Prioritization Lets Recruiting Focus On High-Impact Jobs (Using high-impact, low-cost position prioritization)

Position prioritization allows the recruiting function to “do more with less” (with little effort).

Illustrating The Dollar Impact Of Prioritizing Recruiting

Normally, because of a shortage of recruiters. This corporation has a 30-day wait until a received requisition is actually acted on under its current date stamp rule. The req with the oldest date stamp would be the first to be acted on. And in this case, that oldest req is for an Accounting Assistant position. However, if recruiting purposely moves this accounting requisition back 30 days, that delay would only cost accounting $4,000 in extra overtime costs.

In contrast, by purposely advancing a just received (but top priority) Sales Manager req up by 30 days. This sales job would be filled one month earlier. That would prevent the team’s loss of $70,000 in monthly sales revenue, which is a $66,000 overall gain due to smart prioritization.

If you also prioritized the requisition for the lead of the AI team and purposely advanced it to 30 days in the queue, that prioritization might save you millions. To avoid irreparable AI project delays, it’s important to note that speed is not the only factor that impacts recruiting from prioritization by assigning the best recruiters and allocating additional recruiting budget to each prioritized req. Recruiting would also increase the performance level of its prioritized new hires, which would raise the team’s overall performance with a prioritized position.  

Prioritization Is Both Powerful And Common Throughout Your Business

It’s a fact that everything that’s important has been prioritized within all strategic business functions. For example, sales and customer service prioritize customers so that the most important ones receive the best treatment. The production, supply chain, and marketing functions prioritize how they handle the company’s most profitable products. 

In contrast, most traditional recruiting functions lack a formal process for prioritizing positions based on their business impact. Instead, most begin recruiting for the next position based solely on the timestamp of the requisition.

Unfortunately, not only is that approach naïve, but it also hurts your business results. When, for example, because it was received first, you begin recruiting for an Accounting Assistant position. At the same time, you let high-impact business positions (like AI Engineer) sit in the queue without action until its “received date” is finally the next in line. 

So, if your goal is to make your recruiting function more businesslike, with a larger business impact, the superior alternative is known as “position prioritization.” This is where jobs with the highest business impact, when they are filled with top talent, are moved to the head of the line, where they are handled first by the best recruiters. The goal of position prioritization is to increase the business impact of your recruiting significantly. It does that by allocating the best recruiting talent to the most resources and acting first on the highest-impact open jobs.

Prioritization, wherever practiced, has one of the highest ROI practices available to leaders. It doesn’t require a budget outlay. Once it’s completed, it won’t require any additional leadership time. I have found that prioritizing recruiting can result in up to 20% of the business impact of recruiting.

Highlighting The Top Benefits Of Prioritization

Once you fully understand the many benefits that come from position prioritization. You will likely become an advocate. The top outcomes of this common in business but rare in the recruiting process include:

• Profitability will be maintained – when teams that rapidly manage hot products receive the quality talent they need. The organization will be able to increase its market share and profitability continually.
• Key business units and strategic teams will thrive – when strategic business units’ problem-solving teams and strategic technical teams (like AI) continually get the required high-quality talent. Then, the strategic vision of the company will be reached much faster. 
• Revenue will increase – when revenue-generating jobs are quickly filled with top-performing revenue producers. The organization’s revenue will continually increase.
• Strategic skills will be continually built – by prioritizing the current and future strategic skills that the organization requires. Recruiting leaders can ensure that through skill-based hiring. Their organization will have all of the essential skills that it will need. 
• Your leadership bench strength will be strong – when leadership positions (below the executive level) are filled quickly with proven leadership talent. Your leadership bench strength will continue to grow.
• The same prioritization can be used for other things – such as if you have a formal effort to increase employee retention. You can use this same priority rating to determine which jobs you should focus your retention efforts on. Prioritization might also be used as a starting point for positions that should be spared from future layoffs.
• The image of recruiting will improve – when recruiting focuses its limited resources on the highest impact open positions. Perhaps the first time. Senior managers throughout the organization can see firsthand how the recruiting function is now better at meeting their most important needs. And that will raise the status of the recruiting function and its recruiters.

Are You Curious About Which Jobs Are Usually Prioritized

Obviously, every organization ends up prioritizing a different set of jobs. So, to give you some insight into which jobs are most commonly prioritized. I have provided a baseline list of the most frequently prioritized jobs. Within this list, the jobs with the highest chance of getting prioritized appear early in the list.

• Revenue-generating positions – at many organizations, all revenue-generating jobs are assigned the highest priority. In addition, your leaders may also need to prioritize what is known as “revenue-impact jobs.” Because these support positions directly allow those in revenue-generating positions to produce maximum results. 
• Mission-critical jobs – include roles that when there is a position vacancy, the entire operation must be shut down (i.e., pilot, safety inspector, etc.). Mission-critical jobs also include positions deemed critical to fulfilling the company’s mission.
• All jobs in strategic business units and teams – in many cases, because even a single talent gap can weaken a strategic business unit, function, or team. Every professional position in a strategic business unit will be prioritized.
• Positions that require mission-critical skills – if your organization has identified mission-critical “future skills” critical for future growth (like AI or Quantum Computing). Those requisitions that require them are often prioritized.
• Jobs with a high loss potential – identify the jobs that involve high-risk work. These are jobs where a single employee error can cost millions (i.e., a flammable material technician). Also, look for jobs where a single error would result in a great deal of negative publicity for the company. These jobs are usually given a high priority (even if insurance will cover most of the losses).
• Hard-to-fill positions– Leaders prioritize most of the positions that are currently almost impossible to fill through recruitment.
• Manager and leadership positions – in most organizations that have bench strength issues. Every manager and leadership position is prioritized. 
• “Hire them all” evergreen positions – positions deemed so important. Recruiting for the position is a continuous, never-ending process. These positions are known as Evergreen jobs. In most cases, these evergreen jobs are prioritized.
• Political priorities – in a political, corporate environment. Positions that are clearly favored by individual powerful leaders (for whatever reason). They are often also prioritized.
• “Surplus jobs” are given a lower priority – jobs that may soon be eliminated, replaced by technology, or outsourced are often assigned the lowest priority. Jobs in business units soon to be sold off are often assigned a lower recruiting priority.

Prioritization Doesn’t Have To Be Confrontational

Many assume that by prioritizing the recruiting of some jobs but not others. This will create some serious conflict and confrontation between managers. And yes, that can occur unless you provide all managers with a compelling argument showing why prioritization is in the company’s best interest.

Also, realize that most managers aren’t stupid. They already know (based on the pay grade) that some jobs are more important than others (like a quarterback is more important than the field-goal ball holder on a football team). In addition, most managers will already be quite familiar with prioritization. They experience it daily when in a supply chain or scheduling queue. 

It’s also a good idea to make it clear to all managers that this prioritization only applies to recruiting. Finally, you can reduce some conflict by providing an appeal process for individual managers.

Implementation Tips (For those who decide to implement prioritization)

This final section covers tips on how to implement position prioritization. For those that are serious about implementation.

Implementation Part 1 – Ways For Identifying The Jobs That Should Be Prioritized

The most important element of implementation you must get right is the accuracy of the process you use to separate your party jobs from your regular jobs. Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all priority job identification process. However, with my decades of prioritization experience, I have compiled a list of the identification approaches that have proven to be the most effective. The most effective and easiest-to-implement approaches appear at the beginning of the list. I recommend that you combine several of these identification approaches. But only use the ones that fit your culture and your organization’s needs.

• Prioritize revenue generation jobs first – the single area of prioritization that almost everyone uses. It is placing a high priority on revenue-generating jobs. Those job families typically include sales, business development, investments, and collections.
• ID high profit/ growth units – almost everyone prioritizes business units significantly contributing to the bottom line. So, to identify those units, work with the CFO’s office to identify the business units that produce the highest margins, profit, revenue, or growth. And then give a high priority to each of the jobs in those units.
• Use compensation as an indicator – if you begin with the assumption that the most important jobs are those that are paid the most. Pay rates and bonus percentages should be looked at to identify the jobs that should be prioritized. 
• Ask general managers – often, GMs already know which positions are the most important (one spits out his priority job to me in seconds). So, use their inputs as a major part of your decision-making for jobs in business operations.
• Ask recruiters – don’t forget that the best recruiters know a great deal about which jobs are in high demand throughout your industry. So, when trying to identify hard-to-fill jobs, ask your best recruiters. Also, ask your best recruiters to benchmark against other recruiting functions in your industry (that are not your direct competitors). And then swap information with them on which jobs they have labeled high priority. 
• Look for those who contact key customers – work with the heads of sales, customer relations, and customer service to identify which positions have frequent contact with your most important customers. Don’t be surprised when you learn that some of your hourly jobs must be prioritized because a single negative act by one of these customer contact employees can be extremely costly. 
• Ask your training group about future skills – in many organizations, the training and development function has already pre-identified the key jobs that contain the “future skills.” These are skills that will be essential for the corporation’s continued success. So, prioritize the requisitions that contain these future skills.
• Look for areas with significant budget and headcount increases – look for business units, functions, and teams consistently given much higher-than-average budget increases. Also, look for units/teams designated exempt from any recent hiring, promotion, or salary freezes. Finally, look for positions across the company that have consistently been given increased headcount. Positions that fall into these categories are usually prioritized. 
• Use the cost of an error as an identifier – ask your risk management function to identify the high cost of an error job. When the employee in that job makes a major error, it costs the organization hundreds of thousands of dollars. You only want the best to be recruited into these high business impact jobs.
• Identify costly new hire failures – you need to hire especially well when the failure of a new hire can be extremely costly to the organization. So, consider prioritizing jobs where a failed new hire would be extremely costly to the team.
• Ask your consultants and vendors – getting an outside opinion on which jobs should be prioritized is often a good idea. So, work with your outside consultants and vendors to get their perspective on which jobs should be prioritized.
• Look at workforce plans – if your organization has an up-to-date workforce plan. Use it to determine which jobs and skills are expected to be critical in the future. And then prioritize recruiting for those jobs. Incidentally, your succession planning group may also be able to help you identify critical leadership jobs. That can’t be allowed to be vacant if your succession plan is to be effective.

Implementation Part 2 – Advice Covering The Elements Of Your Prioritization Process

Because you want to maximize the results from your position prioritization, you should consider including the following elements in the design of your process. Each element will dramatically improve your chances of success.

• Managers should make the final prioritization decision – my first and best advice on identifying priority jobs. The recruiting function should avoid making any final prioritization decisions. Instead, recruiting leaders should work closely with operational managers. So, in the end, it is a manager who takes ownership and makes the final decision on which jobs are prioritized. 

• Collaborate to identify critical business units – under position prioritization accurately. Every critical team job with a significant business impact could be prioritized. And because of that broad scope, a significant percentage of the workforce may be prioritized. Therefore, it’s critical that you accurately identify those business entities that will be prioritized. Recruiting leaders should work closely with the CFO and COO’s office experts on critical business units to ensure accuracy. So that together, the group can use data to objectively determine which entire business units, functions, and teams will be prioritized. 
• Limit the percentage of jobs that you prioritize – at least initially, I recommend allowing no more than three priority classes of jobs. Those classes would be priority, regular, and low-priority jobs. I further recommend that you make it a rule that no more than 25% of your positions can be designated priority jobs for recruiting purposes. Because if too many jobs are prioritized, prioritization will lose most of its value.
• Look to improve diversity hiring – if diversity is a primary recruiting goal. It makes sense to prioritize the specific positions where you have found that superior recruiting is all needed to improve your diversity hiring results in an area.
• Use an RPO for low-priority jobs – once you have identified your priority jobs. It makes perfect sense to save time and resources. By assigning the recruiting for some of your regular and all of your low-priority jobs. To an external recruiting vendor with a proven track record.
• Trial and error may be okay – when you don’t have the time or the information needed to make a data-driven prioritization decision. In the short term, it’s okay for the recruiting function to use trial and error to identify a few of the priority jobs. Then, as you gain knowledge and experience, you can shift the decision-making to managers.

If you only do one thing – start by picking an important job with frequent openings. Then, without mentioning it to the hiring manager. Purposely assign your best recruiters (with extra resources) to each new requisition for that job. Over time, see whether the prioritization of this job positively impacted the hiring manager’s satisfaction. I predict you will see enough improvement so your hiring manager will notice the change (because position prioritization really works).

Final Thoughts

Many in talent management always strive to be fair. They end up treating everything the same as a result of striving for equal treatment. You will find that many in HR and recruiting will initially resist the concept of prioritization. Prioritization purposely treats different jobs and business entities quite differently.

Unfortunately, I have found that treating all positions equally is a costly mistake. It could cost a large corporation millions as a result of slower and less effective hiring in all jobs. So, as an alternative, I suggest that smart recruiting leaders adopt the sports recruiting prioritization model. 

Everyone knows which key positions must get the highest recruiting priority (i.e., starting pitcher versus the bat person), and if you really want to be fair, be the most fair to your owner/shareholders. And objectively focus your recruiting on the jobs that will increase both business results and shareholder value the most!

Note for the reader

This is the latest in Dr. Sullivan’s 25+ continuous years of weekly talent articles. Access his thousands of articles here.
Please help to spread his ideas by sharing this with your team/network and by posting it on your favorite media.
And, you can subscribe to his weekly Aggressive Talent Management articles here or by following him on LinkedIn.