Trg & Dev

• Even the hardest working candidate can often only get their foot in the door for the job interview but can’t seal the deal.

• One must have Positive Emotions to push ahead.- Thought credited to hiringsciences

• Key feature in an online assessment : Assessment results that do not require a professional debrief - they should be ready to put to work.- Thought credited to Saleem Qureshi

• The current jobs outlook is better than at any time over the last two years, but job security remains fragile as the New Zealand economy begins to come out of recession, according to Westpac Bank. - Thought credited to Hrmguide

• Statistics Canada reported that unemployment remained at 8.5% in December with little change in overall employment levels. But employment was still down by 323,000 from the peak in the job market in October 2008. - Thought credited to Hrmguide

• According to a study conducted by the University of Michigan, School of Business, about 15-20% of hiring decisions made end in failure. It is astonishing that companies tolerate these failure rates because of costs incurred; companies are losing up to five times the annual salary for the position that was miss-hired for. It is even more surprising because everyone involved in the hiring decision from the line manager to HR manager has a vested interest in ensuring the hiring decision is right. - Thought credited to HRT Magazine

• Almost 60% of surveyed employees plan to leave their present jobs in 2010, according to a 2009 Right Management poll. And a recent Watson Wyatt survey reports that engagement has dropped almost 25% for top performers. - Thought credited to Hrhero.com

• Sixty-five percent of organizations that indicate cost saving is a primary outsourcing objective. They achieved their expected cost-reduction targets through their outsourcing programs. - According to Hewitt’s HR Outsourcing Trends and Insights 2009 survey

• Gen X is perceived to be less far less loyal than boomers. By the age of 32, studies have shown the average Gen X worker has held approximately nine different jobs. In contrast, the traditional employee of yesterday retired after working 30 to 40 years at one company. - According to Hewitt’s HR Outsourcing Trends and Insights 2009 survey

• Despite the economic slowdown, companies continue to invest in and deploy global HRMS and talent management system. 78% of respondents reported their HRMS to be mostly or very effective, and the satisfaction for talent management system is 67%. - Thought credited to Hewitt’s 2009 Global HR survey

• Before the recession, job seekers were careful not to apply for jobs that they were not suited to, however with so many desperate job seekers out there, companies are now being inundated with job applications, many of which are not suitably qualified or skilled for the positions they are applying for. - Thought credited to Gillian Meier

• 43% of HR professionals say in the next five years, a larger proportion of the workforce at their companies will be telecommuting. - Thought credited to SHRM

• 70% of the external customers (applicants) and 28% of the internal customers (hiring managers) indicate they are dissatisfied with the hiring process. - Thought credited to Staffing.org

• 50% of the processes users (managers and recruiters) later regret their “buying” decision (Source: The Recruiting Roundtable). In addition, 25% of new hires later regret taking their new job within one year.
  - Thought credited to Challenger and Gray

• The average American changes jobs every three years, and changes complete career fields three times over a lifetime.- Thought credited to McKinsey & Company

• Routine kills creativity! To do things different, avoid routines.- Thought credited to Alex Putman

• 51 % of hiring managers cited dressing inappropriately as the most damaging mistake a candidate can make in an interview. Speaking negatively about previous employer came in second at 49 % and appearing disinterested ranked third at 48%. Other mistakes included appearing arrogant (44 %), not providing specific answers (30 %), and not asking good questions (29 %).- Thought credited to McKinsey and Company

• “A problem is something you can do something about. If you can’t do anything about it, it’s a fact of life, and so we accept facts: we solve problems.”- Thought credited to Shannon Russo

• Two ways of making your work interesting and fun:
• Find people you enjoy working with.
• Find problems you enjoy solving.- Thought credited to HBR tip of the day

• Aging baby boomers are FINANCIALLY unprepared to retire in US. Mckinsey global institute predicts that baby boomers will save more than spending, slowing down the pace of GDP. This problem can be tackled by allowing baby boomers to work later in life. Enabling them to work later in life would significantly benefit both individual households and the broader economy. By increasing the median retirement age by about two years-from 62.6 today to 64.1 by 2015-the share of unprepared boomer households could be halved from 62 percent to 31 percent.- Thought credited to Mckinsey Global Institute

• Unemployment has come down a meager 0.2 percent to put US at 10 percent, but that’s still the worst level in decades. Even if jobs start to come back sooner than expected-which may happen as more stimulus money starts to kick in-U.S. unemployment is likely to remain high for years to come, as much as 7 or 8 percent even into 2014.- Thought credited to Newsweek

• Recruiters will become aggressive on LinkedIn, twitter and Facebook to seek talent at the start of 2010. Through by Paul Jacobs

• Inference: This means the candidates will start getting more job opportunities and they become selective. This might shift the control in the hands of the jobseekers to keep them on their toes. Recruiters must use a sound assessment system to evaluate their skills, knowledge and abilities wrt the jobs they have applied for.

• Despite China’s enormous pool of university graduates (3.1 million in 2005 alone), MGI research suggests that fewer than 10 percent of Chinese job candidates, on average, would be suitable for work in a foreign company, and the fast-growing domestic economy absorbs most of those who could. - Thought credited to Mckinsey Global Intitute

• India has the world’s largest and fastest-growing off shoring sector, dominated by IT services, which play a major role in the country’s overall economic growth. But signs of strain are appearing that could hamper the nation’s growth. Rising wages and high turnover are evidence that local constraints on talent supply have appeared. Moreover low-wage countries such as China, the Philippines, and Hungary are gearing up to challenge its lead. - Thought credited to Mckinsey Global Intitute

• People used to switch jobs once or twice a in a lifetime. Things are changed now. Most people hold jobs for 18 months to 5 years and gaps in between are not unusual. - Thought credited to Michael Glenn

• Classification of Hires
• Halo/Horn Effect: One that you buy looking at the color is like appointing the candidate on the first impression
• Traits: Strength - The Thoroughbred which can see off the entire race, like a candidate who can perform the task under all kinds of stress and pressure
• Traits: Speed & Agility - The best hire would be a candidate who can outperform others in his work. Similar to the horse who has a potential to win the race- Thought credited to Charles Van Heereden

• Companies around the world are cutting back their financial-incentive programs, but few have used other ways of inspiring talent. Many financial rewards mainly generate short-term boosts of energy, which can have damaging unintended consequences. Whereas non-financial rewards turn out be more effective in the long run. - Thought credited to Mckinsey Quarterly

• Profound uncertainty amplifies the importance of making decisions when the time is right-that is to say, at the moment when the fog has lifted enough to make the choice more than a crap shoot, but before things are clear to everyone, including competitors. - Thought credited to Mckinsey Quarterly

ProfileSense™ is an employee assessment tool created to provide HR personnel with powerful data to make the most accurate hiring decisions faster than ever before. Unlike current assessment products, ProfileSense™ adapts to your specific needs, allowing you to measure applicants against your “perfect” employee.
ProfileSense is our flagship product that makes it really easy to manage, identify and filter out the best of the best from a pool of applicants applying for a position in your company. ProfileSense makes the difficult and time consuming process very simple and at the same time very effective, providing top notch comparative analysis of applicants in real time, so you can spend more time doing business than finding people. HireLabs recently launched a new version, ProfileSense 3.0 by hosting a webinar on 21st of October that addressed the issue of “Recruiting during the recovery” and received an overwhelming response for registrations from all parts of the world and had an attendance of 500 people watching our show live.

The concept of Occupational DNA was developed on the philosophy that every individual possesses a talent within his DNA. Just like every individual has a unique DNA, they have a unique competency too. ProfileSense 3.0 has been developed on this concept to help employers identify the unique talent that is best suited to the job requirements.

How the concept works:
At HireLabs, the concept is put to work in the following 3 steps:

• Identify the current needs of the position.
• Select the Occupational DNA traits that reflect the needs of your position.
• HireLabs will custom design assessments for each Occupational DNA trait that you selected.

Customized assessments:
Here’s a feature that puts competition aside. Our research shows that the talent assessments did not screen the applicants effectively. This was because generic assessments were used for all types of businesses missing out the importance of 3 major factors:
• Corporate culture
• Industry language
• Local environment.
The user can also suggest more questions, which can be included in the test. Imagine the precision that can be brought to your recruitment process.

Benefits of using ProfileSense 3.0:
Here’s how you can benefit from the system:
• HireLabs has created the most user friendly assessment testing tool for the HR industry.
• The interface is designed to assist you in the entire process of screening.
• Create an account and get ready to start assessing the hundreds of resumes that are in your inbox.
• Create a new assessment, select the occupation you want to test for, There are 4500 occupations you can choose from. Add as many tests you would like the applicants to take.
• Customize to suit your local and corporate culture.
• Finally add the names and email addresses of the applicants who you would want to be assessed and the invitation is automatically emailed to them to take the assessment online.
• You are notified as the applicants complete the tests.
• You can view the graphs and charts to evaluate the performances. The reports are color coded with letter grades A, B, C, D, E and F. This way you can focus on interviewing candidates who got A, B and C, ignoring those who didn’t make the cut.
• Imagine how simple things be if all the resumes in your inbox could just sort themselves out as YES, MAYBE and NO.

I had a chance during the weekend to squeeze out some time to watch tennis. Apart from the obvious thrill of watching the sport, I did have an ulterior motive. Who has an ulterior motive for watching tennis, you ask? And what could that motive possibly be? Maybe it was the concoction of a few sleepless nights with this new brand of coffee I’ve been having; but to me, the match seemed like a competitive arena of recruitment. Now before you start blaming my coffee and lifestyle, give me a chance to explain myself. The match was between the renowned Nadal and the new chap Almagro. Initially Almagro, surprisingly, turned out to be a force to be reckoned with - but then he lost. Reason? Almagro got beaten by the patience of Nadal. The match remained tied for both the players, who won on their serves but neither of them tried to capitalize on the opponent’s serve. Once it was 6-6 down, Nadal broke Almagro’s serve to win the set and changed the score to 7-6. The rest was all Nadal’s show, as Almagro was psychologically beaten. In the remainder of the match, Almagro failed to capitalize on the Nadal’s serves while Nadal continued to tap into his psychological warfare with great success. To add insult to injury, the poor new lad got injured too.
The analogy between the game and recruitment was clear in my almost-coffee-induced-coma head. Just as Almagro failed to aggressively respond to the opponent’s serve, we as recruiters have become so passive during the recession and are literally hoping for things to fall into our laps. Any recruiter can have his share of the pie in the hiring frenzy, but the art is to perform even in bad economic times. The recruiters in recession wait for the clients to come to them and become passive in vigorously seeking applicants due to lack of business in the market. I personally believe that recruiters should become even more aggressive during recession and steal the show. This is the time to pounce; to set you apart from everyone else. This is exactly how Nadal won the game; by being aggressive even at the receiving end. The only way to win the game is to respond at times when its least expected. Economic conditions will only be a hindrance unless people don’t make a move to get rid of it. The economic situation has been further worsened by the people who are a part of it. Blaming the economy is nothing more than an excuse for being passive.
To sum it up, all recruiters need to do is to change their attitude and respond in a better, more aggressive manner, especially now. How? By hiring reliable ATS and talent assessment service providers to create a difference; by seeking candidates to benefit the existing clients; and by looking for more and more clients in this huge market filled with numerous industries

Just last week, a friend asked a question about the way I classify employees with respect to what they deliver to their organizations. So I decided to write a post about it. When thinking about the candidates organizations may be interested in hiring, I like to keep things simple and classify them into two categories. Experts or Performers. Yes I know what your immediate reaction will be Hassan, don’t make things so simple because they aren’t. Yes, I agree often they aren’t but trust me guys – at times they are that simple. I like to look at a potential hire with these two lenses because it makes my job easier and simplifies my hiring decision.

Believe it or not, I have been pretty darn good with this. Let’s see why I believe so. Experts are perfectionists. These are the folks with years and years (at times decades) of experience under their belt in the field of their specialty. They are mature in their thinking – too mature maybe for a customer-responsive, innovative and growth-savvy  organization.

Experts weigh in their knowledge and advice on important decisions. Theirs is the carefully chosen path. Risks mitigated – all corners covered. They take pride in their expertise and profession. Often like to work in organizations with established hierarchy and a set career path. Intuition is the element that’s long been suppressed – rationale is what they relish. Organizations with mature work processes find them to be a perfect fit. In my eyes, they are process-improving machines where problems are pushed in and a rational solution will come out the other end.

Performers are the ones who are never short on ideas. You often hear them ask the WHY question in the cafeteria. You might often find them jumping the gun on tough decisions but if encouraged, their idea train would take you places you h

adn’t dreamed of. They are usually the fresh perspective guys – irrespective of the longevity of their careers. They just have the attitude of ‘why not’ and ‘what else’. Often Performers are young blood – the fresh graduate, the newly transitioned into an industry or new to management. They may be short on sound and calculated advice at times, but never short on commitment or energy. Think of the pizza delivery guy who wants to work extra hours just before the Spring break – yes that’s them. If you lead them, you don’t need to bring a sense of urgency to every task – because they do it for you. They thrive when systems, processes and structures are still taking shape and evolving.

So who should you hire!

Market trends show that a particular type of organizations is hiring Performers and it has no co-relation to the size of the company or the state of its business growth. So what sets these organizations apart? Their attitude! Yes, I call it the Responsive Attitude. It is not the one with the reactive attitude, one that waits for the competition to beat them to the next product or market before they call in the emergency board meeting. It’s not even the one with the proactive attitude, one that would be trying out too many new things in search of the Killer App or next iPhone. These organizations are structured enough to have a strategic focus and flexible enough to revisit it from time to time – just the right balance. Having the Responsive Attitude means you are following up on your plans but you are constantly in touch with your customers in various markets to see what they are saying about you, your products, your delivery process and your customer service. These organizations are seeking Performers because they are ready to put out a product that is 80% ready TODAY then release the fully tested one NEXT WEEK. Performers help them make that decision. Experts would still be covering corners, mitigating risks while the competition would be working on their second Beta release. So review your clients and see which ones have the Responsive Attitude and then you would know what to do.

I don’t mean to claim that this is the Holy Grail of talent acquisition but this has been the result of our team’s research. I would be interested in your take on the subject.

A few days back, we ran a discussion on several social networking platforms to reach out to the recruiting community and asked them if recruiters should develop their own assessment tools or hire the services of assessment specialists. A strong majority shared the same idea – focus on what you do best i.e. understand the client’s needs, pool in candidates, perform pre-screening to generate qualified leads etc. and allow specialists to take care of the assessment design and development. Some of the comments that people shared were:

1. Executive search firms and staffing firms have a large number of tasks that they need to perform from client need identification, job postings, talent pooling and talent pre-screening etc. Designing and developing their own assessments would require them to shift their focus from areas that are their core expertise.
2. Building their own expertise on talent assessments would incur a fixed cost while partnering up with a specialized assessment firm would at most bring in a project-based expense, improving the bottom line against each hire.
3. The competition in the industry is increasingly become intense. There are retained search recruiters, transactional recruiters and cross-industry recruiters – all are offering their services to YOUR client. You only get ONE shot to deliver the right candidate and hence conducting the right assessment has become critical to the hiring decision.
4. As new online assessments are popping up on the screen, cross-border talent acquisition and geographically-separated candidate screening is more cost effective than ever. The ROI on online assessment platforms is comfortably high and clients appreciate the value of assessments in the on-boarding process
The trend is shifting – talent assessment is a key process in talent acquisition and talent management. Recruiters, job boards, ATS providers and staffing firms – all are partnering up with specialist assessment firms to add it to their portfolio of service offerings. Executive search firms and staffing firms that traditionally were using their own generic assessment tools are not moving toward specialized, job-specific assessments to get the most out of it.

Searching for happiness in your work?  Image courtesy Bud Caddell.

A way to identify where should your creative faculties focus on

This is the presentation for my training program for a local industry leader in the FMCG area.

Microsoft Office Labs have created a splash of a video with this one. Imagining the 2019 year to be so advanced might seem just a dream to many but all reality begins with a dream. If not all, some ideas will surely be materialized by 2019.