Creating a Win-Win Hiring Culture Starts with a Win-Win Hiring Strategy

As part of the launch of the 4th edition of Hire with Your Head (Wiley, September 2021) we’ll be hosting a number of interactive webcasts where we work through active search projects using the principles of Performance-based Hiring as a foundation. We'll be demonstrating this idea at our next webcast with a focus on what recruiters need to do to connect with outstanding and diverse talent who are in high demand. The key to success here is to start with the right hiring strategy that maps to how these people look for new jobs.

Use Supply vs. Demand Analysis to Develop a Hiring Strategy

One aspect of the book is making the contention that companies shouldn't rely on the same core process to meet all of their hiring needs. This is shown in the infographic with the idea that there are three big hiring challenges companies face and each requires a different strategy and a different matching process. When it comes to hiring process design though this is the biggest point to consider: 

You can't use a surplus of talent strategy designed to weed out the weak when a surplus of talent doesn't exist. In this case, you need to use a scarcity of talent strategy designed to attract the best. 

More important than the process itself is the need for a company to embrace the idea that hiring success shouldn’t be measured on the start date; instead it should be measured on the first-year anniversary date. This is called Win-Win Hiring. Demonstrating how this can be achieved on a consistent basis is the overriding purpose of this book.

A positive Win-Win Hiring outcome after one year means the new employee is still fully satisfied with the role and his or her career progression, and the hiring manager still fully supports and endorses the person. In these situations both are glad an offer was made and accepted one year after working together. Achieving this important hiring outcome changes how the hiring process is designed, managed, and implemented, including how both the hiring manager and the candidate make their decisions to move forward in the process and make and accept offers. Getting all of these critical steps properly aligned starts with the right talent acquisition strategy. 

This boils down to the overarching idea that you can’t use a surplus of talent strategy designed to weed out the weak when there isn’t a surplus of talent. In those situations where there is a scarcity of talent, you need to use a high touch and highly personalized process designed to attract the best. This is possible by spending more time with fewer people, as long as they’re the right people.

By moving the definition of hiring success to the first-year anniversary date from the start date, everything changes about how candidates are found and interviewed, how they’re recruited, how offers are negotiated, and how the person is managed and developed post-hire. This includes delivering on the promise after they’re hired.

Performance-based Hiring is different than traditional hiring practices. However, all of the ideas and the associated tactics described in this book have been validated by one of the top labor attorneys in the U.S. Achieving the results, though, does require some significant reengineering of the more traditional hiring processes used by most companies today. As mentioned above, these changes are both strategic and tactical, emphasizing more high touch and less high tech. The idea is that by spending more time with fewer prequalified candidates it is possible to improve quality of hire, increase assessment accuracy, reduce turnover, and increase job satisfaction, all while reducing cost-per-hire and time-to-fill. In the process it will allow hiring managers to spend more time making their strongest people better. And that's the biggest win of them all.

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Lou Adler is the CEO and founder of Performance-based Hiring Learning Systems – a consulting and training firm helping recruiters and hiring managers around the world source, interview and hire the strongest and most diverse talent. Lou is the author of the Amazon top-10 best-seller, Hire With Your Head (John Wiley & Sons, 4th Edition, 2021), The Essential Guide for Hiring & Getting Hired (Workbench Media, 2013) and LinkedIn Learning’s Performance-based Hiring video training program (2016). The latest edition of Hire with Your Head describes how to implement Performance-based Hiring to build outstanding diverse teams.