Risk Management: Talent Acquisition

Recruiters are continually pressured to deliver high caliber talent to organizations. The Restaurant Industry demands the best talent to meet the demands of high competition. The problem with talent is that it often comes with ‘high risk’. This makes it difficult for older, and highly educated managers land a manager’s position. HR managers screen candidates based on their work experience and job knowledge, but the resume cannot highlight their job related attitudes, people skills, communication styles, or integrity and reliability

The Recruiters job becomes difficult when many corporations rely on metrics related to increase speed to hire, reduce cost of new hires, and reducing the total number of positions. The corporation is only concerned with streamlining the hiring process and cost. The HR managers and Recruiters are then blamed if the manager has poor people skills, or leaves their position within a year.

The High Cost of a Bad Hire can haunt a Recruiter and Restaurant for years. These costs are not limited to the cost of training, and hiring disgruntled employees. It can include damage, theft, time off, retraining, unsuccessfully executed projects, and ultimately unsatisfied customers.

Presenting Yourself as a Talented but Low-Risk Employee

Recruiters are looking beyond the resume to separate the low risk talent from the problem managers. One way to do this is to search their social networking outlets. Adding these to a resume can help the Recruiter.

Take a good look at your social networking profiles. Have you created a strong Linkedin page? Does your pinterest or facebook page portray an honest, respected, and talented professional whose friends show the same honesty and integrity?

Hiring leaders will also use personality assessment tools. These tools tell a lot about you. It is easy to go online and complete a few personality and job assessment tools. Take some time and learn something about yourself.

Screening out the high risk candidates is not as difficult as it seems. Applicants made nearly 65, 000 job-related admissions of counter productive work behaviors in Phase 2 of a risk management assessment. In Phase 1 many were flagged because their attitudes and admissions surrounding job related integrity, theft, anti-social behavior, and unreliable work background were obvious to the HR manager. (References: Workers Compensation Research Institute, Society of Human Resources Management)

As a coach I’ve seen this when working with job seekers. They approach a job interview from an egocentric point of view. They answer questions offering the answer that sounds good to ‘their personality’. Unfortunately, another personality type, or communication style may see their claims as anti-social and a display of disruptive behavior.

When a Candidate understands the basic personality types, and the strengths and weaknesses of their own personality type, they have the power to control the interview and present themselves as highly talented, low risk, restaurant mangers.