Tag Archives: jobs

How to Hire Top Talent in an Instant

How to Hire Right Now

Most of us know that success in business depends on people. From an entrepreneur-led startup to a large organization, we don’t go very far without relying on individuals and teams. Some go so far as to say that the only real competitive differentiation organizations have is people.

But hiring the right talent isn’t easy. We’re often worried we may pick the wrong person.

 

“

A hiring mistake can cost up to 5x the bad hire’s annual salary. -SHRM

 

As the CEO of a large company, I’m often pushing managers to fill open positions. To me, an opening that drags on too long causes all kinds of other problems. Customer needs not met, employees doing multiple jobs for too long, and milestones delayed.

Scott Wintrip takes on the topic of hiring talent in his new book, High Velocity Hiring: How to Hire Top Talent in an Instant. Through his global consultancy, Wintrip Consulting Group, Scott has worked with companies around the world to hire top talent in less than an hour. I recently talked with him about his research and his new book.

 

It’s Taking Too Long!

Why is it taking longer and longer to fill jobs?

Two factors have caused the time it takes to fill a job to reach all-time highs: the skills shortage and an inefficient hiring process.

There’s a persistent talent shortage that’s pervasive across all industries. For example, when you look at middle-skill roles (jobs that require education beyond high-school and below the level of a four-year degree), there’s a gap between the number of jobs and the number of people to fill them. According to the National Skills Coalition, middle-skill roles account for 53 percent of jobs in the United States. However, only 43 percent of U.S. worker have current skills at the middle-skill level.

Copyright Scott Wintrip. Used by Permission.

Qualified people also have more employment choices than ever, including the option of doing their own thing by joining the “gig economy” as freelancers. Because of this, an increasing number of people are leaving the traditional workforce. When you combine this with increased globalization, borders will matter less, creating a talent competition unlike anything we’ve seen before.

The old way of hiring—keeping a job open until the right person shows up—doesn’t work when there’s a people shortage. A reactive process keeps a job open for weeks or months. To have the people they need, organizations must permanently change their hiring strategy by engaging in the new way of hiring: actively cultivating top talent and then waiting for the right job to open.

 

“

“Dating and hiring have a lot in common.” -Scott Wintrip

 

Avoid these Hiring Errors

Warning: Your Job is At Risk

Rethinking Excellence in the Smart Machine Age

 

Artificial intelligence will change everything. It’s coming. In some areas, it has already arrived.

Take Amazon. Its new grocery store has no cashiers and no baggers.

How about water meter readers? Just yesterday someone appeared at our door explaining that those days are over for our neighborhood.

And it’s not only these jobs that are changing. Millions of jobs will be affected from manufacturing to services.

Machines have access to more data than we do. They can analyze it faster than we can.

 

“

“We can be humble and live a good life with the aid of the machines or we can be arrogant and die.” -Norbert Wiener

 

Edward D. Hess is a professor of business administration at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. In addition to fifteen years in academia, he also spent twenty years as a business executive. His research is in high performance in the midst of change.

He argues that we need to change our definition of smart. We need a new smart. We need to be good at what machines can’t do well. His new book, co-authored with Katherine Ludwig, is Humility is the New Smart: Rethinking Human Excellence in the Smart Machine Age.

I recently spoke with him about the changes ahead.

 

“

“A good listener is totally focused on the speaker with an open mind.” -Hess, Ludwig

 

Millions of Jobs Will be Automated

What jobs will be automated?

Over the next decade or so, tens of millions of service and professional jobs will be automated along with more manufacturing jobs. Service jobs that are at risk include retail, fast-food, manual laborers and construction workers, truck drivers, accountants, administrative people, paralegals, customer service reps, and security guards. Increasingly, professional jobs will be automated reducing the number of professional workers needed in the fields of accounting, law, finance, consulting, marketing, strategy, management, journalism, medicine and architecture.  The Chief Economist of the Bank of England in November of 2015 predicted that over the next decade or two 80,000,000 jobs in the United States could be automated.

 

How to Prepare for the Smart Age

Do You Have A Leadership Lifeline?

Leadership Lifelines

It’s 10:25 a.m. on a Thursday.  Your calendar indicates that you have a meeting with your boss at 10:30 in her office to update her on an important company project.  You grab a pen, your notepad, and a printout outlining the status of each open item.

Walking into her office, you immediately realize that the meeting agenda will be different.  Sitting next to your boss is the Human Resources Director.  Your boss says, “Sit down. There’s no easy way to say this, but your position has been eliminated.”

You’re not sure whether they see you gasp for air.  The sharp breath you take is to try to slow yourself down.  You feel heat rushing up into your face like lava erupting from a volcano.  Your heartbeat feels like you are running as it begins to pound faster.

You don’t even hear the rest of the dialogue. You stare blankly as your boss exits the room, and you are left with HR and a stack of paper.

 

“

“Facing your fears robs them of their power.” -Mark Burnett

 

What are you going to do?

 

The Stress of Losing a Job

Losing your job rates as one of life’s biggest stressors.  That stress ratchets up dramatically if you have little or no savings.  But it’s not just about money.  For many, it’s also about identity.  Losing friends and colleagues, and feeling ostracized, are also contributing factors.

And in most cases it is a blow to self-esteem.  Often your higher-level thinking will lose out to emotions. Change is hard, especially when you don’t control it.

 

“

“You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this and you will find strength.” -Marcus Aurelius

 

After you lose your employment, experts quickly tell you that you need to network.  Because, they will say, the way to a new job is through your network.

  • “Who do you know?”
  • “Who is in a position to help you?”
  • “Who are the most influential people in your network?”
  • “Who will you ask to be references?”

I have been both the recipient and the originator of networking calls. If you are looking for a job, you are inevitably going to call everyone you can.

Because I have a large network, most months I receive several calls or emails from people looking for work.  I truly feel for these people. I understand the challenge.  It’s stressful. Earlier on, I tried to help everyone.  Now, though I try, I just don’t have the time or bandwidth to help most people. That’s difficult for me because I want to help every person that I possibly can in these difficult situations.

 

“

“It’s not stress that kills us, it’s our reaction to it.” -Hans Seyle

 

Common and Uncommon Advice

Advice you will often hear: Network. Build your connections. Meet people at industry events. Become an expert in your field.

Here’s the advice you don’t often hear:

Leading The Internal Talent Wars

The War for Talent

Every day there is a war for talent.  When the economy is roaring, the war gets a lot of attention.  Human Resource departments will circulate reports about the hot market.  Reporters jump into the fray with articles warning executives about the market.  Managers quickly realize that the market is hot, not only because of the articles, but also because recruiters start calling more often.

“

“A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together.” Johann Wolfgan von Goethe

 

No company wants to see the best people leave for other opportunities no matter what the economy is like.

Winning the talent war is a complex goal combining leadership, culture, opportunity and other intangibles.

The war for talent happens every day, in every economy, and inside of every organization.  It doesn’t just happen when the economy is expanding, nor in the hot sectors like technology.  It rages on everywhere, in every organization, continuously.

Instead of looking at companies battling for talent, look at it from a different perspective.  Consider the talent wars raging INSIDE the organization.

Step back from it all, and be on the alert inside of your company:

 

Watch the leaders who attract talent.

 

Yes, leaders who attract outside candidates are worthwhile to watch.  More interesting is to see if a leader attracts talent from within the company.  That means that the manager has created a unique environment, a culture that is worth watching.

 

Watch the leaders who send the talent.

 

Some managers are especially good at sending leaders.  This means the person or group may be especially good at developing next generation leaders.  As a result, the manager ends up with raving fans throughout the organization.  Study this person’s methods and replicate the success.  Leadership is not about direct control but about influence.  This manager’s influence is likely growing faster than others.