Recruitment is rotten

“Recruitment has a bad image. How do I know this? I am one of the hundred’s of thousands of recruiters who used to be the typical gun for hire: business developing and slinging candidates to make quick money. I was pretty good at my job (by the standards of my employers and peers) and thought I knew all the answers. The numbers I produced, the fact that all my KPI’s were adhered to and that my quarterly bonus was big reflected this. Right?”

“In spite of all this I was becoming more hollow because the level of service I was giving was dictated to me, not by my clients, but by my company. In the push to provide bums on seats, the need to be at the Chairman’s club for top producers or to be at the top table on the latest incentive lunch drove me. In reality I should have let my dedication to my clients drive me. So what changed my outlook?”

“I changed when I saw the dis-satisfaction in hiring accuracy and my attitude towards it. I qualified my candidates well, but there were times when I just never understood the argument against my candidate’s when they weren’t hired. I felt there had to be a better way; a way to ensure greater accuracy beyond the norm of sending a written profile and a CV. This was more for my clients benefit. Making a gut decision could potentially have a devastating cost implication and I wanted them to avoid this”

“So what is my point? Did you realise that 25% of new hires leave within 6 months of starting a job. The cost to the business is huge: recruitment costs, lost productivity, training and re-hire mean that losing an individual will cost your organisation up to 8 times basic salary (some consultancies place the figure higher at 12 times basic salary).”

“Can you overcome this? Most managers believe that the typical recruitment proposal is effective and saves on time and money. Why persist with this belief when the reality of the scenario is that a process which engages a candidate and manager for a maximum of 2, one hour face to face interviews and a 15 minute presentation hours prior to hire is ultimately flawed. Where is the understanding of the candidate’s core values, assessment of their intellect or understanding of their motivations other than the candidates say so?”

“Have you ever had a recruiter say “I will share the risk?” Ultimately the process we have designed enables us to confidently back this up and put our money where our mouth is!”

Don't worry I'm not sick I'm just unemployable

“So I just got my test results back. No, don’t worry, I’m not sick. I was referring to my psychometric test results. In spite of the months of study and validation I was still a bit sceptical about the 99% accuracy claims etc.”

“These tests formulate the backbone of my business and boy was I impressed by them. The accuracy was astounding as my parents can attest to (who knows me better, right?). I took home the feedback and let my parents loose on them. In fact my Mother said “How true, I’ve been telling you this for years.”

“I guess you want to know what I am all about. My intellect test was interesting and I guess I have to be honest. I don’t have the engine I thought. When it comes to the verbal reasoning I am a Ferrari, the numerical reasoning a soviet era Skoda. I was placed in the 95^th and 48^th percentiles respectively. That means there are 5 people in my norm group of 100 who are better at words than me whilst there are 53 (see what I did there) who can reason with numbers much more fluently.”

“My intrinsic motivators saw no shocks but it is nice to be validated. To summarise my results my ideal role is a strong GM role with the ability to drive conceptual projects to reality. I have a low need for structure but really enjoy consensus and group decision making. I don’t like the day to day responsibilities of line management but certainly do enjoy engaging the wider business when it comes to development. I want to seek new challenges constantly as opposed to consolidating and am Very entrepreneurial.”

“My Orpheus personality test also, validated some areas I was aware of but others I wasn’t. With reflection they ring very true. On a scale of 1-9 my fellowship or social skills were high, scoring an 8; authority too was high scoring a 7; scoring a low conformity was fine as it’s my business but others may not be too willing to take me on board as I would be difficult to manage. The next trait is my emotion level which again scored low at 2. Great if you have to make hard decisions and don’t panic when things go wrong.”

“So where am I going with this? When I worked for a spray and prey recruiter (they weren’t that bad compared to most) I always saw the testing phase as an evil that compromised speed to market and slowed down my number generation. The biggest frustration was seeing credible, qualified and very senior people being phased out of the process.”

“What was I doing wrong as I always prided myself on my ability to qualify my candidates? Surely that hour (on a good day) that I spent with them was enough to go back to the market place and scream: “look who I’ve got”. It clicked. I didn’t know them well at all. I had no understanding of their core values, their behaviours, motivations or intellect.”

“That’s the value of testing. It gives you the chance to see what’s on the inside and to validate the skill set claimed by the applicants. It will help you make the right decisions consistently based on hard data: will this person be loyal, will they be honest? Are they easy to manage, can they lead a team effectively? Do they understand your companies core values? Are they motivated by money or by delivering your product well? Are their behaviours sophisticated enough to fulfil the function you want them to? Can they reason well numerically and apply that data to a complex problem?”

“The scope is accurate and helps you make the right choice for the future of your business. In fact a combination of Testing, Behavioural event interviewing and Assessment centres will increase the odds of you getting your hire right first time from 25% to 90-100%.”