The New Dictionary of Hiring
Better words for the business of finding the people your strategy depends on.
Hiring inherited the language of HR.
That explains a lot.
Requisitions. Vacancies. Applicants. Passive candidates. Time to fill. Cost per hire.
Useful words if you're managing a recruiting process.
Less useful if you're trying to explain why the business can't open the new location, ship the product, accept another project, enter the market or hit the growth plan because three people you don't employ yet stand in the way.
Businesses don't need filled requisitions.
They need capabilities.
They don't have “hard-to-fill roles.”
They have strategic dependencies.
They don't have “passive candidates.”
The people they need are employed capability currently creating value for somebody else.
And the important question isn't always:
What will it cost to hire them?
Sometimes it's:
What is it costing us not to?
The New Dictionary of Hiring is an attempt to give talent leaders—and the businesses they serve—a better language.
Not new jargon for the sake of new jargon.
Better words for seeing the problem.
I didn't write this dictionary so people would read it.
I wrote it so people would steal from it.
Take a definition.
Put it in your next presentation.
Rewrite your hiring report.
Change the words if you can make them better.
Just say where you got them.
[Licensed under CC BY 4.0: use these terms freely, with credit to James Ellis, Employer Brand Labs.]
THE ESSENTIALS
Open requisitions, time to fill, cost per hire. Useful numbers, but none tells the CEO whether the business can deliver its plan. These twelve terms give you a better way to talk about what hiring makes possible, what missing people are costing you, and why leadership should care.
Start here:
Economics
Cost per hire tells finance what recruiting spent. Fine. Who's counting the money lost while the business waits for people? Or the opportunities that never happen because the capability isn't there? Here's how to start counting the other side of the ledger.
Strategy
Companies approve plans that quietly assume the right people will be there when they're needed. Then recruiting gets handed the deadline. Here's the language to challenge that assumption while there's still time to do something about it.
Risk
If a key supplier fails, somebody owns that risk. If the people your business needs never show up, it's usually called a tough recruiting market. Why does one get a risk register and the other get a shrug? Maybe it's time we treated both like business risks.
Talent Market
Your applicants aren't the talent market. They're the people who happened to see your job and decided to click. The people you really need may already have good jobs and no intention of leaving. Until you understand that bigger market, you're mostly recruiting whoever wanders past.
Choice
A candidate who turns you down isn't necessarily rejecting the job. They might be choosing a manager they trust, a commute they can live with, or the safety of staying put. Your offer isn't being judged on its own. Here's how to understand what people are actually choosing between.
Employer Brand
You can tell candidates you're a great place to work as often as you like. They still have to believe you. And they still need a reason to choose you over somewhere else. This is where employer branding gets past the slogans and starts giving people reasons to care, believe and act.
ONE QUESTION TO TAKE WITH YOU
Look at next year's business plan. Ignore total headcount for a moment. Ignore requisition volume, time to fill and cost per hire.
Ask: Which twelve people does this plan depend on—and where do they work right now?
The answer will tell you much more about your hiring strategy than the requisition forecast ever will.
The New Dictionary of Hiring
Created by Employer Brand Labs.
Because the business cannot grow faster than it can acquire the capability to grow.