Obama's HR Policy For Tough Economic Times

Obama's HR Policy For Tough Economic Times

Barack Obama said "Hire above the job". Hire a person who is overqualified, especially in these times. They will be eternally grateful, and work twice as hard.

But if we analyze it correctly and try to understand its consequences, it comes out to be not a very easy task. A report on the analysis and understanding on the industry behaviors is appended.

In these times hiring someone currently unemployed because of a layoff that is at or slightly above the basic requirements is a good practice because they will not only make a good addition for the organization in the short term but also provide value for future growth. As the organization grows the position may, in fact, expand to meet the actual experience level of the incumbent.

Successful organizations should always hire with growth in mind because it is easier to have the demands of a position grow around an incumbent than to have an incumbent be expected to grow into an expanded position.

So while one should always hire the most suitably qualified for a position, I think to simply hire a significantly over-qualified person would be a mistake. On the other hand, if a person is marginally over-qualified, then all well and good. They likely would be at the top of any "short list" for promotion as soon as economic conditions improve.

In these times hiring an unemployed person that has been laid off also provides an immediate stimulus for the economy, which may hasten growth for the organization. One other thing to consider when hiring, especially in troubled economic times, is that it is easier to hire pre-need than at need because in waiting for the at-need situation it may be very difficult to hire rapidly enough to meet the needs of the organization.

Please feel free to comment and give suggestions.

Resources, Tools and Methodologies for Talent Acquisition, Hiring and Recruitment

Resources, Tools and Methodologies for Talent Acquisition, Hiring and Recruitment

Introduction

One needs to have dreams, plans, and strategies to be successful in any venture. This is a basic requirement. If you do not know what you want, where you want to reach and how you want to reach (your mode and plan for success), you certainly cannot reach there. In case you are starting a new venture or you are planning to diversify your existing business, you also need to identify the source for your capital (Financial Backing). You cannot do all these things on your own. You need "extra-ordinarily talented" and Highly Skilled people to help you to reach the goal that you have seen for your organization. For this, you need a jeweler (the talented, matured and exceptionally skilled HR Professional) to identify such DIAMONDS for you. It is one of the key roles of a HR Professional to identify, source, select, HIRE and RETAIN BEST of the talent from the market to work for the organization. If they cannot find talented people from the market then they need to groom the right type of people with the right type of attitude and aptitude. In 21st Century, we are in the era of "war for talent". It is becoming difficult to get right type of people and retain them. Many companies are losing their businesses because they are not able to hire "right type of people"; because they compromised with the "quality of the talent". In this article, we will try to explore and understand different sources to get "Best of the Talents". Any reference of HR Department" in this article, means Team of Talent Acquisition, Hiring and Recruitment.

Different Sources to Get Talented People


As a HR Professional (Chief Talent Acquisition Officer; Hiring Manager or Recruitment Head), one should be aware of all the sources and resources to get best of the talents and they should also be aware of as how to use those resources to the optimum level. You can use either or all of the below mentioned tools to get BEST talents.


1) Existing and "Active" Candidates Data with Company

This is primary, but if properly used, most important source and tool in the hands of HR Department to get right type of people. The HR department gets N number of profiles every day from different sources (including candidates who just drop-in their profiles at the reception. The HR Department needs to maintain and update this data on regular (if possible on daily basis). The details and data should be maintained in such a manner that one should be able to generate a MIS, stating number of profiles in the database, skills of the candidates (including education and experience level) and status of each profile (if short listed or not; if interviewed or not; date of interview; result of the interview; if rejected or selected etc). All these profiles should be considered as "active profiles" for six months from the date they were received in the HR Department of the Company. Any other profile older than six months should be deleted and destroyed. Such profiles are of no use to the company. The HR department should be able to use this data to fill the existing vacant position with a MOST suitable profile.

2) Employee References

In last decade and a-half, all the companies across various industries are facing a BIG challenge to retain the talent in their companies. People are resigning for various reasons. There is another challenge of FAKE profiles (People are faking about their experiences, salaries etc. Many people are just COPYING someone's profile and presenting it as their own, without even knowing what they have mentioned in it). To handle this, it has become apparent to do reference checks. Getting the reference check done in a proper way is very costly.

Considering the above two scenarios and just to counter it, it is important to hire a person through the reference of your existing employee. No one can present, market and brand your company, market the culture and policies of your company then a happy and highly motivated and engaged employee of your organization. Hence, hiring with the reference of your existing employees is an important source and tool to hire and retain Quality Talent.

3) Internal Advertisement (internal Job Posting)

Learning is a continuous process. Many people keep on learning new skills, updating their skills and acquiring higher degrees by way of distance mode of education. There by you might have "multi-skilled" and "multi-talented" people within your organization. Hence, it becomes crucial and important to post your job-requirement, internally for your existing employees. By doing so, you will be able to RETAIN good and talented people.

4) Jobsites and Job Portals

If the above three sources and methods are used appropriately, efficiently and to the optimum level, hypothetically you do not need to go outside the company to get good people, working for your company. However, that is actually not possible and hence, you also need to look for external sources to get MORE Suitable Talent for your company. There are many Job Sites and Job Portals, available in the market and you need to select the BEST one for your needs. Good Job Portals have huge database of millions and millions of profiles. You can source a "Suitable" Talent from that database. You can also post your job requirements on job-portals just to get more relevant profiles. You should learn how to use all the features of your job-portal for its optimum utilization.

You can also have the HR or Job Site of your company and post your requirements on that site. This will also give appropriate branding and advertisement to your company and will also help you in managing the "Candidate Database".

5) Campus hiring

In case, you like to hire "knowledgeable, talented and properly groomed" freshers then you should opt for Campus Hiring. This will give you Raw Clay and Material that you can mould as per the need and culture of your organization. You need to plan your "Campus Hiring" in a suitable manner to target right type of people. You need to decide, if you like to hire a plain graduate or a graduate with some specific trainings or Management Graduates or Engineering Graduates etc. If you provide right type of atmosphere, culture and processes, chances are that you will be able to retain these freshers, trainees for a long period of time. There are many Business Magazines which publishes lists of BEST institutes in different categories, locally, nationally and internationally.

6) Recruitment Consultancies

Most of the time, even recruitment consultancies also uses various job-portals to source talent for their clients. Hence, it makes more sense, if you buy one login on any of the relevant job-portal (or more than one job portal) and if you learn how to use it properly. You need the help of Recruitment Consultants if you are planning to hire a talent through head-hunting for senior profiles and from different geographical locations; for example, if you are planning to hire someone from international market. Hence, taking the help of Recruitment Consultants to hire talent for you should not be your first choice or option.

7) External (Newspaper) Advertisement

This is one of the VERY costly source to hire talent. External Job-Advertisement on media (Newspaper, Television, Radio etc), helps you in Branding and Publicizing your company but if not targeted properly and managed properly, this is one of the POOR but COSTLY source to get suitable talent. You need to understand and plan properly, what type of people you are looking for, from where you can get those people, which newspaper do they read, how you want to get and manage these profiles and what you will be doing with that database or else, you will not be able to get suitable talent.

8) Social and Professional Networks & Local Communities

There are few professional and social networks, such as LinkedIn, FaceBook, Orkut etc, that you can use to get right type of talent (of the listed networks, LinkedIn is highly recommended). You can also target few NGO's, Training Institutes and Local Communities to hire low-level, low-cost workers for factories and your companies.

9) Head Hunting (Also called as "Body Shopping")

There is this bread or group of talent, which are highly experienced, competent with great leadership skills but very passive in job market. They are very experienced in their domain and industry. Sometimes, they are also the founder member of the organization. Generally these are the people working in the capacity of Senior Managers, General Managers, CFO's, CTO's, CEO's, Vice-Presidents, Directors, and Managing Directors etc in their present roles. They do not post their profiles on jobsites. They do not even read job-sections of newspapers. They do not apply for any jobs opportunity. Only very few of their friends and close associates are in procession of their profiles. They need to be challenged by an opportunity. Such people need to be head-hunted. Generally, recruitment consultancies are EXPECTED to do this job. This is a way to get the talent when you are looking for rare and distinct talent that is when you are looking to fill positions like CFO, CEO etc. Here, numbers are not important but quality is. In a year, you might be able to head-hunt 15-20 people but they will be of high worth and value. Not everyone can be a "Head Hunter", you need to have "special" type of skills to be a "Head Hunter". Every type of sourcing is not called as head-hunting. For a sourcing to be called as "Head-hunting", this should involve "rare profiles"; profiles and skill sets not readily available in the market.

10) Talent-Poaching

This, according to some section in the industry, is considered as unethical mode of sourcing and hiring. For this, you need to understand the business of your company and also should be aware of the competitor companies in your industry. Just target those companies and hire in masses from those companies right from the entry level to senior level. This tactic is usually used to kill the competition. This is like a big fish eating the small fish. People across the globe are discussing and debating to ascertain, if the "Talent Poaching" is ethical or unethical. No doubt, this is one of the easiest ways to source trained and talented people within the industry when you have infrastructure and money.

Distinction between Headhunting and Talent Poaching

Some talent acquisition managers as well as hiring and recruitment professionals are confused and are not able to discriminate between the two. Here are few differences between the two:

1) Headhunting is associated with senior and rare profiles. Talent Poaching is just sweeping and running through talent-wealth of your competitor.

2) Headhunting is planned. Talent Poaching is targeted.

3) In headhunting, the intention is to get the BEST person for your organization but in Talent Poaching, the intention is to kill your competitor and the competition.

4) Headhunting is about getting a person with "Leadership" skills with "Global Exposure". Talent Poaching is about "saving the training cost".

Conclusion

This article is not about "Recruitment Process" or to describe about "Steps involved in Recruitment Process" but just to share the resources and channels to source and identify talent. I have taken care to list all the possible channels. I am sure all the readers will gain from this article.

Ref: Ezine Articles.

Recent Trends in Recruitment

The following trends are being seen in recruitment:

· OUTSOURCING

In India, the HR processes are being outsourced from more than a decade now. A company may draw required personnel from outsourcing firms. The outsourcing firms help the organisation by the initial screening of the candidates according to the needs of the organisation and creating a suitable pool of talent for the final selection by the organisation. Outsourcing firms develop their human resource pool by employing people for them and make available personnel to various companies as per their needs. In turn, the outsourcing firms or the intermediaries charge the organisations for their services.

Advantages of outsourcing are:

1. Company need not plan for human resources much in advance.
2. Value creation, operational flexibility and competitive advantage
3. turning the management's focus to strategic level processes of HRM
4. Company is free from salary negotiations, weeding the unsuitable resumes/candidates.
5. Company can save a lot of its resources and time

POACHING/RAIDING

“Buying talent” (rather than developing it) is the latest mantra being followed by the organisations today. Poaching means employing a competent and experienced person already working with another reputed company in the same or different industry; the organisation might be a competitor in the industry. A company can attract talent from another firm by offering attractive pay packages and other terms and conditions, better than the current employer of the candidate. But it is seen as an unethical practice and not openly talked about. Indian software and the retail sector are the sectors facing the most severe brunt of poaching today. It has become a challenge for human resource managers to face and tackle poaching, as it weakens the competitive strength of the firm.

E-RECRUITMENT

Many big organizations use Internet as a source of recruitment. E- recruitment is the use of technology to assist the recruitment process. They advertise job vacancies through worldwide web. The job seekers send their applications or curriculum vitae i.e. CV through e mail using the Internet. Alternatively job seekers place their CV’s in worldwide web, which can be drawn by prospective employees depending upon their requirements.

Advantages of recruitment are:

Low cost.
No intermediaries
Reduction in time for recruitment.
Recruitment of right type of people.
Efficiency of recruitment process.

How to Hire the Perfect Intern

Interns can be valuable resources for all employers. Don’t think that aspiring college and graduate students only flock to large employers when they’re looking for experience. If you have a project or well defined task, there’s an intern out there eager to tackle the assignment and bring enthusiasm and energy to the role.

Hiring interns is also a great way to find future employees. Whether or not the intern returns full-time, they can spread the word on campus to potential employees that you provide a great place to work.

But before you call the nearest college campuses, identify the work that needs to be done and the skills candidates will need. Specific tasks and types of companies are best suited for these short-term assignments. Research, systems, and project-management departments, tasks involving organization, and companies in the start-up phase or doing product launches all create good intern opportunities.

Decide who will manage the intern. This should be someone who can devote the time and patience to someone with potentially limited work experience.

The assignment and requirements are the starting point. Now you can use those for finding schools, or departments within a school, for recruiting. College guides will be useful in locating programs with specific majors that suit your needs. Alumni in your workplace can also be a great connection to the schools they attended.

Local institutions may be a logical starting point, but don’t think you have to stop there. Students from your neighborhood may be pursuing the major best suited for your needs at a school hundreds of miles away. The human resources intern for you is studying right now at Cornell ILR! There are limited internship opportunities for that budding HR specialist in Ithaca, New York.

Some schools have internship offices; others will refer you to career placement departments or specific faculty members. If the student is at a local school they may be available throughout the year. If an internship will be a break from a regular campus routine, ask about semester calendars. Don’t overlook high schools that have magnet programs in areas such as business, finance or healthcare with students eager to perform routine tasks to get a taste of the real world.

Many employers pay interns and some do not. Ask about wages paid by other employers who hire interns. If you are not prepared to provide payment or will be paying lower wages, the school will be able to tell you if this will keep applicants away. Creative additions to compensation will be welcome by students. As a college student I earned lunch and subway fare during a part time summer research project for a non-profit.

Find out if the student will be earning credit for the work experience. You may be asked to complete evaluations or follow up with professors. If you are using college interns to fill in regular spots, beyond project work, don’t flout wage and hour regulations by expecting them to work for free.

With the success of one intern, you will be able to build on the program to include interns as an asset and important part of your company culture.

Ref: Rebecca Mazin

What interviewers look for?

The persons who interview candidates collectively are form the interview panel. Normally, the panel consists of three interviewers. However, there could be more than three. The logic given for interviewers in selection at B-schools may more or less applicable for executive jobs in business and industry as well.

The duration of an interview varies between five minutes and 45 minutes. However, the duration of an interview has no bearing on the final outcome; what matters is the quality of interaction that you have with the panel. Most interview panels comprise professors who work full time in case of B-school interviews and top managers from industry for business interviews.. Sometimes, the panel; of interviewers could also include a psychologist. Of late, some top B-schools are also including an alumnus/industry person to their interview panel.

Interviewers chiefly look for students who are suitable to pursue a management course at their institute and whether the have the potential to go on to become effective managers in the future. Candidates who have clear, breadth and depth of knowledge, and the ability to look at things in a balanced manner are sought. Interviewers also look at the moral and ethical value system of the individual concerned, and how the candidates will be able to contribute to the to the industry and the society at large.

Types of Questions asked in an interview:

The job of an interview panel is to determine whether you are a suitable candidate for a particular B-school. In this regard, they may put any questions under the sun to you and you are expected to answer such a question. On being asked personal questions, you are expected to answer in a mature manner, and not say. “This is a personal matter and I cannot answer this question”. You are not expected to give flippant answers to seemingly innocuous questions. Every questions is asked with a sense of purpose. Make sure that you answer with sincerity so as not jeopardize your selection prospects.

The questions that you could be asked in an interview fall under the following categories:
Questions related to your personal background
Questions related to your personality (strengths/weaknesses)
Subject / academic based questions
Questions on career planning
Questions on hobbies / extra curricular activities.
Questions on job profile ad other organization-related matters (for those with work experience)

Two important questions that are asked in most interviews at top B-schools are:

(a)Why do you want to do an MBA? (b)Tell us something about yourself.

The question at (b) is almost certain while recruiting business executives mostly in case of candidates with relevant experience.

Since such questions are more or less certainly, you should prepare for them well in advance, having a ready made answer to these kinds of questions will not help you as you could easily falter in the interview. What you would be better off doing is have broad reasons, which could form the basis for your responses in the interview. This would make your answer more natural rather than rote.

Most of the top B-schools ask a large number of questions on the subjects you have studied during your +2 and your graduation. These questions are essentially conceptual in nature. However, it is seen that students are unable to answers these questions successfully. By answering these questions correctly, you are sending out a message to the interview panel that you have taken the right amount of care to prepare thoroughly for the interview. Excuses such as “I studied this a long time ago,” will not be appreciated by the panel. You could be asked questions on career planning such as, where do you see yourself five years from now? You could also be asked questions on current affairs / general knowledge and the hobbies that you pursue. Answers to questions from these categories would be reflections of what you do in your leisure.

Ref: CiteHR

ROLE OF TOP MANAGEMENT IN CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

Total Quality coupled with Continuous improvement is a mindset. Identifying problems is half solving the problems which again linked with a mindset. Total Quality management has its seeds in cultural change. Cultural change for Total Quality means creating an atmosphere of improvement free from blame and fear, where individuals can concentrate on applying their minds towards continuous beneficial changes.

Almost every company finds a scapegoat—their own culture, when they begin to lose established markets or their profitability and turnover graphs look down. Cultures cannot be changed with slogans and the good intentions of management. It requires individuals to expose the weakness in their own department and sections at the cost of ridicule, and look upon these weaknesses as problems needing creative solutions. This cannot be the act of a few individuals, but each and every member of management must necessarily go through this process.

A core group of professionals called ‘Facilitators’ belonging to various functional areas of the organization are formed to propel the activity for achieving Total Quality Management. The facilitators take the risks accept the ridicule, and the pressures of traditional organizations, including politicization, as a part of the process of meaningful change. A manual from each department is prepared which is called ‘Process of eliminating losses’ (PEL). This manual reflects the act of courage of individuals to expose their weaknesses and use this as a reference point for improvement and growth. Top management cannot ignore these cases which can amount to a few million dollars for some organizations. PEL gives the basis on which to act and bring beneficial changes. While traditional Accounting system have stood the test of time as instrument of financial control, they have not been able to unearth the costs of not doing the right things right the first time. But the accounting system will continue to play tits role in holding onto the gains, once achieved.

To sustain and add fuel to the process of continuous improvement, management must take policy decisions to reward the Right Behavior. Management must be alert in identifying the wrong behavior and taking necessary action if such behavior is detrimental for total quality management.

Human Resources are the catalyst for Modern Business

Sweeping changes continue to reshape the workplace. Today’s HR professional needs to be more than simply an expert on personnel issues. He/she also needs to be an informed and skilled businessperson since HR professionals must play a key role in helping their organization remain competitive in the marketplace.

HR professionals need to use their sense of commitment, inter-personal skills and training to help make their company a success. The environment of constant change means that they must pay particular attention to cultivating competencies in communications and decision-making skills. They must be able to present the vision of their company clearly. Within this, they must also have a clear and functional perception of the operational management needs. They need to examine and review existing procedures to ensure that improved solutions can be designed and built. They need to emphasize the importance of continuous progress and managing change through goal setting. And finally, they must ensure that the resulting organization is populated and driven by empowered employees.