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Latest Blog Posts
Simplifying Workforce Planning for Summer 2024: Practical Tips for HR Leaders
In today's data-rich landscape, workforce planning is essential for HR leaders to identify talent-related priorities and investments. While tools like Visier and Tableau provide instant and slick access to data, the challenge lies in ensuring its accuracy, deciphering its true meaning and turning it into actionable plans. By focusing on key metrics such as attrition rates and tenure distributions, HR leaders can create directionally-accurate workforce plans that can evolve over time to enable their organizations navigate the most complex talent marketplace we've ever known. This article details a roadmap that will help HR leaders build a simple workforce plan that will allow them to address the most important people-related trends in their organization, now and in the future.
Our March ‘24 Newsletter: Chock Full of Talent News
In case you missed it, here's our March '24 newsletter . . . talent insights that have a long shelf life.
4 Great Questions to Ask HR Leader Candidates, and the Answers to Look For
HR, Talent and TA professionals are generally very good at being interviewed. But that ability doesn’t correlate with true talent management, recruiting or leadership skills. *Your* skills as an interviewer are key to getting beyond showmanship and personality in order to assess true business acumen, talent knowledge and the ability to make data-based decisions. Here are some tough but fair questions to ask your finalists and, more importantly, the right answers to look for.
Hot Tip: That ChatBot on Your Apply Process Isn’t AI
In almost every case, your ChatBot is actually repelling - rather than attracting - talent. Prove me wrong.
Our January ‘24 Newsletter: Chock Full of Talent News
In case you missed it, here's our January '24 newsletter . . . talent insights that have a long shelf life.
Let’s Modernize Talent Acquisition Before Jumping on the AI Train
HR and Talent Acquisition teams often lack the necessary foundation to make AI truly effective because of undefined processes, ambiguous roles and unclear goals. So before delving into AI-driven solutions, TA needs to build its foundation: clear strategies, well-defined and differentiated processes, supporting org design and data-based measures of success. Only then it can be determined where AI can add the most value.
Our Dec ‘23 Newsletter: Chock Full of Talent News
In case you missed it, here's our December 2023 newsletter . . . talent insights that have a long shelf life.
Hiring Manager Satisfaction Surveys: The Worst Thing to (Still) Happen to Talent Acquisition
Hiring managers rating recruiters on how well they filled their job does nothing but reinforce arcane and counter-productive behaviors. Rather than asking: "Do you like us? Were we responsive and pleasant? Did you like our candidates?", Talent Acquisition teams should be measured on hiring speed and quality. Note: by "quality" we mean how well did new hires stay in the role and how well did they perform. Because, like it or not, if TA isn't hiring people who stay and perform, something is amiss. Hiring managers, in turn, will *really* like recruiters if they hire top talent who stay longer than their predecessors. But, if you just can't let these surveys go, read on for tips for best positioning these surveys.
Where the Talent Went and What To Do About It
Despite the waning of the COVID-19 pandemic, hiring and retention remain a significant challenge for businesses. Factors contributing to this shortage include demographic shifts, declining birthrates, and lower labor force participation rates. Here are four strategies to address this issue. And do it now, because it's not going to get easier anytime soon.
Our November ‘23 Newsletter: Chock Full of Talent News
In case you missed it, here's our November 2023 newsletter . . . talent insights that have a long shelf life.
9 Reasons Why Changing Your HR Org Structure Won’t Fix Your HR Issues
Changing the organizational design within HR may seem like a logical step to address issues and pursue a transformative HR strategy, but moving boxes on a chart rarely improves measurable outcomes. This article outlines why simply altering the HR org design won't fix underlying issues or transform anything, much less your HR strategy.
HR Strategy = Talent Strategy: It’s All About Build, Borrow or Buy
The creation of value in companies is primarily linked to intellectual capital driving cash flow, constituting over 80% of average market value. Companies like Apple, Visa, and Microsoft derive nearly all their value from intellectual assets rather than tangible ones. This intellectual capital originates from people, making talent the most critical of assets. However, many companies, lack a talent strategy that aligns with this economic reality, often hold outdated views on the availability of skilled talent despite acknowledging its importance. At its core, talent strategies for organizations across most industries need to outline a build, buy, borrow strategy in order to ensure the growth of enterprise value in the future, which is entirely dependent on talent.
The Data Dilemma: Navigating Challenges to Becoming a Data-Driven HR Function
In today's fast-paced business environment, HR teams are increasingly turning to data and analytics to drive informed decision-making. The concept of data-driven HR has gained significant traction, with organizations leveraging data to optimize talent acquisition and talent management, and connect HR efforts and outcomes to business results. However, despite the potential benefits, many HR teams face significant challenges when it comes to obtaining and effectively analyzing data. This column explores the underlying challenges, why data acquisition is difficult, the conflict between being "customer-focused" and data-driven, and the struggle to utilize data for outcomes that align with critical business operations.
How Many Reqs Should a Recruiter Carry? A Recruiter Workload Calculator for Today’s Talent Teams
The most common question we're asked is: "How many reqs should our recruiters carry?" And it's the right question because it is an indicator of efficiency, effectiveness, resource allocation, load balancing, and investment in talent acquisition. Finally, a roadmap for answering this question and ultimately improving TA effectiveness is a click away.
Talent Acquisition Technology Isn’t Going to Fix Your Hiring Problems
Despite the explosive growth of talent acquisition technologies - and the vast number of problems they claim to solve - hiring isn’t getting better, faster or cheaper. Why?
Re-Engineering Recruiting: Tips for Assessing and Improving your Talent Acquisition Function
Now might be the optimal time to re-engineer your recruiting processes. Start by objectively determining which metrics are most important to your business, how to evaluate them and the best approach for improving these outcomes.
Why Your “Post-Pandemic” Business Strategy Depends on HR
What are the direct and indirect consequences of the pandemic for talent and business recovery? The list is long and we now know that it includes "quiet quitting", supply chain issues, candidate ghosting, brand management, early attrition, social issues, missed performance goals to name a few. And the length of time we'll be dealing with these issues is even longer than this list.
2023 Talent Analytics Playbook for CHROs
The explosion of HR tools, technology and trends makes zeroing in on essential analytics more difficult than ever. How should Talent Analytics define HR priorities? What are the greatest obstacles to achieving effectiveness? What does a Talent Analytics "homerun" look like? In 2023, talent analytics should not just support, but fundamentally drive, your organization's business strategy.
4 Great Questions to Ask Prospective Talent Acquisition Leaders – and the Answers to Look For
Let’s face it: recruiting professionals are generally very good at being interviewed. But that fact doesn’t correlate with excellent recruiting or leadership skills. A TA leader position can be among the most important roles in an organization. Here are some tough but fair questions to ask your finalists and, more importantly, the right answers to look for.
5 Ways to Turn Your Desire to Hire Diverse Talent into Actual Diversity Hiring
The demand for greater representation within companies requires HR to successfully find, attract and win high-performing diverse talent. Here are five tips for doing it right.
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The Most Effective Recruitment Process in the Toughest Talent Marketplace
It’s a trick: the most effective recruitment process isn’t one - it's multiple processes, differentiated and highly engineered. Because in the most challenging talent marketplace that most of us have ever worked in, we can't wing it anymore - nor can we build our processes based on what we've always done, or what hiring managers demand.
Where Have All The Workers Gone: 5 Factors
This is the question our consulting firm now hears more often than any other. And there is no simple answer. To understand the worker shortage, take a quick trip around the external market factors, that issues that exist within most companies, the dramatically different choices that talent (and particularly, high-performing diverse talent) are now making - and 5 places they've gone.
4 Ways to Determine if You Need to Improve Your Job Postings ASAP
This insane labor market requires employers to put their best foot forward in order to win top talent. But often, when the candidate sees a job posting, it's so bad that it literally repels the most qualified among them. Here are four ways to quickly audit your own postings.
Five Reasons Why Candidates Aren’t Applying to Your Jobs
There are many reasons why candidates aren't applying to jobs the way they did before the pandemic. A recent survey identified five key reasons for this (hint: 'being lazy and on unemployment' didn't make the list.)
Building a New Partnership Between CHROs and CEOs
It's time for CHROs to build a better, more collaborative and business-based relationship with their CEOs. Read more about it in our latest book, "Building Business Value Through Talent: The CEO and CHRO Partnership Guide" available on Amazon: bit.ly/TGAbook
Are you in a War *ON* Talent or a War *FOR* Talent?
Here are eight clues for determining where your organization falls.
Technology is Not the Answer to Your Hiring Problems
The rapid growth of talent acquisition technologies, and all the problems they portend to solve, makes investment in them tempting - particularly during these unpredictable times. But TA tech is not going to solve most hiring problems.
How to Improve Recruiting: Begin with a SWOT Analysis
Need to figure out how to improve hiring speed, quality and diversity? Begin with one of the most tried-and-true methods to assessing strengths and weaknesses: a SWOT framework for recruiting. Learn how this method can help you get started the right way.
8 Keys to Ensuring Your Newly Hired Black Executive Fails: A Case Study
Proper recruiting, selection, onboarding and performance management routines are critical for the success of any new executive, but particularly for companies seeking to expand diversity among their leadership ranks. The old routines that may have worked reasonably well with primarily White leaders need to be examined and adapted to successfully and consistently win high performing Black talent.
It’s Happening: Google Workers’ Union
Can a mere 225 unionizing Google employees out of 260,000 have much of an impact? You bet. Their union, in many ways, resembles a private equity firm which will undoubtedly grow larger in membership, funding, and power.
How to Budget for HR in 2021
Budget season 2021 is front and center and a lot of HR leaders have already hunkered down to deal with this same old reality. Businesses are optimistic about the future, after a challenging 2020, but caution and practicality in budgeting is inevitable as businesses begin to recover and adapt to their changed environments. Historically, HR spending requests have invariably ended up looking like sunk costs rather than sound business investments – it’s time to change that up.
The Power of a Diversity & Inclusion Audit: Three Keys to Success
Now that the #BLM marketing rage has died down, it's high time we applied proactive audit discipline and strategy design to diversity and inclusion efforts.
3 Steps to a Rapid and Effective Talent Acquisition Functional Audit
Regardless of how COVID-19 has affected your organization, now is the time to streamline and improve the speed and quality of hiring. There is very little tolerance from senior leaders for time- and labor-intensive hiring efforts with questionable results. Now is the time to objectively assess talent acquisition efforts and determine the best (and fastest) path forward to win top talent quickly and cost effectively.
3 Keys to an Effective Recruitment Department Structure
Org design can be a powerful tool for addressing efficiency and effectiveness problems, but it can’t work in isolation. Here are three keys to making your org design deliver improved speed and quality of hiring.
Strategic Workforce Planning: Seven Steps To Driving Your Best Talent Acquisition Strategy
There is hardly a more nebulous, misunderstood (and possibly hated) word in Human Resources than “strategic workforce planning”, but it is a critical key to successfully improving hiring and retention results. This article describes why it is important, how to do it, and what results you should see.
RPO Lessons Learned: Spotting RPO Dysfunction
So your organization is using an RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing) firm and you suspect things aren't going as planned? Or perhaps you are considering an RPO? Read on to learn about these common pitfalls. And check out other articles in our series to find solutions.
HRE’s Tech Infuencers Make the Business Case for HR Tech Investment
In this recent article by HRE and HR Tech Conference, TGA’s Linda Brenner along with 4 other tech influencers provide insight into the most important technology shifts happening in HR, how to build a case for investment, and common mistakes made in the tech journey.
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Linda Brenner named Top HR Tech Influencer!
The Human Resource Executive (HRE) and HR Tech Conference team released the first edition of the Top 100 HR Tech Influencers, and TGA Founder & Managing Partner, Linda Brenner, made the list. Dubbed “100 individuals who have shaped the world of HR technology”, the list is comprised of people from traditional HR roles, consultants/advisors, and “new media“ influencers. Read more about it here.
Talent Acquisition Model: How to Organize Recruitment Around Talent
What’s the best way for recruiting teams to think about tackling hiring requisitions? First in, first out – like milk? Nah, I don’t think so; but surprisingly, many succumb to this approach in the face of hiring manager pressure and the absence of business-based prioritization.
How Do You Measure Quality of Hire in a Full Employment Economy?
In this full employment economy, finding and winning top talent for critical roles is a key business success factor. But if you’re still thinking about quality of hire in the old way (hiring manager surveys to assess ‘happiness’ with the recruiting team or managers' assessment of a new hire 30 days in), then you’re missing the chance to prove the value of Talent Acquisition in 2019 and beyond.
A High Volume Hiring Case Study: Improving Hiring Speed, Quality and Cost
The Challenge: Improve the quality of hiring high volume, customer service-oriented front line employees. In turn, increase speed to hire and reduce overall hiring costs.
Passive Candidate Sourcing: Which Technology, and Other Key Questions to Ask
In today’s market, employers are struggling to attract quality candidates. Many companies understand the need to source passive candidates but don’t understand how to do it effectively or how to utilize technology to support the efforts.
360 for HR: 5 Reasons Assessment-Based Programs Are the Best Training and Development
Traditional training isn't the way to rapidly improve HR effectiveness, development and credibility. Simulation-based assessment and 360° feedback is a fast, better way to improving recruiters' and HR business partners' skills.
Talent Acquisition Audit: Six Signs That You Need One
Six circumstances where it makes sense to bring in outside, unbiased resources to conduct a talent acquisition audit.
GE Jumps Ahead in Intellectual Capital Share-of-Value in 2016 Study
Industrial or Technology Juggernaut? – ask Owen.
Recruitment Tips for New Talent Acquisition Leaders
Check out this list of tips for new talent acquisition leaders - especially if you're coming from an HR Generalist role - to shorten your learning curve and drive meaningful results faster.
