Retention Starts With Recruiting
The Herman Trend Alert offers up an excellent analysis of the most pressing topic of today – retention. I thought this statement was spot on:
The Hodes 2007 Workplace Study holds that two factors are critical to retaining valued employees. The first is choosing quality people, not settling for “warm bodies”. The second is choosing people who have long-term expectations of staying with the organization.
We encounter companies that have a hire fast, fire fast mentality. Personally, I think this approach is high risk, low reward and we never condone this approach at Select Metrix.
The second point is an important one also. If you are looking at a candidate who is not currently employed, it is of utmost importance to take the extra time to make sure your position is a fit. There are many salespeople who are in transition and are simply looking for a quick stop, money-grab position.
When employers make inferior quality hires, often they will inadvertently lose current employees who now no longer feel valued.
The study also cites what we have been saying all along—that employee turnover, regardless of industry, is expensive. Some reports even show the estimated cost of a single vacancy for some jobs has been calculated anywhere from $7000 to $12,000 per day. According to statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the estimated 2007 annual voluntary turnover rate is about 24 percent.
For more about the Hodes 2007 Workplace Study, please visit http://www.hodes.com/publications/retentionstudy.asp. (my editing)
I worked for a high-tech company in a Regional Sales Manager position. My coworkers were better salespeople than me so I learned much and developed my skills immensely. Then our boss hired two absolute stiffs to join our group. They had little skill and were hired for the wrong reasons. The morale amongst our existing team plummeted soon after as we observed their flamboyant incompetence.
Posted By Derrick Moe | Hiring, Retention | | 
Comments(2)
Stumbled across your website looking for information about recruiting firms OTHER THAN company press releases regurgitated by the business press. Definitely a worthwhile site.
My problem is that I’ve been hunting for work for a very long time. I’m a stay-at-home dad with a very young son (born 16 August ‘07) and I was laid off from a temp assignment about a month before he was born. I’ve basically been hunting for a permanent position while temping for almost four years, and the fact of the matter is that I really feel as though I am unemployable. Those who have actually employed me have been pretty happy with me, but I’m lousy at self-promotion. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to justify the gaping holes in my resume to employers.
Personally, I think a lot of HR management consists of CYA activities like “Whatever you do NEVER EVER hire a guy who’s unemployed,” and “Yeah, sure, call him in for a job interview and waste his time, but DON’T HIRE him–no one else has, and if you go wrong by violating the conventional wisdom, you’re going to get a guided tour of the world of hurt.”
And unemployed people are one category of unfortunates (not the only one, of course) for which it’s assumed there’s no excuse. I’d be better off if you thought I was a founder and chair of NAMBLA as well as a serial ax murderer and seller of nuclear secrets to the North Koreans and al-Qaeda. I am none of those things, but I lack the brilliance at self-promotion that Reston Bolles, et. al. assumes I ought to have.
You seem to be a reasonably sane person. But you know the labor market is actually pretty grim when unemployed people are literally unemploy-able.
James – first, thanks for your comment. Second, I know exactly what you are referring to in regards to finding a job while unemployed. I faced that problem myself when I was fired from a job and went 3 months before I found a new opportunity. Granted, that isn’t as long as you have experienced, but I know the stigma that follows “currently unemployed” resumes.
We work with our customers to find the right talent and it is a struggle at times. Often they want to retreat to a hire based mainly on experience. I know we are in for a long haul when the first question regarding a candidate involves “is he currently working?”
Unfortunately, conventional wisdom often takes a long time to change.