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Seth and Amy say “One Approach Across all Recruiting….Really!?!”

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I love that bit that Seth Myers does. Its even better when Amy Poehler gets in the act. If you are not Saturday Night Live fans, there is a skit that is done during the Weekend Update (a spoof on the nightly news) where the anchors review the news of the week by calling out the intentions or actions of celebrities, politicians and leaders that were broadcast that week, and by asking “Really!?!”

Its good comedy, because it points fun at how people tend to say things, do things, or attempt to do things that are either impossible, not really viable, a waste of time, or have little return.

Its budget season already, and there are talks of companies on the push for enterprise wide change – again. But before you go down the road with the great conversation “we have to do recruiting one way, and have one process” – I suggest you do a vision analysis.

Answer each of these using a traffic light
NO = RED
MAYBE/SOMEWHAT = AMBER
YES = GREEN 

Q1: have you performed a risk analysis?

Q2: does management really know the hiring manager problem and can define it?

Q3: was a worst case analysis on vision achievement, adoption, and realization performed?

Q4: have you developed a prototype within your proposed constraints, and made adjustments such that it can be replicated within those constraints?

Q5: will the vision take less than 12 months to fully install, realize, and adopt?

Q6: do you have an exit strategy from the vision if failure occurs or is imminent?

Q7: does the firm have a success rate of 67% or more with similar projects at an enterprise level? Remember failure means over budget, too many resources, or behind schedule (getting it done is assumed).

Q8: did you revisit similar attempts for enterprise wide HR change, and analyze the holes in those plans, and recalibrate this vision?

The Vision should go through these questions (plus another 40) without having red all over the board. There are over hundreds of assets like this in a well planned project, but if you can’t get past just these 8 during your vision stage without having red all over the paper, then all I can say to you is “Really!?!”

Actually – its just means you need to mitigate risks and make some changes before you move forward, but still…really!?!

Unified Software for Talent – well…what’s “Talent”?

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Usually talent=employees. But inevitably you know better. There are more than just employees doing the work that your company needs. Contractors, consultants, vendors, temp labor, outsourced partners, and so on.

They are all part of the human capital chain. Simultaneously, lots of companies are unifying their talent / HR systems. You know – using something like SAP or SuccesFactors and using one program for all things “talent”. The recruiting, performance management, payroll, and so on.

That totally works. We have a baby sized business, and even we are unified into one system, so I would imagine at larger companies the benefits are even greater (and I have witnessed that). So lets assume that your company does have a unified or best in breed combination of systems to give you visibility to your talent…

How did you define talent? Can you tell which consultants have done what or have which expertise that you rely on? What about the competencies of your engineering contractors in the plant? How about the successes (or failures) of your outsourced partners that you rely on? Are these things in your unified / best in breed system, and can you produce reports or business knowledge that can be leveraged?

What if 20% of your human capital is outside the system? It could be. Take a look. Here is a clue if you have a gap – if you can’t quickly understand the competencies and experiences of your OWN internal employees, then you probably can’t tell me the competencies of the talent you use that are non-employees…

Something to add to the to-do list. Define what your unified system DOES tell you in regards to talent, and more importantly, what it does NOT tell you.