RETENTION BEST WAY TO MEASURE RECRUITERS

RETENTION BEST WAY TO MEASURE RECRUITERS

The length of tenure of newly appointed Australian CEO’s is too far too short.The median ASX100 CEO tenure is now only 3.9 years. CEO turnover in Australia is twice the world average.  In the last four years global CEO tenure declined from 10 years to 8 years but in Australia it is now less than 4 years. The average tenure of a CEO in Australia is 3.9 years. Not to mention that we have had 6 Prime Ministerial changes in a decade!

The level of CEO turnover is absurd and is costing Australian business dearly.

“New hires need to stay in the job long enough to move through ‘norming’ – getting to know the business – and ‘storming’, when they start to make an impact, to ‘performing’ when they
impact the bottom line. The first year is spent learning, the second year making change and the third year only sees the start of real performance traction.

“If newly selected CEO’s and senior management are not lasting beyond the first 3.9 years, it’s time to choose another recruiter,” said  Simone Allan..“We deem a successful CEO hire as being an absolute minimum of 5 years but we should be aiming for 8-10 year tenures like many nations around the world – Asia and Northern Europe.

Cultural fit is the key to longevity.The only way to measure a recruiters effectiveness is by retention. The right CEO needs not only the right skills and experience to succeed but as important is that they need to have a cultural and emotional fit in to the new organisation.Most high level hires that fail don’t fail for lack of ability. They fail because the new hire doesn’t fit in as an individual.

The answer lies in being unafraid to probe and match the values held by the candidate and client organisation during the recruitment process. An effective recruiter needs to invest time in determining what these factors are. They need to know the successful benches in the organisations and have some grids/ templates of the successful performers to align the new talent to. They need to deeply understand your business and  go beyond the interview process, as that is just the start. They need to get to know the candidate at a forensic level – know their childhood and family background, their aspirations, their wins and losses, their passions, their past careers and reference across all levels of peers, subordinates and colleagues. They need to observe the machinations of communication flow of email/ sms and phone calls and see how responsive and timely the candidate is throughout the recruitment process. It is important to create tests and situations where you can observe candidates, their reactions and their approach to managing various situations and experiences.  

Relevant psychometric analysis and forensic reference checking is all part of the process, 360 degree conversations around the networks that they know, lead to core insights into the personality and style of the individuals.  The interview is only the start, as the real skill is what follows in determining the cultural fit.

Companies can monitor recruitment outcomes and improve retention by taking 5 steps:

  1. Make executive retention a strategic issue.
  2. Measure and track retention in all leadership roles over 1 year, 2 years and 5 years. Quality metrics drive quality retention.
  3. Start with quality recruitment. Insist on working with specialist recruiters that have a strong audited track record in retention. This will increase the calibre of pre-screened candidates and the culture fit with the organisation upfront.
  4. Commission independent externally managed “stay interviews” at six monthly intervals for senior executives. These can be far more valuable and timely than traditional exit interviews, which provide limited results. Stay interviews help track the heartbeat of the company and allow the organisation to keep abreast of issues that could affect senior staff.
  5. Make the costs of poor retention visible. Studies show at least $250,000 to replace a senior executive when you add lost productivity during disenfranchisement, the time to bring on a replacement and the time to get the new executive up to speed. Some suggest the cost of replacing a CEO could be up to 40 times base salary.

 

For further information, please contact Simone Allan on 0414 797 369 or simone@mondosearch.com.au

The Interview Is Just the Beginning

The Interview is just the start of a combination of smart hiring techniques. Get smart with new and innovative hiring techniques!

  1. Hiring is tiring – not just for the employee but also for the candidate.  Hiring can also be a risky business with a low success rate, so employers are turning to different means to improve this success rate. Approximately 23% of new hires leave within their first year when the role does not live up to their expectations. This loss costs between 1 and 3 times their salary.
  2. Be lateral in questioning the motives of your applicants!   Online retailer Zappos tempts its new recruits with $4000 if they quit on the spot. If they are prepared to take the money and run, they were never serious about working there. This saves Zappos a lot of money down the track.
  3. Take time to identify your good hires and work to keep them. As much as 75% of demand for new employees is just to replace workers who leave the company.  Every person you retain saves approximately $55K in replacement costs, according to website “The Undercover Recruiter”.
  4. Gaming can now be a part of the hiring tactics! According to BRW (4 June 2014) a new concept to assist with the getting the hire right the first time is to turn to game designers.  Hiring strategist Paul Jacobs says giving people a taste of what a job is like through a role playing game may assist in the hiring process. A successful game can also attract suitable candidates who may not have considered applying.

This is a novel yet powerful way to hire. I know how much my kids love games and communicate through such mediums (Generation Z who were born after the birth of the internet).  According to Jacobs the average young person racks up 10,000 hours of gaming by the age of 21.  Playing at being a sushi chef may not turn you into Tetsuya Wakuda – but it may give you an idea of what you are in for if you get a job in a fast food restaurant!

Paul Jacobs is the founder of Jobgram, a New Zealand-based service that “reimagines” job advertising. He says the first generation of recruiting games were often job-tasting, such as the My Marriott Hotel, which invited people to become hotel managers.

In New Zealand, Jacobs helped create a job-seeker experience for Deloitte in New Zealand by creating a video that allows website visitors to choose how a recruit’s first day pans out, making decisions that indicate whether they are a good cultural fit for the firm. The recruit spills coffee down the back of an unsuspecting partner and has to decide to confess, rub it in, or ignore it. “We tried to make it quirky and humorous,” Jacobs says.

Other innovative tools are “snap chat” people with a summary of why they want to apply for a job and consider requesting voice files and other forms of communication to check more about the communication style of the applicant.

Be a warrior when it comes to finding your talent – think of many techniques to secure the best talent and don’t just rely on the interview process!

 

Leadership Crisis in Australia – no time to perform!

 

The length of tenure of newly appointed Australian CEO’s is far too short. The median ASX100 CEO tenure is only 3.9 years, making CEO turnover in Australia twice the world average. Australian politics is even worse! 6 Prime Ministerial changes in 10 years!

New hires need to stay in the job long enough to move through ‘forming’ –building the foundations, to ‘storming’ – when they start to make an impact, to ‘norming’ – making mutual plans then to ‘performing’ – when they impact the bottom line.

The first year is spent learning, the second year making change, the third year implementing changes and the fourth year only sees the start of real performance traction and results. This follows Bruce Tuckman’s Stages of Group Development

Forming – people aim for acceptance, so they avoid conflict, raising serious issues or discussing feelings. They want to get comfortable so they focus on logistics – when and where they’ll meet, the scope of the mentoring task and how to approach it. They gather information and impressions of each other.

Storming –Tuckman believes that no group would achieve high performance unless they worked through it. Essentially, it is a less comfortable stage of examining the real purpose of the team, confronting different needs and ideas. There may be some conflict and unless participants have the skills to resolve it, the relationship will not progress.

Norming – the calm after the storm is the result of agreeing to a goal and a mutual plan. This means accepting other points of view, agreeing to ways of working together as a team, taking responsibility and committing to the goal and plan.

Performing  – once they’ve figured out how to function well together with focus on their purpose, teamwork gathers momentum. Visible progress is highly motivating and very satisfying.

Cultural fit is the key to longevity. Even the most outstanding candidates are of no help at all if they do not stay in their position.  The best way to measure a good search firm is through retention – how long new hires stay in the job. Recruiters should be paid by term of tenure not by percentage of salary.

The right leader needs not only the right skills and experience to succeed but they need to have a cultural and emotional fit in to the new organisation. Most leaders that fail don’t fail for lack of ability. They fail because the new hire does not fit in as an individual.

New Leaders need to align with the organisation’s values and objectives. Maybe Prime Ministers in Australia struggle so much with the diverse egotistical political extremist thinkers and  there is no common values and a charter for behaviour.

If cultural fit is right, new leaders can better employ their emotional intelligence for smooth organisational transformation.

For more information contact Simone Allan, Director at Mondo Search on 1300 737 917 or email simone@mondosearch.com.au.

CopyrightThe above is the intellectual property of Mondo Search Pty Ltd. None of the information provided may be copied or reproduced in part or in full without the prior written permission of a director of Mondo Search Pty Ltd.

Simone Allan Discusses Reigniting Your Career on the Today Show

Happy New Year!

Now is the time to reflect and look back on all your achievements over the last year, to build your bag of tricks and reignite your career. Our CEO Simone Allan appeared on Channel9 ‘s Today to discuss how you can supercharge into the year ahead. Watch through the link below to find out more.

https://www.9now.com.au/today/2019/clip-cjqfp1jrz005y0hpscbqmk97s

 

 

RECRUITERS – WHO NEEDS THEM?

 

Recruiters are sometimes compared to real estate agents and used car salespeople!  Why so? I think it is because recruiters are involved in one of life’s major decisions – as real estate agents and car salesmen are – your house, your car and your career.  Life decisions are remembered and are important. So often these experiences are rushed or felt highly transactional & impersonal. Recruiters are often dealing daily hundreds of applicants for only one role and from a candidate perspective this can feel very transactional.

How do you find a talented recruiter that you can trust?  Do you even bother?

In Australia there are no formal tertiary courses and no regulations. You do not even have to have a degree in Psychology or Human Resources to start up a recruitment company! Scary stuff!

In Australia we have seen many recruitment companies employ UK backpackers for short periods. They have enjoyed the perks and Government living away from home allowances (LAFA) and made some money, without regard for the long term impact of their hires.  This has given many recruitment companies a bad name, with candidates and clients being dissatisfied with their services. The government has just dropped the LAFA and this may reduce the number of interim UK recruiters. UK recruiters train at University to become recruiters and this is why they are often selected to join Australian recruitment companies. In Australia there are no University courses purely for recruiters – a critical function in an organisation. It is often just a subject in an HR course.

The only way to measure a recruiter’s effectiveness is by retention and long term connection.

Many hires that fail do not fail for lack of ability. They fail because the new hire does not fit in as an individual. The candidate – so willing to begin with –discovers they are at odds with the values and vision of their new employer.  The answer lies in being unafraid to probe and match the values held by the candidate and client organisation during the recruitment process.

An effective recruiter needs to invest time and curiosity in determining what these factors are. They need to know the successful benches in the organisations and have some grids/ templates of the successful performers to align the new talent to. They need to deeply understand your business and  go beyond the interview process, as that is just the start. They need to get to know the candidate at a forensic level – know their childhood and family background, their aspirations, their wins and losses, their passions, their past careers and reference across all levels of peers, subordinates and colleagues. They need to observe the machinations of communication flow of email/ sms and phone calls and see how responsive and timely the candidate is throughout the recruitment process.

The interview is only the start, as the real skill is what follows in determining the cultural fit.  

Good recruiters specialise in industries and disciplines and get to know industry talent and benchmarks for above grade industry talent. Good recruiters stay in touch with talent over the long term. They think long term and work with you in your your thinking of your entire career path.

A perfect fit leads to long term appointments and career engagements and this is how you will measure the effectiveness of a recruiter and whether you need them or not.

For more information contact Simone Allan, Director at Mondo Search on 1300 737 917 or email simone@mondosearch.com.au.

CopyrightThe above is the intellectual property of Mondo Search Pty Ltd. None of the information provided may be copied or reproduced in part or in full without the prior written permission of a director of Mondo Search Pty Ltd.

How do I tell my employer I’m going to resign soon?

Outline your reasons for leaving, i.e. looking for a greater challenge, personal circumstances, career change etc. Being honest and transparent in your reasons for resigning is important as you want to leave on positive terms. You never know when you might need something again from your employer (e.g. a good referee)

 

 

 

 

 

For more information contact Simone Allan, Director at Mondo Search on 1300 737 917 or email: simone@mondosearch.com.au.

Copyright:
The above is the intellectual property of Mondo Search Pty Ltd. None of the information provided may be copied or reproduced in part or in full without the prior written permission of a director of Mondo Search Pty Ltd