What the true motives are of a senior management team we can only guess, one can take the cynical route and say they are only out to win and destroy or the the more middle of the road that I subscribe to that it is about winning and being superior AND ensuring a sound and healthy work environment. I think you will find that companies have all variations of these two extremes.

What truly constitute a good HR manager is I agree a good question. With the foundation for good HR practices laid over 25 years ago, yet with extraordinarily few companies where best practices lived to the full it can be asked what best and latest HR practice looks like. I do not have the answer, and suppose you have caught me out there. What I personally mean is someone who does have a good insight into what erstwhile scholars have written and said as being the way to do things (backed my evidence)

As for TA manager, the maturity aspect in order to secure very good and long foundation in all matters people related (having had the exposure and experiences tend to lead to having a better overall understanding is my take on this)
Much has over the years been written and said about best TA practices, much of it by Dr Sullivan, Kevin Wheeler and Lou Adler, and it is those learnings that I refer to. With those in hand and a good portion of maturity there should be a chance of getting it right.

As for Recruitment 3.0: I have for the sake of making sure I know what I talk about re-read this. I challenge anyone working in TA to tell me that Recruitment 3.0 doesn’t make sense, that it is not the single most comprehensive and well written piece on the holistic and all encompassing approach to all matters corporate TA. I shall be careful not to sound too holy on Recruitment 3.0, but it simply from where I see it makes very sound business sense, why I for my part declare myself a devout follower.

Finally asking and abiding by what your employees say is always an advice I would follow, it is a necessity to obtain full understanding as well as buy in.

“…predictive value to about.67 which is great!” Actually, as the legendary Meatloaf said: “Two out of three ain’t bad.”

Cheers,

Keith

* What are your sources?

** Or have all cognitive employment tests been prohibited in light of EEOC v. Ford Motor Co. and United Automobile Workers of America?

Some in the conversation are interested in data about hiring – I am happy to share the data I have collected.

Interviews

Numerous research studies show that the predictive value of interviews is low – about .18 – which is similar to the predictive accuracy of flipping a coin or random selection. If the interview is highly structured, it goes up to about .51.

Years of Job Experience

The predictive value of experience is similar to that of interviews – about .18 – a big surprise for most managers who assume that past experience translates into success in the new job. Most often, it does not. (Experience is different from job knowledge like how to program in Java or C++ or using the accounting rules that apply to nonprofit accounting. Job knowledge has a predictive value of about .48)

Resumes

Various studies have found up to 59% of resumes contain erroneous information like an edited job title, inflated years of experience, or false degree claims. Think of the resume as a personal marketing document containing unverified, self-reported information – kind of like the used car description written to get you interested.

Referrals

Conventional wisdom is that hiring someone referred by an employee leads to an employee with better performance and longer tenure. The problem is the data tell a different story. I have been unable to find any evidence of the claim that referral employees perform better and the research shows their tenure is no longer. What the research also finds is that if the employee making the referral leaves the company, the referred employee is more likely to leave, too.

The best approach to hiring is a “whole” person approach – one that combines several evaluation methods. Begin with a valid assessment of cognitive and behavioral preferences (assessments like this can’t be faked.) The best approach is to have every candidate complete the assessment – there are affordable sources for this type of assessment – it saves time and money to assess first! Follow assessment with structured behavioral interviews of top candidates – this approach gets the predictive value to about .67 which is great!

@ Todd: re companies- I agree. Furthermore, I see little likelihood of significant, large-scale, institutional change until such time as there:
1) is a return to a sellers market for employees or
2) a revitalized labor movement or
3) the latest crop of corporate robber barons and banksters is replaced by more enlightened leadership…i.e. not very soon, if ever…

Cheers,

Keith

They don’t want people working from home; you have to have attended certain colleges; they deal with people returning from maternity leave in an inflexible way; and so on. And that’s where the chicken-and-egg comes along: I just don’t see some of these companies putting this latest-and-greatest-best-practice person on the board of directors. If they would have wanted to put this person on their board, they already would have changed their policies in the first place.

So while in theory I like what you are saying, Jacob, in some of your comments — I think it’s more what we all want to happen more than what can easily happen in practice. Sometimes I think it’s the company management that needs to read about and hear about best practices in recruiting and managing people more than the HR and recruiting departments, as sometimes it’s the former and not the latter that are the stumbling blocks.

@ Jacob:
1) Have senior management belief, buy in and living the values.
I think that may be a problem- since these are often the REAL values:
a. Enough is never enough.
b. What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine, too.
c. I do not wish to compete- I wish to win and eliminate the competition.
d. It is not enough that I must win- you must lose as well.

2) Have a highly capable and best/latest practice HR management on the company board of directors who will.spend at least 30% of his/her entire time devoted to talent acquisition/management activities.
Can anybody actually agree at this point what best HR management IS? (“Latest” is probably not the best.)

3) Have a mature highly capable senior TA manager that live and breathe best and latest best in class talent acquisition.
If you have someone like this, they will be going right up against the GAFI (Greed, Arrogance, Fear, and Ignorance/Incompetence) of the most powerful people at the company. (Again,”latest” is probably not the best.)

4) Live and breathe and believing in all elements of Recruitment 3.0, and a relentless reader and followe of ere and the outstanding advice shared here. ISTM that following an ill-fined catchphrase as gospel may not be the best policy. As far as ERE, you have a point- someone should carefully see what the most respected employers of choice have as their policies and practices, and what the most respected of my fellow authors and I suggest, and do the opposite- you’re likely to be wildly successful! Or, you could actually do the UNSPEAKABLE: asking your own staff what they would do to improve their effectiveness and efficiency, and then doing it….

Cheers,

Keith

Perhaps things are different in the UK but senior management here in the US, with some notable exceptions, are more concerned with short term gain and inflated bonuses.

Let me put it another way; if you believe that most of senior management is seeking to build shareholder value over time by planning for the long term and building great organizations, you do not understand the nature of capitalism here in the United States on this very cold day in January of 2013.

They talk it to death but in the end, it is just talk.

Quite frankly a candidate that is OK is not a good thing for organizations that want to dominate a given space. (As an aside, a product that is good is not all that much of a winning idea either…)

The question becomes simple. How do you bring high impact players into your organization? All companies believe they deserve the best. In reality, few do.

The inertia of age old recruitment advertisement in news paper is the cause of this malaise. We never posted recruitment ads for soccer/sports coaches…it is left untainted by this recruitment bureaucracy. Hence we take example thanks to the purposeful recruitment we did in sports.

When I interview, I often keep looking for Resilience in a candidate and the passion to get things done. These two ingredients with little bit of technical stuff not only makes recruitment accurate but simple as well.

@ Denise: “The hope is our employers will understand and courageously begin this long overdue transition.”
Don’t hold your breath, Denise…

Cheers,

Keith

* or obtainable.