Introduction
Employees form a critical part of any organization. Properly trained and skilled employees are mainly significant to enable organizations meet their goals and mission. Organizations are required to have ample planning that would clearly outline their goals. This may be achieved through development of the most outstanding hiring processes. The hiring process that an organization chooses must enable the organization to hire the best employee in terms of knowledge and expertise for the required position. Proper understanding of these processes will be understood through excellent analysis of the Heidrick and struggles International, Inc. and their placement practices as a recruitment agency for various corporations as it is mainly concerned with strategic recruitment.
Heidrick and Struggles is an international firm that is mainly entrusted executive search and has been operational since 1953. By the time it became global, it had generalist kinds of consultants who had no specialization. By 2008, Heidrick had been renowned as the global senior level executive search and leadership consultancy. It aimed at developing leadership teams. According to Kevin Kelly who was the CEO in 2006, the company was facing massive challenges in the recruitment industry and techniques must have been changed (Eccles & Lane, 2008).
Kelly was mainly concerned of how consultants conducted their businesses and change was paramount at the moment. Although, he wanted them to be part of the company and its development he developed the company’s vision alone. Also, he changed the compensation plan of the organization and employees felt they had to improve on their performance.
Also, there was an issue of internet search firms that were coming up in the global market. This meant that Heidrick was to give up an outstanding deal of his clients. This was a big worry to mid-level executive placements as they would have been the main losers. Also, the clients that they had served in the past had become alert of the common procedures and they no more needed the mid-level experts. Changes in the demography led to increase in the outlook of lesser people in the employees in Japan, Europe, as well as China. There was clear otline that the executive management tenure was decimal with only 40% of CEOs working in their positions for more than 18 months (Eccles & Lane, 2008).
Therefore, changes could not have been avoided as consultants needed to be in agreement with the management in order to achieve the strategic vision of the organization. Strategic plans needed to be developed to allow the organization recruit the C-level and mid-level executives and assign them to various client companies.
Alternate courses of action
Various things that might have been done to initiate the change process for Heidrick had been identified by Kevin Kelly. He had identified things like: develop stable key accounts that would enhance customer service as well as optimize their portfolio, invest in client’s leadership skills, enhance their internal development and their recruitment ability, invest in technology to enhance productivity, develop visibility with younger talent, invest together with start-ups and develop joint ventures with NASDAQ (Eccles & Lane, 2008). He looked forward to a team that had clear understanding of the clients and their needs. Therefore, he had to train the consultants accordingly.
Also, Kelly came up with a plan that would have allowed consultants to have a more meaningful dealership with clients than the search consultants. Search consultants would get the right individuals as consultants helped them become success through proper relationship with their boards, executive and management teams to assist in enhancing leadership in their organizations. Kelly learnt that was extremely easy to train from within as it required minimal effort than external hiring. He had excellent success plan for new employees. Consultants played critical role in marketing the company through publishing books as well as articles (Eccles & Lane, 2008).
Later, Heidrick undertook the process of investing in internet as well as software development. This was aimed at attracting online clients looking for jobs and organizations searching for employees online. The organization became a joint with a China consulting firm. Kelly decided that this should be a separate company that would aid in generation of income while coming up a database in future (Eccles & Lane, 2008).
Although, the above changes were significant to solve the problem of the organization other measures could have been employed. It would have been wise for the organization to offer internships to fresh graduates. This would expose the market to massive experience individuals who have been properly trained. This would be an excellent move to counter competition (Armstrong, 2011). Students will not only understand what the field entails but will have the practical bit of their knowledge.
The organization would have also considered outsourcing real recruitment of consultants as well as applicants. In this case, the organization would have also focused on leadership consulting as well as retention activities. The internet would have assisted the organization search for individuals even in upper level executives searching for training chances so that they could fill the C-level positions in their client organizations (Armstrong, 2011). Although, outsourcing is expensive it needs to be considered in enhancing changes for organizations.
Conclusion
Strategic recruitment is a significant way through which an organization can optimally utilize its resources. It is paramount for any organization to make clear outline of its plans in form of goals and mission. Strategic recruitment can be defined as the bid to identify real recruitment needs for an organization as well as fulfilling those needs. Organizational needs should be directly linked to the overall strategic business plan. There should be clear definition of quality, number and specialization of skills as well as talents in every section of organizational activities. The Heidrick and Struggles case is a proof for the necessity of well set strategic recruitment goals that are in line with the goals, mission and vision of an organization. It has also indicated that change among employees is also paramount.
References
Analoui, F. (2007). Strategic human resource management. London: Thomson ;.
Armstrong, M. (2011). Armstrong's handbook of strategic human resource management (5th ed.). London: Kogan Page.
Eccles, R., & Lane, D. (2008). Heidrick & Struggles International, Inc.. Harvard Business School, 1(1), 1-19.
