Talent Management: "People must once again be the focus"

Interview with recruiting expert Henrik Zaborowski

Companies are increasingly finding it difficult to find suitable personnel. The reason for this also lies with HR departments themselves, which rarely take a look at the person behind the resume. Recruiting expert Henrik Zaborowski advocates for modern recruiting that makes better use of employees' talents. On November 8th, he will be a guest speaker at TALENT THINKING.

What has changed in the HR departments of German companies with the digitalization of the working and living world? 

For recruiting, at least, I can say that companies have (by necessity) become more communicative. The common social media channels are being utilized and used for exchange, and companies are presenting themselves more offensively as employers. By now, almost every company also has an applicant management system, which considerably facilitates the clean processing of applications and avoids errors. In addition, there are the possibilities of recruiting analytics, which, however, only a few employers are really tapping into for themselves so far. And even then, the question remains as to what they do with the knowledge that big data provides them.

What is missing?

People must be brought more into the foreground. Personnel selection still works the way it did 50 years ago: Resumes are studied primarily, and then those applicants are invited who fit best based on specialist knowledge or hard factors like official degrees. That worked in the past, when there were hundreds of applications for one position. That is no longer the case, however, and that is why we can no longer afford to do that.

And what is necessary for that?

HR experts must pick out the candidates in the application process who bring the necessary ability for the job. Even if that is not immediately recognizable. For this, they must recognize or at least intuit the person behind the degrees, titles, and professional positions. That is the core of talent management. And because ability cannot necessarily be recognized from a resume, companies must start asking questions. For example, in the form of a questionnaire on which applicants can express themselves individually: How can you prove to us that you master the required tasks? What is your motivation for the job? In this way, perhaps the IT career changer gets the chance to show their successful projects, even if they do not have a computer science degree. Yet they can still be the perfect applicant.

So, HR staff should be given the freedom to trust their intuition more?

Whether intuition helps here is probably very dependent on the respective person. The point is, however: Given a shortage of skilled workers, the focus must be on finding employees who want to commit themselves to a company in the long term and who go to work motivated. Motivation is an essential factor, not technical knowledge. If we stay with the IT career changer: If they get the job despite lacking proof of their hard skills, they will be extremely motivated and want to prove themselves. And they will be grateful that the employer is giving them the chance to do what they feel like doing. Conversely: How motivated is the newly hired IT specialist, who is doing the same job in a job change as they did for the last five years at the previous employer?

That will be a bold step for many companies.

It is a question of trust. I have to engage with the person in order to trust them or to trust them with the job. This is naturally difficult with strangers, but fundamentally, recruiting only works through trust. And employers live this out, too. With their internal employees. For example, I know of the case of an outstanding specialist who was working on the executive board of a company and was promoted to head of recruiting. She had to acquire the technical knowledge, but everyone knew that she would bring the necessary skills with her. And in the same way, HR staff must have the opportunity to select new employees based on a more comprehensive overall impression. And then they must help their colleagues to properly arrive in the job and in the company. Because whether someone is successful in their job depends not only on their ability, but also on the circumstances they find at their employer.

At the impulse conference TALENT THINKING in Mainz, Henrik Zaborowski will hold the keynote on the topic "Talent Management Reimagined – From Elite Thinking to Broad Corporate Practice." More information on the conference about the future of working and learning can be found here.

More information on TALENT THINKING 2018.