In my last post I looked at the premise that whilst the business organism has evolved in approach and pace the attitude to problem solving in most talent acquisition organisations hasn’t.  Based on no data whatsoever it looks like talent acquisition have never really been forced to put their money where their mouth is, unlike for example our sales colleagues who live and die by their performance.  I’m not saying we’re soft.  But when did we last recruit like our job depended on in?

Ok, as usual it is not all doom and gloom, we have moved in the right direction, albeit slowly but no one appears to have truly turned what we do up on it’s head. 

So what has stopped us?

Is it that we have been playing it safe.  Corporate politics is not easy when you are at the top of a hierarchy but being HR’s poor cousin doesn’t put you in the most powerful of starting positions.  I’m not saying we don’t count  and I have never believed that but in the who can shout the loudest to get things done competition we have lost the fight before we even got  going.  Sales leaders talk about people but in the main they talk about the number partly because that is what we expect them to do, partly because that is all they have.

But has our time finally come?

Is the typical organisation ready for us to push the boundaries a little, find a new way of doing what we do and for that new way to be rewarded by the organisation with just a tiny  bit of respect and admiration.

What if we took that old school kaizan approach to business improvement? You know set some goals, measure and manage what we want to improve and keep on going in continuous circles, putting some pace in it as we go?  It could work couldn’t it.

Those Job ads need work to start with – make them compelling, measure response rates, survey candidates that got the job and those that didn’t?  In the shop window of recruitment, those job ads need to be right?

I think (I do) we all measure attraction rates and maybe this should stay?  Not everyone agrees with me that a measure of success is the volume of candidates that apply as well as conversion rates but it is an indicator of success or at least that you are fishing in the right pond.  But then high applicant rates combined with some discipline about the number of candidates we interview could be compelling.  So whilst we are here – let’s look at how many candidates we interview.  I saw a role not that long ago that had had 27 candidates looked at seriously. It was 22 too many but a reflection that the hiring manager really didn’t know what he wanted.  Or at least he couldn’t tell his recruiter what he wanted.  Or maybe the recruiter couldn’t extract what the hiring manager wanted out of him.  I don’t know.  Either way, decent job ads, high applicant rates and zealous qualification of those candidates would go a long way to make small incremental improvements. 

But who will be willing to stand by those numbers.  Live or die.  Like the old days?

What do you do to push TA to the top of the organisation?

Comments below, tweet me @MDangerfield or email martin.dangerfield@mckinleyresource.com