Bench Strength

CHAPTER 7

T

ALENT

A

CQUISITION

D

ECISIONS

To seduce the enemy’s soldiers from

allegiance and encourage them to surrender

is of special service, for an adversary is more

hurt by desertion than by slaughter.

—F

LAVIUS

V

EGETIUS

R

ENATUS

R

OMAN WRITER AND MILITARY STRATEGIST

I believe that we’ve reached a point in talent management where

most organizations understand the imp ortance of investing in mak-

ing effective e xecut ive recruit ing and hiri ng dec ision s. Tha t havi ng

been said , many compa nies still o perate without a clearl y thought-

out talent acquisition strategy. Desp ite the huge impact that poor

hiring de cisio ns can have on orga nizat ional perfo rmance, quite

typically seni or exe cutiv es and HR dep artments p ut very littl e

thought into how they can be st orchestr ate their se lecti on and in-

ter view p roces s to raise th eir ‘‘hit rate’’ for leadersh ip hir es.

This problem re veals itself in a variety of wa ys. It’s not unusu al

to w alk into an organi zatio n and find that the company’s leader -

ship hiri ng pro cess is poorly designed , with different depar t ments

and compa ny divisions p ursuing their o wn divergent, and some-

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times con tradictory , recr uitin g and h iring strategies. Executive re-

cruiters may be hired and paid enormous sums w ithou t firs t being

required to pass through any sor t of centrali zed quality review

process, or wit hout being evalua ted th rough even a curso ry after-

action assessment to determine w hethe r their recruitin g efforts

have produced accept able r esult s.

In this scenari o, exe cutiv es have some vague ly defined c oncep t

of what they require in the way of n ew leadership talent, but this

rough ‘‘gut fee l’’ usually stops far shor t of accurate and detailed

talent forecasting. Recruiting effor ts are initi ated in a knee-jerk and

fragmented man ner, and take form as ind ividu al, after-t he-fa ct re-

sponses as lead ershi p open ings b ecome known . In sh ort, in this

type of hit-or- miss a pproa ch to t alent acquisitio n, while the results

of some individ ual recruiting events may be except ional, the collec-

tive, org aniza tion-wide impact of these eff orts i s freq uentl y only

minimally e ffe ctive .

The most i mportant st ep that an organization can ta ke to im-

prove the overa ll effectiv eness of its talent acqu isiti on pro cess is to

gain senior-le vel executi ve ali gnmen t on th e goal s of its recruitin g

effor ts. This chapte r will show y ou how to use two talent a cquis i-

tion decisions to gain that align ment.

The first decis ion requires you to decide whether y our recruit-

ing and hi ring efforts are directed mor e towa rds im provi ng the size

or the qua lity o f your leade rship bench. While you are likely to

argue that b oth objectives are equally important, I’d like to counte r

by sugges ting th at most of u s operate in such resour ce- and time-

limited work environ ments , that ‘‘doing bot h’’ just simply isn’t an

option. Some organiz ation s find it necessary to assume a Build -Out

Strategy, in order to quickly broaden their talent pipelines throug h

extensive broa d-bas ed, high-volume h iring effor ts. Other organiza-

tions are more concerned with the very d iffer ent ob jecti ve of being

able to radicall y upg rade their bench. They a ttemp t to do this

through t he Trad e-Up Strategy of replacing under- perfo rming man-

agers with sign ifica ntly higher -cali ber pe rform ers.

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