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Published June 2007

Think Twice, Hire Once: Best Practices in Sourcing and Recruiting

 

  Josh Bersin

The much-publicized war for talent is affecting almost every company's talent management strategy. This war is being fought differently from past ones — the economic climate, available tools, best practices and processes that comprise solutions are different. The companies winning the war are rethinking old strategies and using new tactics. 

Some of the most useful tools in this new war relate to sourcing and recruiting. As part of a major research initiative on talent management conducted over the past year, Bersin & Associates analysts examined 63 talent management processes and their corresponding business impacts. We discovered processes related to sourcing and recruiting had some of the highest levels of business impact.

Additionally, we found best-practice companies approached sourcing and recruiting much differently from traditional processes.

The upshot is sourcing and recruiting are now two of the most important areas of an organization's talent management strategy. By focusing on your organization's approach to these critical functions and fine-tuning your processes, you'll be gaining an advantage in the talent management war.

Background

Earlier this year, we asked corporate human resources managers and executives representing more than 700 organizations to identify their top business- and talent-related challenges. The results were interesting because they were somewhat contradictory. The most frequently cited challenge (32 percent of respondents) was to hold down costs. The next two top challenges, however, were to rapidly grow the business and to beat competitive threats.

These findings illustrate the unusual dynamics of our economic cycle. The economy is growing, and most organizations see expanding markets, but at the same time, memories of the 2000-2001 recession are fresh in executives' minds.

Consequently, most organizations continue to hold back on spending. In fact, businesses today are sitting on more cash now than at any other point in the last 10 years. So, although many companies have cash reserves, their spending is cautious and conservative — even when growth is a business goal.

As part of the same research initiative, we also asked HR managers and executives to identify their top talent-related challenges. Again, we found some surprising answers.

To the contrary of what we typically read, most organizations are not that worried about the retiring baby boomers — retirement of key workers was cited by only 23 percent of respondents as a key challenge. The biggest challenge named by more than half of respondents was a shortage of qualified leaders.

Although aging baby boomers are moving into more senior positions (many are not retiring but just working longer), there is a developing shortage of available workers in midlevel management positions.