Careful Recruitment Can Lead to Long-Term Leadership

In a recent article from Talent Management.com’s blog titled Talent Management Perspectives, author Sarah Peiker offers some guidelines to help you recruit your organization’s future leaders. Today’s high-performance employees are not always the best candidates for leadership positions. How can your organization bridge the gap between an employee and a leader?

Leaders aren’t formed overnight, and this is why organizations should focus on creating strength in each employee from the point of hire or even as early as the recruitment phases. Leadership training as part of the hiring process can help talented employees utilize the skills needed to become effective leaders.

Long-term employee growth begins with qualified candidates. Effective recruiting can help to place employees in roles where their best qualities can be pin-pointed and effectively planned for.  Today’s entry-level intern and tomorrow’s high-performing leader could be one in the same with the right organizational recruitment practices.

How do organizations sort through all these different factors and define what makes someone a successful employee or leader before he or she even enters the company? By understanding the diverse requirements for each role, organizations can recruit effectively, accelerate leadership readiness and build the bench strength necessary for a high-performance organization.

In this article, Peiker provides data from Manpower’s fifth annual Talent Shortage Survey of 35,000 employers across 36 countries. The study found that 31 percent of employers worldwide are having difficulty filling positions due to lack of suitable talent available in their markets. Establishing a corporate competency model could help eliminate unqualified candidates early in the hiring process. This would reduce the time involved in the hiring process, allowing managers to allocate more time to interviewing potential best-fit candidates.

To recruit effectively for a company’s culture, managers must first understand it. Questions to consider are:

– What are the values, beliefs, assumptions, principles and norms that define the company’s culture?

– Is communication formal or informal in the company?

– What is the company’s attitude toward training and development?

Organizations also need to clearly define the competencies and qualities required for their organization and job roles within it to decide which applicants or recruits are best fit. There are a few good questions to ask in this situation, like “Do employees need prior experience?”

Different organizational cultures will pair with different competencies. Competencies are both behavioral and technique based – both need to be addressed for a solid fit within an organization.

Candidate assessments also create a solid foundation for coaching during the on-boarding and development processes. Organizations can identify high potentials, understand where they need additional training and align thier talents to the organization over time.

Precisely planned recruitment along with the right training and development programs can build skills and stimulate leadership ability. The end result of this is enhanced employee performance for the company. Investing in your talent creates an investment in your company – employee loyalty is a fruit of meticulous future leadership planning. To learn more about guidelines to help recruit future leaders, click here to read the full article.

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