Ever since it was reported a couple months ago that many recruiters are not considering individuals who are currently unemployed, any number of bloggers, pundits, commentators and others have sounded out about the short-sighted in justice that this policy seems to represent. Many HR pros, however, have responded that the real problem is time:
- Time to sort through the dozens, if not hundreds, of resumes – many from desperate applicants who aren’t qualified for the position
- Time to communicate with hiring managers and the potential candidates themselves
- Time to conduct any required background and reference checks
- And on, and on
No doubt, these are all legitimate concerns. What puzzles me, however, is that for all the controversy and debate over the legality, morality, ethics, human capital concerns, business impacts, talent retention, etc that has gone on ad nauseum, there’s been very little I have come across addressing the problem from the standpoint of waste and value. More importantly, there’s little discussion on where waste and value are created in the hiring process.
Are HR departments (and all others who are, or should be, involved in the hiring process) so remarkably lean and efficient that there is simply no room for improvement? Of course they are not, since nothing ever is. HR adds value to the hiring process when they identify and recruit the best possible candidate, regardless of current employment status. Recruiting new talent is a process that can be mapped, analyzed and improved:
- Creation of a vacancy
- functional manager’s requisition
- all necessary approvals
- posting of a vacancy announcement
- receipt of resumes
- candidate selection
- interviews
- offers and hiring
- on-boarding
Where are the bottlenecks?
All of these processes (and probably many others) combine to form a value stream. Where is there waste in the process? Where can it be made more efficient? If not every resume can be given due attention – why not? What would we need in order to assess every possible applicant? Why don’t we have it already?
A business should be looking to recruit the best possible people, regardless of economic circumstances, right? Of course they should. What a terrible thing to witness, however, that when confronted with a tidal wave of resumes the response has not been, “How can we more efficiently process a huge volume in order to identify the best candidates?” Rather, it has been, “Let’s make the number of applications we have to process smaller.”
Sadly, this knee-jerk reaction fails to provide the organization with the best possible candidate.
David,a very meaningful post. I was reading a report today from Center of Worklife Policy which said that 93% of highly qualified women have to take a sabatical for personal reasons, and only 74% get to join the workforce again and in most cases lower salary. What a waste of resources!
Sonia
soniajaspal@wordpress.com
Thanks for your comment, Sonia.
Did the report mention the need for the low rate of workers who return? Is it due to poor economic conditions, or is it cultural or discriminatory?
That’s a shame. If they don’t have enough time, you’d think they could find a better filter than “currently employed” vs. “currently unemployed.” Sad.
Mark,
Thanks for your comment! It is a shame, indeed. This post and some Q&A on Linked In is demonstrating that there’s great frustration among HR professionals over the role they are asked to perform and what they have to work with. It sounds like a great opportunity to inject some lean thinking! I’ve only come across a few articles on Lean implementation in HR departments directly. If you have any knowledge or other examples from your experience, I’d be greatful.
Thanks!
When managing a very technical team, I often used a lean process in hiring, taking time to list in the advert all the software skills I wanted evidenced and to what level. we took the opportunity to review the team skills and requirements.
It meant I could deal with large numbers of replies quickly by taking out those who had failed to read the advert and provide the evidence, these were technical roles in marketing so you needed to get a brief and understand it.
I remember “reading” 20 CVs in under 5 minutes, as not one of the replies had mentioned their software skills in the CV, a quick call to the recruiting agency and a reminder of the key criteria I wanted to see did ensure a smaller pool of talent later but meant that those that came through would compliment and grow the business and be suitable to interview.
Unfortunately all other parts of the process were subject to corporate rules and I couldn’t get past them.
Mark,
Thanks for your comment! Clearly, there’s an element of Lean Thinking in your approach. What would be tremendously interesting to see, however, would be the creation of a value stream map to see which of the corporate rules are value-added or not. Over time, a lean culture would be looking to erode away those things that are not value added. (Simply because something is required, doesn’t mean it adds value).
Mitch Millstein published an article back in February describing a lean implementation within an HR department: http://www.articlesbase.com/six-sigma-articles/lean-in-human-resources-streamlining-the-hiring-process-1862181.html
Could a similar project could be undertaken in your workplace?
Interesting. Our CEO, Jonathan Davis, wrote a post on our blog along the same topic. Seems to be on the minds of all who work in recruiting top candidates these days. http://www.hirebetterblog.com/