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Recruitment & Retention

Published April 2008

Performance Goals and Better Job Descriptions Can Improve Hiring

Ronald C. Pilenzo, Ph.D.

Consider the last time you were applying for a job. Would you have made a better decision if specific goals for a position were shared with you? Would you have been better prepared to make a quicker transition to your new job?

If your answer is yes, you're not alone. But in most organizations today, talent managers aren't required or encouraged to write a list of job goals, even in a highly structured recruiting process. The talent management model Placement by Objectives (PBO) aims to improve recruiting and retention by explicitly stating goals and expectations for each position. After all, the more an organization can do to narrow the focus on job expectations, the more clarity of purpose and commitment it will achieve. Job candidates should fully understand what is expected of them before they are hired, not after. This way companies can make faster, closer job matches.

A Long History
The concept of communicated, shared objectives isn't new. In his 1954 book, The Practice of Management late management guru Peter Drucker introduced Management by Objectives (MBO). The concept was further refined by expert George Odiorne, whose book, Training by Objectives provided guidance on how setting training goals "would not only improve training, but create value, reduce cost and deliver measurable results." PBO simply takes the general concepts of MBO into the arena of recruiting and hiring.

Why Share Goals?
Job descriptions are used in other functional areas of HR, but they were never intended to be more than a framework of job content. Job descriptions should provide details about a job and specifications (experience, education, specialized training, etc.) that can be used as guidelines in selection.

Evidence shows better descriptions do achieve better results. In the CareerJournal.com article "Employers Try Plain English to Improve Quality of Job Ads," Erin White said an apartment-complex operation called Aimco "reduced turnover from 22 percent to 3 percent of employees hired after 90 days by using newly written job descriptions that used clearer language and a focus on some of the most important, but little-discussed activities of their jobs, as compared to their old generalized recruiting ads."

White also said some recruiters claimed traditional job descriptions "emphasize qualifications, but skimp on describing the work, the challenges and the company culture."

PBO supports these contentions by suggesting that companies can do a better job of communicating the expectations of the hiring manager and the organization by including performance goals in the job descriptions, not simply by writing the definitions.

In addition, PBO suggests sharing goals with applicants not only empowers them by allowing them to self-select, but also results in a more engaged, synergistic and interactive hiring system. Currently, the recruiting and hiring process is approached more from the negative, screen-out mentality rather than from the positive, gate-in mentality. The latter option is useful and possible, but it cannot be accomplished without applicant input. Applicants need the opportunity to see a job clearly, through the prism of written performance goals as opposed to unspoken job expectations.

Structuring a PBO Process
In his book, Odiorne said every performance goal should fall into one of four categories: routine, problem solving, creative and personal. With the possible exception of personal, these goals apply to the process of PBO as well, and talent managers should take an active role to ensure they are clearly defined, consistent with job descriptions, reasonable, achievable and have measurable criteria.