Author: AK Menon | Managing Director, Options Executive Search | IPTER India
Trust Trevor Noah to wonder aloud why everything in America is referred to -as „Great‘, as in The Great Depression, the Great Recession, the Great Resignation?
It is so easy to over-romanticize.
As a ringside observer, I am very convinced that the we see attrition was to be expected!
Especially when the pandemic hit, most companies responded by ‚cutting costs‘ and doing it all themselves. The same „HR“ now working from home, became the Swiss Army knife, for all purposes-in the garb of talent management (talent acquisition, talent development, retention,…)
Resorting to all shortcuts. Well, recruitment wasn’t rocket science. Never too difficult to hire folks.
Even tossing a coin one got it right 50% right in the long run.
Well, the reality, as Liam Hassel articulated it so well – hiring is like a jigsaw puzzle.
„Having one piece is pretty useless – that’s hiring someone for the job right now with no more profound thought or consideration as to what might come next.
Parking technical capability to one side (let’s say that’s a given); this takes drilling down into the candidate’s natural desires and dreams. You need to understand how they see their career trajectory and open up about their career expectations beyond the current move.
At a practical level, the result of taking a longer-term view might be that the best person you interview for the job right now might not be the best person for the business over time. So, for example, candidate #2 or #3 might miss the mark on the current vacancy by centimeters but be ahead on future potential and mobility by kilometers.“
Well, it now seems so apparent. It was convenient. And a quick fix. It even fitted the square peg in the round hole in 2020 :)!
We were told back in the kindergarten -„as you sow, so shall you reap“!
Why is it a surprise now that those hires are ready to move on -to the next shiny object?
Aren’t companies -again trying to postpone the problem by making those obscene overtures, counteroffers? After all, a Wall Street Journal survey alludes that, ‚of the 50% of the professionals who accepted counteroffers, 93% left the company within 18 months!‘
Well, is it not prudent to hire right, each time, every time? Then, one has to spend less time managing or motivating them later on!
Leave it to the specialists.
Counteroffers are like band-aids. The C&B, L&D, OD, Talent Acquisition specialists all have a role to play. In the long run, it is more beneficial than merely depending on the flexibility of a generalist?
Reinforces one universal truth. Amateurs practice until they can get it right; professionals practice until they can’t get it wrong!