Talent falling through the cracks …

Companies have long swung over to having a human resources department not simply to manage the benefits and needs of employees, but recruitment now is often the primary responsibility of the HR department.

Big mistake!

In fact, giving HR the responsibility for screening and then selecting candidates for consideration is a key contribution to reducing incoming talent with many companies.

The reason? Most HR departments are not staffed with persons with people management experience and skills.

Here is what you often (not always) find in an HR department. Screening candidates for an open position is assigned to an HR generalist who will review all incoming resumes and applications. The generalist will use a simple listing of position qualifications in assessing potentially qualified candidates and may make a quick call to selected applicants to ask them a few pre-determined, very broad-based questions that are read to them. From this, candidates are selected for interviews, and on goes the process.

Here’s the problem … that generalist often is someone who had little employment experience before they went off to college to earn their degree to become an HR generalist. After graduating college they land that first position in an HR department with a company, and eventually get this responsibility for screening applicants. That’s the very same generalist who has zero experience managing, training, coaching, developing, disciplining, hiring and firing employees. In other words, they have no “real world” experience to use in gauging whether an applicant is truly qualified for a position or, even better, is real talent the company should go after.

For this HR generalist, if an applicant doesn’t substantially match the list of hiring criteria, the applicant will never be considered for the open position. But a talented, experienced hiring manager could look at the same set of resumes and see some applicants who, although vary from the designated qualifications for the position, obviously have skills that could transfer and fit quite well with the position. But it takes the experience of managing people to see how some candidates could bring additional talent to the company.

For this reason, hiring managers should be in the loop in screening potential candidates for open positions in their department. Even HR generalists who have been in their position for years still lack that great experience of managing people that is most needed in gauging potential talent. Hiring managers should be hands-on in selecting potential candidates and the HR generalist can assist with the leg work of setting up and managing interviews and the hiring process. But the identification and selection of talent needs to be the responsibility of the hiring manager and other management personnel who may be involved in the interview or selection process.

Managers who want to make sure they have the best possible talent in their departments will want to be directly involved in the screening process, and business leaders who want to build successful companies by having the most capable personnel should ensure their hiring selection process is designed to empower company leaders to be in the lead in selecting new talent for the company.

Scotty