Strategic HRM (Human Resource Management) is about changing people to align them with your business strategy. The managers of the firm create an ecosystem, an environment, in which their people work. All firms employ people, therefore all firms have a people ecosystem. This paper considers how the people ecosystem can be managed to the best advantage of the firm and how optimising the people ecosystem leads to improved bottom line result.

Managers would often like to know if the person they intend to hire would at some stage in the future be a threat to the hiring company. Managers may therefore be keen to vet candidates before they employ them. But vetting is complex, shrouded in mystique by many firms supplying vetting or pre-employment checks. And statute constrains what's possible. Here’s some outline information on vetting.

Recruitment is a game. In this game a firm tries to hire someone to do a job. On the other side is a person who wants to find an employer who will exchange money for labour in order to achieve their life’s ambitions or just simply to make ends meet and feed their families. The firm aims to exploit the person and the person aims to get as much as possible in return. In recruitment there is a meeting of two minds, the future employer and would-be employee. [Published December 2010]

When assessing job candidates, a manager is trying to predict which candidate will perform best in a specific role. It makes sense therefore to use a selection process that will give an optimum prediction and it should come as no surprise that a thirty minute friendly chat and other ‘light’ selection methods come well down on the effective prediction league table. Here's a comprehensive discussion on how to get recruitment right.

When recruiting a new member of staff you want to select the best person for the job. But how? Use psychometric tools to test for aptitude. [Published September 2014]

Online gaming can be used as part of a selection process. If you play the game well, you get to make a job application. It’s a way of testing the applicant whilst promoting the organisation and informing the applicant about the job. TimelessTime's web-delivered customised assessment delivers quality in selection. It’s not America’s Army but it’s pretty close to CanYouCrackIt. Ultimately it is for that manager to validate what the automated systems are saying. What can gamification offer your firm?