1 Paragraph review of research on Staffing

1 Human Resources Management FA 2 2021 Staffing has become one of the most exciting areas of Human Resources. The new tools and resources available have transformed staffing from a labor-intensive, time-consuming process, to one transformed by technology. Staffing in many organizations has been renamed “Talent Acquisition”, with a focus on finding and attracting individuals with unique talents and abilities. Therefore, in keeping with the new approach, we will address “Talent Acquisition” rather than the topic of “staffing”. The change in terms from “staffing” to “Talent Acquisition” also causes a mindset shift in the organization. In the industrial era, management treated “staffing’ like the purchasing of materials or parts, just determining what you want to make, and creating an order (HR Requisition) for the materials (person) to be delivered next week. The “Personnel” department would receive hiring 2 requisitions just like purchase orders and start working to “make”/hire the desired people. Sometimes the organization treated HR as if they had a “People Making Machine” in the storeroom. Management would say, well we need ten assemblers here on Monday, so run an advertisement in the paper or put a sign outside the building and get 10 assemblers on Monday. This type of thinking was common and caused staffing folks a great deal of stress (because we did not have a people-making machine). Management would also specify the precise qualities, qualities, skills, training, and experience needed and reject all candidates that did not have every characteristic stated on the requisition. Staffing folks could not recruit talent in advance of the requisition (budget limitations) and Management wanted to know why staffing was not “producing/creating” all the fully qualified candidates they wanted. HR was not allowed to be in organizational/business planning meetings, so they had no advance knowledge of the number or types of employees needed to meet the business plans. Management tended to regard employees/workers as “things” that caused problems and had to be replaced because they were defective like parts that did not fit. Oh, how the world and Management have changed! 3 Social media is now the leading recruiting tool. Facebook has job postings that link to members’ profiles. For Talent Acquisition staff, Facebook will allow organizations to post jobs for free through their profile pages. Today, LinkedIn is one of the recruiters’ best sources for “talent” who have difficult to find skills, knowledge, and experience, somewhere in the world. The change from staffing/recruiting to “talent acquisition” expands the opportunities for talent acquisition staff to establish ongoing relationships with potential employees. This expansion of responsibility may include monitoring new hires for turnover, dealing with employees who were not selected for new assignments, sourcing new talent from recent new hires, and sometimes it includes the responsibility for “On-Boarding” (new hire orientation). 4 5 Talent acquisition folks are heavily involved with the new tools of talent acquisition, Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS). There are so many ATS systems available it is nearly impossible to determine one best system. A challenge for talent acquisition staff is to ensure applicants have a good experience with the ATS. 6 An effective way for you to understand the applicant’s experience with the organization ATS is to become an applicant by creating a pseudonym identity and applying for a job. Some organizations are seeking to remove bias from the selection process, so they are introducing “Blind Hiring”. All identifying information is removed from the applications/resumes so that hiring managers can only see qualifications as they pertain to the requirements. At the opposite end of this trend is searching for talent to balance the gender, ethnicity, and other qualities of the workforce. When organizations make a deliberate effort to “balance” the workforce they work closely with their legal and fair treatment experts to minimize possible complaints of “reverse discrimination. This is a new responsibility added to the folks in talent acquisition. Another interesting trend is “culture hiring”, where the talent acquisition staff are required to match candidates to the organization’s culture. Most of us understand our organization’s culture and yet we struggle to articulate it to others. Sometimes we just “know” that person is not going to be successful in our culture, so yes, it would be great if talent acquisition staff could also screen in candidates that are good cultural fits. 7 If the hiring process includes a discussion about culture fit, everyone involved should be on the same page in terms of what that phrase means. The focus ought to be on considering whether or not a candidate will be a culture add rather than a culture fit, according to members of the Talent Acquisition Board, says Lykins. “The consensus among senior talent acquisition executives is that when we talk about candidates, we should approach it from the perspective of screening in rather than screening out.” If ‘culture fit’ is a recurring theme, adds Lykins, it’s possible that hiring managers are consciously or unconsciously resistant to adding people to the team who will bring new ideas and perspectives and potentially shake things up a bit. If this is what’s happening, it needs to be addressed. And it doesn’t have to be done at the expense of evaluating competencies and experience. That stuff’s still pretty important. As is ensuring diversity within your organization—diverse backgrounds, diverse skills, diverse thought. Getting a sense of an applicant’s qualifications is the more straightforward part, of course. Education, experience, accomplishments—that’s all right there on the resume. It’s the less direct tasks—like discerning whether a candidate is a culture add—that can give HR fits. And it’s not going to get any easier, as companies continue to put more emphasis on building and nurturing a healthy culture. Accompanying this mini-lecture are several articles that provide a greater depth of information on these and other Talent Acquisition and Staffing topics. 8 References M c G r a w , M . R e s e a r c h A n a l y s t f r o m i 4 c p February 18, 2020, https://www.i4cp.com/productivity-blog/hiring-for-culture-fit-or-a-conformist-culture