This year we celebrated one of the most significant events in the sporting world. It is none other than the 2022 FIFA World Cup! The goals, the skills, the adrenaline, the heartbreaks, the joy, and the glory - we look forward to all of it!
We can learn and analyse many things from this event, outside the sport aspect of it. There is plenty of work behind the scenes in building a 23-man team that will go the distance to bring glory to their nation. One critical backend activity that takes place is, of course, none other than recruitment itself.
Recruitment by National Team Managers
Let us review some of the key recruitment strategies applied by National Team Managers that you can use in your recruitment practices.
National Team Managers spend close to 4 years of continuous recruitment planning to build a team that will eventually play for a single month. There are many key takeaways from these managers, like how they plan and strategise to ensure they have the best line-up for the world cup, that you can implement into your recruitment strategy.
How does the recruitment process work?
Backroom Staff/Key Management
Any National Team Manager first forms a strong team comprised of multiple specialised managers such as an Attacking Coach, Defense Coach, Goalkeeper Coach, Youth Team Coach, Doctors, Physio, Dieticians, and Scouts. These technical talents are crucial as the backroom staff are be essential in advising the national coach on recruiting players for the squad. These managers are highly experienced in their scope and understand the key metrics when assessing players.
In corporate companies, this role is usually played by Key/Senior management. Therefore, the most important aspect a business should start with is establishing its key senior management to drive the overall talent planning based on its business goals.
Shortlisting/Scouting candidates
Regarding scouting, national managers will set up a team of scouts that continuously look for talent and analyse player stats. This greatly assists the manager in making a call when shortlisting players and finalising the quad. Similarly, the same can be applied when companies appoint recruiters to source on their behalf. When shortlisting candidates for a position, recruiters/scouts will gauge and assess candidates using the SEAT formula, which means Skills, Experience, Achievements, and the Type of person. Often enough, recruiters have a bird's eye view of the talent market and can provide insights to hiring managers, which helps them in their decision-making.
Talent Branding/Attraction
Something unique about World Cup is observing how managers attract players of dual citizenships to represent the country they are coaching. Monetary value isn't the main attraction to playing for the World Cup, so how do the managers convince these players to play for them? That is when talent branding comes into play. Managers need to spend time understanding the motivating factors of their talents and devise ways to capitalise on them. If not for money, candidates in the market are usually motivated if they believe in the project's value, the role they would play, and the leadership experience. Therefore, managers need to keep an eye out to identify which of these would be the best suit to attract the desired talent.
Crisis Management
Accumulation of yellow cards, red cards and injuries are inevitable and often plague teams playing in the world cup. Managing your headcounts during the World Cup is crucial to having a team that can successfully endure throughout the tournament. Hence, an excellent national manager would have robust backups to fill these vacancies should they arise.
Similarly, when hiring managers decide to run a recruitment drive, it is ideal that they do not reject all candidates once they have shortlisted a successful candidate. There are a lot of things that may take place from the offer management stage to the onboarding stage. For instance, candidates may take up a counteroffer, decide to go ahead with another offer from a competitor, or even get cold feet and pull themselves out of the process. Therefore, it is always practical to have options available until the recruitment process is finalised.
Planning Ahead
Succession planning is imminent for both a football team and a private organisation. One of the keys to being a successful football team or manager is based on succession planning. For instance, during this World Cup, a strong country such as Belgium struggled to perform as they relied solely on the likes of senior players and missed out on developing younger players for the team. This, as a result, caused an influx in the number of senior players in the squad, making it quite difficult for the team to assign replacements for underperforming players. On the other hand, if you look at countries such as France, Portugal, Netherlands, and Brazil, they can perform even without the presence of their star players as they have a continuous supply of talent to fill the gap. Hence, whether a football team or an organisation, it is crucial that succession planning is managed well to ensure the business's sustainability.
Although we agree that finding the right talent in the recent competitive job market is challenging, those mentioned above are some takeaways from the World Cup that you can explore as part of your recruitment strategy. By making the necessary preparations now, you'll be able to streamline your recruitment process and be prepared for the future. If you need help fine-tuning your hiring strategy, get in touch with our team today.