Recruitment and Retention Challenges in

Recruitment and Retention Challenges in the Workplace Even in the midst of a global economic recession, there are still companies and entire industries that competitively hire the best possible talent for their businesses' needs. Amidst this significant competitive recruiting and retaining activity, two dominant trends emerge. The intent of this analysis is to discuss these trends.

Recruiting Has Moved From Instinctual to Behavioral Analysis The single greatest trend impacting retention today is the use of advanced behavioral modeling techniques that seek to find the ideal candidates for a given position based on their psychological attributes and innate strengths. What companies are after is finding the best possible match of the unique requirements of the positions they are hiring for and the skills sets, both from a purely professional level in addition to psychological one, that best fits with their organizations (Collins, 2007).

Advanced Human Resources Management (HRM) systems also have the ability to define unique personality attributes and test candidates to find their overlap to the needs of the position (Kaliprasad, 2006). These advanced HRM recruitment systems also seek to capture the level of autonomy, mastery, and purpose that candidates have. These three attributes of a person's personality are excellent predictors of their ability to become proficient in a difficult and challenging career position (Starks, Brooks, 2009).

What these HRM systems and the companies using them are also after is the propensity of candidates to engage in self-directed learning or as it is sometimes called, self-efficacy (Starks, Brooks, 2009). When this attribute is combined with other factors, new hires are capable of progressing rapidly through the initial learning curve of their new positions and also gain expertise in their roles quickly.

In conclusion the use of intuition in hiring candidates is hit-or-miss, and the use of these advanced approaches ensure a higher level of success over time as they isolate critically important attributes and then evaluate candidates based on their alignment to them (Starks, Brooks, 2009).

Retention Strategies Get Real The famous Google approaches to retention, which to the outside appear nearly hedonistic in their pervasiveness and depth are actually aimed at removing all distractions from employees; lives so they can concentrate on the complex problems the software company is trying to solve (Shipman, 2006). The press grabs onto the chefs, the working areas that are more like living rooms and the free soft drinks and snacks. Yet these are all evidence of a more fundamental strategy with regard to retention.

Google strives to create a culture where employees can take a strong sense of ownership over their projects and in fact provides engineers with one day a week for working on their own projects, initiated and driven entirely on their own. This is called the 20% Rule at Google has now accounted for over 50% of new product development (Sachitanand, 2008). This ownership of innovation and the opportunity to earn significant respect in the industry are.