Prioritizing Jobs for Hiring
Week One
Is Job Prioritization Necessary?
The answer to the above question is obviously yes – prioriting jobs are necessary but unfortunately the practice of prioritization is often overlooked by recruiters and HR and the high intrinsic ROI is lost. Let’s look at an oversimplified example of the value of prioritization. If you managed an airline, hiring for every position would be critical. But if you didn’t prioritize the hiring of pilots when a pilot vacancy occurred, your planes will sit idle, and as a result you would lose millions in revenue. In the real world, this important task can be like walking on a tight rope while trying to balance hiring needs, projected positions, and prioritization of those hires to ensure key people are in place to accomplish business goals efficiently.
HR and recruitment leaders need to approach prioritization from an external and internal perspective. When seeking to hire candidates externally you need to quantify the business impact of each job family and then prioritize hiring to focus recruiting resources on those high-impact jobs. A special focus should be on those jobs that generate large amounts of revenue. The recommended approach is to work with the CFO’s office because it adds tremendous credibility to the process. Internally, you can prioritize individuals for retention and development, as well as prioritize business units so that you can target and focus your efforts to improve productivity and innovation.
The primary reason why prioritization works is because you are able to focus HR resources and speed up your response time on the problem areas and opportunities that can produce the greatest business results. While this may sound good, there is the expectation from executives and management that your job is to find talent and put them in place when needed. However, by creating a more proactive process with prioritizing you can increase in your business impacts by 10-20%, without any additional budget – now that will wow your boss!
Week Two
Prioritization is needed; but where should you start?
Last week we confirmed that prioritization of jobs is definitely needed and today we will provide a quick way to get started with the process:
Get organized.
Our best work is done when we have a clear objective and timeline to complete the task. Start by identifying and prioritizing your most pressing hiring needs. Is a staff member leaving? Is your department expanding or even downsizing? Are there employees to promote? By first looking at the big picture you are then able to make clear and strategic plans to fill those vacancies. When you know which positions you’ll need to fill in the near future, for how long, and what skills are required, the execution of the plan becomes easy.
Delegate.
Great managers know how to motivate, teach, and serve – and they also know how to delegate. Not all hiring tasks need to be handled by the manager personally. Determine which tasks you must hold onto and which can be delegated, then do it. Too often we hold onto tasks that are simple yet time consuming and ultimately take away from the things that need our undivided attention.
Work with an executive search firm.
I can recommend one! Partnering with an executive search firm can help you create a higher-quality candidate pool by prescreening candidates for both skill set and cultural fit. Search firms also specialize in helping their clients create strategic staffing plans, thus making prioritizing and hiring easier.
At The Tisdell Group, Inc. we are equipped to help you sort out your company’s hiring priorities to find better talent in less time. Contact us today to learn more about our recruiting services!
Week Three
Prioritization Doesn’t Mean Bad Treatment or Low Morale
Prioritization is the process of identifying which areas should get the fastest or the most attention. It is not a process for providing better service to one department over another. In our politically correct society, it is easy to think that all employees should be treated equitably but in reality when you attempt this in the name of fairness then it can negatively impact all departments. In contrast, by prioritizing critical jobs which are germane to your business model it positively impacts everyone and hurts no one.
For example, in this NBA playoff season do you prefer the best players on the court or on the bench when the score is tied and time is limited? The answer is obvious and it is no different within your company. By focusing on the critical jobs, you greatly optimize your chances at success which in turn helps drive job security, enhanced bonuses, career advancement opportunities, and reputation for all. Being on a winning team raises every participant’s value in the marketplace for labor.
Lower-priority jobs, employees, or managers must never receive “bad treatment.” The budget may be a little smaller, the service may be a little slower, and it may come from a more junior HR employee, but the same quality level is maintained throughout. Incidentally, if you still think prioritizing is unfair then take solace in the fact that there is no rule that requires HR reveal to managers and employees that it is prioritizing its services or what priority they are given. However, to make life easier it is best to communicate with employees how the jobs are prioritized, why they are prioritized, and what the current ranking looks like. Once they are informed, employees can then see what skills they need to add and where they need to move if they want to be in a high-priority job.
My final thought is, be sure you don’t fall into the trap of assuming that the most critical positions are only at the executive level. I challenge you to assess what makes your organization run well and identify the critical jobs from that vantage point.
Week Four
The Benefits of Prioritization in Talent Management and HR
I’m going out on a limb and assuming that increasing revenues is a major strategic goal for your organization; one way of meeting that goal is by prioritizing the hiring. Here are a few ways prioritizing can help you:
1. Quickly filling revenue-generating jobs = increased corporate revenue.
2. Hiring better quality and performing sales people = increased sales revenue.
3. Prioritizing retention efforts = saving valuable people that are considering a new jobs outside your company.
Prioritizing jobs, individuals, and business units can also increase productivity, innovation, and profits. By providing a faster and higher-quality response to high-impact jobs and individuals, you would get a moderately higher return than when you spread your resources evenly and a much higher return than when you focus your resources on the squeaky wheel.
It’s time for HR to act more business-like. For years HR has suffered through reduced budgets. One of the best solutions when you are faced with limited resources and time is to develop some logical process of allocating resources, so that the largest amount of resources goes to the most impactful HR problems. It’s time for HR to stop handling “things in the order that they are received” or “treating all problems as equal”. Instead, it only makes sense to prioritize and put the most time and money into hiring, retaining, and developing employees that have the highest priority or weight.
Prioritizing takes a little more planning but I promise it will pay dividends so embrace the process and make it work for you!
Mike Tisdell
The Tisdell Group, Inc
919.561.8857