HR organisation: Is it killing recruitment strategy?
05 Mar 2013
The image of who your organisation as an employer of choice needs an integrated approach that starts with how and who you select to implement your recruitment strategy. It involves key stakeholders of whom the Board and the the CEO are critical players, but equally critical is HR and how they align their HR organisation with the organisation’s brand and communication. The integration of the key stakeholders and the 4 key elements of your organisation’s strategy to attract top talent are powerful aspects to ensuring success.
In the context of increasingly global and smaller talent pools of individuals capable of leading and managing complexity, organisations (including government agencies), will need both brand and strategies to differentiate themselves from competing offers in the inevitable “war” to win talent. There are 4 key elements to a successful recruitment strategy to attract, select and integrate talent:
- Employer brand
- Employer value proposition
- Recruitment and attraction strategy
- Selection and integration methodology
Product and service branding has been an accepted concept for decades. Brand is designed to develop a lasting image in the minds of consumers to associate quality with the service or product. Your employer brand creates the same and like all brand experiences, it is strongly linked to emotions. Your employer brand is the image that makes potential candidates want to work for your organisation and your brand is a critical element with the power to attract and recruit top talent.
Your value proposition is the way you brand yourself as an attractive prospective employer. Your value proposition focuses on creating a job offer that meets the prospective employees preferences and is differentiated from competing offers. It is also about your organisation’s reputation.
Your recruitment and attraction strategy must incorporate messages that make realistic promises to the prospective candidates and overcome any doubts about alternative employers being more attractive. The image of who your organisation is as an employer needs to be an integrated approach that starts with how / who you select to implement your attraction strategy through to your selection and integration approach.
Responsibility for talent recruitment and integration sits not just with the Board and the CEO, it also relies on HR structuring its organisation to align with communications and employer brand. All too often in recruitment we see HR non-alignment as the actual or potential deal breaker when it comes to the critical phase of engaging talent. We get a great brief from the CEO or Board Chair, go to the marketplace to source talent that will deliver the value that the organisation needs, the CEO / Board implement the selection methodology and then HR organisation is disconnected from the brand and communication. Taking long response times to put offers in writing, failure to show willingness to be creative about accommodating individual preferences in employment arrangements and inflexible or bureaucratic approaches put at risk the organisation’s success in achieving its strategic vision through being able to compete to win top talent.
