Searching Talent At The Time of Crisis

Staffing solutions have become critical in recent times. The economic rundowns, new criteria for employment, changing technologies, finding right talent and such like have affected the recruitment process and talent pool of companies to a great extent. While finding the right set of candidates has become challenging, there are certain measures which can be useful towards hiring at the time of crisis.

• Often it has been observed that organizations hire or rather look for talent only when they have an opening. This means the company is already in crisis when it starts looking for recruits. This approach affects the company objectives in the long run. So, it is better to start off early. Regular analysis needs to be performed regarding the future talent needs of the company. The talent pool should be evaluated at regular intervals and forecasting regarding future talent needs is crucial.
• It is essential to specify the demands of the job role along with the skill set requirement. The hiring manager should identify the team in which the recruit will work and consider the company culture impact on the job role in order to find the best match.
• Talent pool development is one of the fundamental measures to handle recruitment crisis. The sourcing of the talent pool should be channelized among employees, social media platforms, network channels and such like for a compressive database of candidates. Even the candidate peers can be asked for nominations.
• For a successful recruitment process, an organization requires a set of well trained and high caliber interviewers who can successfully analyze candidate’s knowledge base along with professional behavioral pattern, problem solving abilities and soft skills. Reference checks can be effective towards past experience verification and it is better to involve the top stakeholders in the assessment process.
• Recruitment process goes both ways towards impression creation from the employers as well as candidate end. So it is better to keep the door open for questions in order to perk up the candidate interest. It is also essential to involve technicians and hiring managers along with HR professional to close the deal. In case of higher positions, C level employees should be involved in the process.
• Integration of the fresh recruit within the system should be performed with systematic on boarding of the candidate and proper support towards working systems to be provided by the team members and managers.

While these measures can assist towards effective recruitment even before the crisis rises, there are certain things which should be off limits.

• Going for the recruitment at the nick of time. When a company is desperate to hire, that’s when the worst decisions are taken. No one wants to end up with a bad recruit. So, refraining from hurried recruitment is a best approach,
• Generic competency models should be avoided at the time of recruitment.
• Ad hoc approach towards talent search results in a disorganized process.

Lastly, delaying selection for too much perfect match or settling for a candidate at first instance, both may result in crisis in after years.

Millennial - The Driving Force Towards Altering Workforce Demographics

The millennial generation is the new face of workforce demographics in current corporate structure. The people belonging to this generation have a different outlook towards employment than generation x or the baby boomers. While baby boomers were more in to organizational structure and used to put in long hours of work, millennial generation are skilled and technologically inclined. They are confident in performance and have the ability to multi task with efficiency. They prefer working in teams and seek challenging tasks in their employment. They have a tendency to achieve something much higher in career path yet give importance to work life balance. They are set to take over the reins from baby boomers who will be retiring in the coming years. The four most important characteristics that this generation looks forward in organizational structure are as follows.

• Digitization is one of the primary factors which drive the interest towards an employment opportunity for millennial. The technological innovations for carrying out several organizational processes are very common now days. This helps in effective and error free management of such processes which attracts this generation. Also it influences the working style by removing the restriction to work at office desk always.
• Transparent flow of communication and information from time to time along with open forums for discussion and feedback is greatly sought after by millennial. They think that organizations with clear and constant flow of information tend to make smarter strategic decisions and achieve growth in coming years.
• Flexibility is a key element of employment for this generation. As stated earlier, work life balance is important for them. Flexibility includes variable work timings and ability to work at different locations are to name a few. It also depicts the working environment demographics of the company. The fluid organizations better server customers and are advanced in strategic planning and execution.
• Time efficiency matters the most for millennial. Since they have access to huge information and resources within a quick span of time, they need similar processes within the organization. The streamlined processes for back end jobs with technology touch are sought after by them.

So, it is essential for the companies and recruitment agencies to follow certain processes to manage millennial.

• It is essential to have a structure in place for team and leadership management. Daily tasks require end of day updates. Similarly weekly and monthly sessions regarding assignment development and knowledge transfer sessions are important to encourage millennial.
• Providing required leadership and guidance at regular intervals during the course of employment is crucial to keep this generation stay motivated towards work.
• Since, this generation believes in team work, so it is better to encourage interaction of this generation within teams to channelize the team work spirit for better productivity.

There should be a well structured system for sharing thoughts and feedback regarding the work and its related affairs. Since millennial generation seek recognition for their work, appreciations and reward systems are essential in this regard.