Strategizing Talent Acquisition in the Philippines

If you are just looking for arms and legs to work for your company, you don't need to read this blog.

As a recruiter, I've worked with many clients and have come to observe that recruitment in some companies are not given the importance that it deserves. Many acknowledge its importance but the actions negate that acknowledgment.

Recruitment is important for two reasons. First, recruitment is sourcing. It provides the company the needed talents to work in the organization. Without which, an organization may lose the business. Second, recruitment is gate keeping. While you need people in your organization, you need to make sure that the people you are inviting in are the ones you really need. If you fail to do that, the cost of a wrong hire can be greater than the cost of no hire. Let me share my views on these two points.

You prepare for war by creating a plan or a strategy. You change them as you get more information about the situation. That's the first thing I believe we need to do. We need to understand the current situation in sourcing for candidates.

Recruitment as Gate Keeping
What are the facts? There will be more people applying for a job than qualified ones; while a person is qualified, a mismatch between that person and the boss or the team can cause some dissatisfaction that will eventually lead to separation; many hiring managers are not trained to screen candidates; many hiring managers are not trained to understand test results. What needs to be done? HR or those in charge of recruitment and selection should devise a screening strategy that considers the following:

• Effective ways of describing the position and enrolling requesting managers to use them.
• Tools to use in determining aptitude
• Standards
• Strategies for determining if the candidate possesses the needed competency for the job
• Way of gauging if there's fit between candidate and prospective boss or team.
• Training for all the participants in the screening process to appreciate and use all of the above.

Recruitment as Sourcing
What are the facts? Good talents are fast becoming rare commodities; you need to search far and wide if you want to have enough choices; good talents disappear fast, they are in demand and offered jobs left and right; if you don't move quickly enough, you are likely to lose a candidate; if your compensation package is not competitive enough, you may lose a good candidate.

What needs to be done? You need to create a strategy for searching far and wide or by casting a wide enough net. If you become more stringent with your screening, you will need to screen more people. Your hiring managers need to move faster. Many potentially good catch get away because the hiring managers are too busy to schedule the interview before the candidate gets an offer from another company. When the partnership between HR and the requesting managers is not strong, the requesting managers tend to be oblivious of the significance of the loss. The tide has shifted. The attitude that people must be dying to get the job before you even consider hiring them is old. It only works for positions where there's overabundance of qualified people. Some enlightened managers, adjust their schedules to accommodate a good candidate, invite them to dinner or coffee and go out of their way to show the person that the company is a good one to join in. The difference between them and the managers with the old mindset, they are most likely to get the people they want.

The best way to attract talents is to create a culture that nurtures them. One where teamwork is evident, personal and professional development opportunities abound and where good performance is encouraged, recognized and rewarded. For this to happen, HR will need a strategy for enrolling the rest of the organization in an effort to create the RIGHT COMPANY.

In ExeQserve, we always say, right people, training and company. Find the right people for your company, give them the right training and build the right company for them to succeed as professionals and contribute to organizational success.

Managing Up is an Important HR Skill

Think about it. The only way HR can play a strategic partner role in the organization is if HR practitioners learn some effective ways of managing up.

On many occasions, HR practitioners play the gopher role (gopher this, gopher that... get it?) because of several reasons. First I guess is because they don't have the competence to act at a strategic partner level and another is because they don't know how to shift from that order taker role.

I have written about strategic HR management in several posts. Today, I will focus on suggesting ways to help HR build a cooperative and collaborative relationship between them and Top Management.

In typically top-down organizations, there is a tendency for middle managers, HR Managers included, to wait for top management instructions. While nothing is wrong with receiving and aligning HR strategies with top management directions, it is seldom enough to cover all the areas that HR is responsible for. If top management tends to micromanage, it is even more likely that not all of the HR roles will be covered unless HR is able to influence top management to champion some HR initiatives.

How To do it? Let me share my own take on managing up based on my own experience.

Whenever I start work as HR Manager, I normally ask for a month of acclimatizing and understanding the organization's current state. I look closely into the company's strategy, performance strengths, challenges and culture. After that, I craft a comprehensive plan that demonstrates integrated strategies to help the employees contribute more to organizational effectiveness. Whenever I present my HR plans, I make it a point to make clear the role of top management in championing the initiatives and the handover between HR and other line managers. I always get wholesale approval for my plans and it makes my life easier because top management and my counterparts' commitment come with the approval of the plan.

I always make it a point to level expectations with top management. I bat for open communication. I seek clearance to engage management in a discussion of issues whenever warranted. I ask to be allowed to speak freely about what I know, my opinion and feeling about issues. I believe that establishing this kind of communication relationship help improve the quality of decision and paves the way for informed top management decision.

Managing up on a day-to-day basis.

While having a good plan helps, new needs surface everyday that either affect the plan or presents a need to change it. There are also instances when top management make decisions that may have adverse implication on HR matters. HR practitioners should be able to come up to top management, make their proposal or raise their concerns. As long as the roles are clear, norms are in place and communication is respectful, this should not be hard to do. I often say "may I speak" or "may i express my opinion" to seek clearance whenever needed. In a Filipino work culture, I believe this is an invaluable way to show respect and still be able to speak up to top management. I say, "I disagree" whenever I do. At times when I disagree and expressed the implications of top management decision and yet top management decides to go with the decision anyway, I accept the decision and communicate it to others as my own. It is imporant to emphasize at this point that managing up is not about getting what you want but doing what needs to get done. When the communications between top management and middle management flow more freely, this is achieved. If communication is hampered, politics grow and mess things up. Politics don't only slow things down, they hurt relationships as well.

If you see managing up as a challenge, I encourage you to explore this topic further. The web is rich with information on this matter. I suggest that you read up. I also recommend that you explore assertive communication because this is an important skill for managing up.

Here's another post I written in the past that you might find useful:
HR Managers Should Learn How to Sell

Team Building Step 1 : Build a Cohesive Management Team

My 2009 experience and my current consulting engagements further strengthened my belief that organizational change and performance improvement are achieved more easily if members of management team are able to demonstrate collective leadership. What are the indicators that your management team has it?

Communication among management team members is unencumbered. When team members communicate with each other, they do so with a great deal of candor without fear of damaging the cohesiveness of the team. They are able to demonstrate collegiality thereby blurring if not totally erasing departmental divide or silos. This helps improve collaboration, problem solving and decision making.

There is unity of communication. If there is anything that best aids the promotion of change in the organization, this would be it. When everyone in management conveys the same message, with the same fervor and conviction, the message becomes crystal clear. Nothing muddles change more than a manager griping about it and washing his hands in front of his staff. When there's unity of communication, the organizational members don't have to second guess priorities and needed results. Work becomes more focused and needed changes are achieved much faster.

There is just too much benefit to building a cohesive management team for any leader to ignore it. Despite its importance, however, why oh why do many of us ignore it? I can only point to two possible reasons; denial and not knowing what to do. Many clients deny that they are slowed down by silos and politics and I understand why. An admission of this is tantamount to acknowledgment of a weakness which a lot of us are not comfortable doing. Admission however, is the first step towards management team rehabilitation.

If any of this sounds familiar to you, please do not ignore it. If you have the power to change your situation, take the FIRST STEP. If you don't have the power, bring it to the attention of the one in power. Set it in motion, get the ball rolling, begin the journey towards building a more cohesive management team. Make it the most important leadership and organizational development investment you will make this year.

Lastly, make it an ongoing process. If you need help, let me know (yes, I know, shameless self promotion :))

If you are with Human Resources Department, know that not too many of other managers will take the initiative towards this. If your Top Management is not thinking about it, maybe it's time to make it your job to let them appreciate the importance of building a more cohesive management team.

See ExeQserve's Team Culture Building Program.