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There is a war on…The Talent War

How can businesses win the battle of attracting talent, developing it and retaining it?

By Rhema Director Lorraine Cribben

 

 

The battle is on. UK based multinational companies are fully engaged in the fight to find, appoint and retain talent in a well-recognised environment of serious skills shortage.

For ongoing success organisations have to address two key issues today:

1. Screen efficiently for the best new talent
2. Really develop the talent already in their business

Strategies need tactics and tools.

Prime tactics must be

• Appoint the best and fittest candidates for every role
• Do that using truly bias-free assessment
• Optimise every recruiting pound by also screening job applicants for talent applicable elsewhere in the organisation
• Identify coaching and training needs to retain talent and develop people efficiently and cost-effectively

Today’s tools for unbiased assessment are refined, sophisticated and accurate. Psychometric testing and analysis are now part of the norm for many organisations.

Qualifications and experience set out in a candidate’s application tell only about 25% of what you want to know. The other 75% is what a company really needs to find out. How much will a person enjoy the job? What is his/her likely length of stay? What is the best succession plan? What is his/her individual learning capacity?

In the past, truly individual training was not possible in any company with more than a handful of employees (and often not affordable for small companies). Tailored personal development programmes for scores, hundreds or even thousands of employees could not easily be created.

Now it really is possible, by making optimum use of online tools for analysis, and linking the results to customised training input from an expert and experienced blended solutions provider such as Rhema Group.

The best tools can be applied from when a person joins a company and throughout their career there. What’s the ideal process in my experience?

• Web search leads to an online job application.
• Role specification seems to be a fit, so an initial online questionnaire is completed.
• The most promising applicants are led on to further online briefing and more searching questions (extremely carefully compiled initial psychometric assessment of the applicant’s suitability for this job and his/her skills, talents and preferences generally).
• A unique report is generated for each applicant, offering a job match percentage.
• Scores of 80%+ are recommended for interview.
• Scores of 60% to 80% generate a report for HR on where else in the company they might fit in, and what early training and development would help them.
• Interviewees and interviewers have the benefit of additional tools which accurately assess candidates from various perspectives (those of the employer and the customer being key) and rate qualities such as empathy, tact, reliability, honesty, productivity, team membership, as well as numeracy and literacy.
• Jobholders, new or long-serving, are consistently and continually assessed by the same suite of psychometric tools to produce coaching and training plans.
• The virtuous circle is completed by tools assessing progress and changing needs.
• Most importantly – regular, large-scale validation of the survey tools is carried out.

And the company which has the wisdom to use such tools and methods also has the wisdom to use every available means of training and development – and to bring in blended solution experts to deliver these in a truly customised way which works with the assessments and recommended programmes.

Rhema Group can certainly provide this vital external expertise, and work closely with internal HR resources.

Can the rest of my ideal scenario be achieved? This issue of The Eye also contains an interview with Richard Marsh MD of Profiles International in the UK, because in my professional judgement Profiles International is the provider of the best psychometric testing available now or in the foreseeable future.

See Strategic Alliances – Profiles International