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LIFE IS GOOD
With a booming economy, job satisfaction levels are high.
LABOR COSTS ARE RISING
Salary growth is here. How far behind is inflation?
FOR THE RECORD - THE VALUE OF DOCUMENTATION
From the recruiting professional's viewpoint, keeping good records is a competitive advantage.
BEST QUALIFIED VERSUS MOST APPROPRIATELY QUALIFIED
This debate is about getting managers to decide what they really need.
According to the 1998 survey conducted by Inc. magazine and the Gallup organization,
72% of U. S. Workers indicate that they are extremely satisfied in their jobs. This
should be no surprise to us in a business climate that is flush with nearly full
employment and a soaring stock market.
Similar in many ways to the results revealed in both the 1996 and 1997 surveys, the 1998
data strongly suggest that the vast majority of workers are more than just satisfied,
they feel respected, counted on, communicated with, and cared for as people.
We do ponder the fact that, despite the continued growth we are seeing in the economy
and the further reduction of unemployment, there hasn't been any measurable improvement
or increase of job satisfaction in this year's results. Perhaps the labor market is
too good, causing too much churn to allow many employees to get comfortable in their new
situations. Also, corporate downsizing continues at a torrid pace, with no end in sight.
It appears that American companies are practicing what has been preached to them in
recent years by the management gurus and authors. That is, people feel they are being
nurtured. In terms of individual fulfillment, 82% of workers in this country said they
are given the opportunity to do what they do best every day, whereas in Japan and Germany,
less than two-thirds of their workers claimed the same degree of satisfaction.
Comparatively speaking, the same results were reflected in response to the question
about having the opportunity to learn and grow on the job.
Married men, particularly if they were over fifty or married, appeared to be the
most likely to be extremely satisfied. Nearly 84% of the survey respondents said
their employers' mission made them feel their jobs were important. Twenty years
ago, nobody knew what the mission was.
Despite all the jokes and anecdotes about the incompetent manager, this survey says
that at least 39% of workers feel their boss is more intelligent than they are, while
only 11% said less. Similarly, 51% said their bosses are more committed to work (versus
12% saying less), and 43% say their boss has more talent than they (the workers) do
versus 16% indicating bosses are less talented.
Nearly three-quarters of workers think they are getting fairly paid. Despite all the
talk about the gender gap, men are only slightly more satisfied with their pay (76%)
than women are with theirs (71%).
Emerging from all the overall survey results was also a picture of the new American
dream. While more than two-thirds of us feel we are better off than our parents were
at the same stage of life, nearly half the respondents indicated that, if they had it to
do over again, they would choose a different line of work. The most commonly expressed
dream was that of starting a business of their own.
The optimism the current economy fosters is also reflected in the perpetual American
dream. That is, 74% of those surveyed expect their children will be even better off
when they reach the same stage of life as their parents are today.
The wonderfully robust economy we've been enjoying for the last three years is finally
beginning to show some real growth in wages for the American worker.
It is not just in the high tech sector. Cheap labor is nearly impossible to find in
any segment of the labor market today. Services wages are up 4.8% from a year ago,
racing ahead of productivity gains.
During the period from 1992 to 1995, profits rose more than 20% annually as companies
announced some two million layoffs. Real wages stagnated. But today, due to labor
shortages, rising benefits costs, and escalting wage demands, profits are beginning to
suffer, creating more headaches for business managers while worker satisfaction levels
are high.
Inflation has been held in abeyance by productivity gains, consumer spending and low
interest rates.
In an effort to cope with rising costs, some companies are trying a variety of
techniques to reign in inflation. Some are trying one-time bonuses, stock options,
increased vacation, or flexible work hours to avoid irreversible salary growth.
Unfortunately, all of these efforts add to costs. As a result, many companies continue
to reengineer and downsize to postpone what seems to be inevitable. Workers will
ultimately reap the rewards for their participation in this growth economy.
There has been one constant in the most time-honored professions of both law and medicine.
These practitioners have depended very heavily upon the written record to resolve
individual cases as well as establish historical precedents for dealing with similar cases
or situations in the future.
There is a lesson in all of this for those of us who call ourselves recruiting
professionals. We, too, can help ourselves and our client organizations if we do a better
job of recording our efforts and our results.
Consider the value we can add to the interviewing and selection process when we provide
decision makers with documentation from our prescreening interviews, reference checks and
other prequalification efforts. Without it, we are nothing but paper-pushers to our clients.
How do we justify the changes or additions to our recruiting strategies? In the majority
of situations, we have to track our past sourcing efforts and evaluate what they returned
for the dollars and efforts invested before we can convince management that change is needed
and justified. The more complete, accurate and reliable your data are, the greater
your chances of convincing them to adopt your plan.
Today's desktop technology permits the real-time capture of virtually all the data you
will need to measure, evaluate, plan and justify your contributions to your organization.
The problem, however, is tha many of us have not yey discovered the value and efficiency
that can be gained by capturing and recording relevant data as it occurs. Many of us
plan to do it later when we are not so busy, but as you know, that time seldom, if ever,
comes. So, much of the data never gets captured, or, it gets inaccurately recreated long
after the fact.
In these times, information is power. In recruiting, the information we gather and
document is very often our only competitive advantage.
Satisfying hiring managers today is hard enough, but few things can be more frustrating
than knocking heads with a manager who insists upon finding another candidate who is
just a little bit better than the qualified candidate he has already seen.
The modern day recruiter's lament seems to be, Good enough (to do the job) just isn't
good enough for most managers.
Why is it that the person has to be more than qualified in order to be worthy of an offer
today? Some of us think it is because most managers don't really know what they are
looking for. Others believe their managers don't want to make a hiring mistake. Still
others think it is an artful way to discriminate.
All of these explanations probably fit some managers in some organizations. But the most
frequent cause of this problem is most likely to be the lack of a defined selection profile.
Organizations that recruit lots of candidates for common positions have found value in
conducting job analyses to identify the key competencies that predict success (or
failure) of people who perform in these jobs. With this knowledge, they are then able
to recruit and select individuals of all ages, races and sexes who may not exactly look
the part, but almost always perform at or above expectations.
When a manager has two or more qualified candidates available and interested, but only
one job to fill, most managers will choose to hire the best qualified candidate. That
right is their's as long as their decisions don't create a pattern of discrimination
affecting women, minorities or other protected groups.
As recruiters, we need to encourage managers to be clear in their own minds about what
the job requires before they begin to interview. Otherwise, they will modify those
requirements based upon the candidates they see and like. When this occurs, someone
may be hired who is overqualified but under-challenged and leaves, or a person's
shortcomings may be rationalized in the rush to fill a position and the resultant hire
is ineffectual.