Your
First Task As A Recruiter: Recruit Senior Management
Onto Your Team
by David Lee
Originally Published by ERExchange.com
If your job is to recruit the best
employees possible, here’s what should be at the top of your “To Do” list: recruit
senior management onto your team. You can increase your efficacy – and your
value to your organization – by helping them recognize that the responsibility
for recruiting talent doesn’t lie in the recruiting department.
Recruiting talent is everybody’s job and
should be on everybody’s mind. Recruiting is everybody’s responsibility because
every person, every decision, and every action influences whether your
organization is a Talent Magnet or a Talent Repellent.
Any management team serious about their
organization being a Talent Magnet should think about how they, and their
actions, influence their Employer Brand, and then heed the advice of Starbucks’
Chief Coffee Buyer, Dave Olsen. Mr.
Olsen was asked by Scott Bedbury, author of A New
Brand World: Eight Principles for Achieving Brand Leadership in the 21st
Century, about the secret to Starbucks’ powerhouse brand. What was the key to Starbucks’ ability to
get people to come through the door again and again.
Was it their unique blends, their happening ambience, their hip baristas?
After thoughtfully considering all the
variables, Olsen responded with two words that should be engraved on every
manager’s consciousness: “Everything
matters.”
Everything matters when it comes to your
Employer Brand. Everything matters when it comes to your ability to recruit –
and more importantly, to attract – the best employees. Every interaction your
organization has with your customers and the marketplace, every interaction
your managers have with your employees, every operational process and employee
policy matters. Each moment of truth shapes how your Employer Brand is
perceived in the labor market.
Just as importantly, every moment of truth
influences whether your recruiting efforts are limited to your recruiting
department, or whether your whole workforce engages in recruiting. Research
shows that the best source of quality applicants comes from an organization’s
employees – or more accurately, from happy employees. If you don’t have
happy employees who are proud of their employer, don’t expect a stampede of
employee referrals. If you do have happy employees, you’re in the enviable
position of Don Kemper, CEO of Healthwise, a
If you can’t say the same thing, you’re
like most organizations: your recruiting engine is firing on only one cylinder.
When you compare what the majority of people say about their previous employers
with what comes out of Healthwise’s “volunteer PR
firm” – its workers – you see why Everything Matters.
To unleash the recruiting power of your
workforce, you need to have an organization that inspires loyalty, passion, and
pride. To have this kind of an organization requires a unified effort with
everybody recognizing that Everything Matters. It
means that everybody understands that every policy, every process, every
interaction, every decision matters.
Whether deciding on how much to involve employees in a new initiative,
communicating to employees about new developments, or simply following up on an
employee’s request, managers should examine every decision, action, and process
through the lens of “How will this affect our Employer Brand?”
To begin this exploration, here are four
questions for your senior management team:
Does Your Reputation In The Marketplace
Warrant Pride?
Your reputation in the marketplace, your
corporate brand, affects your ability to attract talent. Employees want to feel
proud of their employer, to believe that they are part of an organization that
produces world class products or delivers world class service. Thus, managers
who oversee your organization’s interface with the marketplace would be wise to
scrutinize every marketing, public relations, and customer service process and
ask:
· “How does the way we do this affect our Employer
Brand, our appeal in the labor market?”
· “Does this process inspire pride in our
workforce (and therefore their ability to speak highly of us)?”
When considering a change in these areas,
an important part of the conversation should be how the change will affect your
Employer Brand. For instance, if you make a change in your customer service
process or policy that is less customer-centric, expect a diminution in
employee pride and corresponding decrease in employee generated positive PR and
referrals.
Does The Way You Run Your Organization
Warrant Pride?
Facilitating employee focus groups over
the years has taught me one thing above all else: employees notice everything.
Ineffective processes, poorly thought out decisions, nonsensical rules – they
notice it all. These observations form the basis for some pretty unflattering
assessments of management’s ability to run the organization. These assessments,
in turn, profoundly affect not only employee morale and loyalty, but also what
they say to others about their employer. Because management is usually unaware
of these unspoken observations and judgments, they don’t see how they are
contributing to a weak or weakening Employer Brand. To prevent this from continuing, senior management
would be wise to examine all organizational processes and ask:
·
“Does the way we do this
process reflect a well run operation, or a fly-by the-seat-of-the-pants
outfit?”
·
“Does the way we do this
engender pride?”
·
“Does this contribute, or
detract from, the Employer Brand we are trying to create?”
Each manager should be held accountable
for asking these questions about the processes he or she is responsible for.
Each process should be examined step by step, because each step is a Moment of
Truth that either helps or hurts your Employer Brand. For instance, each step
in your recruiting process communicates to the job applicant something about
your organization – for better or for worse.
Commenting on how Everything Matters in
the recruiting process, executive recruiter Catherine Swift, of Swift and
Associates, a
Do you support,
or thwart, excellence?
Many organizations drive their most
talented employees out the door, and into the arms of their competitors, by
subjecting them to inadequate technology, insufficient logistical support, and
creativity stifling bureaucracy. Although nobody likes to have their efforts at
doing good work thwarted, this is even more of a deal-breaker to those who
demand excellence of themselves and others.
When they’ve had enough and leave, they become part of their former
employer’s negative PR firm. Those who stay, simmer silently, with no intention
of ever making an employee referral.
For instance, I worked in an insurance
company where customer service reps had to do battle everyday with a Byzantine
database system that’s lack of usability was matched only by its sloth-like
speed. Call after call, customer service reps would attempt to wrest the needed
information from their computers, while their customer’s patience evaporated.
Think of how this affected not just job satisfaction – and therefore, turnover
– but also what employees told others about their employer. Then compare their
experience to the daily experience of Fidelity Investment employees, who use a
database and knowledge management system where critical information is just an
intuitive mouse click away. Then think of the recruiting implications of both
situations.
If you’re serious about being a Talent
Magnet, your technology, policies and procedures, staffing, logistical support,
and training should be examined through the lens of:
·
“Does this support, or
thwart, excellence?”
·
“How does this affect what
employees think of our organization and what they tell others?”
·
“Does this contribute or
detract from the Employer Brand we want?”
Do Your Managers
Inspire Loyalty, Excellence, and Pride?
Every interaction employees have with
their manager shapes their impression of your organization – for better or for
worse. As most people in the business world know by now,
Managers should be coached to remember
whenever they are dealing with a Moment of Truth to ask:
·
“How does the way I’m
handling this affect employee morale, respect, and loyalty?”
·
“Would this decision, would
this approach, lead to employees feeling proud of, passionate about, and
committed to our organization?”
Here are some of the more critical Moments
of Truth that managers would be wise to examine, because they’re so frequently
mishandled:
·
Whether or not employee input
is solicited about changes that directly affect their jobs.
·
Whether employees hear about changes in a timely
way or at the last minute.
·
Whether management initiates
and executes changes in a well thought out way or acts in an impetuous,
fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants way which they perceive as dynamic and visionary,
but which employees see as careless and clueless.
·
Whether appreciation and recognition efforts are
“done to” employees as gala events or whether appreciation and recognition are
a regular part of the manager/employee relationship, and management and
employees co-create events that are meaningful to both parties.
Do You Have What Today’s
Worker Wants?
Knowing what your customer wants and
delivering it is Marketing 101. Smart companies also know that to keep
satisfying your customers, you must stay “wired into the voice of the
customer,” to use the phrase coined by Richard Whitely, Vice Chairman of The
Forum Corporation and author of The Customer-Driven Company. Both
principles should be applied to your organization’s recruiting efforts. To be a
Talent Magnet, you need to know:
·
What
today’s employees value most in an employer.
·
What
matters most to the various professions and demographics you desire (e.g.
What’s important to a 25 year old graphic designer will be different from
what’s important to a 50 year old accountant).
·
Whether
or not you are delivering what matters most to your employees.
·
Whether
or not you are addressing the eternal human needs that have always affected
employee performance and loyalty, such as the need for meaning, the need to be
part of something greater than oneself, the need to learn and grow, and the
need to experience mastery and self-efficacy.
Are You Ready
To Stop Competing in The Labor Market With Only a Fraction of Your Team?
Regardless of how effective your
recruiting department is, trying to recruit the best employees without senior
management being part of your team is like a basketball team trying to compete
with only one player on the court. To compete successfully, you need everyone
on the team playing in the game. You
need everyone to recognize that Everything Matters and pull together to make sure
you actually deliver a “product” – in this case, a work experience – that the
best employees want. With a product that
the best employees want, recruiting becomes infinitely easier. More
importantly, when you create a great organization that provides a great work
experience, you unleash the secret recruiting weapon of all Employers of
Choice: employees who love where they work and love talking about it.
What’s Next?
For this to be more than wishful thinking,
you need to recruit senior management onto your team, and together build an organization
that is an Employer of Choice. To begin the process, here are four actions you
can take:
1. Share this article with your senior
management team.
2. Share articles from ERExchange.com and
other websites on issues related to Employer Branding, attracting and retaining
employees, the role managers play in retention and
productivity, the cost of turnover, etc. This doesn’t just help recruit them to
your team, this increases your value to senior
management. Why? First, you multiply your value exponentially if you’re part of
the process that gets everyone involved in making your organization a Talent
Magnet, and therefore unleashes your volunteer recruiting team (your
workforce). Second, by helping them identify the
factors that are impeding your organization’s ability to recruit and retain the
best people, you will help management save a tremendous amount of money in
recruiting and turnover costs, not to mention opportunity costs.
3. Encourage your CEO or other senior
executive to facilitate ongoing discussions around the principle of “Everything
Matters,” and to work with managers on making sure their processes and actions
are contributing to a powerful Employer Brand.
4. Start and maintain an Employer Advisory
Council. Involve them in exploring the above questions. Work with them
regularly to stay wired into your workforce. Doing so will help management make
decisions that strengthen your Employer Brand. It will also inspire passion and
commitment, because instead of being just hired hands, your employees get to be
players on a winning team.
Click
Here for more articles by David Lee
About the
Author: David Lee is a consultant, speaker, and executive coach.
The founder of HumanNature@Work, he has worked with
organizations and presented at conferences throughout
For More Information:
David Lee, President
HumanNature@Work
P.O. Box 430
Bar Mills, Maine 04004
Tel: 207-929-3344
E-mail: info@HumanNatureAtWork.com