “We hire managers with a winners mind set and a passion for create dramatic change”.

Also Soft drink giant's  ED-HR says  “We hire people who are capable of growing the business rather than just growing with the business”.

Now the question is what should be Recruitment Challenges in the new people management. It can be detailed as under :

1. Indian corporation have to attract people with Multi Dimensional, Multi Cultural experiences and skills. We have seen the Indian corporations attracting talent those are having cross cultural multi dimension skills e.g. HUL, Reliance, AV Birla Group, Multi National Corporations : Coke, Pespi, P&G, Enron.
2. Have to induct out siders who are having new perspective to lead the company. Those are having vision, can drive the company in the right direction.
3. Infusing fresh blood in the organisation. We have seen lot of corporations are recruitmenting certain age of people for achieving higher corporate goals. Through premier institutes.
4. Development of new corporate culture which can attract people.
5. Locate new people those who can be fitted in to company values.
6. Devising methodologies for assessing psychological traits.
7. Have to find unconventional methods of talent.
8. Have to search for globally.
9. Designing entry compensation on quality.
10. Best CEO Recruitment.

Now the question is how to manage Recruitment Planning. Recruitment Planning can be managed with the following steps :

1. Preparation of man power resource planning based on job analysis / Feedback.
2. Preparation of specification of people task.
3. Develop employee profile.
4. Select Recruitment Methods.

Techniques :

Internal : Advertisement, Screening, Assessment, Challenging Job Assignment to high fliers, Abilities & Skills, Assessment of results, Satisfactory – Yes / No.

External : Campus, Interaction with the Institute, Preplacement talks, Training of Interviewee, Screening, Shortlisting of candidates.

Through in house : Screening, Invitation, Testing through Search firm, Appropriate Test, Results, Assessment with supporting data, satisfactory – give an offer.

Through search firms : Thomas profiling, Provide them clearly outline employee profile, Screening Selection.

CEO Recruitment : Prepare details CEO Profile, Search leadership skills, Outsourcing, Hiring through executive search firm, Hire change agent.

e.g. of India’s Best Hiring Company 1. HUL, Reliance, Infosys, Satyam, Dabur, TATA Group,

Five Secrets of Great Innovators

First came the iPod. Then came the iPhone. With the unveiling of the iPad last week, one might argue Apple CEO Steve Jobs officially cemented his place in history as one of the world's greatest innovators.

We all might wish we had Jobs' creativity and business savvy. The good news is, the ability to innovate is a learnable skill - at least according to three researchers from INSEAD, Brigham Young and Harvard. In their new study, they find that the most innovative leaders possess five key "discovery skills" that distinguish them from their less creative colleagues:

1. Associating, which is the ability to connect seemingly unrelated questions, problems or ideas from different fields.

2. Questioning, which means constantly asking "Why?" "Why not?" and "What if?" as well as always keeping an open mind.

3. Observing, which is scrutinizing the marketplace and common business phenomena, including behavior of potential customers.

4. Experimenting, which involves rigorous testing of new ideas via prototypes and pilots.

5. Networking, which means making a conscious effort to speak with and visit others to expand one's own knowledge base.

The researchers, who surveyed nearly 3,500 executives over the course of six years, also found that the most innovative individuals spend 50 percent more time on these activities than those with no track record for innovation.

"Finding innovative skills at the C-level is not only critical to generating new ideas for disruptive businesses, services, products and processes, but equally valuable to soliciting and valuing others' great ideas," said Hal Gregersen, affiliate professor of leadership at INSEAD and one of the authors of the study. "Without C-level executives who are comfortable at innovating themselves, it's far less likely they will honestly value innovation in their senior team - or throughout their organization, for that matter."

Of course, there are challenges to developing the five critical skills identified by Gregersen and his fellow researchers. First and foremost, most organizations don't place a high value on discovery skills, Gregersen said.

"We live in a world that often gives lip service to discovery skills, but rarely backs up the rhetoric with rewards," he said. "Almost every 4-year-old sees himself as creative, while less than 10 percent of adults would say the same."

Additionally, many leaders make the mistake of expecting big, immediate returns on innovation investments, Gregersen said.

"Be prepared to engage in actions with no immediate return to the company. Acting innovatively rarely delivers immediate big impact results," he said. "Rather, everyday acts of innovation help C-level executives lay the foundation so that when the world demands of innovative ideas or solutions, they are prepared to deliver."

That said, there are steps learning leaders can take to help executives overcome these challenges and become more innovative. The first is simply a restatement of the old adage "practice makes perfect."

"With consistent effort, we're convinced that anyone can improve their creativity skills," Gregersen said. "Spend at least 15 minutes a day building the skills. Over time, insight capacity increases and new ideas flourish.

"These are the skills that any 4-year-old is quite accomplished at: always asking questions, watching the world around them carefully, experimenting with every sense and talking to just about anybody about anything," Gregersen continued. "Some very straightforward learning tasks done on a daily basis can deliver marked improvements in a short amount of time."

Learning leaders also should engage executives in 360-degree feedback conversations to increase not only their own creative thinking, but that of others as well.

"We worked with one C-level team where an executive was superb at innovating but abysmal at encouraging others," Gregersen explained. "We have found 360 feedback around these skills especially powerful for not only innovating better as an individual executive, but creating an environment where others can do the same."

[About the Author: Agatha Gilmore is a senior editor for Chief Learning Officer magazine.]

Compiled by; Hemant Gade
Hemant@JobsEnsure.com
http://www.jobsensure.com

Lean Means More Green in HR

While the recession hit many companies hard, the best performers came out of it stronger not because they spent more money, but due partly to more efficient and effective HR practices.

According to the "HR Book of Numbers," an annual analysis of HR practices compiled by advisory and consulting firm The Hackett Group, high-performing companies are more efficient with their money, spending 30 percent less than their peers on HR. They are also more effective, with practices correlated to 15 percent higher earnings, 22 percent higher net profit, 12 percent higher return on assets and 51 percent higher return on equity.

"Anybody can become cheaper and anybody can just keep throwing money at a problem," said Harry Osle, global HR practice leader for The Hackett Group."But the balance of the two - driving efficiency while still driving value - that's what we consider world class."

The "HR Book of Numbers" analyzes and compares approximately 200 HR organizations on efficiency drivers such as cycle time, cost, productivity and technology usage, as well as effectiveness measures, including measures of staffing service, workforce development, organizational effectiveness and strategic workforce planning.

From 2004 to 2008, top performers - defined by Hackett as the top 25 percent on both efficiency and effectiveness measures - performed similarly to their peer group. That changed when the recession hit. Top performers were able to make smarter decisions under pressure and began to outpace peers, Osle said.

"World-class organizations have better service delivery models," he said. "They're more disciplined. They have greater focus. They also enable and leverage technology a lot better. That allow[ed] them to become much more nimble and flexible and turn on a dime when the recession hit."

Lagging HR organizations made just as many decisions as top performers during the recession, but saw an uptick in cost. They simply weren't as nimble or well informed to make the right decisions, Osle said.

The difference is top performing organizations have a disciplined approach for activities such as benefit management and other transactional processes. Instead of having three different options to get an answer to an HR-related question, they have a tiered, repeatable approach.

"The world-class companies are more disciplined and [are] enabling technology first and then having a peer system or shared services environment as only a second option," he said. "The peer group[s] typically have two or three options for employees to go to, thinking that they're driving greater value. What they're actually driving is greater cost."

That efficiency enables greater effectiveness at higher-level talent management processes. For many HR organizations, performance management and succession planning are a check-the-box activity, but top performers have a more meaningful approach.

"If you lift the covers off these companies ... they have very defined and detailed competencies, very defined and detailed job descriptions, very defined and detailed roles and responsibilities with proficiency levels mapped out for their organization," Osle said.

To become more efficient and effective, Osle recommended benchmarking against other organizations to understand the existing gaps and weaknesses and then prioritizing where to invest.

"It's almost like building a house," he said. "You want to look at the foundational elements first and then drive to the greater value activities. Organizations tend to want to go to the apex of the pyramid. It's a false way of driving a sustainable model."

It's important to prioritize, but focus on being efficient in transactional HR processes and building foundational elements such as competency development and performance management, Osle said. That level of detail drives better performance in succession planning, strategic workforce planning and recruitment.

"It's about understanding what are the right roles that we want for the function, what are the right jobs for those roles, what are the right competencies for those jobs, what are the right skills needed for those competencies and what sort of proficiency levels should people be delivering on," he said.

While money is important, higher levels of investment won't guarantee results.

"If you want a sustainable talent management program ... that's actually going to drive value for the organization over a period of time, you need to do the hard work."

[About the Author: Mike Prokopeak is editorial director for Talent Management magazine.]



Compiled by; Hemant Gade
Hemant@JobsEnsure.com
http://www.jobsensure.com

HR Technology: A Cost-Effective Business Solution

To sum up the past decade of HR technology, talent platforms have evolved from tackling such procedures as applicant tracking and on-boarding to now being able to automate an organization' s every HR process.

These talent platforms' capabilities have expanded to not only include pre-hire functions, like CRM and resume parsing, but to also streamline post-hire functions, such as employee performance management, succession planning and off-boarding. Provided an organization chooses a platform that best fits its business needs, this will undoubtedly make the HR staff's lives easier.

But during a time when most companies are experiencing little to no hiring and are under stringent budgetary restraints, does avoiding an HR headache justify a sizable investment in a talent platform? As more and more organizations are making investments in HR technology, the answer seems to be a resounding yes. The immediate and long-term cost-effectiveness of HR technology - important during stable times - becomes absolutely crucial during a downturn, and numbers are showing that senior-level talent executives at organizations of all sizes, in all locations and in all industries are realizing this.

How can an organization immediately cut costs by using a talent platform? Right off the bat, organizations of all sizes save money by using a talent platform's job posting and applicant tracking tools, which eliminate the costs spent on tools and technologies to communicate with passive and active candidates. That means no more costly mass mailings, reminders and tracking job statuses. By taking the plunge into talent acquisition of the 21st century and carrying out a completely paperless recruiting and on-boarding process, the cost of paper products is eliminated.

The immediate cost efficiencies of a talent platform continue to add up, while additional long-term savings emerge as well. Many talent platform vendors have competitive job posting packages, thereby eliminating the cost of posting jobs each month and also doing away with staffing and consulting agency fees every year. Because everything is automated and searchable, it's easier and cheaper (e.g., free) to report on such key metrics as EEO and OFCCP compliance.

Meanwhile, the unemployment rate is at a 26-year high of more than 9 percent. Many HR departments are being cut in size because of budget reductions, leaving fewer people with the overwhelming task of managing a massive influx of candidates per each job opening. A talent platform eliminates the hours of manual labor and data entry associated with this, allowing a small team to accomplish the same, if not a greater, amount of work. Being able to maintain the same level of productivity and efficiency while employing a smaller number of employees not only presents long-term cost value, but is an especially vital advantage in today's economy.

Taking a step back to look at the results of implementing a talent platform, organizations not only see decreased cost per hire but also reduced time to hire, all of which give organizations a greater return on investment to impact the bottom line. HR technology is always a worthwhile business practice for organizations, but when budgets are being scrutinized and expenses need to be reduced in every way possible, the immediate and long-term savings seen from the implementation of a talent platform more than justify its implementation.


[About the Author: Caitrin O'Sullivan is the public relations coordinator at iCIMS, the third-largest provider of talent acquisition solutions and an Inc. 500 honoree focused on solving corporate business issues.]
Compiled by; Hemant Gade
Hemant@JobsEnsure.com
http://www.jobsensure.com

Are You Missing Key Capabilities When Assessing Talent ?

Many companies today have adopted Session C, GE's rigorous performance management process that includes a "nine block" for ranking employee performance and a "bottom 10" for getting rid of talent that fell in the bottom 10 percent of the nine block.

What may be missing from this equation is a talent strategy called "4D" - which was developed by NexGen Advisors and includes four dimensions - that is critical to the future of any business and talent management process.

Implementing the following steps can help a company identify not only employees who will be future leaders, but also employees who may not be future leaders but are nonetheless integral to driving growth and allowing the business to operate efficiently.

High potentials and these employees are very different, so managers should think twice before using a standard nine block that may not give them the full picture of the company's human capital strengths and weaknesses.

1. Performance:
This piece of the equation is usually weighted the most and has the most focus. It is simply: How did the employee perform against goals and objectives? It's rather straightforward and represents the "current" state of an employee's performance. The key here is to see consistent performance year over year.

2. Promotability:
The "future" aspect of the equation is the promotability factor. If the employee has consistent performance year over year and exhibits the competencies the company has identified as critical to the business, then the employee has a high chance of being promoted or moving up the career path. A big mistake companies make is to only have one career path, which leads to managing people. Companies must have a career path for experts (technical, scientific, engineering, etc.) in order to have a promotability factor that does not include managing people. Not all employees are good at managing, but they may be highly proficient at their discipline.

3. Growth:
In today's economy, one of the most important skill sets is the ability to grow a business. As revenues plummet and margins compress, companies need to look at ways to grow the top line. Whether operationally, by reducing costs to increase profit, through innovation of products and services or through expanding in new markets and regions, growth is the name of the game. Companies that excel at this will ultimately win over competitors.

4. Risk:
The other side of the equation is risk. Most people are aware of how crucial it is to assess financial risk when managing a company, but how many understand it's a crucial ingredient when assessing talent? Another factor to consider is the loss of legacy knowledge when long-tenured employees are laid off. Unless a company has a knowledge management database, they lose this valuable knowledge forever, which in turn can hurt productivity and business continuity. It's often easy to understand the impact to a business when it loses a strong leader, but the risk of losing a plant manager can also have a similar impact.

Compiled by; Hemant Gade
Hemant@JobsEnsure.com
http://www.jobsensure.com

[About the Author: Carla Zilka is the founder and principal advisor of NexGen Advisors LLC, an advisory firm specializing in business restructuring, talent management, organizational efficiency and business process improvement. She was a former vice president of HR at GE.]

Background Screening: A Crucial Step When Hiring Talent

Background screening every single candidate is not cost-effective, yet maintaining a safe work environment is critical. There are a number of ways to verify an employee's identity before he or she comes on board so as to ensure a no-surprises approach to hiring and on-boarding talent.

The term "identity theft" conjures up images of hackers stealing credits cards for online purchases or scenes from "The Bourne Identity." In the workplace, however, a more common scenario is when someone uses someone else's name and Social Security number to land a job in the United States. Oftentimes, it is an illegal immigrant seeking legitimate employment - a paycheck and benefits - who cannot apply for a SSN firsthand. In fact, experts suggest that almost 75 percent of illegal aliens are using fraudulent Social Security cards to obtain employment.

One of the biggest issues employers must tackle when recruiting new talent is to verify the individual's identity and authorization to work; however, this cannot be done until an employee is actually hired.

Many companies with high-volume hiring requirements are considering proactive measures to make sure employees are really who they say they are.

An action that can be easily implemented pre-hire is asking a series of knockout questions during the application process, such as, "Do you have a driver's license?" In this way, applicants can be sorted into those who do and those who don't. Additionally, letting applicants know during the interview process that any job offer is predicted on the successful completion of a background check, drug screening and identification verification will help filter out those applicants who know they cannot successfully pass these.

Post-hire, employers can ensure that their staff members are legal by using a combination of the federal government's E-Verify system and the Social Security Number Verification System. Other companies offer services to verify identity against public databases and provide a detailed report. For example, the person with real estate holdings in multiple states is unlikely to be applying for work in a poultry processing plant.

Being audited by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement means lost productivity and brand damage. Employers who knowingly hire or knowingly continue to employ unauthorized workers face civil penalties from $250 to $11,000 per violation. Even in high-volume, minimum-wage hiring situations, some employers have chosen to put pre-hire assessment testing in place. In addition to interview knockout questions, these pre-hire assessment tests require candidates to be consistent in their responses to behavioral and skills-related questions. Some tests are designed to help determine who is truthful as well as what their tendencies will be once they're hired into the job. Even in high turnover situations, a penny spent on pre-hire assessments can help significantly lower costs over the long term.

There's another significant aspect of identity verification employers ought to consider. Hiring is on the increase, but the supply of candidates still outweighs the demand. With no additional recruiters or HR staff to help qualify the plethora of candidates, employers can consider instituting a "rehire eligibility check" as part of the pre-hire qualification process. Not all former employees are qualified candidates for positions in other employer locations. This approach can be particularly helpful in preventing someone fired for stealing at one location from being hired at another. These checks are especially meaningful in industries such as staffing, retail and restaurants.

Identity theft cannot be dismissed or ignored when it comes to hiring. Whether the illegal employment is intentional or merely due to an oversight or lack of knowledge, the employer bears the burden of the fines, and the person whose identity has been compromised may be subject to years of red tape to undo the damage. Rather than risk compromising their companies' reputation, employers should consider reliable employee verification checks to remove uncertainty in the recruiting process and have the protection and assurance that the candidates they hire really are who they say they are.

Compiled by ; Hemant Gade
Hemant@JobsEnsure.com
http://www.jobsensure.com

The Right Kind of Retention

Money is often seen as the most motivating factor for employee engagement, but it can lead to employees working for incentives instead of focusing on good work. Instead, employers must focus on intrinsic rewards -- meaningfulness, choice, competence and progress -- to keep employees engaged.

Given the cost of employee onboarding, HR and top management concern over retention is certainly justified.

However, those who fixate on retention itself may be missing the point - all retention is not necessarily equal. If, for example, employees remain primarily because they feel they have no other options or they're afraid of losing benefits, it's logical to assume they aren't giving their full talent and energy to the work.

Conversely, if they stay put because they enjoy or believe in their work - or are, in other words, engaged in their work - you may reasonably expect higher quality/productivit y. Engagement, therefore, should be a chief concern in any retention plan.

What fuels engagement? In our research for the Work Engagement profile - an instrument designed to measure the level of individual employee engagement and provide insight into how it can be improved - we found that, while salary, benefits and other extrinsic rewards are doubtless a factor, there is a more powerful indicator - intrinsic motivation.

When employees are intrinsically motivated, they derive energy and satisfaction from doing work that matters and doing it well, and tend to excel. What are some of the intrinsic rewards that fuel engagement? And how can organizations employ these in a way that, not only reduces turnover, but enables employees to connect meaningfully with their work? Those answers will allow companies to achieve the right kind of retention.

Defining Work Engagement

The engaged employee is committed to the purposes that underlie his or her job and self-manages in pursuit of accomplishment. Research shows that today's work requires considerably more judgment than in the past, including adapting to customer needs, solving problems and innovatively achieving organizational purposes.

However, the level of employee engagement is not keeping up with the growing need for it. The 2008 study The State of Employee Engagement by BlessingWhite found that only 29 percent of North American workers were fully engaged.

How can organizations fuel true engagement? Money - viewed by many as the end-all-and- be-all of motivators - does not have quite the impact on engagement you might expect. In fact, when employees are motivated only by incentive systems, they tend to care more about the rewards than doing good work, focus solely on rewarded activities, perform only "well enough" to get rewarded and often try to game the system.

Employees, it turns out, are not in it simply for the pay. Sure, they need the money, but once on the job, they also need to feel that their work makes a positive difference. They make ongoing judgments concerning their contributions which, when positive, produce strong, energizing intrinsic (psychological) rewards that fuel a high level of work engagement.

When the judgments are moderate, they become only somewhat engaged, putting in a "fair day's work." When the judgments are negative, in contrast, they become increasingly disengaged and cynical about work and begin to resent the effort they put into it.

In the Work Engagement Profile we identify four key intrinsic rewards based on the judgments employees make about their contributions:

1. Sense of Meaningfulness
You feel that you have an opportunity to accomplish something of real value that matters in the larger scheme of things. You feel that you are on a path that is worth your time and
energy, and have a strong sense of purpose and direction.

2. Sense of Choice
You feel free to choose how to accomplish your work - to use your best judgment to select work activities that make sense and perform them in ways that seem appropriate. So you feel an ownership of your work, believe in the approach you are taking and feel responsible for making it count.

3. Sense of Competence
You feel a sense of satisfaction, pride, or even artistry in how well you perform your work activities - that you are doing good, high-quality work.

4. Sense of Progress
You are encouraged and feel that your work is on track and moving you toward accomplishing your purpose. You see convincing signs that things are working out, giving you confidence in your choices and in the future.

Our research indicates that these intrinsic rewards have widespread and powerful effects, and are strong predictors of the kind of retention that truly benefits the organization. They are a healthy and sustainable source of employee motivation, leading to more positive - and fewer negative - feelings on the job, higher job satisfaction, fewer stress symptoms and a feeling of professional accomplishment.

Employees with high intrinsic reward levels show more work concentration and innovation, are rated as more effective, and become informal recruiters and marketers for their organization.

Creating a Culture of Engagement

You can create a culture of engagement by making it clear that your organization stands for quality, meaningful work. Keep people's attention focused on the elements of employee contribution, constantly asking:

a) What can we do that is meaningful?
b) What creative choices can we make to accomplish our purpose?
c) How can we improve our competency?
d) How can we ensure we are making progress toward our purpose?

Here are some additional guidelines for building a culture of engagement:

1. Engage the "middle."
It is tempting to divide your time between the "go-to," highly engaged employees and the disengaged ones who need the most oversight. But success depends largely on engaging the sizable group of "somewhat engaged" employees in the middle. Bringing these folks into the "highly engaged" category will create a strong majority of engaged people and a culture of engagement.

2. Regularly take stock of the four intrinsic rewards.
We designed the Work Engagement Profile for this purpose, but individual leaders can also get a rough sense of the level of each reward through ongoing conversations with their employees. Feedback from those in the engagement middle-ground is particularly useful. This ongoing assessment provides vital diagnostic information, revealing areas of reward that need attention.

3. Provide missing building blocks for any intrinsic rewards that are low.
Each intrinsic reward requires its own, unique enabling conditions, or "building blocks," which we identify as:

Meaningfulness:

a) A non-cynical climate: freedom to care deeply
b) Clearly identified passions: insight into what one cares deeply about
c) An exciting vision: a vivid picture of what can be accomplished
d) Relevant task purposes: a connection between one's work and the vision
e) Whole tasks: responsibility for an identifiable product or service

Choice:

a) Delegated authority: the right to make decisions
b) Trust: confidence in an individual's self-management
c) Security: no fear of punishment for experimenting or honest mistakes
d) A clear purpose: an understanding of what one is trying to accomplish
e) Information: access to relevant facts and sources

Competence:

a) Knowledge: an adequate store of insights from education and experience
b) Positive feedback: information on what is working
c) Skill recognition: due credit for one's successes
d) Challenge: demanding tasks that fit one's abilities
e) High, non-comparative standards: demanding standards that don't force rankings

Progress:

a) A collaborative climate: co-workers who help each other succeed
b) Milestones: reference points to mark stages of accomplishment
c) Celebrations: occasions to share enjoyment of milestones
d) Access to customers: interactions with the beneficiaries of one's work
e) Measurement of improvement: a way to see if performance gets better

4. Share credible evidence of meaningfulness, choice, competence and progress.
Engaging leaders keep their people energized through such practices as sharing appreciative customer-feedback customers, reminding people how much they've accomplished, telling stories about innovative solutions, drawing attention to special accomplishments and celebrating important milestones.

5. Build intrinsic motivation and engagement into leadership training programs.
Finally, provide supervisors and managers with an understanding of the importance of intrinsic rewards and worker engagement.

Managers and professionals, though quick to recognize the importance of these rewards in their own engagement, are often surprised to realize that they are equally important to employees at all levels. Give them the tools to engage their direct reports, so that they can help you achieve the right kind of retention for your organization.

-Kenneth W. Thomas

[About the Author: Ken Thomas is perhaps best known as co-author of the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument, which has sold over 6 million copies. His new instrument, the Work Engagement Profile (with Walter Tymon, Villanova University), published by CCP, Inc., provides a means of gauging the level of intrinsic motivation within an organization or individual, and tools for using the four intrinsic rewards to increase work engagement. Ken is also author of Intrinsic Motivation at Work: What Really Drives Employee Engagement, co-published by Berrett-Koehler and ASTD.]



Compiled by ; Hemant Gade
Hemant@JobsEnsure.com
http://www.jobsensure.com