recruitment

Don’t look back

Posted on by Blog

I stand to be corrected, but if memory serves me well I’ve only once employed a direct team member in two different organisations. And in that case it was many years later and after they had already left the organisation in question. To say that I find it peculiar when people hire people from their previous teams, is an understatement. It completely baffles me.

Let’s start first of all with the moral arguments, or those of good and decent etiquette. Whilst there are often contractual and legal reasons for not seeking to solicit previous employees, there’s also in my opinion a really simple point of etiquette. A bit like stalking an ex on the internet to look at the pictures of them with their new partner, or driving slowly past the house that you once lived in to see what they’ve done with the decor, there is something a little bit icky and unbecoming about going back into an organisation that has been part of your past to make it part of your future again.

But more than this, it also infers a limited self confidence and a level of protectionism and closed mindedness. The chance that the very best people that are available to do the job that you need doing are in the place that you previously worked is highly improbable. There are of course certain circumstances that might prove extenuating, when a full team moves from one organisation to a near competitor, for example. But these are nearly always closed off by the contractual restrictions I mentioned above.

One of the things that I’ve loved throughout my career is working with different people, with different perspectives, ideas and approaches. Sometimes learning to get on and find your groove can take a bit of time, but that’s as much about stretching yourself and adapting to other people’s styles. In many ways that’s one of the joys of moving to a different organisation, learning new things, new ways and working with new people (incidentally that’s also one of the joys of moving sector). Bringing the people that you’ve previously worked with is going to limit that stretch and potentially lead you to continue to have the blind spots that you previously were unaware of.

Would I rule out ever working for a CEO I’ve worked with before? No, but I’d want to know that there was enough time and space between it to make sure that they’d changed and so had I. I’d want to know that the organisation was entirely different and there would be things that I would need to learn and develop in. But would I ever take the people who’d worked for me with me? I just wouldn’t. For the very simple fact that I would want them to grow and develop and learn from different leaders in different contexts. When push comes to shove, no matter how brilliant they are it would be better for them, and it would be better for me.

Moving on up

Posted on by Blog

A few years ago I wrote a post about internal promotion and the comparison to external candidates. It is fair to say that it raised quite a bit of debate at the time and a range of differing views. If you don’t have the time, or the inclination, to read the original post, my point was essentially that internal candidates should be given more benefit of doubt when being compared to external candidates.

One of the main challenges that internal candidates have is that their limitations and areas for growth most likely already known. Which, whilst some would argue is a benefit, can often be a reason to look beyond them. So does that mean that as an ambitious internal candidate you have to move on and look externally? Well obviously sometimes that’s the right thing to do, but before doing that, how about trying to address some of those gaps?

Every HR person and recruiting manager is different and of course I only speak for myself here, but when I’m interviewing or assessing an internal candidate I’m quite happy for there to be gaps between the role and the individual, it is only to be expected. But I want the candidate to be aware of that too. And that is particularly true if the role that you’re applying for is a promotion.

To put it more bluntly, no-one applying for a promotion should have nothing to learn. In fact it is entirely counter intuitive to believe that could be the case. Whilst there are always financial and other considerations, and I don’t mean in any way to belittle these, my experience is that the deciding factor for most people is that they want to pick something new up – more responsibility, a different team, a different department or function, a different business area.

Yet the moment you put them in the assessment process, the justification of worth can start and completely overshadow the very thing that I want to see. I want to know the individual has understood the requirements of the role, has assessed themselves against them, has made an appraisal of the areas that they can and can’t currently demonstrate and are willing and able to work on the gaps. I want them to have identified the very best person doing a similar job and asked themselves the questions, “how do I get to be that good?” not, “how do I persuade them I’m good enough?”

Being an internal candidate is hard – for all the reasons that I’ve mentioned in the previous post. No matter how we assess external candidates, they will always have the ability to add more spin and positioning than we will ever fully see through until they’re in post. But at the same time, internal candidates have a whole host of data, information and connections that they can use to their advantage. They just need to make sure that they absolutely do.

When recruiting gets tough

Posted on by Blog

I’ve mentioned before that I started my career in a recession and how the process of getting my first job was utterly soul destroying. To this day, I still have the rejection letters that I received from the hundreds of companies that bothered to reply as a reminder of how it feel to be on the receiving end. The letters are almost uniform in their nature, with banalities mentioning the number of candidates, the fit to the role, but with little specificity or anything of any help.

A quick scan through Linkedin will show you that many are in that current position. And with headlines in the news about the thousands of applicants for roles it can all feel bleak and difficult for candidates. At the same time, hard pressed resourcing teams are finding themselves faced with increasing numbers of applicants and in many cases, simply do not have the time or resources to handle the new volumes in their existing processes.

It is a tricky mix. But one that those of us in the industry need to work through.

We need to automate but not depersonalise – automation can be a big help, many organisations will have a system of some sort for recruitment. But at the same time, we need to understand the impact that a cold automated email has on the morale of those seeking work. The wording that may have been acceptable six months ago, may seem clumsy and uncaring now.

We need to balance the effort of the applicant with that of the resourcer – there is a temptation to introduce a whole load of exercises or tests to reduce the number of applicants. That’s fine, but if you’re going to ask an applicant to spend an hour of their time to do these, you better provide them with something more than a simple email. The more you’re asking candidates to put in, the more you need to give back.

We need to be open to all – I’ve seen a lot of well meaning people say that they are going to prioritise those who have been made redundant. Others copying and pasting statements about being willing to help “anyone they’ve worked with in the past”. Whilst I understand the sentiment behind these, they’re both discriminatory and unfair. We cannot know the background of all our candidates, so we need to treat them all the same.

We need to ask for what we need – The qualifications shambles that has taken place over the last few weeks should act as a blunt reminder that qualifications are not a good means of selection. Nor is asking for prior experience beyond the needs of the role. Now more than ever, we need to specify only those things that we need, it may increase the number of applicants, but it is also more likely to get you the best hire.

We need to be humble and care – Every applicant is a person, a human being, with a unique story. They’re not a candidate number or a CV. Our focus on candidate experience should increase during this time, even if our approach to it needs to change. We may not be able to handle things in exactly the same way as before, but we should care about candidates equally, if not even more.

It’s more than bums on seats

Posted on by Blog

I’ve always enjoyed resourcing. Well, with the exception of interviewing which I to this day find the most terribly dull activity to spend a whole day on – one or two is my limit. Which makes it more surprising to me when few leaders seem to spend as much time on it as I think they should.

When I was studying HR back in the days of steam engines and the printing press, recruitment was seen as a bit of a transactional process. Our efforts were mostly focused on the how and not the why. Bizarrely, much of the recruitment chatter at conferences these days still focusses on the same, with technology platforms taking the place of strategic discussions.

If we believe that people are a defining competitive advantage for organisations, if we believe that having talented, committed, passionate people in the right jobs is critical, then we have to spend more time focussing on recruitment and resourcing than simply talking about the latest platform to help improve speed/reduce headcount/take out cost. Because ultimately, our job isn’t about any of those things.

Hiring good people should be hard, whether internally or externally. It should make us think, we should put time, effort and investment into it. Our obsession to make it easy absolutely misses the point of why we are doing it. An employee that is paid £25,000 probably has an annual cost to the business closer to double that when you take on costs, occupancy and other factors, if they stay for five years, that’s £250,000. How many other decisions like that would you enter into with such little due diligence?

That’s before I get into the cultural factors, issues of inclusivity,  future needs, team dynamics etc.

If, as leaders, we believe that human capability is one of our key responsibilities, then we need to take resourcing a lot more seriously than we do. And those that work in HR and recruiting teams need to get much better at explaining why. This isn’t a process that can be outsourced or systemised in the relentless pursuit of cost savings, it is a strategic imperative that needs to be understood.