Click the link below to read a recent story we were featured in on how online apps and social networking help connect employers, job seekers on web.

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The economy is slowly gaining ground but many are still in downsizing and hiring freeze mode as the state of “cautious optimism” is still in effect. Few employers are thinking strategically about the current buyer’s market for talent. A year ago we were using the term “the war for talent.” Although there might be a cease-fire at the moment, the war will come back in full force - and I predict it will in fact be worse than it was. (Note: the state of the economy has not changed global demographics - retiring boomers…)

In order to prepare for the war that will resume, now is the time to look at your recruiting and selection processes. By improving your processes now, you will be in a better position to recruit and retain top talent in the future when others are scrambling to catch up. Here are the top 7 areas to review in order to ensure your process is top notch.

1) Plan: Develop a workforce plan - how many new people will you need when things pick up? What is your historical turnover? Know how these things impact your required future headcount.

2) Define roles: Don’t just rely on job descriptions - look at specific skills, knowledge and talents needed. What is the nature of the team and the workplace culture. All these impact how you will select the right candidate.

3) Sourcing: Develop a pipeline of candidates through the right channels - social networks, referrals, clients, suppliers. Develop the pipeline before the vacancy!

4) Screening: Develop standardized screening questions and avoid the “good guy” syndrome. You know…the gut feeling you get after you interview a candidate based on an informal conversation. DANGER!

5) The Offer: Make sure you describe the job realistically - the good and the bad. Be fair in creating offer packages and involve the right players in the process without dragging it out into a 26-step 12-week process.

6) All Aboard: Welcome new hires before they even start - have a co-worker call them at home 2 weeks before they start to ask if they have questions and to say we are looking forward to having you start. In the first few weeks, you need to set standards and expectations for performance and ensure new hires know how they will be evaluated.

7) Results: What metrics do you have in place for the recruitment and selection process? How long did it take from posting to start date? How long do your new hires stick around? Did you source 100 people - interview 10 or did you source the right 10 people and interview the top 3? Think of the time investment made in the process and the returns. Less is more - fewer, better candidates = time and money saved.

Review the above 7 key areas and ask yourself “does my recruitment process suck”? Even better, ask your recent hires what they thought of the process - they have the answer.

We highly recommend making sure your team members have all the tools to deliver and be as productive as possible.

Take the opportunity to invest in current staff with training and development activities. To keep costs down you might want to develop some in house training. Here are the top 10 things you should keep in mind to make sure you see a return on your training investment.

1. Assess your needs: Define what you want employees to deliver. For example, if you are planning a course on customer service, what are the top 3 things you want employees to do when greeting a customer?
2. Content: Have a good mix of theory and practice. Make the delivery engaging by having a few role play/simulation exercises where participants can put the theory into practice right away.
3. Ask for feedback: Once you create the training material, run it past a few employees to get some feedback on the content. Make sure it is effective and hitting the mark.
4. Train the trainer: Make sure trainers have the skills and tools needed to deliver engaging content.
5. Evaluate and follow up: Look for ways the training is being applied on the job to ensure you are seeing a return. For example, ask specific questions to customers about employee service on your comment cards.
6. Clear expectations: When people leave the training, make sure they know what is expected of them. Look for opportunities to see them in action and align your expectations with performance review discussions.
7. Keep it practical: Make the material relevant and as actionable as possible by using work related scenarios that employees are likely to encounter.
8. Keep it short: Deliver your material in 2 hours or less to keep your audience engaged. Anything longer and you risk losing them.
9. Keep it top of mind: At morning huddles, weekly team meetings and on bulletin boards, re-enforce the concepts and remind people of your expectations. A great way to do this is to recognize people who are doing it right; say thank you or share a customer comment card.
10. Create Job-Aids: Want people to deliver a consistent experience to your customers? Create on-the-job-aids that can include laminated checklists, reminder cards or visual process flow charts.

If the only way you’re advertising your job vacancies is to buy space in newspaper career sections, you might as well dig a hole and bury those ads, along with the money you’re spending—because they won’t be found. Today’s job seeker is looking for much more than a help-wanted ad in Saturday’s paper. In fact, they’re probably not looking there at all.

But it’s likely that they’re highly active on at least one of the Web 2.0 websites that are fast replacing the old model of one-way communication with one based on interaction, sharing and collaboration. There are two key reasons it’s high time you started using these Web 2.0 tools in your recruitment efforts. If you don’t, you’ll risk being seen as so behind the times that potential employees might not even consider working for you. And if you do, you’ll be able to tap into the vast and fast-growing talent pool of those who communicate via their social networks on the Web.

But, with so many Web 2.0 recruiting tools out there, from blogs to Facebook to Ning, where should you start? Here’s a look at the fundamentals of this new approach to recruitment, the leading tools and how best to use them.

Click here to read the full story as published in Canadian Business Online

For marketing and human resources functions, those companies who have utilized Web 2.0 sites have quickly realized the use of social networking to foster staff and client relationships. This has been accomplished via internal company sites, public sites hosted by companies such as Ning and MySpace or a combination of both, that allow team members or clients to interact across departments or locations. On another level, sites like LinkedIn and Xing provide a platform for business contacts to connect, as well as allow HR professionals and recruiters another avenue to identify and recruit talent. Sites like Facebook can also prove to be valuable networking and recruiting tools as more and more personal detail is added to potential candidate’s profiles. This information will often include employer information as well as a person’s current position and location. Many employers are embracing the technology and encouraging its use. Employers large and small are seeing the value, influence and reach of Web 2.0 apps like blogs, widgets, wiki’s, and social networks and they are looking for ways to effectively represent themselves in this new virtual space.

In order to successfully manage this new and far reaching social technology, companies will need to implement a comprehensive Web 2.0 strategy. Where will you be represented online? How much employee interaction will you encourage, and in what format? How will you administer your web presence? Will you have your team actively recruit through social networking and media? For many employers this is where the train comes off the rails. The fact is that in order to maintain an effective and proactive web presence, a significant time investment must be made. The engine that drives the new internet is interaction, and unlike search engine optimization, this web footprint is very difficult to automate. The key to any successful web strategy will be creativity and responsive social interaction.

From online employee referral programs and contests, to Facebook Friday’s and employee alumni groups, organizations are finding ways maintain a positive position in the new internet landscape. For many large corporations like McDonalds, internal social networking platforms have been the answer. These custom designed sites have provided the companies an effective way to control its web exposure and connect with customers and employees. With the external approach, companies create and manage groups and sites using popular or industry specific applications.

Whichever direction you chose, your web presence will increasingly define your company. As the technology continues to evolve, and users around the world continue to shape the future of the internet, your level of interaction, and online social footprint will be your first point of contact for new business, customer interaction, employee engagement, and potential new candidates. A web strategy that is tailor made to your business needs can help ensure the continued growth and success of any sized company.

Dave Hick

In the current knowledge-driven economy, organizations must know how to develop and implement knowledge-based strategies. This means knowing how to apply knowledge management (KM) concepts to your talent management strategy to drive measurable business results. HR can harness the power of KM to help achieve results.

What is Knowledge Management?

What exactly is KM? While there are many definitions out there, simply put, KM allows organizations to maximize their return and generate value from intellectual and knowledge-based assets. Most often, generating value from such assets involves capturing what employees know and sharing that information to drive a competitive advantage. It’s important to note that KM is often seen as a technology project or an IT responsibility. While KM is often facilitated by technology, by itself it is not KM. KM is all about strategy, culture and people.

What are the Drivers of Knowledge Management?

According to wikipedia.org, there are a number of “drivers”, or motivations, leading organizations to undertake a knowledge management program. Some common objectives include gaining a sustainable competitive advantage through people, increasing organizational effectiveness, improved or faster learning, new knowledge creation, greater innovation, better customer experiences and knowledge access across global organizations, just to name a few. If HR can apply KM skills to drive the previous results, its role can shift into a new value delivery model and be seen as a more value added, strategic resource.

Some of the most common considerations driving a KM strategy include:

- Reducing the risk associated with knowledge loss (retirement, turnover etc.)
- Facilitating and managing organizational innovation and learning
- Leveraging the expertise of people across the organization
- Increasing collaboration, the sharing of best practices and lessons learned

How Can HR use Knowledge Management?

According to the APQC, HR can use a four-step knowledge management strategy to drive results in their organizations as follows:

- Identify: Determine what knowledge is critical for the success of the organization.
- Capture: Collect critical knowledge using techniques such as interviews and best practices submissions.
- Retain: Store the captured knowledge in a format where it can be easily retrieved for use at a later time.
- Transfer: Transfer through training, apprenticeships, mentoring, and other opportunities.

Specific Examples

Here are some of the more common and hands on examples of ways HR can use KM to drive value in their organizations:

- Workforce planning: Identify skill/knowledge gaps in the organization and source new external talent pools
- Exit interviews: Identify and capture key knowledge, processes and contacts upon exit of the organization
- Succession planning: Plan to reduce the risk of knowledge loss by grooming internal and external successors
- Mentoring: Implement mentoring programs to transfer hands on experience and knowledge
- Apprenticeship programs: Support formal apprenticeship programs through the ITA and other ITO’s
- Training and development: Conduct training need assessments to identify key knowledge/skill gaps and implement strategies to close the gaps
- Career planning: Give employees the opportunity to learn and grow within the organization to retain knowledge and experience

Final Thoughts

With the challenges to recruit and retain top talent at an all time high, now is the time for HR to embrace a new skill set to add more value. If your people are the only true source of sustainable competitive advantage, who better than HR to lead the charge in the development of well-rounded KM strategies to add value?

Let me know what you think…please feel free to contact me at dhick@talentedgesolutions.com

So what are some other solutions? Can hospitality and tourism operators become competitive with other industry niches? On a purely financial level, the answer is no. As most restaurant owners will tell you, this is a business of nickels, and sometimes pennies. This mantra is also true for tourism operators, and a whole spectrum of other hospitality based operations. There is no way that these types of companies are ever going to be able to match the wage packages being offered to entry level staff in the construction, or natural resources sector. It simply can’t be done economically. That being true, many hospitality operators are starting to effectively market their strengths to prospective employees. Lifestyle, work/life balance, and flexible scheduling are just a few of the benefits that these employers can offer, without adversely impacting their bottom lines. Finding ways to match what they are offering as employers, with what the modern workforce is asking fo,r is what organizations need to be considering. I have many clients who are actively improving their recruitment and retention strategies to reflect these values, with great success. In addition programs like www.worktoplay.ca are giving employers the chance to tap into a traditional source of candidates in a more effective way, by facilitating the movement of staff around seasonal resorts in British Columbia.

I am sure that foreign recruitment is a valuable tool for employers in our industry. I believe that in some cases, this solution is the most effective way to respond to our labour crisis. I also believe that if employers do not get a little more creative in how they are attracting Canadian workers to their industry, that that same industry is going to change forever. Let’s not forget that one of the first responses visitors to Canada give, when asked what stood out about their experience, is the people, the Canadian staff who helped to make their visit memorable. I would call that a natural resource that we need to develop.

Dave Hick is the Hospitality Accounts Manager for Talent Edge Solutions, and has been a manager in the hospitality industry for 15 years. If you would like to find some creative, effective ways to market your business to prospective employees please visit, www.talentedgesolutions.com, or if you are a seasonal operator, please visit www.worktoplay.ca, and find your seasonal stars today.