Let’s change recruitment forever!
Posted by Mitch on 5th February 2016
Everyone seems to want to “reinvent” recruitment.
Or “disrupt” it.
Or, in the case of these clowns, “change it forever”.
Apparently, the big idea in that last link is that the company are going to change recruitment forever by introducing some tech that will make it easy for everyone to be a recruiter by referring their friends for jobs.
Yeah, I know. Genius, right?
The thing that all the recruitment gurus and disruptors refuse to acknowledge is that recruitment is what it is because of people – and unless someone comes up with a piece of tech that removes the human element all together, I can’t see it changing anytime soon.
But.
There is a piece of ‘old tech’ out there that could change recruitment.
Last year the Washington Post published a blog that suggests there is no evidence that interviewing job applicants prompts better hiring decisions.
My own 143 years of experience in the recruitment industry (that’s dog years by the way) has brought me to a place where I find myself agreeing with this premise.
I’ve seen too many candidates who have almost totally matched the brief I’ve been working to, not get the job.
Sometimes I’ve even squirmed with embarrassment for the line manager when listening to their attempted rationale for hiring someone, when what they really wanted to say was “I’ve just got a hunch about this one”.
So what do we do about recruitment selection to make it fairer for everybody involved?
This is a tough one and I’m sure it’s a question that the Recruitment Futurologists (the planet’s true failed recruiters) will dissect to death over the coming months/years/decades/millennia.
So, putting-on my borrowed recruitment futurology hat, I pondered this same question for what felt like a lifetime, but was in fact only 7½ minutes.
You put all of the shortlisted candidate names into a hat (or a big drum if it’s a big shortlist) and basically do a prize draw.
First name drawn gets the job.
Second name gets the job in case the other person turns it down.
And the third name gets a Primark voucher for 25 quid.
You could turn it into a bit of an event. Get a few beers in, some nibbles and maybe Youtube it as the theme for a new employer branding video.
What difference would it make to British industry if companies selected candidates this way?
Would work performance really suffer some seismic shift downwards?
Think of all the management time that could be saved not having to interview people, not to mention the reduction in stress.
No doubt some Dig Data Scientist will come along soon and tell me that not interviewing people really is going to become the future. No wait, that’s what the Futurologists do, right?
Seriously, run with the Tombola idea for a while.
Comments
By Stephen O'Donnell on Friday, 05 February 2016The only thing that will change recruitment forever is something that can never happen - a single solitary location for every available job.
If there ever existed a single platform for all jobs, and no duplicate ads were ever posted, then life would be immensely simpler for candidates and employers the world over.
What it would also mean is that every single available candidate could be found in that single CV database - no need to go raking through multiple expensive job boards. Employers would know that they weren’t missing candidates lurking somewhere else.
In my view, any so called advance in recruitment is simply fannying around with a contrived system setup to block any hiring until a fee is billed.
By James Mayes on Friday, 05 February 2016
I bet the tombola would have a positive impact on diversity. Chew on that one!
By Mitch on Friday, 05 February 2016
Thanks for the lol, James. As is often the case, truth is borne out of cynicism.
By Bill Boorman on Friday, 05 February 2016
Mitch,
You know Google did something like this in an experiment. From memory it was something like 50 hires by their usual method, and 50 hired by random selection. (This was after selecting the CV’s for the random picks by skill fit according to the CV.) They monitored them for 6 months for performance, retention etc and the performance split was something like 51% in favour of the random selection. Bring on the tombola
By Marc Dhalluin on Saturday, 06 February 2016
Key reason for poor hires? Laziness, avarice and incompetence. Poor briefs that merely tick boxes, place at all costs syndrome and interviewers who can barely tell the difference between stated skills and ability. Too much money, too little care. And, oh, someone forgot to say these are humans, not cans of soup. These reasons help good practitioners rise above the quagmire.
By Sam on Wednesday, 10 February 2016
Does the person drawn 4th still get a place in the Champions League?
By Mitch on Wednesday, 10 February 2016
Blimey, I didn’t know that Bill.
Can’t say I’m surprised though.
By Mitch on Wednesday, 10 February 2016
We’re working on that, Sam.
By Adam Hill on Thursday, 11 February 2016
Stephen O’Donnell - All this would do would be eliminate one of the very few things a recruitment consultant can class as a salable skill!
What happened to building networks, talking to people, recommendations, referrals and - (crazy one here, watch out) - meeting people?!
Why trawl through a CV database, calling hundreds of people and then effectively having to take a minimally educated guess as to whether they are good at their job, when you could ask someone who works with guys just like the person you want. Someone with whom you share a mutual trust and respect that he won’t refer crap people and you won’t abuse the contacts he introduces you to?
Alas, it seems I’ve been doing it wrong all these years. I should be doing keyword searches on CV databases, then throw as many as possible at my already inundated hiring manager and see what, out of the proverbial I’ve flung, sticks.
I’m going to stop now before I bounce of the ceiling, but before I go a message for Mitch: I’m behind any crusade to bring some respect and integrity back to this industry, good job Sir. Even if your hard work doesn’t eventually turn it all around, you can be damn sure it will make a big dent.
By Mitch on Friday, 12 February 2016
Thanks Adam.
By Shannon Erdell on Wednesday, 09 March 2016
Amen Adam, and thanks Mitch for teaching me a new word! I’ve never heard it here in the US.
By Mitch on Wednesday, 09 March 2016
Which word was that, Shannon?
By Kavi Kumar on Thursday, 17 March 2016
Hi Mitch,
Great article. My only concern is that this approach seems to take a bit less work - how will you justify your full retainer fee?
Leave the tombola behind afterwards?
By Mitch on Saturday, 19 March 2016
Great question, Kavi.
Leaving the tombola behind could work. We’d probably need to call it a database or a talent pool though.
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