SPEC Kit 344: Talent Management · 11
well-constructed strategy are enormous, because ef-
fective recruiting is the foundation upon which any
talent management program is built” (Breaugh 2009,
p. 21). This section of the survey focused on learning
what strategies or local circumstances have impacted
the responding libraries’ success in recruitment, how
successful the libraries have been in recruiting a spe-
cific set of skills, the relative importance of various
credentials (e.g., MLS, MIS, PhD) when recruiting, the
type of onboarding activities the responding libraries
have undertaken, and the greatest challenges they
have when onboarding new employees.
The survey asked respondents to indicate which
strategies or circumstances had the most effect on the
success of their recruitment efforts. The 50 responses
show that most circumstances have a positive impact
(determined by either a 4 or 5 on a scale of 1 to 5, with
1 having negative impact, 3 having a neutral impact,
and 5 having a positive impact). The most positive
strategies/circumstances include benefits packages,
support for professional development, position re-
sponsibilities (41 responses each, or 82%), and work
environment (40 responses, or 80%), followed by repu-
tation of the institution (36 responses, or 72%), flexible
work scheduling (30 responses, or 60%), employee
engagement (29 responses, or 58%), sabbatical/profes-
sional/research leave (24 responses, or 48%), potential
for promotion (21 responses, or 42%), eligibility for
tenure/permanent status (19 responses, or 38%), and
faculty status for librarians (17 responses, or 34%).
The only circumstances or strategies that had a more
equal balance of being either a positive or a negative
were the salary range (both 18 responses, or 36%) and
local cost of living (positive was 21 responses, or 42%
negative was 19 responses, or 38%).
The survey next asked how successful libraries
were in recruiting staff with the following skill sets:
language expertise, IT expertise, subject expertise,
senior management/executive expertise, functional
expertise or other. In general, the 51 respondents seem
to have reasonable success in recruiting for all skill
sets however, they reported that they were less suc-
cessful in recruiting for two skill sets (determined by
either a 1 or 2 on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being not at
all successful, 3 being neutral, and 5 being very suc-
cessful): information technology expertise (9 of 51
responses, or 18%) and senior management/executive
expertise (9 of 50 responses, or 18%).
Another interesting finding was that all 51 re-
spondents unanimously indicated that a Master’s of
Library Science was an important to very important
degree for potential employees (determined by either
a 4 or 5 on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being not at all
important, 3 being important, and 5 being very im-
portant). Only 83% of them (42 responses) indicated
the same for a Master’s of Information Science. The
relative importance placed on the MLS as compared
to the MIS does not seem to align with the importance
of information technology expertise and skill sets that
is seen in other responses throughout the survey.
Onboarding is “the process of helping new hires
adjust to social and performance aspects of their new
jobs quickly and smoothly” (Bauer 2010, p. 1) and
the faster new employees are onboarded, the faster
they can function effectively and contribute to the
mission of the organization (Bauer 2010). The results
of the survey show that many of the 51 responding
libraries use traditional programming, relying on
a new employee orientation at either the library (50
responses, or 98%) or the university/institution (49
responses, or 96%) to onboard their staff. A much
smaller percentage use other onboarding techniques
such as providing networking opportunities to new
staff (28 responses, or 55%) or staff pairing such as job
shadowing or coaching (20 responses, or 39%). The
challenges to onboarding new employees that were
most frequently cited by the responding libraries (31
responses) were: employees who were geographically
dispersed, acclimating new employees to the culture
of the organization, orienting new employees to the
structure and roles within the library and in the larger
institutional context, and the time it takes to develop
and/or maintain an onboarding program.
Retention
“Retaining the appropriate talent can determine the
success or failure of the organization” (Phillips and
Connell 2003, p. 5). Lack of employee retention can
result in high financial costs, loss of productivity,
loss of expertise, degradation in service quality, and
decreased satisfaction of the remaining employees,
and negative image of the organization (Phillips and
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