My conversations with many CEOs in the last 90 days have gleaned what keeps them awake. First, most are worried about the attrition and backfilling of those positions. Second, they rely on conventional approaches, especially making their labour market predictions, which reduces the effectiveness of their hiring solutions. For example, some corporate leaders have told me that they expect most of their labour woes to be resolved once pandemic-related compensation hikes rollback; it is like predicting tomorrow's share market. Employers must be creative to retain the right talent, develop new skills to fill critical gaps, and attract new people.
Therefore, a recruiting strategy starts with acknowledging that you will not solve your current hiring challenges by applying the past solutions. Instead, it's time to revisit your previous underlying assumptions, stress-testing them one by one.
Every company recruits candidates differently due to a variety of factors like industry, company culture, work location and recruiting teams. Recruitment also changes by open role, time of year and urgency of the hire.
Rather than define a specific path or rule based approach I would recommend to follow principle based approach and one of the principle based approach is to break the Norm. Below are 3 approaches one could take.
Break the market norms
Consider taking these three actions to shore up a long-term talent strategy:
- Outside the boundaries: Many refugees have employment skills yet find themselves in countries where they cannot work locally or are locked out of international skilled migration systems. Explore refugee-serving organizations, a legal pathway that enables displaced people to work, resume their careers, and rebuild their lives with dignity.
- Tier 3 Cities: Pandemic has proved that work-from-anywhere is possible. Many talents are moving away from the bigger cities for a better work-life balance. Tier 2 and tier 3 cities are emerging as future talent hubs like Vadodara, Indore, Coimbatore, Kochi, and Trivandrum.
- Experienced workforce: One study tells us that workers between 55 and 65 are as healthy as those between 45 and 55. They work as reliably as younger employees. A review of 185 research papers also found that older people may have higher motivation and job satisfaction than younger workers. They come with maturity, emotional intelligence, experience, and the ability to navigate people dynamics and get work done.
Defining Your Path
Convincing your organization to make these significant changes to their recruiting strategy will be the hardest part. Some of the initiatives discussed above will be challenging to implement. However, if it were easy, you probably would have already done it and so would have a number of the other companies scrambling for available workers in your market. Pick one area and focus on creating and systems and processes around it, including a balanced scorecard to measure effectiveness. Be bold and make the first step.
About the Author
Dr. Parthiban Vijay Raghavan is an expert in solving an organization's complex problems through accurate diagnosis, designing, innovation, agility, and execution excellence. He is also expertise in Decision Making Process, Leadership Communication, OD, Learning Strategies, and implementation, He is a Certified OB/OD Professional.