How do you find talent today? (page 2 of 2)

Successful recruiting starts with knowing where to look for the talents your company needs. It helps to know what the company is looking for before starting the search. It will also provide the data you need to determine if advertisements should be placed in local, regional or specialty magazines or newspapers.

It's common practice for HR personnel to start the recruiting efforts with internal candidates and turn to external sources if a qualified in-house candidate isn't available. This approach ensures the organization has a motivated workforce that competes for internal job openings while also recruiting new talent from the outside when internal candidates are not available.

Once the company has gathered enough qualified applicants the selection process begins. This process deals with choosing and hiring the most qualified individuals for the existing job vacancies. Selecting the right set of skills, knowledge, and abilities is an attempt to get a "fit" between what the applicant can do and what the company needs. This is extremely important because how well an employee is matched to a job will have a direct bearing on the quantity and quality of their work efforts. Successfully matching the applicant's skills, knowledge and abilities with the job requirements will have a number of positive effects:

• Lower operating cost
• Lower training cost
• Higher employee morale
• Rates
• Greater job satisfaction

Finally, by ensuing a good fit exists between the candidate, position and company will help improve the company's retention rates. This is extremely important when you consider that recruiting costs can be as high as 25% of the employee's annual compensation package. This figure includes recruiting costs, orientation and training costs, as well as replacement costs if the individual leaves the company within the first year. Not getting a good fit becomes a losing situation for everyone and can actually hurt the company's reputation.

Although attracting talent is a difficult challenge for every organization, those that take the time to set up a systematic process based on their own strategy will be successful! To close this article I would like to leave you with two important thoughts:

• Good training will not fix a bad recruiting process
• If you don't hire the right applicant, your competition will