Listen to this fascinating podcast that will make you want to fix your hiring process
Businesses have never done as much hiring as they do today. They’ve never spent as much money doing it either. However, they’ve never done a worse job of it, the experts claim. Harvard Business Review presents an insightful podcast in which Peter Cappelli, professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and director of its Center for Human Resources, explain what’s wrong with your hiring process. And what you can do to fix it.
Please find the full podcast here
Survey after survey finds employers complaining about how difficult hiring is. There may be many explanations, such as businesses struggling to find the right candidates, but they’re all still hiring much more than at any other time in modern history, for two reasons.
The first is that openings are now filled more often by hiring from the outside than by promoting from within. From the end of World War II through the 1970s, corporations filled roughly 90% of their vacancies through promotions and lateral assignments. Today the figure is a third or less. More accurately, only 28% of talent acquisition leaders today report that internal candidates are an important source to filling vacancies. Now companies must be good at hiring from outside across most levels, because the candidates they want are already doing a great job somewhere else. These desired talents may be ready to contribute right away, but they are much harder to find.
The second reason hiring is getting more and more difficult is that retention has become exponentially tougher. Companies hire from their competitors and vice versa, so they need to constantly replace people who leave. Census and Bureau of Labor Statistics based on US data shows that over 95% of hiring in the US today is done to fill existing positions, and most of those vacancies are caused by voluntary turnover. This tendency is most likely global. Ironically, LinkedIn data will tell you that the most common reason employees consider a position elsewhere is career advancement, which is surely related to employers’ not promoting to fill vacancies from within.
The root cause of most hiring is therefore a drastically poor retention cycle caused by talents seeking to climb a rapid career ladder and businesses not allowing them to do that without having to change employer. So, how do you optimize your overall HR and hiring strategy to get the most out of the difficult talent market of today? Give current employers a better chance at advancing and stop focusing on retaining outside talent? Not exactly. Peter Cappelli provides you with a few simple steps to how your business can improve hiring from both retaining outside talent and by promoting from within.
Dive deeper into practical steps provided by the expert to optimize your hiring process. Hear Peter Cappelli discussin this insightful podcast here