By
Yvonne LaRose
I hear a lot of talk about how hard it is to find qualified people, especially in relation to an anticipated workforce shortage. I disagree. In fact, we have two overlooked, overlapping populations that are a rich source of qualified personnel within our organizations. Both are just waiting to be noticed.
The In-house Talent Oversight
Too often, once a person is hired, they find themselves pigeon-holed in that same position for the rest of their organizational lives. Opportunities for which they are profoundly qualified go to new hires or to employees already in a particular area, simply because no one bothered to look a little deeper into the existing talent pool. The lost opportunity costs of promoting existing in-house talent is multiplied by the costs of external advertising, recruiting and interviewing for open positions. Talent acquisition costs can be saved by looking deeper within the existing talent base.
The Under-employed Malady
Another disregarded workforce group is the in-house under-employed. As we leave the dust of the New Millennium Depression, we need to survey our under-utilized internal potential talent pool. What we'll discover as we strive to regain full employment is that there is a thick layer of under-employed. In many instances, they became part of the typically overlooked strata because they took a common sense approach to living—they vied for and accepted a position below their past experience as a means of covering the minimum living standard while the economic storm clouds dissipated.
What usually happens to this segment of the workforce is that in order to save dollars, workers are asked to work longer hours or more hours per week. As the work/life ratio becomes more out of balance, morale slips and employees seriously consider seeking employment elsewhere.
Employers too seldom ask the forward-looking question “Do you have any experience in doing …?” during a job interview. The response to this critical question will reveal the talent gold mine sitting before us. This is a rich resource that can significantly cut recruiting and training costs because the experience and know-how already exist.
Non-traditional Experience Measures
As Lou Adler pointed out in his “Hiring 2.0” workshop, lost quality hires are due to the use of traditional, rather than performance-based, methodologies that demonstrate comparable experience and ability. Adler further explains that when we begin using performance-based methodologies for screening and interviewing candidates, we open a greater candidate pool that is more diverse.
According to Adler, “Many people can perform the job with a different mix of skills by demonstrating competency in comparable rather than identical accomplishments.” So it is advantageous to look for comparable experience in all candidates. Organizations will benefit greatly if they consider whether a candidate has developed the desired skills through non-traditional avenues.
A View to the Future
The prudent move is to learn more than whether a candidate can use a copier and type 60 words per minute. Take the time to cull through some of those old interview notes for the candidates whose resumes did not reveal their full range of experience in positions of responsibility, successfully interacting with government entities, writing reports, managing budgets, cutting costs, turning profits and supervising other employees. If these types of questions weren't asked, a good remedy is to keep an interviewing checklist that includes:
- Promotion Interest
- Promotion Potential
- Management Experience
- Report Writing
- Budgets and Costs
- Negotiations
If this exploration is overlooked, there may exist a large pool of “qualified hires” who are not being hired. The longer this qualified talent languishes, the lower corporate morale will slip and the higher the turnover rate will go, along with further recruiting costs.
The Other Under-employed
This brings me to a unique class of qualified, under-employed hires. Survivors of domestic abuse are not completely unqualified for positions of responsibility. Nor are they traditionally from impoverished, needy backgrounds, lacking education or intelligence. According to the National Domestic Violence Hotline (NDVH), about a quarter of women with incomes above $50,000 have reported domestic abuse in their lifetimes by a spouse or boyfriend. People who have achieved this salary range have made other significant employment accomplishments. They have been in positions of responsibility. Their accomplishments are equally traditional and nontraditional and screening them by using traditional tools will more than likely reveal an extraordinary talent who is under-reaching her potential. They, like their New Millennium Depression survivor counterparts, take positions far below their capabilities and experience for the sake of getting back into the workforce. Screening these candidates using performance-based methodologies will expose their rich, hidden talents. The key is to screen with a view to seeing the entire person and her potential.
The NDVH reports that still another quarter of women (37%) with incomes of $16,000 or below report the same abuse. Survivors of domestic abuse are more likely to be in this economic stratum, because through no conscious fault of their own, they have lost their material resources. Making a comparison of the two statistics, it is safe to assume that there is some homogeneity between the two populations. The important issue here is to do performance-based screening in order to cull the qualified talent.
Recruiting Action Steps
As we move forward in our recruiting and hiring initiatives, we should begin to re-examine our screening protocols and to rethink how we conduct our quest for “qualified talent” so that we don't miss some rich opportunities. Searching our in-house talent should be at the top of the list. Under-employed, under-utilized employees are lost gold mines. Rather than give them away to another industry or a competitor, we need to take the time to explore ways they can fulfill their potential by taking on more significant roles within the company.
In addition, we need to enlist our human resource professionals to expand their screenings of potential talent to include analysis of candidates for their experiences beyond the advertised desired qualities, and their interest in promotional opportunities. It’s important to dig for the unstated background that is rich in management, responsibility and successful decision making that may have been camouflaged just to get in the door.
Lastly, we need to take steps to rid ourselves of the social blinders that cause us to overlook the qualified talent under our very noses.
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Author Bio: Yvonne LaRose is a Certified Domestic Violence and Legal Advocate. Her practice focuses on organizational and career development, especially in regard to diversity. Yvonne can be reached at her Beverly Hills office at ylarose@recruitandretain.net.
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