Organizational alignment is one of the biggest challenges in creating an effective hiring process. When human resources, training, and operations all have different goals or a different focus, it impacts the success of your hiring process.
For example, when interviewing executives to get their understanding of a job, you might find that their perceptions of what the job entails are different from the actual work being done. Whether that’s right or wrong, there is a gap. Informing those executives and creating better alignment becomes important.
There can also be varying incentives regarding retention. For example, human resources could have a goal to hire people who stay on the job, where trainers have an incentive to move people out of training who aren’t getting it. That creates a disconnect from what the recruiter is trying to accomplish and what the trainer is tying to accomplish. Operations is then not getting people who are ready to move into a production role, creating an opportunity cost because work is not being done.
To fix alignment early on in your hiring process, establish a cross-functional team with representatives from HR, training, and operations. The team should focus the five areas outlined below.
1. Operations and Goals
Establish standard performance measurements that support organizational goals.
How do you measure performance for each of your employees? In some cases determining this is easy. For example, for an executive sales person, it’s his/her sales rate on a monthly basis or against quota or by hour.
It’s here where you start to layout the scorecard and metrics used to evaluate job performance. This, in turn, will help you determine the types of candidates you need to hire for job success.
2. Business Strategy
You also need to have a common understanding of the business strategy. What’s happening in the industry/company? Are things changing? How will an acquisition or new technology impact the organization? Your hiring practices should bring in the skills that match the organization’s needs.
Therefore, your hiring requirements need to align with the direction of the business. For example, if the business strategy is to provide more technology – such as dynamic systems that require more computer or multi-tasking skills – requirements for hiring need to change to meet those needs. Otherwise there will be a gap, or disconnect, between they types of employees you are hiring and the skills needed for success.
3. Focus Group Feedback
Meeting with current employees with various levels of tenure will provide an insiders perspective of the job. Make sure that job performance and tasks are discussed collectively from an alignment perspective. This is also a good way to uncover underlying retention issues.
4. Survey Results
Engagement and job analysis surveys will help inform you about your employee population and the competencies required for a job.
5. Employee Performance
Be sure to understand what is actually being measured and whether that is consistent with the business goals you outlined earlier in your discussions.
Your overriding goal should be to drive quality of hire, improving quality of hire over time. However, you have to be able to measure quality of hire in order to improve it. These discussions are where you start to build those measurement items and create alignment within your organization to ensure all areas are working to achieve better business results through greater employee success.
