Recruit, Inspire & Retain

11 Challenges Facing Hiring Managers

After working with and learning from some of the most successful companies in the world for over 20 years, About Recruiting Inc. has seen several challenges facing hiring managers and those people on the interviewing team:

		Most companies lack a formal sourcing strategy and end up hiring the best of the bunch rather than THE BEST. Top talent needs to first be found. In a robust economy or tight labor market, many of the best people are working. In other words, they are passive candidates that need to be located.
		The wording in typical job descriptions limits the number of qualified people who will apply for the position. Rather than looking at what people are exceptional at, abilities and talents that are instinctive, many companies make their hiring decisions based on what people have learned, acquired and experienced to date. Because the essence of people is not what they have learned, acquired and experienced, hiring based on those limited aspects will bring limited results.
		Most companies only list the "necessary" skills, experience and knowledge required without appealing to the real reasons top talent accept new offers.
		Too many companies erroneously discard top candidates because they do not have ALL the skills, experience and knowledge listed on the job description. These companies are more focused on processes and procedures and less on the end result.
		Hiring based on emotional biases is common practice. Whenever a hiring decision is based on a subjective element like an emotional bias, the interviewing process becomes tainted.
		When an emotional bias is favorable to hiring the candidate, the interviewer often starts selling the company to the candidate.
		Lengthy job descriptions are posted listing desirable skills, knowledge and experience required for the role paying little to no attention to natural abilities and the outcome expected of the job. Someone with all the skills, knowledge and experience does not guarantee a world-class job performance.
		The placement of job advertisements often reaches average candidates shopping for another job, not top talent seeking a progressive career move.
		Hiring managers and people on the interviewing team often have conflicting information about what the job entails. This is especially true if the focus of the job description is on learned skills, experience and knowledge, and not on performance outcomes.
		The hiring team does not often follow the structure of the interviewing questions and if they do, they do not know what to do with the results.
		When it comes time to offer the person a position, hiring managers seem to have little experience negotiating the remuneration package or in dealing with counteroffers.

This book is the result of a study that compared remarkable sustaining profitable non-profit associations with those that were not considered remarkable. Characteristics of a remarkable association are explicitly defined and described. Facilitators and trainers can apply much of this information to the many non-profit clients they service.

Inspire Staff With A Breather Once A Year

We have had an annual "Mystery Fun Day" for 2 years here at Northside Christian Church; only the Executive Pastor, Executive Secretary, and myself create the day. Top Secret; not even the Sr. Pastor knows what we are going to do.

1st Year – Safety Day Testing (big ruse)
I told our staff we were having a mandatory Safety Meeting and they had to be here by 8:00 a.m. that morning. We got the entire staff together for breakfast; we rented 15 passenger vans and took them to the first location.

Hearing "Test"
We had breakfast at Denny’s and I put a "Bible" character name tag on the back of each employee. The rule was this "you could ask questions of others to get hints of who you were". For example; am I in the OT or the NT, man or female, etc.? It was a total hoot. I made the youth pastor Jezebel. The place was buzzing with excitement and I laughed my head off.

Agility "Test"
There is a family game park called "Boomers’; we purchased passes for everyone. We spent two hours climbing rock walls, playing laser tag; video games, golf and water games. It was a total hoot; everyone was age 12 all over again. The competition was fierce on the racecourse….

Visual "Test"
We went to a rated "G" movie, and stuffed ourselves with soda, popcorn and candy. After the movie we went to get ice cream. People are still talking about this day; now we look forward to it annually.

2nd Year – The Great Race (We filmed at each location; it was hysterical)
We ordered shirts and split the staff into teams (we purposefully put people together that did not work together). We had custom made shirts with a racing theme and purchased goofy trophy (see the picture of Darlene; she was on the losing team so she got the turkey award). We spent a lot of time coming up with "clues" to each destination. Teams were given 5 minutes to get into their cars and line up at the parking lot. We had summer interns that were told where the "locations" were that morning and given explicit instructions to monitor each activity at each location:

Location #1
We had a "racing course" with pylons; the vehicle was a heavy duty John Deer bicycle that the guys could fit on. As each team arrived they had to ride the course and tag the next team member. At the conclusion of the relay they were given the hint to the next location.

Location #2
The 2nd "hint" was in Spanish (a very nasty thing to do to a group where no one speaks Spanish!) They were stopping people on the street, Mexican Resturants, etc. trying to get someone to translate the note. The ultimate location was a Spanish Language station on the South West side of town (our town has several Spanish Language Stations). When they arrived they had to complete one of two "hula hoop" exercises.

Exercise #1
Group gets in a circle and puts their two index fingers out. "Together" (this is the tough part) they are to lower the hula hoop without it lifting off anyone’s finger.

Exercise #2
Everyone in the team must successfully "keep the hula hoop" up in motion for 2 minutes.

Location #3
Back to "Boomers" the family game park we went to last year (a very, very popular option). This year we just paid for the racing cars; school was in session so it was hysterical to see our "grown-ups" patiently waiting among little kids for their ride on the racing car.

Last location: Woodward Park
We had a reserved spot for our group; we decorated it with a racing them. We hired a D.J. who played different themes for each team as they arrived; the winning team theme song was "Rocky"; the last group had some ridiculous song that reminded me of a turtle. We had a full BBQ catered, dessert, and we had an awards ceremony for the winning team and the last team. At this event we also recognized any employees that were celebrating a 5, 10 , etc. year anniversary. We give them gift certificates based on years of service.

My hometown of Chicago serves up plenty of traffic challenges so the issue isn't one of surprise. What strikes me today is how easily we put up with wasted time. Whether it's the daily crawl commuting to and from work, the mind-numbing anguish of directionless meetings, or the needless time re-working the fallout of a poorly planned project, our days are filled with wasted time.

Traffic School
A few years ago I had a fascinating interview with one of my heroes: Zig Ziglar. He talked about using commute times as Automobile University, quoting a University of Southern California study that found 12,000 miles of metropolitan area driving a year for three years afforded enough time to learn the equivalent of two years of college education.

If you have an MP3 player and you’re not intentionally listening to podcasts, electronic books, or other resources focused on areas you want to develop, you’re missing an easy way to take advantage of Zig’s idea. The iPod has changed my personal development strategy, not because of the seemingly endless amount music onboard as much as the learning I get any time I’m on the road, working out, or have other time available to absorb more learning.

Are you enrolled in Automobile University? Are you using your MP3 player to better use your time?

eLearning
I’m doing more e-learning. I have found I can maximize my training time and dollar by choosing online options for selected topics I want to grow in. And I can do it without the time and cost of getting on a plane or driving in that traffic!. If you haven’t tried e-learning lately, I highly suggest you add it to your professional development strategy.

Staff Need to See Your Strategic Plan Being Implemented

If you involve staff (or not) in developing a strategic plan, but they never see it being implements, get to participate in implementing it, or it isn’t even being implemented, you are missing not only the benefits your organization gets from implementing the great, forward moving strategies, BUT you lose a wonderful retention technique!

Mike Femlee, The Prouty Project, has a wonderful idea:
Michael Mankins and Richard Steele wrote a great article published in the Harvard Business Review recently entitled, "Turning Great Strategy into Great Performance". They interviewed senior executives from 197 companies worldwide with sales exceeding $500 million and learned that despite differences in product markets and geographies, they shared many of the same concerns over planning and execution. Their survey indicated that, on average, most strategies deliver only 63% of their potential financial performance. On a grading scale, this is a "D" at best.

The Top 3 Reasons:
Inadequate or unavailable resources.
Poorly communicated strategy.
Actions required to execute strategies are not clearly defined.

Obviously, this performance would not be acceptable to your Board of Directors, your senior leaders or your shareholders. Then, why is it happening? And, more importantly, why are you continuing to let this happen?

The Reality Check
This is where we believe many strategic planning processes fail. Simply stated, you can miss the opportunity to "brutally" evaluate the reasonableness of your plan in the context of existing systems, structure, people, culture, and processes. Without a "Brutal" assessment of each of these factors, no wonder you don’t deliver the financial results you forecast. The cold, harsh reality is that you never really had a chance.

Here are 3 guaranteed ways to fine-tine your "strategic" intuitions:
	Challenge your Board of Directors or members of your Advisory Council in a no-holds barred evaluation of your strategic plan. It’s not about patting you on the back for your brilliance. Rather, challenge them to help you sniff out the blind spots and the fallacies in your logic.
	Share your plan with 35 "contrarians" (an eclectic mix of employees not on the senior leadership team) and ask them what they like about your plan. More importantly, ask them what they don’t like and what changes they would make if they were wearing the CEO hat.
	Ask a group of 3-5 CEOs from different industries to weigh in on your strategic plan. They don’t have any skin in the game and can be brutally honest in their assessment of your plan. Chances are, they’ve tried many of the strategies you believe will help move your organization forward. Listen well to their insights and perspectives and react accordingly.

Do you have the courage to embark on these types of reality checks? Do so, and I’m convinced you will better position your organization to execute its strategic plan. No question, you’re responsible for the execution of your plan. The actual tactics will be delegated but the responsibility and accountability are clearly yours. So, make sure you perform your reality checks early and often and put the missing piece(s), staff, back into your strategic planning.