The recruitment process

Posted by adi on Nov 6, 2008 in The world of the web

I was reading an interesting message by Seth Godin today that asked why companies will often spend an awful lot of time and money to market their products, yet when it comes to trying to attract the best people for new positions they do the bare minimum.

I’ve had some experience of the recruitment process recently and many things do stand out as obstacles to the process of hiring outstanding people, a few of which I’ll discuss below.

1. Hiding the company. I regularly see adverts that contain openings such as “our client, a leading name in xyz industry is looking for….”.  Presumably this is done to protect the recruitment agent from people applying direct to the company, which may sound reasonable enough from their point of view.  From the point of view of the hiring company however I fail to see how this helps at all.  Surely it is in their interests to attract candidates that not only want to work for your company but can also then provide an individual response to how they could benefit your company.
2. Failing to sell the story. Storytelling is without doubt one of the best ways to sell a concept to the reader.  Each of us grows up with stories yet they so often stop when we reach adulthood.  All of which is unfortunate because they still hold an awful lot of power.  In a job advert for instance, why not paint the scene of a day in the life of your new role?  Explain about the jobs you would be doing, the people you’d be working with, the company culture.  What seperates your company out from all the others in your industry?  Changing jobs is one of the more stressful things a person can do so sell it to them, make it sound as exciting as possible to be joining your company.
3. Not taking the time to do the recruitment yourself. I’m sure the use of recruitment agents has many benefits but I can’t help but think that in a modern service economy, where the workforce is the principal asset that recruitment is one of the main roles.  Yet increasingly it seems that agencies are used to fine tune candidates on their clients behalf.  It’s akin to a football manager hiring someone outside the club to suggest players for them.  I remember Jack Welch used to say that human resources is the most important department in the company, and if recruitment is outsourced to such an extent it begs the question how hands on that company will be once you start working there.  Retention is after all just as important as recruitment.

Anyway, a few things that have perked my interest in the past few weeks.  Your comments and thoughts are always welcome.

Tags: Employment, Human resources, Marketing, Recruitment, Seth Godin

Should employees learn political skills?

Posted by adi on Nov 5, 2008 in The world of the web

Yes, according to Vickie Gallagher and Mary Laird, two American psychologists.  They suggest that in highly political work environments, those people with low political skills suffer reduced job satisfaction.

Political skill was measured by participants’ agreement with statements like “I spend a lot of time and effort at work networking with others”.

A sense that the organisation’s decisions are influenced by internal politics was measured by participants’ agreement with statements like “I have seen organisational decisions based on things other than business necessity, like the wants of a certain few.” Finally, job satisfaction was measured as you’d expect by agreement with statements like “I feel fairly well satisfied with my present job.”

They suggest that existing employees should be trained to be more politically skilled, and indeed new recruits should have their political skills considered as part of the recruitment process.

You can see the full study here.

What do you think?  Are political skills vital to enjoy work?  Are they something that can be taught?

Tags: Employment, Job satisfaction, Politics, Recruitment

How often do you hold project post-mortems?

Posted by adi on Oct 17, 2008 in The world of the web

I’m sure many of you have made mistakes in the workplace, or worked on projects that have failed for whatever reason.  But how many of you have subsequently conducted training on those mistakes, analysing what happened, why it happened and how the same mistakes can be prevented in future?

Obviously a key facet of knowledge management is the flow of information within an organisation, both good and bad.  Freedom of expression is key, but there seems to be a lack of regular dialogue concerning project failures, at least within the companies I have worked for.

As Einstein said, insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

The reason for this blog was a study I read last night concerning the training given to a bunch of firemen in America.  The researchers wanted to determine whether training that focused on the mistakes others had made in the past worked better at minimising errors than training that focused on best practice.  Two groups were given case study based training, with one group receiving case studies of failed missions, and the other receiving case studies of successful missions.  When the data was analysed it was found that the firemen that received the training on failure had improved judgement on missions than those that didn’t.

In a corporate environment this is often tricky because by pinpointing failures it can feel as though an employee is being picked upon.  Perhaps in an individual setting this can be intensified, but if the project team are given the opportunity to analyse performance collectively and improvements made then it could go a long way to stopping those failures occurring again.

It would be good to hear from you.  Does your organisation conduct training on failed projects as well as successful ones?

Tags: Best practice, Case study, Education, Employment, improvement, Knowledge Management, mistakes, training