Interviews

Personnel selection: how to turn it into a strategic tool?

Personnel selection as a strategic tool with Oscar Marin - niikiis
This week we interview Oscar Marin, Talent Advisor at Pro a Pro Spain, with a degree in Psychology and a Master in HR Management. With him, we will talk about how recruitment can be a strategic tool to generate value from the first moment both with our employees and with those who aspire to be employees.

Welcome, Oscar. First of all, we would like you to tell us a little bit more about yourself, your experience and how you define yourself.

My career started 7 years ago in team recruitment in the outsourcing industry, and since then, I have always been fascinated by this role and how it can bring value to teams and companies of all sizes.
I have worked in companies of different sectors, sizes and with both specialist recruitment and more diverse HR functions, so I have a very broad view of how good recruitment impacts the overall functioning of a company.

To begin with, let's talk about the basics of personnel selection: what are they and what do they imply?

Personnel selection, understood from a more classical point of view, has always been seen as the function within Human Resources where "simply" the aim is to ensure that the company has the number of people necessary and qualified to fill the job positions. If we take this definition and analyze the current market reality, you will understand why I put it in quotation marks.
In reality, companies often face several challenges: the need for highly specialized personnel, high competition for talent, market pressures to include diversity in the talent pool, and in recent years, a volatile environment and rapidly changing trends.
It is for these reasons that the selection of people should no longer be understood as a mere tool to choose who is and who is not. Now, it must be an aspect discussed at a strategic level, planned, and focused on achieving an above-average attraction, together with employer branding strategies, generating networks of contacts and maintaining a knowledge and sensitivity towards the market and democratic trends.

How to implement personnel selection within the business strategy?

The first step, for me, would be to understand and listen to the market situation. Knowing which profiles are in high demand in the market and how that can affect selection times can help to plan selections and recruitments in advance, and minimize critical impacts on the business. At this point, a professional technician or an experienced business partner is key, as they can provide a lot of alternative information and options.
The second step would be to involve the selection professionals in the business, so that there is a more fluid communication and a better understanding and knowledge of the profiles. It is common to want to keep certain business "secrets" away from the recruiter, and although in some cases this is necessary, it tends to hinder the correct resolution of needs.
The third step would already be the maintenance of these relationships and open communications at all levels about the selection, taking it into account in the planning, budgeting and plans of the company.

"Companies often face several challenges: the need for highly specialized personnel, high competition for talent, market pressures to include diversity in talent, and in recent years, a volatile environment and rapidly changing trends."

And what indicators can we use to improve recruitment?

Once you have involved recruitment in your strategy, one of the main factors to take into account is measurement. Just like any other area in the company, recruitment can be measured against different indicators, including budgetary ones.
At this point, just as I say that it is important to measure, it is important to define beforehand what, how and for what purpose you are going to measure. There are standard data that everyone uses, such as time to select and/or hire, time between phases and hiring costs. These are all good indicators as long as you do not lose sight of the fact that they sometimes compete with each other, or affect other areas.
For example, I have come across cases in which the priority for some teams was the speed of hiring, wanting to be below the market average, without realizing that in some cases, this speed was pushing back some candidates, and sometimes caused that the incorporation and first months were not managed with the necessary quality, causing a high turnover in the positions, which not only affected the business, but also the hiring costs, since the same profile was hired several times.
Here, again, it is important to listen to specialists to know the market and not only be guided by being "better than average", but to stop and think about what is best for your company.

How can we make the candidate or employee experience a talent attraction tool?

In this last point, what I want to address is something that can help especially smaller companies, and is nothing innovative or "groundbreaking" if analyzed coldly. I am referring to the experience given to candidates and workers, since a positive experience can turn them into ambassadors, and even in the case of candidates, even if they are not hired, can bring the talent you are looking for to your door.
In this sense, it is again important to measure, but at a more qualitative level, to know what your current employees think of you, and to take samples of what they think of your selection process. Without making great efforts, it is likely that, just by visiting certain portals, you can start to find information, and give you one or two ideas of where you need to put efforts to improve or strengthen.
And if employees are known to be satisfied, they can most likely be great levers to attract talent without having to invest a lot of effort or resources in it, and also generate a snowball effect.
Watch the interview we did with Oscar Marin about recruitment as a strategic tool through LinkedIn or YouTube

Leave a reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked with *.