Every week, I review blogs that cover talent development to find the very best talent development posts. This week, you’ll find pointers to pieces on hurry-up hiring on the rise, Gen-Y and recruiting benchmarks, understanding turnover, measurement in talent management, and whether transparency is good in succession planning.
From Fortune: Hiring in a hurry picks up
“As competition for talented workers heats up, some companies are giving their hiring process a boost and reducing their interview-to-offer times.”
Wally’s Comment: Companies see evidence that talent is starting to move around faster and, as a result, they’re speeding up their hiring processes.
From Dorothy Dalton: The declining art of conversation and Gen Y recruitment benchmarks
“Much has been written about the need for changes that employers should make in order to attract and retain Millenials. We have seen a veritable outbreak of company Facebook pages, inter-active web sites, Twitter accounts, mentoring programmes and the like. But as one client mentioned recently after a less than effective graduate recruitment job fair, an additional challenge is even more basic: to identify the best entry-level talent. I’m not even talking about text-speak or spelling errors on CVs, but basic social inter-action during the interview process which is generally the backbone of most hiring systems. Modern technology has impacted us in many ways. Many are positive. Some are not.”
Wally’s Comment: Many pundits have written about Gen-Y as fish that swim in a sea of technology and how companies must adapt. Less has been written about how Gen-Y and the rest of us have changed the way we act with each other and how our recruiting processes and metrics must adapt.
From Ann Bares: The Perils of Misunderstanding Turnover
“HR pros and business leaders are often guilty about approaching turnover in a rather simplistic, one-sided way — overlooking the sometimes critical upsides of turnover and failing to consider the unique organizational and workforce factors necessary to properly assess turnover costs and benefits in their own organizations.”
Wally’s Comment: We know that turnover is a two-faced beastie. There’s good turnover and there’s bad turnover. So, why, wonders Ann Bares, do we only record turnover in one way and gin up our reward systems to stop any turnover?
From Jon Ingham: Challenges and Opportunities for Talent Managers / 6: Measurement
“the real issue here is simply that CEOs and their Heads of Talent haven’t figured out that it’s not just that these measures are hard to make, it’s that a lot of the more value adding and creating attributes a CEO would like to know, e.g. on skill gaps and pivotal jobs, simply can’t be measured in ways that would be ‘adequate’ in other business functions, that understanding is never going to be more than ‘moderate’ and that they’re just not going to be able to make decisions with the ‘same rigour’ as for marketing, supply chains and product strategies.”
Wally’s Comment: The late Russell Ackoff would love this post. It was Ackoff who reminded us that “Managers who can’t measure what they want frequently settle for wanting what they can measure.”
From Dan McCarthy: Transparency in Succession Planning: To Tell or Not To Tell?
“I recently attended a talent management networking meeting hosting by PDI Ninth House. It was well attended, with over 100 participants, all responsible for some aspect of talent management. The two presenters had a packed agenda with over 50 slides to get through. While it was all good and interesting, the part that sparked the most questions and discussions was the section on ‘transparency.'”
Wally’s Comment: Should everyone know who your designated “hi-pos” are? Dan McCarthy reports on some spirited discussion of that very thing.
