I recently interviewed a perspective a candidate for an outside sales position. During the conversation, he told me that he takes time after every sales call and evaluates how it went. He said that even though he has a successful process, he evaluates each call because his process can continue to be re-tooled to land more accounts.
Evaluate. The word does not sound impressive. In fact, it does not necessarily sound positive. Yet, evaluating talent engagement processes is key for at both the employer and job seeker. Just ask my sales candidate who made it to the face-to-face interview.
Evaluating on the Inside
What if employers routinely evaluate their talent engagement process? For small businesses, this is even more important as their practices may not be as robust or reliable as other organizations who hire more people. Evaluation would allow employers to see:
- That the candidate flow is missing skills and/or fit targets.
- Their salaries are not as competitive as they thought.
- They are missing real connectedness with the candidate.
Evaluate on the Outside
On the other side, job seekers evaluating their own job search complements what the organizations are doing. Job seekers may learn:
- Their resumes or professional stories do not align with the story they really want to convey to employers.
- More about the hiring climate (like right now it is a candidate’s market).
- Understand where their “market value” is based on industry, company size, and culture.
- How follow up and follow through after interviews make them “the one in a crowd” instead of “one of the crowd.”
Process evaluation is not hard, but it can be hard to accept on a couple of levels. The world of work changes quickly. Analysis and change are not everyone’s forte. “Redoing” is hard. Especially when it took time (and money) to get to the current level.
As with other challenges we face in the workplace – it’s all about perspective. Self-learning sounds better than evaluating. Reposition sounds better than redo. With the ultimate gain of this process to learn how to better connect to fill jobs, both sides benefit.
Reach out to me if you want to start a discussion on either side of the employment equation.
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