If you work in HR you believe, with all your being, that good human capital management leads to better productivity and better product quality. But, sometimes it’s so hard to prove, especially to a CFO who wants to see short-term financial improvements. As one top HR professional put it, "A financial person is concerned with taking money out of the organization. HR should be concerned with putting investments in." Well, now there is some research to support the connection between successful applicants and product quality.
One of the leaders in this effort is Betty Lou Smith, the vice president of corporate HR at Hunter Douglas. She began investigating the connection between employee turnover and product quality. Divisions with the highest turnover rates, she found, were also those with damaged-goods rates of 5% or higher. And extraordinarily, 70% of employees were leaving the company within six months of being hired.
Visit: http://www.fastcompany.com/node/53319/print . This is a fascinating article that also focuses a great deal on why others in many organizations don't care for human resource planning and talent management in general. While most of us might disagree with some of the points made in the article, it is thought-provoking.
Effective Applicant Tracking Software and assessments can be the first steps in finding those with the right Job Fit. Creating thought-provoking key questions right on the application can save a recruiter time and help focus the search on only those that meet the very highest standards. Using employee assessments can validate those first impressions.
At ExactHire, we love creative HR managers who are ready to use every resource at their disposal--Applicant Tracking, Assessments, Human Resource Management Systems-- to get to that perfect Job Fit. We believe, like you, that putting investment IN an organization will produce the value that makes taking money OUT possible. Check out our new website for more information: www.exacthire.com.
I was driving down the street today watching Holiday decorations going up in the trees, lights being strung, ribbons placed around light poles---so the daydream started.
As you wind down 2009 and look forward to 2010 what are your plans for the coming year?Will you modify your processes to make your businesses more successful next year?
Will any of the people you hired this year or for the holidays have outstanding job performance? Will they transition into great long term employees?
Now is the time for all of us to start planning how we are going to attack 2010. What will we do differently next year to be more successful.
I suggest you look at our applicant tracking software and employee assessments as a way to increase the probability that you will hire employees that are engaged. In a very short period of time you will be able to determine if what we offer is right for your organization. The ROI can be very significant.
Visit www.exacthire.com to learn more about how we can help you meet your objectives in 2010. Proper talent management and employee engagement can make a big difference.
Do you ever leave a business & feel like employees were brought in by the Talent Acquisition Process known as "Drive by Hiring"?
Who is managing talent acquisition in those companies? For the sake of retaining customers and valuable workers, having a Human Resource Management System in place is critical.
While talent acquisition is one of the most important functions we as owners and managers perform in our businesses, why do we spend so little time, energy and money trying to get it right? The cost of "Drive by Hiring" is almost always poor Job Fit. What is "Drive By Hiring"; it is when we feel pressured to just fill a seat, or when we don't have the time to really evaluate all the applicants who submit information, OK you get the point. Most of you have done it and it usually always ends with someone who is not an ideal fit for your job, company and culture.
Don't lose customers or good employees by using the "Drive by Hiring" process!! We can assist you to be proactive with better hiring practices through partnering. Visit www.exacthire.com to find out how we can help with pre-hiring employee assessments & applicant tracking to build superior Job Fit!
SHRM did a survey of employees to determine what was important to them. The rating used a 4-point scale to indicate what was “very unimportant” (that’s a 1) to them or “very important” (that’s a 4).
The percentages below indicate how many people gave the item a 4, meaning “very important.”
The 601 full- or part-time employees were randomly selected from a U.S.population.
63% Job security 60% Benefits 57% Compensation/Pay 55% Opportunity to use skills/abilities 54% Feeling safe in the work environment 52% Relationship with the immediate supervisor 52% Management recognition of employee job performance 51% Communication between employees and senior management 50% The work itself 47% Autonomy and independence 46% Flexibility to balance life and work issues 45% Meaningfulness of job 45% Overall corporate culture 42% Relationships with co-workers 39% Contribution of work to organization’s business goals 35% Job-specific training 34% Variety of work 32% Career advancement opportunities 31% Organization’s commitment to corporate social responsibility 30% Organization’s commitment to professional development 29% Paid training and tuition reimbursement programs 22% Career development opportunities 17% Organization’s commitment to a “green” workplace
Besides the expected answers that relate to pay and benefits, notice how high the rankings are for how they feel about their job and their supervisors.
The key here is not only hiring people that have Job Fit but also making sure you have the right supervisors in place.
When it comes to Job Fit, Job Performance and feedback for HR Management--we'd like to hear what your issues are. We would like the opportunity to help you imrprove your organization. Check us out at www.exacthire.com
We continually talk to our clients about Job Fit. The question that comes up is how to soft skills relate to Job Fit and Talent Management? Soft skills are intrapersonal and interpersonal skills that determine a person's ability to excel and fit into a particular job or company's culture. These skills include competencies in areas such as emotional, communication, leadership ability, etiquette, conflict resolution, decision making, self-motivation, self-discipline, persuasion, etc.
The reason for all the fuss is simple. Experts ranging from psychologists to business and spiritual leaders, such as Donald Trump and the Dalai Lama, agree that one or more of these soft skills have the greatest impact on your level of success.
We can help you with talent acquisition. The use of our applicant tracking software and employee assessments can assist you in identifying potential "A" players and improve your talent management; especially when we are all being asked to maintain a lean HR approach. Take a moment to look at some of the solutions we offer at www.exacthire.com
Longtime human resources professional Harlan Schafir has seen employees go through excruciating divorces, and he thinks he’s on to as good a way as any to handle them.
Schafir, who is majority owner of Exact Hire (www.exacthire.com) and Human Capital Concepts in Indianapolis, makes clear to the employee that he understands they will be distracted and lose their productive edge for a time. He gives them much more flexibility in their schedule during this time.
Giving workers time to deal with their problems and heal is the right thing to do from a human perspective, Schafir says. But it’s also good business.
“If you develop the right culture, it’s a huge component to your success,” he says. “The way you treat your employees is the way they’ll treat your customers.”
What do you think? In your experience, how has divorce—yours or that of a coworker’s—affected your work place?
There is a higher chance that your competition can replicate your product easier than they can replicate your human capital. So why not invest in the best human resource tools? This does not mean large dollar amounts. What it does mean is investing in highly effective applicant tracking software and career personality tests that can make you the best in human resource planning and management.
The key to staying ahead of the competition is managing your human resource tools to create better employees. If you use effective applicant tracking software that asks applicants for key, job related, information you will increase your ability to create a world class team that can build, market and sell your product far better than your competition.
You spend money and time to protect your product or service secrets, why not find out what little it takes to create the best human resource tools? Even if you have the same product, you’ll win every time with an applicant tracking system that increases the quality of your talent acquisition.
Don’t risk losing your best human capital to your competition. ExactHire can help you. Go to www.exacthire.com.
All human resource professionals love it when they see the magic that happens when good candidates are matched with the right job. Everybody wins! The company wins because the new employee makes a successful contribution to the company, both in the bottom line and in the culture of the company. The employees win because they are happy doing the job, they stay longer, build history and success.
Providing an applicant tracking tool and assessments gives us a way to contribute to that magic. We believe in our products and services, but nothing convinces us or others more than when we hear it directly from our customers. Just this week, we received this email:
“We are really enjoying ExactHire and are now wondering what we ever did without it! It has been a wonderful tool to use and is helping us do a much better job of managing applicants as well as our process.”
What a great feeling to know that customers are using our product in assisting them to improve the way they manage applicants and the hiring process. But best of all, it’s making life easier and more enjoyable in the ever changing and challenging field of human resource management. Come and start experiencing the magic for yourself……..www.exacthire.com. It’s only a click away.
Your competitive edge is going to be derived from your employees! So, how are you going to do this? Read on.
Physical properties of a business can be cloned. Your intellectual properties can not. Business will realize sustainable value from technological sophistication, creative & superior customer service responsiveness and insightful managers.
Outsource projects that are not core competency to a firm who specializes in that field to allow you to concentrate on your own business!
Our specialty is human capital management, human resource planning, applicant tracking, talent acquisition and assessments! We can give you that competitive edge so visit our site now to see how we can partner together! www.exacthire.com
I don't know about you, but I'm getting tired of hearing about how bad the economy is doing these days. But, until it improves a great deal, we all will have to continue to deal with it. Having read several articles about this, it made me think (scary, I know!).
All of the experts advise us to do some key things related to talent management with this economy. Incorporate Lean HR practices wherever possible, focus on talent acquisition to upgrade your staff, etc. Great ideas, but in a practical sense, how do you do those things? Especially if you are a small or mid-sized organization?
I'm seeing more companies turn to technology to accomplish these tasks. Using applicant tracking software and automated onboarding solutions can really help to incorporate those Lean HR principles into most any mid-sized organization. Likewise, using employee assessments or career personality tests that can be administered online can really augment any talent acquisition process by helping to ensure JobFit is present for both the new hire and the organization.
These human capital management systems are becoming more affordable and can really improve the overall talent management function within most organizations. More to come, but if you haven't investigated these solutions, I would encourage you to begin.
There is a higher chance that your competition can replicate your product easier than they can replicate your human capital.So why not invest in the best human resource tools?This does not mean large dollar amounts.What it does mean is investing in highly effective applicant tracking software and career personality tests that can make you the best in human resource planning and management.
The key to staying ahead of the competition is managing your human resource tools to create better employees. If you use effective applicant tracking software that asks applicants for key, job related, information you will increase your ability to create a world class team that can build, market and sell your product far better than your competition.
You spend money and time to protect your product or service secrets, why not find out what little it takes to create the best human resource tools? Even if you have the same product, you’ll win every time with an applicant tracking system that increases the quality of your talent acquisition.
Don’t risk losing your best human capital to your competition.ExactHire can help you.Go to www.exacthire.com.
If there was ever a time to underscore the importance of Human Resources, it has arrived. In these days of economic woes--phrases that ring loud and clear are; Lean HR, Human Resource Planning, Job Fit, Talent Management & Talent Acquisition. The importance of using hiring assessments and human resource planning when adding colleagues to the team is more critial than ever. Maybe you don't know where to start nor do you have the tools? Visit our site for more info www.exacthire.com
Did you ever wonder why you get so many resumes that don’t meet your minimum job requirements? Do you find yourself asking “didn’t they read my job requirements”?
The answer is NO.
They used a job site such as Monster or Career Builder and searched for job titles that are close to what they are looking for (e.g. sales). Then they shoot off a resume without reading the details. That is how they can send a 100 resumes in an hour.
Well the candidate just moved the work from them to you the company. Why do companies allow this to happen; hard to tell.
Contact us on how to change the process so it works for you the company. What a novel idea! What have you got to lose except a lot of wasted time.
When you are looking for an employee getting a resume is usually the first step in the process. Most of you still do it this way.
When we ask hiring managers why they continue to accept resumes, even though it makes the process very inefficient, they tell us they want to see:
If they use proper grammar and sentence structure If they make any spelling errors How they express thoughts
For some time now a person could get their resume written professionally for under $100; BUT now some of these sites are free.
So why are you stuck with doing it the old way. Hard to tell.
Wouldn't it make more sense if you had them apply on line. You would get the basic information included in all resumes but you could also ask questions specific to your company and job that you know they had to construct. Now you really have some insight into the skills listed above that companies say they look for.
Change your process today; you will be amazed at how it will improve the quality and job fit of your prospective candidates.
For sites where candidates can get resumes written for free or a small fee, check out these sites:
Companies need to take a rigorous and progressive approach to the hiring process by determining what it is they're really looking for and how to assess it. Who are the "right" people to hire? Members of successful teams differ in complementary ways. If you've ever worked for someone who only hires people like themselves, you know why this is true. Diversity needs to be a part of an office's unique environment. Differing perspectives will keep your company from seeming similar, regardless of the client or the services you deliver. It also helps you round out your team. A team made up of just quarterbacks would not be very successful.
A progressive approach to successful hiring is needed to achieve diversity and success. Do you have a human resource management system securely in place? Have you looked to an outside specialist who can assist your human resources team by using an applicant management & tracking software to help you build a model for successful job fit? The time to invesigate an applicant tracking software systesm is now when you have the time. When the markekt recovers and we return to "green flag racing" we will all be to busy.
It all comes back to marketing. We are stuck with bad processes, and we are comfortable with that. Millions are spent on the choice of a name for a product or a company, but one of the most important concepts for our economy - Lean Theory - is saddled with a name that had little thought applied and is now causing problems. Lots of negative implications, and little upside.
What should the new name be? If we had a clean sheet of paper and wanted to rename the process of waste reduction and simplification, what would we call it? I'm spending time today on this little problem - I need 3 people to respond to this with one idea each of a better name.
If we rename it, and it is more effective, it will be worth it. Time to quote Shakespeare...
Juliet: "What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet."
Every now and then, a conference turns out to be special – both good content and a good audience coming together to make the time worthwhile. That was certainly true at the recent IAHSA conference. We had a great standing-room-only session, with great, thoughtful remarks with ideas both from me and from the audience.
There were several requests for copies of my presentation, and you can click here for the download. While you’re here on my blog, go ahead and subscribe for more updates!
Again, thank you for your interest, and as an audience, you were the best I've had as a presenter. You made my work easy. I appreciated the open discussion around challenges in using assessments, applicant tracking, and how to build a high performing culture.
These are times that get irritating when all of the pressures start to mount. Our personal reserves vanish when we are under stress, and now we are all poster children for acting snippy and crabby.
We all need to get the answer, and fast. That's where Lean comes in. The whole point with Lean is making things simple, eliminating waste and getting better results, fast. That is exactly what we all want, yet we often just add another layer of stuff on the top of a pile of earlier stuff. Over time, it all just collapses from it's own weight.
In all of the work I do, I seldom see people who are willing to go back to a clean sheet of paper and start fresh. The joy of Lean is looking at the pile of stuff that has built up over the years, and getting rid of the pile and doing it right for right now.
Let me repeat that - doing it right, for right now.
We need new answers and the questions are getting tricky.
My vision of the future is simple - back to basics in our organizations and families, our diets, and our life. In the work I do in assessments and applicant tracking, I get a chance to change the world of the organizations in my life, which is truly wonderful.
Beyond my family, my other passion is getting a new way of thinking into the organizations on this world. If we make things simpler and better, good will come from it.
So, a question. What will you change first? I will be keeping you in the loop...
It's all in the packaging. We are very sensitive to the words behind a concept. Would you go to a marketing firm named "Red F"? Ick. Yet, they exist. Click here to see how proud they are of their name.
Years ago, RCA came up with a very expensive set of component electronics they named (at great expense) Dimensia. It failed to get market share - somehow sounding like a psychological diagnosis was not helpful.
Which brings me back to Lean HR. In the work that I do simplifying the hiring process, I am often frustrated by the concern that flickers across employee faces when the term Lean is mentioned. This has gotten worse as the employment marketplace has gotten worse.
If I'm working on job fit or pre-hire assessments, fine. But if I start talking Lean Theory, their imaginations jump into the "worry about my job" column and the project gets slowed down. Making matters worse, there are times that when Lean works and the process becomes more efficient, there are extra workers that can be reassigned.
Anyway, the purpose of my rant is to ask the community for a better term for Lean HR...what do YOU use? What should we use?
In the work I do with Applicant Tracking and Assessments, I am in the front lines of Human Resources.
Sometimes it takes a surprise to cut through the fog. Rather than words, a plant can speak volumes. A dead plant can be better.
I am in a borrowed office. Rummaging for copier paper, I found a mummified office plant that had died of thirst years ago. It was big. It was brown. It was very dead.
Just as I found it, one of our clients was on the phone talking about how her employees were griping about the reduction in benefits that was happening because of the economy. She loves our assessments and our applicant system, but has to cut back on some of the "perks" that people have grown accustomed to.
Rather than giving logical answers to the employees, I reccomend that she replace all of the greenery and cheerful flowers in her office with dessicated, dusty relics of plants that have met an untimely end.
That way, when someone comes to complain, they can be met with a shrug and a gesture to a very tangible reminder that things are different, and could be far worse...
I am not a very cynical person. I really have a green thumb. Just let me know if you would like my plant. I'd be happy to deliver....
or, buy an applicant management system or some assessment tools, and I'll throw the plant in for free!
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