Companies eye long-term success from new hires

Talent acquisition firms now focus on future leadership ability

New Delhi, May 17: Indian talent acquisition professionals are increasingly focusing on the long term success of the new hires instead of simply filling up a vacant position, says a Korn Ferry survey.

A new global study by the Futurestep division of Korn Ferry finds that talent is increasingly being seen as a key business asset, and top priority metric are time-to-hire followed closely by cost per hire for Indian head hunters.

“Traditionally, the job of a talent acquisition professional ended when a position was filled,” Korn Ferry Futurestep managing director Asia Sue Campbell said.

“But in today’s competitive marketplace, the focus has shifted to finding, hiring and retaining workers who are not only effective in their roles today, but who can also be the leaders of tomorrow,” Ms Campbell added.

In the survey, 40 per cent of Indian talent acquisition professionals cited a lack of candidates who can move up the leadership pipeline as the top reason for the current talent shortages.

This is the highest globally, 11 per cent higher than Latin America and 13 per cent higher than EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa), the survey said.

“Tackling the leadership pipeline shortage requires that organisations do a more effective job of leadership assessments, development, and succession planning for specific positions,” Ms Campbell said.

According to the survey, quality of hire (56 per cent) and competition for talent (17 per cent) are the two most significant issues that keep Indian talent acquisition professionals up at night.

According to Chong Ng, president Asia Pacific, Korn Ferry Futurestep, some organisations are implementing new reward structures to incentivise talent acquisition professionals to think long term.

“We've seen members of the talent acquisition team receive bonuses based on the performance of candidates they brought into the organisation particularly for sales positions and other jobs where performance can be easily quantified,” said Ng. “While this is not a common practice, it very likely may become more popular as organisations seek to reward the recruitment of high performers,” Ng added.