Talent Acquisition and Workforce Planning
From job analysis to offer
Everything begins with job analysis: systematic collection of task, duty and context information. It produces the job description (tasks, duties, responsibilities) and the job specification (knowledge, skills, abilities, other attributes). Errors here cascade into poor postings, invalid selection and pay equity problems. Recruitment is marketing to a labour market: internal versus external sources, employer brand, realistic job previews, yield ratios and source effectiveness. Selection is measurement: know reliability (consistency) versus validity (does it predict performance). Structured behavioural interviews, work samples, job knowledge and cognitive ability tests generally outperform unstructured interviews, references and graphology.
Workforce planning link
Forecast demand, assess supply, decide build versus buy, then sequence recruiting. Onboarding and socialization drive retention and time-to-productivity.
Traps
- Calling an unstructured interview valid because it feels predictive.
- Confusing reliability with validity: a broken scale can be reliably wrong.
- Ignoring adverse impact. Apply the four-fifths rule (a protected group's selection rate divided by the highest group's rate; below 0.80 signals adverse impact) and remember a bona fide occupational requirement must be justified.
- Confusing time-to-fill (requisition to acceptance) with cost-per-hire (all recruiting costs divided by hires).
- Assuming an off-the-shelf personality test alone is sufficient.
Worked example
600 applicants, 150 interviewed, 30 hired. Interview yield = 150/600 = 25%; hire yield = 30/150 = 20%. If a protected group's selection rate is 45% and the highest rate is 60%, the ratio is 0.75, below 0.80, so investigate. Rule of thumb: the best predictor is the one most similar to the job itself, applied consistently to everyone.