Recruiting Every Day – Your Own Employees, That Is

Recognize This! – “If you are not recruiting your best people, you’re the only one who isn’t.”

Yesterday, I highlighted Bersin & Associates 14 predictions for strategic human resource.... But while we anticipate the future, we mustn’t stop focusing on today.

The same is true for recruiting – while we are always looking for new talent to bring into our organizations, we mustn’t stop focusing on the top talent already within our organizations today.

Dr. Katherine Jones, an analyst with Bersin & Associates, brought that point home in a recent post on Bersin’s blog, “Re-Recruit the Talent You Want to Keep”

“Re-recruiting is a means to rekindle the levels of excitement and enthusiasm that the brand new hire had coming in the door – and re-engage the existing workforce. It may be easy to take the team you have working for you for granted – easy and dangerous.  With the increased capacity of recruiters to locate talent (through tools such as LinkedIn),  companies are increasing vulnerable to losing their top talent.”

Research reported by Hay Group analysts Mark Royal and Tom Agnew in their new book The Enemy of Engagement, makes this point quite clear. Their results show employees are generally highly engaged when they first begin, but engagement tails off over time. This is due to new hires learning the rules, and then looking for ways they can continue to make a difference. If they become frustrated in their efforts due to managerial or process-oriented impediments, they well feel less enabled in their work and far more willing to look for a new position where their talents and skills are valued.

Dr. Jones’ last words in her post drive home the point:

“(P.S. The book I was reading was called “The Executive Guide to Integrated Talent Management” by Kevin Oakes and Pat Galagan. Their final word:  ‘If you are not recruiting your best people, you’re the only one who isn’t.’)”

Are you the only one not recruiting your top talent? What would you do if your top 20% of engaged performers walked out today?