Planning your recruiting strategy
Due to the economic downturn and tight job market, pharma, biotech and healthcare employers are carefully planning their recruiting strategies. In this article, MedZilla’s Frank Heasley and HR experts discuss the recruitment planning and the need of HR professionals to plan and establish effective strategies for the coming year.
For Immediate Release
Contact: Michele Groutage
Company: MedZilla,
Inc.
Title: Director of Marketing & Development
Phone:
360-657-5681
Email: e-mail protected from spam bots
URL: http://www.medzilla.com
Planning your recruiting
strategy
Marysville, WA (PRWEB)– September 12, 2003 – A tough economy and
tight job market are putting extra pressure on HR professionals to plan
recruiting strategies. Recruitment planning is one of HR's most important
functions, says Frank Heasley, PhD, MedZilla.com President and CEO.
“You
can’t wait until you have openings to start planning the recruiting strategy,”
Dr. Heasley says. “HR professionals today have to take part in the strategic
planning of their companies and plan for the coming recruitment year by looking
at the needs of their hiring managers, top candidates, recruiting trends and
what has and hasn’t worked in the past.”
Be part of the corporate
culture
HR professional should be part of the business team and have a
good understanding of what is coming for the company in the next 12 to 24 months
to complement the business strategy, says Keith Greene, director, organizational
programs, Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM). This will enable the HR
professional to plan a strategy to complement the business approach. If an
organization is going to go through an acquisition period or the possibility
there of, you need to plan accordingly. If you think, you might be going into a
position where you maybe laying people off, you have to take that into
consideration. The most important thing for an HR professional is to make sure
they’re aligned with the business strategy, he says.
Do the
math
The first thing you have to analyze is your current
hiring/recruitment process. “Have an audit taken of your current program,” says
Lou Adler, president, Performance Hiring System and creator of Power Hiring, a 5
step hiring process designed to attract top people. “Figure out those tactics
that work and give you the most bang for the buck,” he says.
“If you’re
not measuring, you’re not going to be taken seriously in the corporate
environment,” says Greene. “The entire concept of metrics in the field of human
resources has taken on a much more important role because HR people need to be
able to justify and measure their effectiveness. If you want to be a business
partner you have to speak in business terms,” Greene says.
Passive,
partially active and active candidate breakdowns
According to Adler, you
should break down that process into three areas, including recruiting for active
candidates (those looking for a job); partially active candidates (people with
reasons to look occasionally); and passive candidates, who may be interested but
have to be found and approached proactively.
“Businesses, especially in
pharma and biotech, are under pressure to employ top people in order to
successfully develop their products from concept to market,” Dr. Heasley says.
“This requires taking a multi-pronged approach to hiring, where you’re using
different targeted methods, including niche job boards and targeted networking,
to get the people you want.”
Adler also, author of Hire with Your Head:
Using Power Hiring to Build Great Companies, published in 2002 by John Wiley
& Sons, says that the more passive the candidate, the more expensive the
recruiting methods. Active candidates tend to be found through well-placed job
ads; versus passive candidates who tends to be ‘high touch,’ requiring
professional recruiting and networking.
It’s important to look at these
three broad categories of candidates to determine where your candidates are
coming from and whether your recruiting channels work properly.
Hiring
the best in each category
You need to know what the best people in each
category want, Adler says. The reason this is so important is that there are
fundamental differences in how the top 10% to 20% of candidates decide on jobs.
For example, top passive candidates tend to be more discriminating because they
have more opportunities and they are relatively satisfied right where they are.
They look at both short and long-term objectives when they look at the job
offer. They not only look at salary, but also growth opportunities and
challenges. They are much more concerned with how the company’s vision and
strategy tie to the job. They tend to decide with other people because they
already have a job or competing offer. They look at the first day on the job as
a start of a new career, rather than the end of a job search. To capture these
people, you have to design a hiring strategy that will meet their needs, Adler
says.
“The strategy is built around knowing how these top employees make
their decisions. Within each of these broad channels, you have to design every
one of your hiring systems [ads, employee referral program, networking, etc.] to
take into account the needs of the best,” Adler says.
Don’t forget about
the employees you have
According to Greene, more organizations today are
paying attention to succession planning and retention. Succession planning is
putting people in place and training them to take over a position at the next
level, so that as openings come up, you have the opportunity to move people up,
as well as hit the ground running. “In reality, what it does for recruiting is
that it enables you to recruit at a less skilled level, which means the
position, will be easier to fill. Consequently, the skill requirements could be
less. This may apply to pharmaceutical and biotech more than other industries.
Their need for talent is acute. Therefore, these organizations need to pay more
attention to keeping their best people and preparing them to assume additional
responsibilities.”
Trends that capture candidates
Adler
says that the better candidates will not allow themselves to be bogged down in
the system. The trend, he says, in corporate recruiting strategies is toward
improving technology to better identify the best and get them in touch with a
very professional recruiter. That seamless transition from of high-tech to
high-touch is key, he says.
About MedZilla.com
Established in mid
1994, MedZilla is the original web site to serve career and hiring needs for
professionals and employers in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, medicine, science
and healthcare. MedZilla databases contain about 10,000 open positions, resumes
from more than 13,000 currently available candidates and 55,000 archived
resumes. These resources have been characterized as the largest, most
comprehensive databases of their kind on the web in the industries served.
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Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2003/9/prweb79723.htm