This post moves onto the chapters focusing on the integration of hiring / recruitment talent acquisition. First up is a typically insightful chapter from John Sullivan who lists the main consequences of poor integration to include:
- Delay in process cycle time
- Increase in error rates
- Mass duplication of effort
- Limited process improvement or innovation
- Lack of accountability.
He suggests that the five main direct relationships needed for recruitment are compensation (my chapter, which I’ll review next), onboarding, relocation, new hire training and global recruiting. There are then eight indirect relationships: leadership development and succession, workforce planning, performance management, offboarding, retention, the innovation function, merger and acquisition teams and shared skills functions (temporary reassignments during slack periods). I’d argue with the placement of these (leadership development, workforce planning and performance management seem like quite direct relationships to me) but it’s still a good list.
I also don’t like the piece on ‘anticipate resistance’ as I think we need to do more than this. But it’s a good, informative chapter that sets things up nicely for the practitioner piece. This is by Leslie Joyce at Novelis.
Most of the chapter is actually about recruitment, rather than integration, but that’s a small point, and the stuff about recruiting is very good.
I particularly like Leslie’s ‘brilliant exercise (her opinion, but I’d agree) comparing the decision making involved in buying a new car to that in taking on a new hire. And this is supported by a six step process for effective recruitment:
- Identify the talent acquisition strategy that best supports your business strategy
- Create a compelling employment value proposition that clearly states what is different about your organisation versus others than top talent might consider
- Capture the employment value proposition in a memorable employment brand that simply states what makes your organisation a great choice
- Translate the employment brand into a talent brand that clearly articulates the calibre of talent working for your organisation
- Determine the most productive channels to the talent you want
- Measure your success.
It’s a sound process though I don’t agree that an employment brand is a tagline and don’t like the distinction between talent and employer brands – to me, the whole employer band should be based on talent anyway. I also wouldn’t label job boards as innovative web-based processes. And the difference between tactical measures and strategic measures isn’t one of time perspective – this is just about lead and lag. The real difference is about contribution to competitive advantage, but lots of people get confused about this – eg this post on John Boudreau’s measures of efficiency and effectiveness.
Joyce does finally move onto the secret sauce of total integration and alignment of all the talent management efforts within the organisation and suggests there are two critical areas to this:
- Alignment between the organisation brand and talent brand (in my terms, there’s an alignment around the organisation’s mojo)
- Alignment between the talent brand and the organisation’s search and development processes.
This then takes us back to the same sort of partnering requirements discussed by Sullivan before, which in Joyce’s view are that:
- Job descriptions and position postings reflect the characteristics of the talent brand
- The ATS is optimally configured and functional to ensure that candidate management is proactive and comprehensive
- Website information reinforces both the organisation and talent brand
- Onboarding and assimilation processes reflect and make real the promises of opportunity made by the value proposition and the brand
- Training and development tools and programmes are clear and support career development and growth.
So there you go – now you know. But if you want to know more, do buy the book as well!
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I may not often comment on other peoples’ blogs, but I do read a lot of them. My favourite post last week was 
I was at Onrec (UK) on Wednesday – where I finally won an ipad at the exhibition! – thanks to ClearChoiceCareers.
More HR & social media related training today – in Birmingham (UK). And nothing personal against Birmingham (recently voted Europe’s least sexiest city) – but I am probably looking forward more to the next session I’ll be doing in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Since I’m on the topic of 
I’ve had this article published in TrainingZone – looking at the increasing integration of Learning & Development, Organsiation Development etc, post my attendance at the recent CIPD OD conference. Take a look? (free subscription required):
I mentioned in my opening to my session on HR 2.0 that I thought there had been a bit too much agreement on things during the conference (particularly in Jason Averbook’s and Naomi Bloom’s love-in), and said that I’d try to be clear about what I did, and didn’t agree with (since doing this would help people decide whether to support my model of HR 2.0).
Despite all the wonderful content, my favourite part of the HR Technology (as is always the case with conferences) was meeting lots of new people, and catching up with existing contacts.
Just back from Zappos. Definitely wow!
