1. How to Hire and Hold Top Talent
Peter Cosgrove
January 18th 2012
2. Agenda
• Why we do not focus on our people
• Current marketplace for talent
• How we hire
• How we hold/ retain
• What are the future trends in talent
• Summary actions
4. Why is Talent Not Our Top Priority
• All CEOs say it’s a top priority but…..
• Director salary levels
• Selling - vs - Hiring
• Human behaviour
5. Ultimatum Game
• Here is €20 you can keep it under one condition, you have
to share some of it with your friend, it is up to you how
much you share and your friend has no say in it.
• If your friend rejects your offer you both get nothing, if
he accepts you both keep your share.
• How much will you offer your friend?
6. The Cost of Turnover
Cost of a poor hire = 3 to 5 times employee’s annualised
compensation.
Specialist functions = 10 x annual salary.
For an employee earning €30,000, a hiring mistake can cost
up to €150,000.
Harvard Business School
7. Increased Productivity
225
185
150
100 100 100
Average Top Average Top Average Top
Performer Performer Performer Performer Performer Performer
Low Complexity Jobs Medium Complexity Jobs High Complexity Jobs
Journal of Applied Psychology
8. Why the Disconnect?
• Ownership of the cost of hiring
• Lack of accountability
• Hiring Top talent does not necessarily work when filling a job
11. Ireland Marketplace
• 2 speed economy
• Demand: IT, Finance, Healthcare, Science and Engineering
• Other areas have a huge over supply
• The social welfare “challenge”
15. Hiring mistakes made by Employers
1. Responsibility is left with HR/ Recruitment and not
with the business
16. Hiring mistakes made by Employers
2. The Recruitment Process
Screening
The Interview
Urgency
References
17. Hiring mistakes made by Employers
3. Involve the existing team and use your own people to hire
18. Hiring mistakes made by Employers
4. Your employee value proposition - your brand is not what
you think it is.
19. The moment of Truth…
“Every time a customer interfaces with SAS Airlines we give
them a little vignette of film, and over a period of time we
will give them enough evidence to decide if they are
watching an Oscar winning epic, or a horror story”
(Jan Carlzon- CEO- he turned it from B listing to Airline of the Year)
23. Worker Satisfaction
PwC Research - May 2011
Employee turnover is likely to rise.
Employee free agency to accelerate.
No one expects to work long-term for
one company anymore.
24. Holding Talent
Generation Y - Work-Life balance
Generation X – Work -Family
• More family time
• Work from home
• Reduce travel time
Baby Boomers
• Less working hours
• Knowledge transfer
• Reduce travel time
• Increased pension
Source - CRF International Holding BV.
25. Engagement
• An engaged employee is one who is
willing to put in discretionary effort
• “An exceptional employee is not just
a little better than someone who is
pretty good they are 100 times
better” Mark Zuckerberg “
26. Your Top Talent Wants…
• Challenge
• Opportunity
• Lack of bureaucracy
• Accountability
• Other top talent
• Mentors
27. Company health Check
Have you:
Surveyed your employees?
Asked people who did not choose you why not?
I hate networking!!
Talked with those recently joined to get their initial
assessments?
33. PwC Video
Its what the public want to see not what you want to put out there
Over 113,000 hits
34. Trends - Tomorrow’s Candidate
I hate networking!! James is 12
…his last Christmas list was online using price
comparison site data!
…his favourite film Ironman, he downloaded
from iTunes.
...he put together his holiday videos into a
movie using the iMovie app.
… after scanning a QR code on his mum’s
iPhone, he won a trip to Disneyland.
… he taught his dad to stream football online.
=> Do you think he’ll ever send you her
CV or reply to a job ad?
35. The Future….
Scientists at University of
Bradford and Aberystwyth.
More science and more data
may not make it easier to
recruit.
37. Takeaways
1. When is the last time the whole team talked only about
talent.
2. Does your selection process make it easy for people to
want to join your organisation.
3. Do you know what your brand says to your potential
hires.
4. Are you a good place to work, don’t just say you are.
5. Hiring and holding talent starts with the CEO.
I will promise is that everyone will learn something and that you will be able to take away actions from this.All slides will be online so no need to take notes.I am trying to cover the MNC and the start up of 8 staff so perhaps not everything will be specifically relevant to you perhaps
CEOs say it is (our survey says its not) Less than 10% of organisations have a talent metric for the top teamEveryone agrees it is important and the data backs it upWhat makes it so difficult to implement …because of human behaviour and the inability to be totally scientificHR Directors are paid significantly lower than Heads of IT and FinancePwc hiring vs client salesHuman behaviour is a challenge Who wants to be a millionaire in RussiaUltimatum game -
People are not rational
Ownership of the cost of hiring and it is spread across the businessEveryone can easily blame someone else – it was the manager, the process was too slow, what chance do we have against google etc, Where is the talent metric that makes the senior team responsible for peopleJust when you are ready to hire is not very linked to when someone may want to work for youHow often do you fob someone off when they may be the next excellent employeeHiring Top talent does not necessarily work when filling a job, a job is about skills not success factors, measure performance not personality
Temporary high unemployment is generating an overwhelming pool of the wrong applicants when companies need to tightly match the right skills with the candidates they need to recruit.Conclusion – hiring is very difficultFirst you need to find the right people and either you find none or you are swamped with applicationsThen you need to be clear who is right for youThen they need to want you…not as straightforward as it seems given people are not rational
How do we find that diamond candidate that no one else knows about…
We have a run of the mill job that many people could doThe internet makes it easy to send lots of job applications to the wrong jobs – same for everyone
You do not rewrite a 3 year old job specYou want the guy who has just left even though you should really be looking for the guy who joined youYou don’t work with the HR team to identify who and where the best people for the position areTherefore you get a shortlist of candidates you don’t want because no one knew what you were thinking and you never wrote it downIf it was easy to find these people you would not be struggling to hire – great people are not easy to find you need to look for them!Who owns the problem
You do everything by interview – therefore you are using a very poor assessment tool, and you do it 5 times as opposed to giving some sort of a test – you would not hire a secretary without checking typing speed, there are plenty of tests to give IT, marketing, finance professionals but we do not use them Its about de-selection not selection however de-selecting based on degree would exclude such visionaries such as:Steve jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael dell etcIf you found the perfect candidate would you hire them – no I need to see a few more candidates!You take forever to make a decision because rightfully you worry about hiring but you end up losing candidates who love companies that can move the process alongYou do not put out your best people to hire Reference – nothing highlights better how good they are – work harder to get reliable references, there are ways around companies saying they don’t give out references – we are a small village really – someone will always know someoneAlways be ready to hire – many great people apply to companies they love not positions and companies cannot handle this – you need to!
You do not look at the network and knowledge within the teamWho has ever recalled in their time in business when someone is hired and everyone goes “how did that person get hired” Most people have come across this. The team know who fit – this does not mean they get total control but they should be listened to and it absolutely engages the teamThey are also your best sort of referrals – the best way to hire a person for which many people can do the job is not advertising at all but just to see who internally knows someone and more importantly can vouch for themHiring managers prioritise speed over quality
You think you are a great company to work for =- that’s why you are hiring – maybe everyone else does not think the sameBig brands can scream opportunity but also bureaucracyStart ups can scream opportunity or riskySMEs can scream – quick decisions vs lack of brand presence..What you can control is how your people interact, as interviewees make a lot of decisions based on the interactions with the company …first impressions last
What are the candidate touchpoints like for your hires?How easy is it too apply to you?How easy is it for a talented employee to tell you they are interested in working for you
Only 45% of employees polled said they were satisfied with their jobs — the lowest level in two decades. Employee engagement levels among top performers fell more sharply last year than they did for workers overall WorldatWorkThis means that when there is an upturn or when employees eventually feel they would rather risk a new co that stay where they are -you will have people waking out the door…Focus on being a good place to work for as opposed to being worried about your employees being headhunted – in an ideal world you want talent that is headhunted
Real generational differencesGen Y – 2 major challenges a) Reduced supply Already (b) Entirely different view of the W-Life equation70% of Gen Y professionals intend to take a sabbatical of 6 months or MORE (in their first job)Expectations – Gen Y - Flexibility is a right not a privilegeGen X - retention is providing time to care for family (Family time / work from home / reduce travel time)This is having a significant impact on talent / workforce planning You also see companies like B&Q actively hiring senior citizens as they are more productive
Most people approach their work in one of three ways: as a job, a career, or a callingInfo on junior achievementInfo on companies not using email after hours – VolkswagenNetflix – how ever many holidays you want but linked to a very strong performance management modelSo who are your best employees and are you just letting them get on with it?Everyone knows who the under performers areI like the definition of bureaucracy that Jim Collins gives Flow is the mental state of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. Proposed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, the positive psychology concept has been widely referenced across a variety of fields.[1]
Think of how good your best people are and how easy it is to work with them – now look at it from their side.Good to great – bureaucracy only exists because of the 10% who would not do it unless you checked up on themNetflix in the US gives out unlimited holidays BUT it also has a very strong performance management culture – they can work togetherHere is the other point – if you asked your teams who were the worst performers, most likely not to last – they will tell you –everyone knows – we just don’t do anything about it
5 Exabyes of information was created from the dawn of tie to 2006…now that amount of information is created every 2 days!1 billion tweets per day1.2 billion apps downloaded between Christmas and New year3 billion youtube videos are viewed every dayHenry's prowess as a steel-driver was measured in a race against a steam powered hammer, which he won only to die in victory with his hammer in his handDeep Blue vs kasparovWatson vs Jeopardy
Here’s the point though – its another tool, nothing more and one that needs to be respectedOnly 10-30% of Professionals are Actively LookingWhat about the other 80% So linkedin’s sale is that jobsites are not the whole population. Don’t limit your reach in terms of size of quality. Go where the best areBut ensure you u/s how to approach themThe flipside is many people are not on jobsites because they are happy and don’t want to be contacted and you could argue there are many people on jobsites that are not on linkedinMaybe people don’t want to be contactedHarder to prise awayIt’s the balance of the “great” candidate vs the time to findOut of date profiles
Does that machine measure suffering?
Mckinsey study says senior managers over 60% do not invest the requisite time – until you discuss it you don’t know what you need to doPeople express tray tables…Boards.ie will tell me if you are a good company = not your websiteInternship highlighting companies abusing the systemMichael O’Leary story
Good to great – bureaucracy only exists because of the 10% who would not do it unless you checked up on themNetflix in the US gives out unlimited holidays BUT it also has a very strong performance management culture – they can work togetherHere is the other point – if you asked your teams who were the worst performers, most likely not to last – they will tell you –everyone knows – we just don’t do anything about it