DDI’s Talent Management Intelligence

Should the Unemployed also be Unemployable?

By Scott Erker

I just heard a story on NPR ”Job Seekers Find Bias Against the Unemployed” discussing how much harder it is for those without jobs to find jobs. Considering that earlier this month, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that there are still 14.8 million people unemployed—a 9.6% unemployment rate. So that discrimination is directed at 10% of the US population.

One job seeker says that while he knows it's not personal—“try telling that to some kid who asked every single girl to the prom in his high school and they all said no. After a while, being told that you're not desired or wanted that many times, it might start to sink in, but you try to block it out.”

How terrible it would be to lose your job, not be able to get work, and then to have the length of time that you’re unhappily unemployed be a knock against you. Especially considering that in the 12-18 months that have passed since companies experienced massive layoffs, the economy has barely recovered with open positions and ramped-up hiring, so individuals haven't been able to recover with a new job for more than a year in many cases.

Traditionally, time out of work has been a viable predictor of performance and turnover.But today, you have the significant confounding factor of the down economy.

The story pointed out that the chance of finding a highly qualified candidate in the ranks of the unemployed was very likely when you look at the volumes of people out of work and the rate that companies downsized.

So how do employers balance this out? It’s important to note long gaps in employment, but to really look closely at skill, ability and motivational fit to the target job as the best predictors of future job performance.

It would be better to look at what they’ve done in the time they’ve been unemployed—have they been developing themselves, exploring new opportunities, networking—or have they been resting on their laurels, hoping that something great would land in their lap.

Scott Erker is the Senior Vice President of Selection Solutions for DDI.

Meet the Pretenders

By Scott Erker, Ph.D.

Do you remember how to hire good people? That sounds like a ridiculous question, but for many organizations it has been quite some time since job openings were posted on a career site or job board. But as the potential for economic recovery becomes more likely, we must keep in mind that today’s hiring environment differs dramatically from yesterday’s.

I often hear about the challenges associated with managing candidate pools and a common theme has been that while the pool is large (this would typically be a good thing), it is the size of the pool that also makes it hard to find qualified candidates. To make matters worse, candidates—especially those who have been out of work for a while—have become much better at demonstrating to recruiters that they are a good fit for the job even though this might not be the case. I call them ‘the pretenders.’ Consider this:

• Many candidates have been on the market for an extended period of time and have had a lot of practice interviewing and meeting with recruiters. With practice, they are learning the ‘right things to say’ even though they may not truly have the skills or experiences they seem to have on the surface.
• Resumes have been polished and re-polished, making them look good on paper where skills and experiences can be exaggerated.
• Armed with a wealth of information, today’s candidate is better equipped to predict what you’re looking for and could possibly fool you into believing they’re EXACTLY what you’re looking for.

My point in raising this issue is not to cast job candidates in a bad light. They are doing the best that they can under difficult circumstances. The issue is in how staffing professionals can bring the highest quality people into the organization and avoid being misled by practiced and polished candidates. Some ideas:

1. Update your job requirements and competency models to reflect today’s role. Don’t use last year’s job profile and ask hiring managers to provide up-to-date job requirements so that you avoid sourcing candidates for the wrong job.
2. It’s not like riding a bike. Conducting effective interviews is a skill that degrades over time. Refresh hiring managers’ skills so they can ask the right questions; avoid stereotype biases; make a nervous job candidate feel at ease; and objectively score interview data.
3. Don’t rely on gut feel for hiring decisions. Upgrade your recruitment arsenal and collect and review data to provide an objective view of candidates’ capabilities and qualifications.

Companies that polish their selection systems can avoid falling into the trap of hiring someone they don’t really know—and who is pretending to be the best hiring choice.

Listen to Scott's Podcast Hiring Success: The Importance of Culture Fit.

Scott Erker, Ph.D., is the Senior Vice President of Selection Solutions for Development Dimensions International.

Where Did the Forest Go?

By Scott Erker, Ph.D.

At the risk of referencing the much overused analogy – don’t lose site of the forest for the trees – I think it can be used to describe a classic pattern that is emerging in staffing today.  For many organizations, the light is at the end of the tunnel. Job growth could be on the horizon. But there are many reasons to believe that the convergence of factors we typically see just before job growth will be compounded by the severity of the recent recession. Do you see this pattern emerging?

• Recruiting resources are lean due to staff cuts.
• Placement and management of contractors is taking a lot of time.
• Turnover of full-time associates is taking a slight upturn as the incumbent population grows restless and sees opportunity elsewhere.
• Some areas of the business are starting to create jobs and the demand for new hires is taking more and more time.
• Hiring managers are especially demanding as they’re nervous about hiring the wrong person (exacerbating to poor business unit performance).

I could go on. At times like this, we should remind ourselves of the foundational elements that lead to successful staffing systems – in good times and bad. While these items won’t help you in the short term they may help you to prioritize (or shape) your week-to-week activities which in turn leads to sanity and hopefully, longer–term improvement. Think about:

• Linking business goals and drivers to talent selection
• Utilizing diagnostic tools to gather accurate information
• Driving development and engagement on the first day in the new job

Read the entire solution in Scott’s post on RecruitingTrends.com.

Scott Erker, Ph.D., is the Senior Vice President of Selection Solutions for Development Dimensions International.

Will Opportunity Knock?

By Brad Schneider, Ph.D.

Opportunity passes by your door a thousand times a day……but it never stops to knock
   – Ben Vareen

It was 30 years ago when I saw Ben Vareen on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. I can’t tell you if he danced well or how he sang – it’s not what mattered.  What resonated with me – and what I vividly remember three decades later – is what he said to Johnny as they sat on the couch.

Just to drive the point, since 1954 there have been thousands of guests on the show. Some, such as Joey Bishop, have sat on that couch 177 times. I don’t remember any of them.

Fast forward 30 years, and I’m sitting in a hotel lobby in Dallas. As I glance at the counter, the cover story in USA Today reads that high unemployment has resulted in perhaps the most talented candidate pool of all time.

In fact, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, since 1948, unemployment has peaked 11 times, each coinciding with a brief recession.  As we sit on the verge of economic recovery – an S&P 500 that’s above 1000 and 50% up from it’s low back in March, ever decreasing new unemployment claims, and a housing market with new signs of growth, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist – or a great singer and dancer, for that matter – to figure out that unemployment is going to drop. As it does, the cream of the current candidate pool will be hired right off the top….by either you or your competition.

Organizations have a brief window of opportunity to quickly and efficiently identify top performers from among the crowd—using tools like employment tests—and bring them on board before their competitors hire the best of the best.

The only question is whether you’re going to let this opportunity pass by your door.

Brad Schneider, Ph.D., is a Senior Consultant with Development Dimensions International (DDI).

Beware of the Monkey

By Brad Schneider, Ph.D.

Step into any Chinese restaurant and it’s there, a placemat with the Chinese Zodiac. If you were born in 1986, you’re a Tiger. If you were born in 1966, you’re a Horse.

In the Chinese Zodiac, the year you are born determines your personality. Boars, people born in 1995, for instance, are prone to marital strife. Dragons, born 2001, are attractive and vain.

Why do I have such an interest in all of this, you ask? Well, if everyone who is born a certain year shares the same physical and mental characteristics, then, theoretically, all you need to do as an employer is to hire people who are born the same year as your top performers.

Want better salespeople? Determine which year your top salespeople were born, and hire every job applicant who was born that same year. You could fill an entire department filled with creative, intelligent, and dependable Goats.

Could hiring and promoting top talent really be that simple? Not a chance. However, if you have the right processes in place it’s not that challenging.

It may be more difficult than choosing a Horse or a Dog, but you’ll have better luck with new hires if you:

• Identify what it takes to be successful in the job
• Determine which candidates have those characteristics
• Use the data collected during the hiring process to determine development needs for new hires

By the way, in case you’re wondering whether the Chinese Zodiac placemat is as prevalent in China, I can tell that in the eight days I spent shuttling between Beijing and Shanghai, I did not see a single one.

Brad Schneider is a senior consultant for Development Dimensions International (DDI).

Test Your Gut

By Mark Busine

Recently, I was again immersed in hiring for a key internal position. Because I’m operating in a relatively new market, I have been very conscious of not allowing my own biases and perceptions overly influence my judgment about candidates. But this process reminded me that gut feel (or abdominal intuition as I like to call it) should not be ignored. I learned over the years—usually after a bad hiring decision—that my intuition can often alert me to risks that are very real.

This isn’t a new issue. A 2001 HBR article “When to Trust Your Gut”, investigated the role and value of intuition in decision-making and how experiences enable us to develop patterns that help understanding and judgment in all types of situations. More recently, Malcom Gladwell traveled into the human subconscious to explore how we make snap decisions, in his best selling book, Blink.

While both writers draw on significant examples to demonstrate the power of intuition they also recognize the negative impact biases developed over time can have in decision-making. Gladwell in particular notes the negative impact that these can have when making judgments about people.

In the end though, we cannot ignore our gut. As Gladwell points out, the subconscious interplay and categorization of our experiences, knowledge, competence and personal style enable us to make rapid and often sound judgments. At the same time, the biases that are sometimes formed also need to be tested and challenged with processes such as behavioral interviewing, simulations and testing. They ensure that decisions are made on sound and legally defensible grounds.

Too often gut feel is dismissed. While I would never advocate a selection process based on gut feel, next time you’re thinking to yourself ‘something just doesn’t feel right’ or ‘something tells me they could do it’, back yourself and be prepared to test your gut.

Read more on the topic and share your thoughts.

Mark Busine is the Managing Director of Southeast Asia for Development Dimensions International (DDI).

Social Networkers Anonymous

By Bradford Thomas

Is there such a thing as being too plugged into the world?

On a typical work day I receive about 90 e-mails.  It’s my own fault because I have become addicted to signing up for breaking news alerts, RSS feeds, and—my particular weakness—LinkedIn user groups.  I monitor every topic under the sun from recruiting to sales talent management to the business environment in China.

Based upon the multitude of e-newsletters and Linked-In discussions around Social Networking in HR, I suspect I am not alone.  Witness this sampling of headlines from the past few weeks:

• “Social Networking: The Future of your Recruitment Strategy”
• “Tweeting Job Posts”
• “Using LinkedIn to Maximize Recruiting Efforts: A Step-by-Step Guide”

It doesn’t just stop with the media pushing us to catch up with the rest of the HR world.  We do it to ourselves. 

I can’t tell you the number of postings like this from recruiters in my LinkedIn Group discussion threads:  “Hello, I’m an open networker with close to 10k first level connections and I am looking to expand my network. Please send me an invite and I will accept it!”  Talk about using LinkedIn as your own personal Applicant Tracking System.

Am I the only one to read these postings and feel inadequate about only having 117 connections—even if those connections link me directly to over 1,960,400 professionals?

But is there any real value for recruiters to collect connections—other than bragging about the size of your network at parties?

Is social networking for recruiting working to your advantage? Read more on the topic and let me know what you think.

Bradford Thomas is a Manager at Development Dimensions International.

Down, But Not Out

By Scott Erker, Ph.D.

If the staffing function were a fighter in a boxing match, it has just taken a series of one-two punches and is leaning on the ropes. However, there are signs that staffing is coming back into the fight which I saw last week at the 2009 SHRM Staffing Management Conference. While attendance was down from last year’s record numbers, there was buzz about a few significant topics.

First, companies are buckling under the weight of too many candidates for too few jobs, causing manual staffing processes to break under candidate volume. Pressure to hire the right person is extremely high and fear that an eventual turnaround in the economy will drive massive turnover from employees that accepted a ‘placeholder job’ to pay the bills. This fuels interest in ways to find candidates who are invested in the culture of the organization–long term.

Second, legal issues got a lot of attention as the number of grievances filed with the EEOC and OFCCP has increased for two consecutive years and this is likely to continue as this recession drags on. Social media is another legal concern – the temptation to use easy access people searches (thank you Google) to gather information about job candidates is tremendous, yet they risk crossing legal boundaries protecting applicants from discrimination.

While staffing may be down, it’s certainly not out. How is your company hiring for critical functions and preparing for the turnaround?

Scott Erker is the senior vice president of Selection Solutions for Development Dimensions International (DDI).