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Strategic Hiring-What If Tomorrow Doesn't Resemble Today?

Guest post by: Stephen Blakesley

Article Overview: We live in times of exponential growth, yet we act as if tomorrow will be just like today. It will not! To do more that just survive, to excel in the future, organization must start building the environment that will allow them to distance themselves from their competition. Strategic thinking is requred and effective implementation critical. Find those thind that need be in play to become the very best.

Strategic Hiring-What If Tomorrow Doesn't Resemble Today?

China will soon become the largest English speaking nation in the world; The top 25 percent of India's most intelligent is a larger number than the entire population of the United States; One-half of what is being taught in our most expensive colleges and universities is out-dated before the student can graduate; those in our colleges, today will have held 12-14 jobs by the time they are 38; In the last decade, 2 million plus women took jobs while on 50 thousand men got jobs Finally, 1992 marked the date of the first text message, today there are more text messages every year than the population of the world.

If you have been thinking that things don't change much, think again. We live in an exponential world. There is a race on and you are in it. The question is; what will you do about it?

When it comes to hiring, if we are to make a difference we need to be strategic in our approach. Yet, we seem to consistently be lulled into a sense that tomorrow will be just like today and plan for the future as if it will. That often plays out as lower and lower performance, more and more turnover and constant frustration of middle managers.

Strategy is a military term meaning to plan the environment that best leverages the strengths of one's own forces. Applying the term strategy to the selection and hiring process makes good sense in a world of accelerating change. What is the environment, in which you wish your organization to be 5 years from now?

For an organization to build an environment that distances your company from its competition through a work-staff that is inspired, energized, and innovative you will need be strategic in your planning-thinking about the terms on which you wish to fight this battle. Terms that will leverage your strengths and maximize your chances of winning. Here are a few important facts:

1. Tomorrow will be different from today, much different
2. People will be more transient (12-14 jobs by 38) than they are today
3. People will have good skills but meager experience using them
4. Good people will be more likely to stay in one place if they perceive value is being added to them
5. Superior people will be so not because of their innate abilities but because someone took the time to show them how to leverage their talents
6. Flexibility will be essential

Based on these few facts, what must we do today to guarantee "a place in the sun" for the organization of the future?

• Sourcing potential employees will still be a major contributor to superior performance. Today having too few candidates to select from is possibly the number one problem many organizations will face in the future. Plan for that today by realizing that only the wealthiest organizations will have the resources to build a database that will supply all your future needs. If you are not one of those wealthy organizations you can still slay goliath by outsourcing your sourcing and recruiting needs to a professional recruiting firm, most likely, for less money than goliath.
• Skills and competencies will be even more important in the future because of the specialized needs or job and requirements being more laser-focused. The whole issue of Job Fit becomes a major cog in the high-performance wheel. Because of the specialized nature and needs of jobs the cost of making a hiring mistake will grow exponentially. Creating a clear picture of the jobs needed and the needs of those jobs will create a distance between you and your competition.
• Utilizing the latest tools that aid in "seeing what you can't see" beneath the surface of candidates, before you hire them, will be increasingly important. Using multiple assessment tools to bring greater clarity to strengths and weaknesses of potential employees will be the rule rather than the exception in the future.
• Making certain that Hiring Managers know how to hire those that fit the job entails raising their interviewing skill level several notches. Holding Hiring Managers accountable for hiring superior people will be essential.
• Teaching coaching skills to middle mangers and insisting on their competency in them is a must. Helping people understand their own strengths and weaknesses and how they can best leverage their application and management to maximize performance is an essential job of middle managers.

I am certain that these points are not comprehensive, but I am equally certain that if your organization adopted each of them and became expert at each, that your organization's future would be far more secure than it has ever been.

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Article Tags: exponential growth, future organization, implementation, strategic thinking



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