I am passionate about recruitment – it is one job we really have to get right, so crucial it squeaks. Without the right people in the right places we might as well fold and go home. And the time and effort we have to put in if we get it too wrong is unbearable. After laughing until I also squeaked about a recent interview experience of my chum – to be described at various points in this blog but briefly it was a bit 1970s sitcom awful – I drifted off into a daydream about what it is that makes recruitment go well. So here goes.
I have worked with too many organisations who don’t actually know what they want in a candidate, or even in a role, but plough on anyway perhaps thinking they know or perhaps not knowing what knowing and not knowing looks like. Bear with. Looking in from outside, understanding where the organisation has come from and where it is now (which happens because of conversations that are had….), without the emotional investment in the place that people often develop, I can often see a different picture. Organisation A thinks they want a process driven go-getter with bells and whistles to grow the business – what they really need is a relationship builder who will warm up the group and grow friends for them and grow it that way. What organisation B thinks they need is a chummy friend to get the best out of people – what they actually need is a ballsy battleaxe who will weed out those irksome poorly practicing people and replace them with the right ones so that the good ones are enabled and retained. All without a damp eye but with definite precision and skill. On the inside it can be difficult to see clearly for all the fog of commitment, fear, pressures, emotional baggage, time constraints. From the outside none of those things impact and the clear air allows a forensic view to be taken. So often, before we even get as far as a JD PS and advertisement we are on the wrong tracks.
Tip one: be rigorously clear about what is needed and before you can do that, be rigorously clear about why you are recruiting. What outcome do you actually need rather than what kind of person do you think you want?
So, we have decided what we want. Now we set about finding the who.
My chums sitcom style interview (if only that had been intentional……) was such a hoot he was almost left lost for words. Props: a desk, some chairs, people with double sided A4 pages covered in pre-set questions (probably taken off t’internet) who were congenitally unable to deviate from script. Questions that seemed unrelated to the job itself (asking someone if they can perform a certain task, apart from begging an affirmative – who says they are crap at things during interview?! – relies on that task being relevant to the job ) demonstrate very clearly the interviewers own lack of skill and understanding. It was almost as weird as asking someone interviewing for a job as an HGV driver if they can ski or bake bread. A bit WTF.
Interviews, which only occur after a bit of screening, should be a conversation, not a set of boxes that get ticked. Those boxes will tick themselves if you talk in the right way. Sitting behind a desk asking a series of usually pretty meaningless questions (“describe your management style” “well pretty shite really, I am a bully and I hate my colleagues”……..) is the death knell for relationship building. We talk endlessly about networking, the how why and wherefore, and in reality interviews are the budding start of a working relationship and an opportunity to connect. Wasted if we just sit there asking if someone knows which piece of legislation goes where, but so so useful if we chat about experience and knowledge and see the person. A personality unfolds in front of us, we share stuff, we connect. Even if that person isn’t the right one for this job that relationship is started, and who knows where you might all end up. There are lots of bits of research, practice guidance, training courses, manuals, that all try to teach people about interviewing and recruitment, but at heart, once you know what you are looking for and realise you might find it in an unexpected place, having a conversation is the best way to find the right person. The rest follows.
So, Tip two: throw away the bog standard question-and-answer nonsense. Have a nice conversation that everyone can enjoy being sure to incorporate those requirements without making a big fat hairy deal of them. Be interested in the candidate, who is, after all, a person, and one with background, experiences, views, skills and probably a nice sense of humour and some pictures of their kids/grandkids that would be nice to see, possibly some Out There hobbies that would grab you, maybe even a great recipe for soda bread (yes, I blagged a really good soda bread recipe during an interview – it was brilliant).
Finally, if someone has taken the trouble to apply for a job, has had a detailed conversation with a recruiter or similar about it and has been put forward, courtesy kind of tells you that a quick email or phone call with the outcome would be appreciated. It would be good manners. It would be kind. Not, as happened recently, the candidate following up and receiving an email by return that simply said “This position is no longer available”. Nothing else, nada, zip, tumbleweed. In what realm is that ok? Even just in terms of relationship management – presumably that candidate will remember that recruiter in the future, perhaps when recruiting to positions themselves. But really just common courtesy, which after all oils the wheels of relationships.
And I guess that is really where I am heading with this. Our whole journey is about relationships. Trust, courtesy, honesty, purpose. If what we are doing is a barrier to that rather than a bridge we are doing it wrong. If we are doing it wrong, it will not go well for us.
So……have a chat, make some coffee and get out the good biscuits, make sure there are enough cushions and the room is warm without being oppressive. And if you are recruiting to a social care or health care post, make sure the people that will be on the receiving end are at the heart of it – not a boltontokenpopinboxtickingshallow here-we-are-with-some-punters-aren’t-we-inclusive-and-personcentred-and-lovely effort, but a genuine involvement with proper engagement and listening to the people with the lived experience and then using that and showing it working alongside each other.
Are you hearing the passion, that real passion I have for recruiting? Well, if you are recruiting and you don’t feel that passion you might want to get someone else to do it for you………….I mean it kindly. xx
