Wrench Group

Julie Anderson

We constantly hear the dire predictions about how, in the next 5-10 years, there will be more trade jobs than people to fill them. But this handwringing does not change the fact that we still need to hire and develop technicians to support this deficiency in the market.

Now more than ever, your Talent Acquisition (TA) team needs to be part of the strategic landscape of your business plan. According to a survey published by The Predictive Index, 66% of companies have a talent strategy that isn’t entirely aligned with their business strategy. This is a mistake. TA strategies must align with the rest of the business, such as Finance, Operations, Marketing, etc.

Alignment to the company’s overall business is, to put it bluntly, critical to your recruiting success. Your talent acquisition team must understand the overall plan to drive revenue, productivity, gross margin and more. For example, is your plan to boost revenue by increasing the production of individual technicians or by increasing headcount? Your talent partner needs to know this so they can adjust their recruiting plan.

Once the overall strategy is understood, defining which recruiting metrics most align with the strategy must be determined. Is the most important metric time-to-hire? Qualityof- hire? Is it balancing revenue-driven labor and supporting labor costs? Whatever it is, work with your talent leaders to determine which are the best measurements of your talent strategy—it is not a cookie-cutter approach. This then provides a road map for your recruiters to use in their recruiting workflows and selection process.

In other words, your strategy directly impacts talent selection, no matter what business it is.

Next, you need to build a strong Employee Value Proposition (EVP). Quite simply, the EVP is the value potential employees gain in return for working at your organization. The EVP can include rewards, benefits or personal opportunities like worklife balance or professional development, and it is critical for attracting the right talent.

Developed thoughtfully, the EVP benefits your efforts in several ways: ensuring that your open positions are attractive to top talent, enabling candidates to determine if a position is a fit for them, marketing and defining your company culture, and building the foundation for the candidate experience.

Even with great alignment to a company’s overall business strategy, “the biggest driver of talent acquisition performance was strong relationships between recruiters and their hiring managers,” according to a recent study from Bersin by Deloitte. Without this strong bond, there can be frustration that ultimately trickles down to the candidate experience.

Here, collaboration is key. Recruiters need to know the hiring managers’ needs better than they do because those hiring managers often have conflicting goals. Even when the wants are clear, the hiring manager often won’t know how to communicate that to their business partner.

One way to mitigate this is by creating recruiting intake forms. These forms should include discussion points around candidate skill and experience, hiring manager “deal breakers,” current employee profile to emulate, behavioural type to fit the culture, compensation, etc. The conversations between the hiring manager and recruiter should be with each opening, but if your talent openings are “evergreen” (i.e., the same positions that have a consistent demand over time), there should still be intake meetings several times per year.

Hiring managers should understand the current talent market and the challenges being faced in recruiting. Recruiters need to share data on current talent trends (i.e., job seeker-to-open job ratios, competitive compensation, what your competitors are advertising, etc.). When there is a transparent and trusting relationship between the recruiter and hiring manager, hiring manager satisfaction is three times more likely to reduce timeto- hire and two times more likely to improve the quality of hire.

Today, the talent market is savvy, and companies are being interviewed as equally as candidates.

86% of candidates research companies, looking at the EVP and “what’s in it for them” before deciding to make a change.

Hiring managers need to be ready to answer questions about culture, management style, and job responsibilities. They need to be prepared to explain why the candidate should leave where they are to come to work with them.

Organizations that are “people-centric” understand that “people” start with talent acquisition. They have strong strategic relationships in place with their recruiting organizations, have hiring managers who fully embrace being in a constant state of talent acquisition and market the EVP well to candidates to encourage them to make a change.