Recruiters frequently confuse hiring strategy with hiring activity. While the act of posting job openings, interviewing prospective employees and filling vacancies seems like a step towards success, the reality is that without a clear strategy in place, hiring decisions will not provide you with sustainable success. A hiring strategy clearly identifies why an organization hires talent, as well as how their new employees help support the organization with future business needs.
A recent report from Deloitte, entitled “Global Human Capital Trends,” states that organizations that align hiring with long-term business goals are more than twice as successful as their competitors on both financial and operational metrics. This means that determining if you have hired effectively shouldn’t be based solely on volume, but rather on how well you’ve aligned with your business goals. Because of the ongoing pressure on recruiters to fill vacancies quickly, this presents a significant challenge for recruiters when it comes to recruiting.
According to the LinkedIn Global Talent Trends report, 58% of recruiters say they feel pressured to prioritize speed over quality, whereas the same report indicates that the speed at which prospective hires are hired directly correlates to an increase in early attrition rates. While pursuing expediencies helps fill immediate vacancies, it does so at a long-term detriment to ensuring stability within an organization’s workforce.
Another important factor within hiring strategies is defined as “Role Clarity”. According to a study conducted by the Society For Human Resource Management (SHRM), having unclear job expectations is one of the top reasons new hires fail to succeed during their first year of employment. Interviews conducted for poorly defined positions tend to focus more upon generalised competence rather than behaviours which are critical for outstanding performance, leading to lower accuracy in the assessments made.
In addition, Workforce Planning is also a strategic component of hiring. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report indicates that 44% of the skillsets required for jobs will change within the next five years. Therefore, hiring based on current technical abilities is risky; rather, employers who have forward-thinking strategies for hiring will increasingly look for candidates who exhibit a higher degree of learning agility and adaptability – these traits are usually associated with long-term performance.
Finally, the hiring strategy has direct implications for job engagement rates and retention rates of new hires. As shown in a study done by Gallup, teams that believe their roles fit their individual talents are six times more engaged at work than teams that do not feel this way. Engagement with one’s work has been strongly associated with lower turnover rates and higher productivity levels, which indicates that strategic hiring decisions have far-reaching effects beyond just the onboarding process.
Consistency in hiring decisions is one of the ways that organizations can differentiate themselves. According to research done by the Harvard Business Review, organizations that utilize structured hiring frameworks have consistent performance results and fewer hiring mistakes, relative to non-structured organizations (e.g., companies that use a structured hiring framework are likely to have fewer hiring mistakes than non structured organizations). This consistency also helps reduce bias in decision-making and increases leaders’ confidence in their decisions regarding which candidates to hire.
Organizations also develop their cultures through hiring strategies. Candidates that an organization hires demonstrate their culture and values through how they act and what they expect. The MIT Sloan Management Review states that lack of cultural alignment contributes significantly to employees who are technically proficient but dissatisfied with their employers. Therefore, an organization that does not have a clear vision of its culture will create a culture based on chance rather than strategy.
Recruiting and staffing are also strategic opportunities—not operational activities. Organizations that have clearly defined purposes, visions, strategies, and methods of evaluating talent will build high-performing, agile teams focused on long-term organizational success.
While a structured hiring process does not remove the risk of making poor hiring choices, it does provide organizations with tools to help reduce preventable risks. In a competitive and rapidly changing labor market, focus—rather than speed and urgency—separates organizations that hire effectively from those that leave themselves open to continuous re-correction.