Chapter 8. Implementing Performance-based Hiring

 

It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage, than the creation of a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institutions and merely lukewarm defenders in those who would gain by the new ones.

 
 --Machiavelli

Is it Too Late to Make Hiring Top Talent a Systematic Business Process?

Since the second edition of this book came out in 2002, I’ve asked managers and recruiters at over two hundred different Fortune 1000 and midsized companies if they’ve finally won the war for talent. Only a handful said yes. In a March 20, 2006, USA Today/Gallup poll, 59 percent of managers said finding and training enough good people to fill current and future requirements was their most pressing problem. Worse, I can’t find one company making the claim that things look like they are going to get better. This doesn’t make any sense. Just consider the following major changes that have been implemented over the past 10 years:

  • Technology is far better, when you consider the Internet, new advanced search techniques, candidate tracking systems, and automated employee referral programs.

  • Companies now have in-house recruiting departments designed to compete with outside search firms staffed by experienced third-party recruiters (i.e., people who have agency experience).

  • Companies have outsourced the entire recruiting function.

  • New ...

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