The recent report following new research conducted by HR.com in partnership with the IBM Smarter Workforce Institute, explains how organisations identify and hire great talent, with a detailed look at the challenges faced.
The survey considered the responses from 555 HR professionals, across all industry sectors and with only 28% of the businesses involved employing more than 1000 people. And the findings were illuminating and frustrating in equal measure.
Challenges are illuminating
The independent insights offered were illuminating because they confirmed that the major challenges faced by talent acquisition professionals were surprisingly straightforward, with the primary problem, simply finding candidates with the right skill sets.
The findings reported that regrettable recruits remain a problem, with participants reporting they would not hire almost a third of recent hires if they had a chance to reconsider.
It was reported that most employers continue to have trouble filling positions quickly and at a cost they consider reasonable. And when they get the individuals they want, they often find they can’t keep them, with around fifth of candidates leaving within the first six months.
Despite the size of the organisations quizzed, these challenges will be familiar to SME and smaller businesses across the UK.
Ignorance is frustrating
Following the illuminating insights came the frustration for us here at Coensus-hr. We found ourselves reading the report and shaking our heads in disbelief, as we recognised just how many of the challenges could be overcome by utilising the Prevue normative assessments we offer.
One of the major challenges reported was the apparent lack of good assessment to identify best candidate, which dovetailed neatly with the desire from just over half of all respondents who wanted help to improve the match between candidates and jobs.
This aspect of the recruitment process is at the heart of the Coensus-hr offering, which also addresses another major gripe of talent acquisition professionals, namely their need to spend less time sifting through resumes.
Strength of a normative approach
Whether choosing an assessment that compares a candidate to an accepted standard of what good looks like in a specific role, by selecting from the more than 1000 roles in our library or comparing them to the best an organisation has to offer, the results will impress.
Ipsative assessments, used for many years, help understand an individual’s personality. But is discovering that a candidate is dominant, outgoing, enthusiastic or willing of much use, when you are recruiting for a business development manager you expect to perform as well as your existing ones?
Of course, the ipsative assessments have been around for a long time and are now the accepted norm for recruiters who want a little help in the process – and using any assessment is better than none. Or is it?
Relying on these assessments ensure many talent acquisition professionals ignore the facts and stick with what they know. But this approach will be a contributory factor to the revelation that almost a third of recent recruits should not have been recruited in hindsight.
Surely it makes more sense to understand how the candidates abilities compare to those of someone who already does the job well, rather than whether they are friendly?
Normative assessments like those we offer, measure three specific abilities, which when combined offer a measure of an individual’s general ability:
- Verbal reasoning – how well a candidate understands and uses words.
- Numerical reasoning – the ability to understand and use numbers
- Spatial reasoning – the ability to manipulate shapes and visualise objects in their mind
Another essential part of the normative assessments evaluates how much an individual likes and dislikes different types of work, to help identify their preferences – what really makes them tick, their motivations.
The final aspect of the assessment looks at how a candidate acts and thinks – their personality – which is clearly an important indicator of how they’ll perform at work. So, in addition to their personality, our assessments discover their abilities and their attitude to work.
Time for a different approach
The reason for our frustration should now be clear. We have a system that addresses many of the challenges faced by talent acquirers in the recruitment process and once tried, we are confident it will become the new normal.
Recruiters are continuing to do the same things, use the same tools and yet seem surprised they are not getting different (or indeed better) results. An accepted definition of insanity?
Coensus-hr offers modern, accurate and fair assessments that reduce the number of resumes that need to be reviewed.
Perhaps more importantly they are valid and will not attract criticism from those not securing a role. The results are also reliable, time after time, which helps build confidence in their use, which can help sift out a lot of the unsuitable candidates, without a CV having to be read.
And importantly we ensure better job-fit candidates that will not only help businesses improve, but reduce attrition, all of which removes the major headaches revealed in the report following this important research.
If you don’t want to just take our word for it, you can read the report here and if you don’t reach the same conclusion that we did, that Coensus-hr has the answer, we’d love to hear from you.
We’d also like to hear from you if you, if you believe now is the time for you to adopt a different approach to recruiting; one that offers the chance to identify the people you need, who fit your business and will stay beyond six months.