“Higher value-added activities in marine engineering, aerospace, medical technology and precision engineering will require higher skilled scientists, engineers and technicians”
Gan Kim Yong, Minister of Manpower
As we look ahead to 2010, it is good to know that the economy is emerging stronger from the economic recession that has clouded over this year. Therefore, HR practitioners need to be ready to seize the opportunities that are likely to arise from the economic upturn. Here are two key areas that they can focus on:
1 Build up the talent pool
It’s important to ensure that you are able to get access to the best talent for the right jobs in your company.
To be able to do this, you need to build up a talent pool. This is essentially a database of well-qualified people who are able to replace any of your current employees if they decide to leave. It is an effective backup plan that helps to reduce the costs and time it takes to hire new staff and, most importantly, ensures that your productivity is not negatively affected.
Here are 3 useful ways to build up your talent pool:
Networking — it’s good to attend industry conferences, join professional associations and participate in career exhibitions as these are good places to reach out to new talent.
Online networks — LinkedIn and Facebook are two popular and useful social networking websites that help your company to leverage on Web 2.0 technologies to reach out to a larger audience and also grow your presence online.
Past job applicants — keep the contact details of previous job candidates who made it to the final interview rounds but who weren’t selected eventually. They are a good source of talent as they have shown that they have potential, but it just happened at the time that there was a better job candidate.
2 Streamline hiring processes
In these competitive times, it’s crucial for companies to get the best value for every advertising dollar that HR spends on job advertisements. This is where using recruitment portals for online hiring offers many advantages. They offer cost-effectiveness, 24-hour job ad coverage every day of the year, and the ability to reach out to highly targeted jobseeker audiences that isn’t limited by geography. Recruitment portals are also able to track job applications with user-friendly ad management tools and much more.
Furthermore, recruitment portals, like JobsDB.com, annually organise a fully paperless Career and Learning Exhibition to enable participating companies to enjoy a convenient way of capturing and administering jobseeker information – thus streamlining the hiring process and reducing the time to hire by doing without the hassles and tediousness of dealing with paperwork and administration.
Mark Lim, web editor, JobsDB Singapore