March, 1999

There’s a Vacancy to Be Filled: What Next?

CRITICAL JOB OPENINGS, like dental cavities, scream for attention – begging to be filled. When the tooth hurts, of course, it’s off to the dentist for help. But when a job opening occurs, organizations face a bewildering array of choices.

Among the options on a typical company’s platter are transfer or promotion from within, employee referrals, unsolicited resumes and leftovers in the personnel files, job fairs, Internet searches, direct recruitment advertising in a wide variety of media, third-party advertising via resume-screening firms, company recruiting and external recruiting (or search). That’s not to mention the possibility of using contractors for non-recurring tasks or outsourcing some kinds of positions – for example, to a service provider skilled at running mail rooms or cafeterias.

One thing is for certain: no one size fits all. The organization, for instance, that always advertises or always turns to the Internet does itself as much of a disservice as does the organization that looks to recruiting firms to fill all vacancies.

Nonetheless, it’s hard to get rid of bad habits. In a late 1998 survey of almost 2000 employers, a trade publication called The Fordyce Letter found that 92 percent of them "regularly" advertise to fill positions, despite the fact that satisfaction with results rated only 2 on a scale of 1 (low) to 5 (high). Outside recruiters received the highest rating of any hiring method – but were used on a regular basis by only half the sample.

Evaluating the Options

The choice of hiring methods all too often boils down to a budgetary decision, as opposed to a realistic needs assessment.

Transfer or promotion from within costs only a salary increase, advances someone’s career and normally bolsters organizational morale ("the system works"). The flip side is that it can lead to inbreeding and predictable solutions to problems.

Employee referrals (generally of relatives or neighbors) are probably ok for task-important jobs but are unreliable when more subjective factors (such as leadership or management skills) come into play.

If your company is a magnet for job-seekers, chances are that the HR department has scads of resumes on file – or can generate them through print or electronic advertising. There are several problems, however, with passive recruiting:

• First, the ideal candidate may be happily employed and not looking for work.
• Second, those seeking employment often apply for anything, whether they are qualified or not. (The resumes in your files are also in the files of countless other companies and computer job banks.)
• Third, resumes are a notoriously poor source of accurate information and reveal little about the personal attributes of the candidate.
• Fourth, while sophisticated enterprise resource software can organize and to some extent screen resumes, it still takes human beings to evaluate the senders – a time-consuming task that overworked HR departments may be hard-pressed to complete.

The use of search firms becomes, in effect, a way to outsource the recruiting function, have it conducted by skilled specialists, improve timeliness and identify those candidates who are happily and productively employed. While seemingly costly, the use of outside firms can actually save companies money by filling the job promptly, eliminating advertising dollars and reducing staff expenditures.

But of even greater importance, a top-flight search firm can add value to the recruitment process by asking the kinds of questions that otherwise may go unasked. (Continued on other side.)

Taking the Guesswork out of Search 

About five years ago, Sanford Rose Associates tackled a problem that is endemic to the recruiting process – the trial-and-error nature of filling most positions based on standard job descriptions. In far too many cases, the job candidate who looked great on paper failed to look so great in person, or wasn’t what the client was really searching for.

To alleviate trial-and-error recruiting, SRA created a proprietary process called Dimensional SearchÒ , which matches a candidate’s skills to specific job requirements, past accomplishments to future job needs and personal management (or operating) style to the specific work environment (or culture) – the three dimensions of successful search.

When position openings were analyzed according to the Dimensional Search process, it also became apparent that the relative importance of the three dimensions varies by position opening.

Some positions, for example, are heavily skills-dependent -- with successful on-the-job performance based primarily on the utilization of those skills to complete assigned tasks (such as equipment operation or computer programming). Other positions call for specific past experience to address a particular need (such as union avoidance or improved plant productivity). Still others blend both skills and experience with the need to lead or manage others in a particular kind of work environment (which might or might not, for instance, value team effort above individual creativity).

Traditional job descriptions are usually great at describing duties but lousy at addressing the other kinds of variables above. When duties are paramount (as in the case of an accounts-payable clerk, process engineer or production scheduler), an employer might feel comfortable as a first step to search its resume files, advertise in the newspaper or post the position on the Internet – assuming there are readily available candidates with the skills required.

In many kinds of positions, however, duties fail to describe success on the job. An example would be the multi-plant company, with a generic plant-manager position description, that is seeking to solve a unionization or productivity problem at a particular plant. Here, the use of a professional search consultant to ask the right questions plays a more evident role in identifying the type of individual whose past accomplishments will match the company’s needs.

And when is the last time you saw a job description or advertisement for a division general manager that said, "Must be able to improve employee morale, make peace between the manufacturing and marketing departments, restore profitability and regain the confidence of the Board of Directors"? It requires considerable powers of observation, question-asking and diplomacy to piece together such an analysis – and even greater skills to identify the person who would consider that kind of situation to be an opportunity.

Let the Buyer Beware

Two recent trends have sparked considerable controversy in the executive search profession.

One concerns the use by certain firms of Internet job registries as an acceptable substitute for the direct recruitment of "mid-level" (i.e., $60,000-120,000) positions. The other concerns the use of third-party classified advertising by the recruiting firm to promise the employer a guaranteed number of "qualified" candidates. Neither constitutes full-service executive search, even though the costs may be comparable. And not only is the employer paying for a substandard search, it is also subsidizing the expansion of the provider’s database.

Clearly, not every position opening warrants the assistance of outside recruiters. But when the needs of the position are so specific and so important that superficial matches won’t suffice, seek out a full-service firm with the expertise and commitment to conduct a true custom search.

Beware if all a recruiter wants is the job description and salary range in order to send you candidates. The time you save today will be wasted many times over.

If you work in a large, multi-unit organization, others – including the corporate Human Resources and MIS Departments – might appreciate copies of this issue. These can be ordered from your Sanford Rose Associates search consultant.

©1999 SRA International, Inc. All rights reserved, including electronic reproduction or alteration. This SRA Update is published for the clients of Sanford Rose Associates.