TALENT MANAGEMENT
Assignment Overview
Two primary outcomes of HR management are recruitment and selection. Through HR planning, managers anticipate the future supply of and demand for employees and the nature of workforce issues, including the retention of employees. These factors are used when recruiting applicants for job openings. Being able to recruit and retain the “best” employees have been difficult tasks for HR managers. The “best” employees are not necessarily the most qualified individuals (e.g., the most educated or with the most work experience), rather it is the individuals who provide value to an organization, who complement the organization, who understand and embrace the organization’s mission, and who fit the culture of the organization. This quandary is a result of a number of different variables such as: job satisfaction, organizational commitment, job performance, and motivation.
Furthermore, contemporary HR managers also are tasked with assisting with peak performance initiatives because of escalated global demands and competition.
Assignment
Go to the Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2016-17 edition (https://www.bls.gov/ooh/ ) and read about a Human Resource Manager generalist position. [A generalist is someone over many HR functions, as opposed to a specialist who might be responsible for only one or two functions or sub-functions of HRM.] Assume that this is a position you as an HR consultant need to fill for your client.
Develop a job announcement/ad to fill the opening for an employer in your home state. You may either include your job announcement/ad as a separate Word document or include in the 3- page paper.
In your paper (a) Describe the employer’s business and key qualifications needed. (b) Explain your advertising and recruiting strategies to find candidates qualified for this opening for your client company. (c) Defend which recruiting and selection processes you will use to choose the best person for the job. (d) Be creative.
Background
Talent Management
Before we jump further into Talent Management, and specifically recruitment, selection, and retention, we need to briefly discuss job analysis. Job analysis is akin to preparing the ground before we plant a garden.
Job Analysis:
Job Analysis is a process to identify the particular job duties and requirements and the relative importance of these duties for a given job. Job Analysis is a process where judgments are made about data collected on a job.
The job, not the person: An important concept of job analysis is that the analysis process studies the job, not the person. While job analysis data may be collected from incumbents through interviews or questionnaires, the product of the analysis is a description or specifications of the job, not a description of the person.
The purpose of job analysis is to establish and document the ‘job relatedness’ of employment procedures such as training, selection, compensation, and performance appraisal.
Source: HR Guide to the Internet; Job Analysis: Overview. Retrieved from Saylor.org, BUS301-2.1.1.
The Staffing Process:
Creating valid recruitment and selection processes is of critical importance in human resource management. Knowing the job content is key to designing valid recruitment and selection activities. HRM professionals design recruitment processes and personnel selection systems to find the best candidate for the job.
Recruitment is the process of identifying qualified candidates and encouraging them to apply for jobs with an organization. Recruitment processes include developing job announcements, placing ads, defining key qualifications for applicants, and screening out unqualified applicants.
Selection is the systematic process of hiring and promoting personnel. Selection systems employ evidence-based practices to determine the most qualified candidates: interviews, personality inventories, psychomotor and physical ability tests, and work samples.
HR professionals must evaluate the validity of measures to determine the extent to which selection tools predict job performance. To do this, they look at content validity, construct validity, and/or criterion validity.
Validity: A quality of a measurement indicating the degree to which it measures what it is supposed to measure (e.g., if its measurement reflects the underlying construct).
A major HRM task is to design recruitment processes and selection systems which are highlighted below:
Recruitment:
Recruitment is the systematic process of hiring and promoting personnel, and includes the search for potential applicants for actual or anticipated vacancies. It is the first step in the hiring process. No matter how a company recruits, the goal of a recruitment strategy is to produce viable applicants who fit in with the company’s needs and values. Therefore, it is beneficial to attract not just a large quantity of applicants, but a group of individuals with the necessary skills for the position. It includes developing job announcements, placing ads, defining key qualifications for applicants, and screening out unqualified applicants.
Selection:
The next step in the hiring process is selecting new employees from the pool of qualified candidates. After obtaining a large, qualified applicant base through recruitment, managers need to identify the applicants with the highest potential for success in the organization. Selective hiring is critical because it reduces future staff turnovers, reduces costs, and increases morale and productivity. Selection systems employ evidence-based practices to determine the most qualified candidates for a job. To find the best fit, managers create a list of relevant criteria composed of critical skills and behaviors for each position. It is important that managers select candidates based on how they fit with the culture of the organization, as well as their technical skills and competencies. Common selection tools include ability tests, knowledge tests, personality tests, structured interviews, the systematic collection of biographical data, and work samples.
Read: Hire the Right People, a philosophy on why hiring and retaining the best people will result in a high performing company (ATTACHED)
Types of Selection Measures:
HR professionals use a variety of measures to select applicants who are the best fit for a position. The main goal of these tests is to predict job performance, and each test has its own relative strengths and weaknesses in this regard. When making a hiring decision, it is critical to understand the applicant’s personality style, values, and motivations. Technical competency can be acquired by new employees, but personality is not easy to change.
Interviews: Interviews are one of the most common ways that individuals are selected. The best interviews follow a structured framework in which each applicant is asked the same questions and is scored with a standardized rating scale. In this way, structured interviews provide more reliable results than unstructured interviews.
Personality Testing: Another tool sometimes used for selection is personality testing. Personality tests can provide an accurate analysis of an applicant’s attitudes and interpersonal skills. These tests can reveal a variety of things about an applicant, such as how well the applicant gets along with others, self-discipline, attention to detail, organization, flexibility, and disposition.
Ability Tests: Psychomotor-ability tests are sometimes used to measure fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination. These skills are important in jobs, like carpentry, that require a lot of hand-eye coordination. Unlike psychomotor ability tests, physical ability tests measure gross motor skills, such as lifting and running. These skills are important in jobs such as construction, where strength is needed.
Work Sample: Another selection technique is to have the applicant complete a hiring assignment. The applicant is asked to complete a task that simulates the actual job. The goal is to assess how well the applicant can learn and perform the tasks.
Validity and Reliability:
HR professionals must evaluate the validity of these measures in order to determine the extent to which selection tools can predict job performance. Measures have different types of validity that capture different qualities. There are three major types of validity: content validity, construct validity, and criterion validity.
• Content Validity: Content validity refers to how comprehensively the measure assesses the underlying construct that it claims to assess. As an example, let’s look at a job interview for a banking position. This measure would have low content validity if it assessed whether the candidate was comfortable talking to many different people, but not whether they were comfortable with math, because the candidate would not have been thoroughly evaluated on every facet of being a banker. The measure didn’t cover the full breadth of what the job requires.
• Construct Validity: Construct validity refers to whether the measure accurately assesses the underlying construct that it claims to assess. This can be evaluated by examining correlations with other measures that purport to assess the same construct. When we ask if a measure has good construct validity, we’re asking, “does this test the thing we are interested in testing?” An example of a measure with debatable construct validity is IQ testing. It is intended to measure intelligence, but there is disagreement about whether it indeed measures intelligence or merely one type of skill.
• Criterion Validity: Criterion validity examines how well the construct correlates with one’s behavior in the real world across multiple situations and manifestations. For instance, does the measure adequately capture the construct (e.g., work ethic) as it presents in real life (e.g., getting assignments done on time, coming in to work on time, not leaving early, etc.)?
Reliability:
The reliability of a measure refers to whether the measure gets repeatable results. Will the recruitment and selection processes that a company uses work every time they need to hire someone, or just once? If their processes get good results every time, those measures can be said to be reliable.
Source: The Psychology of Recruiting and Selecting Employees.” Boundless Psychology Boundless, 26 May, 2016. Retrieved from https://www.boundless.com/psychology/textbooks/boundless-psychology-textbook/workplace-psychology-21/workplace-psychology-106/the-psychology-of-recruiting-and-selecting-employees-401-12936/ Licensed under CC-BY-SA.
Identifying the traits one will need for success in a position is relatively easy compared to the daunting task of identifying those traits within an applicant. Given the cyclicality of unemployment, HR professionals likely receive a pile of resumes simply by posting an opening on a company website or job board. But how many of those resumes will be worth looking through? How many will be worth interviewing? And will any of them be the right person for the job? You do not want to just select the best person in the applicant pool; you want to find the best person for the job. Sometimes this means going beyond the normal labor market and recruiting people currently employed at other firms.
There are a number of methods of recruiting the right talent. Some firms prefer to use specialized recruiting firms, while others ask their current employees for recommendations. The point is that a firm needs to cast the widest net possible in order to secure a large applicant pool.
Then, the firm must face the challenge of selecting the right applicant by determining whether he or she possesses the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed. Like it or not, the interview method of selection is one of the weakest forms of selection. Critics argue that it is too subjective. While subjectivity is not a bad thing, it must be paired with the right objective measures. This unit will cover a number of such measures that can be useful in identifying candidates. Please note that interviews are still very important and that there are “right” and “wrong” ways to conduct interviews, all of which will be addressed here.
One of the key points to remember when recruiting and selecting human capital is that you should identify individuals who share the company’s ideas about the goals and objectives of its business. You should work to identify unique individuals with shared and complementary skill sets in order to build an effective team. Recruiting and selecting human capital should be carried out in order to provide the organization with a strategic advantage.
Retaining Employees
Once quality employees are on board, how do you keep them? See Recruiting, Motivating, and Keeping Quality Employees. (ATTACHED)
A major piece of the Starbucks success story has been the superior service provided by its motivated employees. But, how do you keep employees motivated? See the video below:
Howard Schultz – On Connecting Employees to the Vision
Also, see Zappos’ approach to delivering happiness
Promoting the Best
To learn about promoting the right way, see Promoting Employees: How to Get It Right. (ATTACHED)
How do hiring decisions affect a company’s success? Zappos is well known for consistently providing excellent customer service. In the video, CEO Tony Hsieh explains how company values drive their hiring decisions.
What Makes a Zappos Employee a Good Fit? – Tony Hsieh (Zappos CEO)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ6rVsqfMiQ
Watch this video summarizing Three basic Principles of Great Talent Management:
In this assignment we learned about Human Capital Management and the role of HRM. We explored the area of staffing and acclimation; this function area is called Talent Management. Talent Management is the catchall heading for recruiting, interviewing, selecting, and onboarding new employees.
We hope you realize that the talent management area is a critical, if not the most critical responsibility that HR professionals are charged with. Poorly planned and executed recruiting, staffing, and onboarding strategies set the stage for headaches down the road.