If your company’s talent management strategy is still based on the oft-repeated adage: “Hire slow, fire fast,” your organization may be losing out in the war for top talent.
Human resource and hiring managers must adopt new rules and more efficient strategies to attract and retain the best employees, says Scott Wintrip, the author of High Velocity Hiring and the featured speaker in a new HR Certification Institute webinar, Mastering the Changing Rules in the War for Top Talent.
Be "quick to hire and faster to inspire," advises Wintrip, the CEO of the Wintrip Consulting Group. That is the practice of the most "talent rich" organizations, which are also, he notes, the businesses that are most often looked up to for industry leadership and innovation.
Becoming Talent Rich
Wintrip, in the HRCI webinar, provides an overview of his Talent Wealth Spectrum, a way for HR leaders and stakeholders to determine whether the business is Talent Rich, Talent Strong, Talent Stable or Talent Poor. Talent Rich companies ― only about 10 percent of organizations ― have nearly zero time to hire by anticipating future hiring needs and maintain a constant flow of top talent. Less than 20 percent of firms are Talent Strong, operationally successful and able to innovate at times. The majority continue to labor, scramble and struggle due to inefficient talent pipelines.
To reach the top of the talent spectrum, Wintrip shows how a company can adopt a "red-carpet" candidate experience that completely flips the logic of traditional hiring processes.
"The old way of hiring is keeping the job open until the right person shows up." Such practices create unnecessary obstacle courses for candidates who have more choices than ever thanks to ongoing talent shortages and more options than ever to work and enjoy the flexibility that comes from being an entrepreneur in the gig economy. "The new way of hiring is cultivating top talent and waiting for the right job to show up.”
Using Multiple Talent Streams
By taking advantage of eight distinct talent pools, companies can not only develop more efficient hiring practices, they can create a surplus of candidate options. Wintrip identified eight talent streams: advertising, automation, candidate mining, market presence, networking, referrals, talent manufacturing and talent scouts.
No single stream, he warns, will help a company secure all the qualified talent, so it’s vital to phase in all the streams over time. Typically, companies use only one or two streams, the reason there is "a low flow in so many organizations when it comes to talent. This low flow is feeding a process that takes a long time because there isn’t enough talent to choose from. And so, the old way of hiring persists ― keeping a job open until the right person shows up."
Wintrip said he began thinking about a better flow of talent after learning that average time to fill reached an all-time high of nearly 30 days in 2016. While many blame talent shortages for increased time to hire, he believes it is a process issue that can be overcome with smarter hiring practices and better coaching of hiring managers.
HRCI Recertification Credits
HRCI invites you to learn more by viewing the webinar co-sponsored by HRCI and Top Employers Institute. HR practitioners who hold HRCI certifications can also earn one business credit toward recertification by watching the replay of the webinar, Mastering the Changing Rules in the War for Top Talent.