When it comes to e-business, wider ranging skill sets are evolving as fast as the technology itself. A sophisticated understanding of website development, optimization and navigation is not enough. Today's e-business professionals also need a nuanced understanding of branding, marketing and business principles and the ability to collaborate effectively with the business units they serve.
The importance of your organization's e-business talent pool to current and future competitiveness cannot be overstated. Today, virtually every business unit within an enterprise - from advertising, marketing and sales fulfillment to inventory management and manufacturing - is dependent to one degree or another on e-business applications. And that dependence will only intensify in the future.
How then can HR specialists position their organizations to attract talented professionals who are capable of taking e-business solutions to new levels and conferring competitive advantage?
What follows is a specialized e-business recruiter's perspective on what HR specialists need to do to cover all their bases for a successful talent search &
Staying in tune with e-business trends and needs
The best e-business talent searches have four characteristics: a job profile that precisely defines required skills and qualifications; a search methodology that matches candidates to the job profile and business model; an interview and screening process that minimizes the risk of over-or-under estimating skills, and timely execution.
The only constant in e-business is change. Executing a talent search with these qualities, therefore, is much easier when HR specialists are conversant with e-business trends and take a collaborative approach to defining current and future skill requirements. Organizations that proactively engage their e-business professionals and brand managers in defining and anticipating skill requirements enjoy a competitive advantage when seeking the best new hires - not the least of which is making the strong first impression that is so essential to attracting "top guns .
This may sound like a statement of the obvious, but a common complaint from e-business job candidates is that the people who initially interview them do not understand what they do.
The current market is hot, and the best people get snapped up by enterprises anxious to stay ahead of the curve. This means that the most talented candidates will quite naturally gravitate to the most exciting and challenging opportunities. Savvy HR specialists understand this and reinforce the perception - from first contact to final selection - that their organization offers a dynamic e-business environment.
The job description
An organization that does not know what it wants will not find what it needs. As every HR specialist knows, the starting point for all talent searches is a job profile that defines critical competencies and the type of individual best suited to the job.
A common pitfall, particularly for highly technical roles, is requiring expertise in too many methodologies and programming languages. A better approach is to differentiate between primary technical skills and those that are nice to have. Job descriptions that are too broad, or all-encompassing, muddy the water and scare talented people away.
When developing the job profile, HR specialists should ask hiring managers to identify skill gaps within their teams and preferences related to personality, work style and interpersonal skills. A hiring manager, for example, may have a quiet group and need an enthusiastic, go-getter to stimulate new ideas.
The required "soft skills must also be profiled, so they can be thoroughly probed in the screening and interview process. Senior and intermediate candidates, such as tech leads and development managers, need to be superb communicators who understand the brand and speak the language of business. Particularly important is the ability to explain highly technical solutions to non-technical people. This is essential to developing on-line channels that are easy to use and navigate.
Job descriptions should also include performance benchmarks and consider how the skills of the new hire will need to develop over time. If candidates are given a good sense of where they will be and what they are expected to accomplish in three months, six months, a year or even five years, enterprises are more likely to attract the best people and keep them for a long time.
Assessing qualifications, skills and aptitude
Talent searches often go wrong because the candidate's skills and aptitudes were not accurately measured. On-line technologies and applications change at a lightening pace, and even to the most meticulous HR specialist can make mistakes. The bottom line is that e-business qualifications can be deceptive and the best defence is to put the candidate's skills to the test.
A client of ours recently tested technical, business and communication skills with excellent results by requiring each finalist to present how they would develop and execute an on-line product launch. The presentation was made to key members of the hiring manager's team and the brand manager. The strongest candidate was quickly revealed.
Other useful safeguards include: verification of information on resumes, including education; personality assessments; testing to measure verbal and written communication skills; peer interviews; mandating that the external recruiter screen each candidate in person, and insisting that senior and intermediate candidates have Fortune 500 or name brand experience and, when appropriate, submit an "on-line portfolio with relevant work samples.
For finalist candidates, interviewing at least three references, including former employers, subordinates and peers is recommended. Wherever possible, references from sources other than the candidate should be contacted. This provides the most objective assessment.
How to use an external recruiter
Whether or not you engage an external recruiter depends on your network and internal resources. Recruiters can help in formulating job profiles and providing access to a deeper pool of candidates and sophisticated search methodologies. The most important thing is to treat the relationship as a strategic partnership.
Recruiters always deliver the strongest candidates in the shortest time when there is dialogue and timely feedback flowing back and forth within the hiring team. These synergies are essential to targeting the search and ensuring fit. Giving the recruiter direct access to the hiring manager at the beginning of the search is of paramount importance.
Recruiters who are well connected in e-business will often know former colleagues or employers of candidates who can be contacted as references. This can be an important advantage. Many companies will not provide references beyond the function and scope of the candidate's prior position as a matter of policy.
One final point: if you are a senior human resource executive who is not in sync with e-business best practices, it pays to educate yourself about the latest trends via articles, discussion with e-business thought leaders and seminars or "webinars . You don't have to know the technical intricacies of e-business, interactive and digital media roles, but you do have to know which questions to ask to position your organization to compete - and win - in the hyper-competitive marketplace of e-business talent.
Marci Schnapp is President of New Media Links, a Toronto-based recruiting firm specializing in sourcing talent for e-business, interactive and digital media sectors. For more information, visit www.newmedialinks.com.
