Courtenay HR

Usual Prospects

Recruiting talent - such a major topic currently and one which we need to make sure we get right. However, you could be forgiven for thinking that, despite the rhetoric, we don’t actually take it that seriously at all given some of the rather ropey practices involved in hiring people into the organisation. On the other hand, maybe we take it too seriously; looking too hard, digging too deep, without considering the wider implications or issues of doing so or indeed, assessing the value in this investment.

If we consider current practices, we can see that these vary widely from organisation to organisation, both in thoroughness and quality of approach, yet pretty much every organisation would make a statement to the fact that recruitment of talent is key to the success of their business.

Frequently, some of the most important hires into an organisation - those at the mid level, the up and coming talent - are recruited through some very slack and undefined processes, even within the framework of a preferred supplier infrastructure, which while no doubt reduces cost per hire, does very little to improve the quality of information that flows during the hiring process, or improve the candidate ‘experience’

They say how crazy it is that as consumers, we invest so little time and effort in the process of buying a home when it’s the biggest single spend item we will ever make. Well, the same can and should be said for corporations when recruiting staff. It’s usually the one biggest expense on the P&L, yet you wouldn’t know it from the quality and level of attention that it gets across the organisation. If you want to know what a company’s decision making process etc is like, just go through the recruitment process.

Whatever is done, it’s important to do it properly. Keeping it tight and doing it well are as important as doing it thoroughly. So how can the business of identifying talent be so variable when it is apparently valued so highly? And how can we get the balance right?

Defining requirements and being thorough

It has to be said that in many cases, defining requirements is poorly done. No doubt internally, at the design stage when the job is created it is well defined. But when that requirement is translated into a recruitment need, the detail is often lost.

Job descriptions themselves are insufficient to translate the detail and nuances of the requirement, even when they come with a person specification, which is not always the case. When they do, they are often dry and confining, focusing more on limits than on possibilities and asking for wish list character profiles. Ask yourself how many job descriptions/requisitions you have seen with completely conflicting personality or character traits that just do not exist in the same person.

Many organisations enlist the help of a third party to help them in the process, paying significant fees, particularly at the senior level. But, speaking from experience, the investment in that third party in terms of equipping them with the right tools to attract the best candidates can be very low indeed.

“This is the job description - it’s a bit out of date but its near enough” or “Organisation chart? It’s being updated, I’ll send you a copy” (You never do!) I’d be a wealthy man if I had a fiver for each time I have heard that - even from my own lips as an HR professional.

Assessing the candidates

If we do get the briefing and attraction process right, the next hurdle to overcome is selecting the right candidates from the available pool. Testing has become a common feature in the process, used in many cases to raise the predictive validity of the more traditional forms of selection including the traditional interview and assessment centres. Despite the wide use of testing however, there is no evidence that correlates the outcomes of psychometric instruments with success in role. But that does not stop their prolific use. And our seeming obsession with digging deeper into the candidate’s psyche.

Ultimately, we have to ask ourselves if we are we digging too deep. A recent article in Management Today profiled a number of professionals who had undertaken a range of psychometric tests as part of a selection process. The instruments used included the usual tests but others that were perhaps more obscure. To quote one person “One test really probed my inner psyche and my deep dark secrets”. Another mentioned a tachistoscope, which apparently measures ‘non rational defence mechanisms’ by flashing up images and asking what you see. Apparently, they correctly identified a period in his life where he had gone into virtual hibernation! Is this really justifiable and does it really add value to the recruiting process? As previously mentioned, it gives no reliable view of how successful the person will be in the role over time, so why bother?

It also raises the issue of who reviews the results of these ever more intrusive instruments. The issue of HR professionals or line managers fancying themselves as budding psychologists is a real one. One could argue that the output of such processes, particularly the deeper and darker stuff should only be interpreted by an occupational psychologist or psychiatrist and not someone who has been on a two week course.

But we do need something to shore up the traditional interview as a method of selection. The standard interview, undertaken by an ‘average’ manager has a success correlation (between success at selection and success in role) of 0.18 so it’s no surprise that used on its own, it has its shortcomings.

This can of course be improved with the use of structured questioning and probing where answers are not clear or forthcoming. If the interviewer is trained properly and some form of structured competency framework is used, the correlation improves to 0.40. This improves again to 0.65 if the structured interview is supported by some other form of objective assessment.

If we refer back to the house buying scenario, hiring on the strength of an interview is like buying a house without having a full survey carried out first.

Getting it right

There are some things that can be done to improve the whole process and increase the chances of making that all important hire.

• Prepare properly - Invest time in translating the original job design into a recruitment brief that actually lives. Try to avoid staid or stereotypical descriptions or jargon and bring them to life with actual case study or example material. Get one of the peer group of this role to articulate the opportunity as a previous candidate who can describe a slice of real life in the job and the opportunity it presents to those coming in.

• Focus on the future - So much of the recruitment and selection process seems to be focused on past or present competence, rather than potential, which is far more important. Create ‘living’ and ‘future’ based recruitment requirement documents. i.e. those that encapsulate the behaviours and actions of someone successful who is actually doing/or has done the job.

• Work with your partners - If using a recruitment partner to help you, make sure you invest the time required to ensure they are excited about the proposition too. If they are fully engaged, so will the candidates be. Make sure you give them up to date documentation including org charts but also don’t just rely on what you impart verbally in half an hour or so and the job description. If you do, you will find that your partners will have no choice but to elaborate on your words or worse, turn to your website and cut and past swathes of that boring marketing speak that resides in your ‘About Us’ pages.

• Use testing instruments wisely - If psychometrics are to be used, be clear before the process begins exactly what conditions or parameters the person in this job must meet and distinguish between the killer factors and those that are less influential. Use the psychometric tools to help you build this profile before selection, rather than relying on a collective wish list of traits that are impossible to find or judging outputs for each individual in isolation at the interview stage.

• Treat your candidates like customers - If their experience is bad, they will tell plenty of their friends about it. And anyway, as potential talented hires, they deserve to be treated well and not made to feel grateful for the opportunity to interview with you. Challenging times when it’s a sellers market.

• Recruit honestly - Make sure your recruitment messages are true to your organisation and that these come through in the process. So many organisations attempt to create a veneer at the recruitment phase that holds false promises of the environment and the opportunity. This is one of the biggest issues currently as the whole subject of ‘employer branding’ gathers momentum.

  More companies are investing significant sums in creating an employment experience and messages that, under scrutiny do not stack up with the reality of life inside the business. This can be tremendously damaging and is probably one of the biggest contributors to employee dissatisfaction and retention issues and can lead to employees feeling hoodwinked and cheated.

• Keep the ball rolling - One of the biggest problems, even with organisations that have thorough and robust recruitment practices, is often the timing and management of the process. With the so called war for talent prevailing, it’s often a sellers market and ambiguity around the process will result in losing good quality candidates.

  So many organisations lose out on great potential hires because they procrastinate and deliberate over irrelevant details, or they stall the communication because of internal issues which are often not even relevant to the hiring process. This does nothing to enhance the organisation’s brand in the mind of the candidate, which in the current market is an absolute priority.

Remember - keep the process tight, timely and open, and you won’t go far wrong.

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Recruiting HR Managers

Traditional attributes of interpersonal skills, empathy and knowledge of the details like employment law are no longer sufficient in isolation for a successful career in HR and need to be supplemented with all round commercial skills. In recognition of this change, Courtenay HR has overhauled their selection and assessment process.

“Having recruited HR professionals for over 30 years, we know instinctively when we meet a good HR professional and what their key skills are”, commented Chloe Watts, Consultant at Courtenay HR. “However, with demands on the role changing, and the dynamics of measuring HR skills becoming more complex, we decided to introduce a more rigorous and relevant selection model.”

Based on the work of leading thinkers in HR, including David Ulrich, Courtenay have created the Beta Map™, an assessment model that looks at four key areas of contribution:

• Strategic Intervention
• Change and Transformation
• Employee Contribution
• Infrastructure

“We delve deep into each area, fleshing out actual evidence of influence and involvement. The assessment of experience using the Beta Map™ is supplemented with a character profiling tool - the Courtenay HR Character Map™ which gives us a further dimension on which to base the discussion.”

The benefits of the new approach are numerous. “From the candidates’ point of view the interviews are far more rewarding, as we no longer ‘walk’ through the CV. It does throw candidates from time to time who are used to talking through their experience, blow by blow in a chronological order. But in most cases, they like the fresh approach and appreciate the more challenging nature of the interview.”

“An added benefit for the candidate is that they walk away with a feedback report which they would not get anywhere else. It also allows us to give development feedback in a structured and meaningful format”, said Watts.

Courtenay is also benefiting from the new approach. “We are now able to benchmark the candidate pool much better than we were before. This gives us an invaluable insight into where the gaps are and also provides the client with a clearer understanding of how the shortlist candidates compare.”