COVID-19’s Silver Lining: Filling Your Talent Pipeline with Other Organizations’ Layoffs

Kristin Allaben
March 25, 2020
Corporate Culture, COVID-19, Fit, hiring, talent

I know. It is hard to imagine that there is anything positive coming from the increasing presence and impact of COVID-19. But as it has been said, “in the trying times and the good times, life is just doing what life does. How we use these moments is how we create or give up value.”

Knowing we will survive this pandemic because we are smart, resilient and tenacious, we should also be focused on what things will be like after we move past this challenge. What decisions should we be making now with an eye to the future? What new information do we have in this moment that can affect our future?

So as other organizations struggle to keep their teams employed, an opportunity presents itself. There are many talented people now unemployed because of COVID-19. How do you want to use this moment to expand your talent pipeline and locate talent that will help today or in the future?

Not all industries are furloughing or laying talent off. If your workplace could benefit from this surprise talent surplus, or if you see the rebound coming soon, it is important to approach this period wisely and methodically.

Commit to building a talent pipeline. Talent acquisition and development should always be directed by a strategy. Review your current staff. Review your future talent needs. Ensure you have a plan that provides the organization with the right number and performance levels needed to provide the service vision and deliver the planned results.
Create a performance profile on each role. A performance profile summarizes what the job does and the behaviors, skills, education and experience of someone who would do it well. Most organizations miss this step. Instead of crafting a performance profile, they use outdated job descriptions that don’t clearly identify the success attributes in the job. This makes it difficult to inform the world what you are looking for when hiring, and more difficult to successfully interview and assess candidates. Spend time clearly defining the role and its success attributes, and all other parts of the hiring process will be both easier and more effective. In today’s world, with a sudden greater amount of talent on the market, it is important that you are clear about what you want and need, or your hiring process will bring in the wrong people.
Expand your website to include a career center and employment opportunities. Nearly 75% of today’s workforce job hunts online (and on their phones). To get the attention of today’s talent, every organization should have a mobile-friendly online career center that does the following:
- Attracts job seekers by getting their attention through videos, community presence, job fairs or other means.
- Informs job seekers what the organization believes and does, what each role does and how the jobs add value to the organization (i.e. purposeful work).
- Engages job seekers by providing something of value (white paper, information, fast track job consideration, access to a talent assessment, etc.) in exchange for their email to be able to stay in touch. Today’s layoffs have created far more intentional job seekers. Getting them to leave their name and contact information should be easier.
- Assesses job seekers who leave information by encouraging them to submit a resume and respond to key performance or skill questions so you have a preliminary idea of their skills and core abilities. This makes it easier to determine which candidates may be the best fit as roles become available.
Redefine the interview process. We quickly left a period where organizations were desperate for talent, and were therefore willing to relax some of the role requirements to get talent to come on board. Now, it is important to refocus on hiring for fit – both for the role and the organizational cultural. Use this time of scrambling workplaces to rethink how you interview and who on your team is involved. Develop the prove-it-to-me approach in your interviews by including more activities and more proof of performance abilities, particularly in remote environments. Also, be aware that more of your interviews may need to be remote, which means you will have to redesign your interviews to ensure they allow you to continue to be effective at assessing and evaluating candidates.

A changed world means a change to some of the things we habitually do. Times like these provide an interruption, showcasing our outdated and ineffective habits when it comes to hiring. Consider the benefits to adopting more effective ways to define, source and interview talent in a way that identifies and connects with those who fit both the role and the culture.

Every organization should have an opportunity-focused mindset when it comes to talent. Since it is the driver of everything in the workplace, it is critical to continually review, assess and modify anything that will improve your ability to create and implement a process that consistently and successfully hires the right employees, even in the middle of COVID-19.

Take Action
Create an objective to assess the increase in talent available in the workplace. What is the supply of available talent in your market? Review the roles where you require new talent or a change in talent. Even if you don’t actually hire at the moment, consider the improvements you can make to your process of defining, sourcing and interviewing. Doing so now will put you a step ahead of the competition; when the workplace and world rebounds, you will be ready to take advantage of the available great talent that was laid off during the pandemic.

The best people released to the workplace with be snatched up in a hurry. Be sure you know what you are looking for and you are ready to get it when things turn around.

By Jay Forte

Consider reading You Can’t Manage the People You Don’t Know

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Corporate

Why Should I Hire You?

Organizations are always looking for the best talent. So, when you have the opportunity to introduce yourself through an organization’s job site or to respond to an available role, how do you present yourself in a way that matters? How do you help the organization answer the question, “Why should I hire you?”

As a coach, I routinely see that most of my clients have not initially developed a clear understanding of who they are. They don’t know their strengths, liabilities, values and interests, or what activates and diminishes their performance. This becomes one of the first things we work on because becoming self-aware creates the information needed to be able to assess which jobs fit and what will be important to share in an interview.

When you are aware of your strengths, you have the practical language to assess which opportunities need what you do and like best (why would you apply to a job that doesn’t need what you are good at and interested in doing?). And when you have chosen a good-fit opportunity, you are able to stand out among other candidates in the interview.

As organizations become wiser and shift away from strictly asking questions to also including activities in their job interviews to assess candidate alignment, knowing your strengths will help you develop confidence to demonstrate what you are best at. You must be able to help the organization clearly see why they should hire you. Remember, most organizations are ineffective at interviewing, so you’ll need to make it easy for them to see how you’re a good fit for their role. You may have to volunteer information about your abilities that the interviewers forget to ask about but are critical for them to know to see how you would add value and make a difference in this role and in their organization.

So, you need to know yourself to be able to find jobs that align to your abilities and interests, and to present yourself in a way that gets you noticed.

My guidance in helping clients who are job searching is to prepare for the interview by doing the following.

Complete your inventory of abilities so you know yourself well. Be able to clearly identify your top 3 or 4 strengths, your interests, values and what amplifies your performance.
Bring these two things with you to your interview:
- A summary of what you want the organization to know about you. It’s important to have a summary prepared so you can easily share it if they don’t ask. Make it easy for them to assess if you fit them.
- A summary of what you want to find out about the organization, so you can assess if they fit you.
Have your thoughts ready to share about how you add value and make a difference in your current work and how you would do the same in the role you are applying for.

By doing some work ahead of your interview, you can gain self-awareness to wisely choose roles that fit you and be better prepared with information to know how to present yourself in an interview in a way that helps you stand out, regardless of whether the organization is good at interviewing or not.

And remember, the interview is for you to determine if they’re a fit for you just as much as if you’re a fit for them. Share meaningful information about you. Gather meaningful information about them. Have what you need to wisely assess if you belong in the organization.

Take Action
Know yourself well to know what of your abilities will be important to this role. Create and deliver your personal branding statement. Make it easy for the organization to see you in their role. Be ready to help them see why they should hire you.

By Jay Forte

Consider reading Building a Personal Branding Statement

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Corporate

3 Ways to Win in the War for Talent

Kristin Allaben
January 2, 2019
awareness, employee engagement, employee morale, employee motivation, hiring, talent, workplace

People are the hands, heart and soul of all organizations. This requires you to have a plan to attract, hire and retain the best because they are the connection to your customers and the drivers of your results.

With record low unemployment rates, many organizations are feeling the pinch for talent. Those people who want and can work are nearly all employed, leaving a small available talent pool to choose from. This, for many, means we are in a war for talent.

The war for talent isn’t as much about hiring the few people available. It is more about winning in to your organization the talented people who are disengaged in their current organizations. The Gallup Organization shares that nearly 70% of the workplace is disengaged. This isn’t because they are average employees. Rather, it is more likely that their current organization isn’t doing what it takes to attract, hire and retain the best talent. This means that today’s war for talent is more the result of a branding problem than a supply problem.

Seeing this challenge from a new perspective can help you see that many of the disengaged employees in other organizations have the interest and capacity to be amazing in your company if you are able to do these three things.

Attract. Spread your story about what makes you different, unique and a great place to work. We used to think that sourcing talent meant going out and finding them. Today, sourcing talent is more about them finding you. Work hard to create a dynamic employee-focused workplace culture that values, develops and engages its employees, then share your story. Let your website host a career or job center that tells your story through images, videos, testimonials and other interactive media. Great people want to work for great companies. Get the word out that you are a great company and the great talent will find and connect with you.
Hire. Commit to only hire people who fit your roles, team and culture. With an expanded amount of interest in your organization, have a clearly defined and well-followed hiring process that clearly states the tasks of each role, and the specific attributes needed to be successful in those tasks. Then, develop an interview process that uses both activities and behavioral-based questions to have the candidate share and prove their skills and strengths, to assess for fit. Be sure that your interview process can assess for team and culture fit. This helps you hire the right people who feel aligned, engaged and competent in your organization, limiting turnover and the need to hire again.
Retain. Guide, support, develop and coach your employees to give them a reason to perform and stay. By hiring wisely, you help employees feel capable and competent in their roles. Then, train your managers to think and act like coaches to build stronger relationships with employees to better understand, support, guide and develop them. This encourages employees’ engagement, which is a key driver in their decision to perform and remain or to do as little as possible and seek new opportunities.

Take Action
Win the war for talent by being an employer of choice, hiring wisely and helping your managers learn how to guide, support and coach instead of direct, control and manage. Commit to getting the best employees up front by building an employee-focused workplace culture that creates a dynamic employee experience that attracts top talent to come, perform and stay.

By Jay Forte

Consider reading 3 Reasons Why Your Best Employees Will Leave Your in 2019 (and What to Do About It)

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