The Perfect Blend
The world economy has changed forever. Your organisation will need to rethink its workforce planning and organisation structure. How you blend permanent employees with contract and interim talent will be a key performance driver.
Re-thinking workforce design for greater agility
Some time back, our Talent Intelligence Team surveyed several hundred HR leaders to understand what portion of their employee base they would change overnight, if they were given a magic wand. Over 50% replied “the lot of them”! Real agility has been on the wish list for years, now it’s an absolute must have.
AI, world economy challenges, and the influence of global conflict are not temporary obstacles. These are permanent shifts. The landscape is evolving so rapidly, even organisations with progressive HR strategies are struggling to adapt. A bold transformation that blends the use of permanent, contract and interim professionals in your workforce is needed. This will ensure your organisation is continuously innovative, responds quickly to challenges and maintains competitiveness.
New talent model
The future of organisation talent structures centres around a blend of core groups of permanent executives and teams that mirror those functions that drive proposition into revenue. All other employees will be retained “as needed” and deployed in a secondary set of groups. This includes hires from entry level professionals to the executives that run these functions, who will be an interim or contract service provider. We know from our own work as a contract and interim recruiting partner, many of those with higher levels of specialist expertise choose to work this way. Research on the subject on Generation Z, indicates many strive for the autonomy and flexibility that contracting can provide. They are happy to trade career advancement for new experiences, learning and work that is meaningful.
The ability to predict the right blend of talent relationship based on a wide array of analytics is already available, but demands a close working relationship with a highly competent recruitment partner. Crucially the organisation must have the commitment and engagement necessary for high performance, along with the flexibility to scale up or down when plans change. The key to this is ensuring that culturally, socially, behaviourally, and developmentally, the permanent and agile sets of employees have similar employee experiences.
The blend
Permanent employees are typically valued for their organisation and market knowledge, their tenure and their commitment. By comparison, interims and contractors are valued for their expertise, skills and wider perspective. The latter also bring a reduced labour overhead given there are no holiday, benefit, or employer PRSI costs. Interims and contractors also bring experience of how they addressed similar challenges that your organisation might face, from other firms. They help to inject new insights and innovative tactics.
Building a blended workforce demands new structures and methods of engagement. To ensure cultural fit, recruit for the same value set and cultural fit as you would a key permanent hire. Invest in their learning, as you would with permanent employees, in core groups. The role specification should be specific to the need and not generic. It must include expected behavioural norms and level of decision-making authority so that everyone is clear where they stand.
The workforce of the future
Blending your workforce is no longer optional, it is essential. The talent you seek today and over the next ten years wants to work this way. Blending by using contractors and interims supports the elevated level of organisation flexibility, cost efficiency and rapid access to specialised talent, that your organisation needs for adapting to this strange new world.
Get in touch
To discuss how we can support your Executive Search and Contract & Interim requirements contact:
Arlene Moran– Managing Director - Contract & Interim | arlene.moran@hrmrecruit.com | +353 86 3656648
Ciarán McCaughey– Managing Director – Executive Search | ciaran.mccaughey@hrmrecruit.com | +353 83 1420673
Shane Browne– Managing Director – International Operations | shane.browne@hrmrecruit.com | +353 1 6321865
Interview Hacks: 5 C's Employers Seek In You
The goal for you as a candidate when attending interview for a new position is not in fact to be appointed into the role, but rather to become the preferred choice of the hiring organisation. This might seem a subtle difference, but it alters how you should approach your meetings and the emphasis that you place on your interview presentations.
Employers do not make decisions based exclusively on hard data when hiring. Often an experienced interviewer will see stretch potential or unexpected possibilities in a candidate that can swing their decision. The five C’s that employers want a candidate to demonstrate are: Capability, and evidence of it, to perform the absolute must deliver tasks; Confidence in their own ability; Concern for others and the organisation; Command and the desire to increase this; and Communication ability at all levels.
Everyone needs an edge, an ability to differentiate from their competition. Having worked with thousands of successful executives and professional leaders, we know that using these five hacks will ensure you become the preferred choice of any employer.
1. Know The Problem, Be The Solution
Work with your consultant, or the employer if applying directly, to understand the real need behind why the organisation is recruiting into this role. Find out what is not happening because this position is currently not filled. Learn what the employer believes are the essential qualities a candidate needs to be successful in the role. When preparing for the meeting, develop a detailed written response to these needs so that you can deliver an accurate account of why you are the solution. Practice saying the words out loud and succinctly, all interviews are time bound to some extent.
2. Use Body Language Hacks
When you watch the news on television and the anchor goes to an outside broadcast, the reporter at that location will nod gently into camera as the report is being handed over to them. This is a signal to the studio that the communication is coming through to the OB reporter and that they are ready to engage. Do the same with your audience at interview, nod gently to show your attentiveness and engagement as an interviewer comes to the end of their question. Answer to all parties, not just the person who asked the question, by moving eye contact between both or all if a panel interview. Support your points with hand gestures to convey comfort and confidence in what you are sharing. Always keep your feet firmly planted on the ground, this facilitates easier shifts between creative and rational thinking.
3. Tell Your Story
Interviews can be stifling affairs if candidates are aiming for “perfect” and sitting behind a “front”. There are no perfect candidates. To be successful at interview, the authentic you must always be present in the room. Otherwise, interviewers may find it difficult to relate to you. Develop your story in a way that showcases your talents and experience, in a structure that makes the following clear; the challenge(s) you faced, the action you decided on, the obstacles that arose during implementation and the ultimate outcome. Include examples where your plan did not work out, but you learned from the experience. Stories are powerful ways in which to make emotional connections with an interviewer, so long as the story is interesting, relevant and succinct.
4. Strengths Based Presentation
You will always be at your most energetic, enthusiastic and engaged when an interviewer turns to a subject or competency you regard as a strength. You can adapt “strengths” to give effective responses to a wide variety of competency questions that may arise. Identify what you are good at, have received positive feedback about, enjoy doing and are most proud of. Knowing your strengths and communicating around these conveys confidence and assuredness, but do not fake it. If you have a gap don’t try to fudge it no matter how tempted, you might be or how much you want the new position. This only undermines the positive elements of your interview. Instead, approach gaps by highlighting specific evidence from your career to date where you have demonstrated genuine ability to learn quickly and adapt to new situations.
5. Be Curious
Prepare intelligent, insightful questions unique to each interview you attend that demonstrate your desire to understand more about the company and role purpose. Ask your questions at relevant points throughout the interview and not bundled at the end. Threading both prepared and spontaneous questions this way, demonstrates curiosity and engagement to the interviewer. For you personally, it helps to keep your mind active and focused as the interview progresses. Operating in “curious mode” makes you observant of new ideas and helps you spot opportunities to align with how an interviewer may be thinking. This in turn can create greater rapport and emotional connection between the interviewer and the candidate.
What separates winners is down to how well prepared a candidate is. Preparation fuels confidence, confidence enables performance. Performance when presented through authentic stories and genuine curiosity, which shows concern for and interest in an organisation’s need, creates genuine likeability. People buy from people whom they like.
