The Sunday Mail
Memory Nguwi
An organisation is as good as the quality of the people it hires.
Those organisations that do not pay attention to who they hire often experience performance challenges.
I have observed from my experience that some organisations have deplorable hiring standards. Such low standards have set the bar too low on who joins the organisation. Some organisations end up hiring to fill a role even if the quality of hire is poor.
Organisations such as Amazon set the bar very high on recruitment, which is why they are so successful. Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, said:
“Setting the bar high in our approach to hiring has been, and will continue to be, the single most important element of Amazon.com’s success” (that’s not just the most important HR function, but the most important business function). You can see that the commitment to hiring the best people comes from the top office in the organisation. I wish most African organisations could emulate such an example.
An organisation that settles for the second best when hiring will fail to compete in their chosen market. Here is another interesting quote from Jeff Bezos, as outlined in an article here “If you can’t hire quality, don’t hire at all.” “I’d rather interview 50 people and not hire anyone than hire the wrong person.
To hire top-quality talent, you need to work on your recruitment and selection policy. Every business should have a recruitment and selection policy. A recruitment and section policy aims to ensure that the company gets the right people for each role in the organisation. The right people means employees who, on day one, start adding value according to the requirements of each job. However, it’s no point in crafting the right recruitment policy if you do not follow the approved recruitment policy when hiring staff.
I want to urge you to look around in your own business community or country as a whole, and you will find that organisations that tend to do well have high recruitment standards. Look at the top five companies on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange (ZSE), and you will realise that they have high recruitment and selection standards. You can also look at the bottom five companies; they do not have very high recruitment standards. I read a book called Work Rules by Laszlo Bock, former VP of People Operations. He clearly outlines how Google has leveraged its recruitment and selection policy to get the best talent available. It is clear from this book and other scientific research that the performance of your business largely depends on the quality of the people you hire. Organisations that recruit people on merit far outperform those that do not.
So what is a policy? A policy is a standard that a business follows as it executes its business strategy or model. So the first step in designing a recruitment policy is to first be clear on your philosophy about the quality of people joining your organisation. For example, some organisations believe that they will only recruit the best and brightest people available in the market. After this, you need to connect this philosophy with your business strategy. What does your business require in terms of people in the short, medium and long term? Once that is clear, you need to be clear on attracting and selecting these people.
Let’s start with how you will attract the talent you require. The ability of your organisation to attract the right talent starts with the quality of your employer brand and the employee experience value proposition. Good employer brands attract the best talent cheaper than unattractive employer brands. So how do you know your employer brand is strong on the market? First, check the quantity and quality of candidates applying for jobs you advertise. Inferior employer brands struggle to attract candidates regardless of the method used. It pays to build a credible employer brand as it reduces the costs of hiring.
Creating the right employee experience is one thing you should be working on as a business and incorporate into your policy. There is no point in attracting the right talent and letting them suffer throughout their work experience in your organisation
In your policy statement, you need to indicate what you believe in regarding critical issues related to recruitment. For example, what is your stance regarding diversity, employment of relatives and giving internal candidates first opportunity when a vacancy arises? Answering these statements will send a clear message to internal and external stakeholders.
It would help if you were also very clear about the procedure followed in the recruitment and selection process. For example, will you be using recruitment agencies to source for candidates? Are you going to be advertising internally and in the newspapers and other jobs portals? If so, what do you hope to achieve? In most cases, having your policy allowing you to use multiple sources of candidates ensures broad reach, which provides a good pool of candidates. Do you have minimum hiring standards for each role that allows you to start the recruitment process? It’s an exercise in futility to begin the recruitment process without knowing the type of person you require. The recruitment process is meant to attract the right candidate to your organisation.
The selection process starts with shortlisting applicants who will respond to your call for CVs. Be clear in your policy if this process will be done internally or by external consultants. For some senior roles, you may want this process to be done by external consultants for various reasons. The key reason is that Board members and other key stakeholders may have vested interests. This is a serious challenge that must never be allowed to happen regardless of justifications. Every individual must be selected on merit.
Your policy need to be very clear on whether you will be using psychometric assessments as part of your selection or not. As you decide on psychometric testing, remember that cognitive ability predicts over 65 percent of the variation in individual performance. If you do not use psychometric assessments to assess cognitive ability and personality, you can almost select the wrong candidates. All top-performing companies locally and globally use psychometric assessments to select supervisory, technical, professional and senior managerial roles. They are also used for selecting high-value specialist fields like apprenticeship trainees and graduate trainees. Other companies extend psychometric profiling to every position in the organisation. In top-performing companies, over and above written psychometric tests, candidates for all supervisory roles and above go through assessment centres.
Once the candidates have gone through the above process, the policy needs to outline how you will be doing reference checks, qualification verification, criminal record checks, and credit assessment before a job offer is given to the candidate. Once an employee is cleared, you can now offer them a job.
The last part of your recruitment process is induction. Again, your policy must talk about a comprehensive induction process that will allow the recruitee to settle quickly and reduce the time it will take before they start giving you value.
With good recruitment and selection policy, you are guaranteed to get the best candidates for each role. When you hire the best talent available, your organisation succeed in the process.
***Memory Nguwi is an Occupational Psychologist, Data Scientist, Speaker, & Managing Consultant- Industrial Psychology Consultants (Pvt) Ltd, a management and human resources consulting firm. https://www.thehumancapitalhub.com email: [email protected] or visit our website at www.ipcconsultants.com
