Does pressure overcome good practice?
October 6, 2008
I read an article in People Magazine recently that looked at the culture and people practices of Google, (Finders Keepers, 18th September), this year’s best place to work. Google is one of those holy grail places for job seekers in the industry, with its famous funky offices, free dinners, flexible working and a multitude of other employee perks. It’s also well known for its top class management practices, so for HR professionals looking to implement new ways of working in their own organisations, it’s a good place to start for ideas. But how much of what Google does is realistic in other companies?
The most startling aspect of the article, which was an interview with Lianne Hornsey, Director of people operations, was the number of interviews a candidate will go through before being engaged. Whilst the process has been reduced slightly in the last few years, it’s still common for most staff to have at least five interviews, and for more senior positions, many more than this. During this process the candidate will be interviewed by the line manager, potential colleagues and people they would be managing if relevant (360 degree interviewing), and if any person in the process has concerns about the candidate, they are not taken on. These processes sound really good and I’m sure Google have fewer problems down the line with retention, performance and capability as a result, but since the company receives 3,000 applications per day, Google has much more scope to carry out these systems than the average company. Google is such a huge brand and so well known as a great employer, I imagine there are no worries about competition in terms of other companies the candidate may be interviewing with, whereas when I am recruiting, I’m always made aware that ‘if I want this candidate I have to move quickly because they’re also seeing X competitor and won’t be on the market long’. I can imagine that many companies avoid long winded recruitment processes just because of the fear of losing good potential candidates. Add that to the internal pressure from managers to get people into post quickly because of work pressures, and it’s quite hard to put your foot down and say no, we’re doing it this way because we need to get the right people. Even when the company has been burned by poor performing employees that were recruited in haste, it’s hard to get the message home about taking your time over choosing future employees, because all the day to day pressures get in the way and cloud everyone’s vision. Sometimes you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place: get the wrong employee and you’re dealing with difficult issues and potential retention issues further down the line; fail to employ someone when there’s a heavy workload and you could deal with retention issues with the existing staff due to stress and pressure. Being prepared and good planning is obviously important but of course this doesn’t always happen.
Google sets a really good example of how to recruit and manage people, and should be used as such, but you have to see these practices in the realistic context of the organisation you’re in. I guess the best lesson that can be learned is that brand is everything, and if you can get to the point where your candidates are coming to you because they are dying to work for the organisation rather than the other way round, you can implement a very different way of recruiting new employees.
Why the structured interview is better
September 18, 2008
If like me you’re carrying out a lot of recruitment and selection at the moment, then you may be involved in interviewing candidates, as this is probably still the most popular selection method in most organisations. We’re all well aware of the financial turmoil the UK (and other countries) are experiencing at the moment, so in organisations that are still recruiting rather than laying off staff, it’s even more critical to avoid a poor recruitment decision as this can turn out to be a very costly mistake.
Some interviews I have been involved in have turned out to be quite an informal discussion based around the CV or information the candidate has submitted, and I can see why some hiring managers wish to make the discussion more like a business related ‘chat’ than an interrogation, as this can often put the candidate at ease and make for a more open and honest discussion. However there are several reasons why this method fails to help interviewers make a good decision about the candidate:
- Talking about the candidate from the point of view of their history, i.e. around their CV, leaves the risk of discussing a lot of irrelevant information that may appear to be impressive, but bears little importance in relation to the job in hand.
- Of course, even parts of a candidate’s history that are not directly linked to the available role can still be relevant in terms of transferrable skills and situational experience, but it is possibly only the skilled interviewer that is able to make these connections without a direct linking question. And how many organisations out there can honestly say that it’s only staff that are trained and experienced in interviewing that carry out the process?
- Failing to work from a structure that is based on the job needs means that all the candidates that interview for the same role may not be assessed against the same criteria. How can you make a sound judgement about a group of people’s ability to negotiate if you have only covered this subject with half of them? A lack of structure means that your decisions could be made on areas that aren’t the most critical
It really makes sense that candidate selection should follow a clear, flowing process: analysis of the role that needs to be filled; creation of a comprehensive job description and person specification or set of competencies; then the building of the interview questions or other selection methods from these requirements. Clearly this is the ‘process’ that many hiring managers will follow almost subconsciously; they know the job and they ask questions to find out if the candidate can do it. But there’s no reason not to prepare for this process, and really think about it so that every aspect of the job and the role requirements are covered comprehensively. As for the actual style of the interview, it is possible to make the candidate feel relaxed and make the interview chatty or informal without having to sacrifice the structure that will help you make an informed choice. This is more of a skill for the interviewer to learn than a technique or process, and often comes with experience and confidence in conducting interviews.
… and another thing!
September 14, 2008
After my rant yesterday about dodgy recruitment agencies, I was thinking about the differences in experience I’ve had with recruiters working for my organisation and thought I would share a couple more anecdotes about things to look out for when using agencies.
Recently I’ve had cause to terminate quite a long established agreement with our main recruiter, after I had heard a stream of complaints about his poor practice in the last year and after losing a few employees because they hadn’t been managed properly in the process of finding a job. The problem is that many recruitment consultants are heavily targeted (and commissioned) on everything from new business generated to number of conversions (i.e. how many job offers were received against the number of candidates put forward), and this means that some of the more pressured ones end up giving a less than satisfactory service to both the candidate and employing company in order to force through recruits and hit their targets. The complaints I received recently were that the recruitment consultant had mis-sold the company and the job to the candidate and on another occasion had promised a salary review at a much earlier time than our organisation would ever offer. In both these occasions, the agency cannot be held completely responsible for both misunderstandings, as it is down to the company and employee to establish expectations and make the job role and company very clear. However one candidate, who ended up leaving quite soon after starting, said that he had not asked as many questions as he could have done in the interview because he felt the recruitment consultant had given a really clear picture of the role, and as this was his first role out of education he had not thought to check this out himself. He then found that the description had been completely wrong just to suit what he was looking for in a role. With the employee who was given an incorrect salary review date, his initial paperwork from the company made the correct date clear from the outset, but the fact that he had effectively been ‘convinced’ into the role with incorrect information reflected badly on my organisation and made for a poor start to the employment relationship.
I also have examples of the opposite to this scenario. Having worked for a while with a small locally based agency, I have found the service much more reliable and honest. Whilst the size of the company may mean that sometimes they struggle to cope with the large volume of recruitment we throw at them, I think the main consultant we work with has really taken the time to understand the organisation and what is needed. Sometimes we discuss a candidate before they are put forward and during the conversation, the consultant will say ‘I’m not putting them forward because after what you’re just said, they’re not right for the job’, which is a refreshing change from the CV farming we see from some others – where they have simply looked on a jobsite and found CVs for people with the relevant skills, had a quick chat to them over the phone and sent them through for us to discover whether they’re right or not. I think that for the not insubstantial amounts companies pay for recruitment services, a more in depth pre-screening should be standard practice.
One thing we will now be doing is asking specific questions to candidates and newly recruited employees regarding their experience of the recruitment agency, including how they found the company (e.g. advertising, word of mouth or were contacted directly from the agency), how the role was explained, the pre-screening process and how they found the consultant (e.g. were they pushy, did they listen etc). This is something I am hoping will help us to keep finding quality candidates without the worry of how the company is being represented to them.
Watch out for those recruitment cowboys!
September 13, 2008
Moaning about dodgy recruitment consultants seems quite a regular feature on this site, but as this is a major part of my role in HR it’s something that I’m plagued with on a daily basis. Finding the recruiters that work well for me and then continue to do so in the face of difficult assignments or a little bit of pressure is not an easy task.
One thing that has really irritated me lately is the lengths to which recruitment agencies will go to find candidates, and I’ve experienced many trying to directly poach staff from my organisation recently. Now, I’m not naive, I know that there’s a lot of headhunting happening in the world of employment, and I know that employees everywhere are being approached by recruiters looking to fill lots of roles. This doesn’t bother me. What does bother me is when recruitment agents call the actual company to speak to employees that they have identified as potential candidates from company websites or the ever helpful networking sites such as linked in (whoever invented that, cheers very much, you’ve made my job just that little bit harder). To get through to these people the recruiter will pose as a potential client or customer, sneak past the receptionist with a well placed fib and a bit of schmoozing (our receptionist is very good but sometimes the caller is more canny) and once they’ve reached the target candidate, start to pitch various jobs offering the world and more. This, in my opinion, is underhand and very unprofessional, but I have experienced even worse than this:
I am quite fortunate in that many of my employees will inform me if they are being chased by a recruiter and what has been said, so you can imagine my delight when I was contacted by a consultant who ‘really wanted to work with me’, when I had only the day before been told that he was contacting my employees to offer them new opportunities. I have to say I really enjoyed cutting the cheeky blighter down over the phone, and he was most embarrassed. As you can imagine I haven’t received a further call.
Another quite amusing situation happened recently, although for those involved it wasn’t actually that funny. A colleague of mine sent me an email conversation that had taken place between him and a number of other people in similar positions in the region. This had occurred because a slow witted recruitment consultant had sent a group email offering retail vouchers for applications or candidate referrals out to all the potential candidates she could gain details for – many of which were their work email addresses – and she had failed to hide the addresses from all the other recipients. This led to many outraged responses from the people on the list, expressing their disgust at having their email addresses revealed to so many other people, and the fact that they had been portrayed to the industry as a job seeker when they were not looking for a new role. Some of my favourite comments were:
- ‘Pretty shocking behaviour, and doesn’t do the recruitment industry stigma any favours…’
- ‘what makes you think any potential job applicant wants to have their email address made public in this manner? Surely there is more tact in your industry. Please remove me from your books immediately’
- ‘I’d suggest removing everyone’s data from your mailing list as you’ll find nobody inclined to do business with you from now on.’
This example just goes to show how careful you need to be when dealing with the recruitment industry. However there are many really professional recruiters out there and it’s important to see each provider on their individual merits, but you need to continually review the service you’re getting and also encourage your employees to highlight recruitment sharks to you if at all possible.
Skills shortages and pay rises in the IT sector
August 26, 2008
A shortage of technical graduates and off-shoring schemes for low level IT work are both to blame for skills shortages within the IT sector and rising salary expectations for mid to high level IT professionals, according to recruitment consultancies and Incomes Data Services (IDS), the HR research organisation. This situation is leading to a skills gap, where IT graduates cannot find their first position out of university because much of the entry level work is being outsourced to countries such as India or China, and therefore cannot gain the 1-3 years’ experience required for the roles that many organisations are struggling to fill. This has led to a reduction in IT graduate numbers – applicant numbers for technology degrees have fallen by 48% since 2001.
This is proving to be a big problem for technology related companies and IT departments, not only in sourcing good quality candidates, but also in retaining the mid-level staff, who have perhaps gained a couple of years experience with the company, and are now being enticed away by higher salaries elsewhere because their skills are so much in need. I have experienced difficulties in recruiting staff in this area with more than one year’s experience, yet I don’t have the same difficulties in recruiting new graduates. This isn’t too much of a problem as long as the company is able to provide the appropriate training and support to these staff, who may have never had a job before. All of the new graduates come with the necessary technical skills, but may need close supervision or strong direction in terms of company policy, client management or commercial awareness. Further down the line, it is necessary to be on the ball in terms of retention of these individuals that the company has put a lot of time, effort and money into, as there are so many positions out there and not enough people to fill them. I am constantly plagued by recruitment agencies that find out the names of key staff in my organisation, call them under the guise of a client, and then offer them interviews for jobs with sky high salaries that we cannot compete with. Fortunately most of the time the staff let me know when this happens so that I can contact the agency to complain, but I have lost some staff because of this problem. Understanding the needs and desires of existing staff to retain them is a continual effort, covering all aspects of the employment experience including salary and benefits, career progression, learning and development and general happiness/interest in the role. Here’s some more ideas on how to manage staff retention.
With the continuing decline in IT graduates and increasing pay requirements, companies need to be quite innovative in their approach to recruitment and retention in this area. If you have any advice or experience to share regarding this issue then please leave a comment.
You might need your GCSE’s after all!
August 13, 2008
When I was at school studying for my GCSE’s, I always thought that Science was a waste of time. When am I ever going to have to think about chemical bonds or the process of photosynthesis ever again in my life? Well, it seems that it is more important than I thought.
It seems that nearly 59% of firms have had difficulty in recruiting employees that have the necessary scientific skills. Jobs in the this industry are increasing and by 2014 it looks like there will be 2million jobs that require science skills.
In order for young people to take up careers in Science, the high achievers at school are being encouraged to do three separate GCSE’s in Biology, Physics and Chemistry rather than double or single awards.
The director from the Confederation of British Industry, Richard Lambert has said:
“We need to create an environment in schools that reflects the importance of science, and the value of studying it. We also need to send an unambiguous message to young people who are good at science that science as a career can be fascinating and worthwhile, and will reward you well.”
It isn’t just this industry that has problems finding people with the correct skill set, this is probably an issue in most firms, finding the right candidate isn’t as easy as it seems.
Have you had a problem with finding the right employee’s for a role? if you have, let me know.
Job prospects fall to a record low
August 12, 2008
It appears that Job prospects have fallen to a record low according to a recent CIPD/KPMG survey, and it looks like there is going to be an increase in redundancies and recruitment is falling sharply.
The survey showed that employment prospects are at their weakest level since 2004 when the survey first began.
In the third quarter of 2009, 29% of employers expect to increase staff levels, this is quite a drop from the 37% who said they want to boost their recruitment in the previous quarter.
Redundancies are also planning on increasing, with 27% of employers planning for them between the second and third quarters this year.
The CIPD’s Chief economist, John Philpott had something to say on the matter:
“The jobs market has been one of the few bright spots in the UK economy, but cracks are appearing in the face of an increasingly uncertain economic outlook. Even if we avoid the scale of jobs fallout suffered in previous downturns, the era of the candidate’s recruitment market is already over, with people in work becoming increasingly anxious that their P45 might soon be on its way.”
This is quite scary business, redundancy is an awful thing to go through, and it just makes you wonder whether your job is as safe as you think it is.
Succession planning (2)
August 8, 2008
Yesterday I was discussing the definition of succession planning and the fact that traditional models of this practice are no longer relevant in today’s business environment. So how can succession planning be effectively implemented within the constraints facing companies today?
As I said yesterday, identifying the roles that the company will need to fill in the future may be difficult due to the rapid changes that take place, in some industries more than others. Where I work the current management team looks completely different now than it did only a year ago, because the needs of the industry have changed, and because innovative thinking within the company has led to whole new departments that have required management structures being implemented. Therefore I think that in succession planning activities, it will be more relevant and useful to identify the likely skills and competencies of future leaders rather than specific jobs that will need to be carried out. Many companies use competency frameworks for their selection and performance management processes, and these can be developed to be used in succession planning. Information from performance management activities can be used to identify potential, or for a more in depth way of identifying talent, development centres provide a way to measure individuals and encourage them to contribute to/manage their own development.
Skills and competencies of potential leaders may be quite different to the skills and competencies they need in their current role. It is common to promote people into leadership roles within a team because they are exceptional at the role that they will in future be managing, but this does not necessarily lead to success. Many excellent leaders are in fact better at facilitating others’ success in a particular practice than actually doing it themselves. Skills such as motivating others, coordinating workloads, listening and coaching are more important than operational skills – there’s no point being great at something if you can’t get your staff to do it effectively as well. Moving into a leadership or management role can be challenging as it’s quite hard to stop ‘doing’ when you should be ‘managing’. Effective succession planning needs to allow the time and space for future leaders to practice ‘letting go’ and coordinating activities instead of doing them all themselves.
Progression can no longer always be about promotion to more senior positions within a company, due to the changing shape of organisations as I discussed yesterday. However this doesn’t mean that individuals cannot grow and develop themselves, and this needs to be recognised, highlighted and rewarded where appropriate. Traditional succession planning might concentrate on management development, probably involving formal training courses and focussing the development in the one area where the individual would eventually end up. As we know, in the new business climate, leaders need to be aware of wider strategic issues and understand where their particular function contributes to the strategy. Therefore more appropriate succession planning activities may involve ‘lateral moves’ such as secondments to different parts of the business, different challenges such as new projects or initiatives, or simply more autonomy or responsibility within their role. A lot of candidates ask me about ‘progression opportunities’ within the organisation and I tend to explain that while the traditional routes to senior positions are not necessarily available for everyone who would wish this, there is a great deal of personal progression within the role, for example working with more complex projects or with higher profile clients. It is really important to make sure employees understand how they are progressing and measure this realistically instead of benchmarking against traditional career paths that are not completely realistic in the current business environment.
Succession planning, to me, is about managing expectations and understanding aspirations as much as it is about planning for the future of the business. It’s no good setting long term plans in motion that will make the organisation a huge success if the employees involved don’t see where they’re going or understand their place in the plan. The last thing you need is employees who are gaining all the good skills you’ll need in the future to leave because they didn’t see the potential in the career they had in the company.
What is succession planning?
August 7, 2008
With all the talk about ‘the war for talent’ and the lack of leadership and management skills in the UK labour force, there’s quite an emphasis within the HR community on succession planning at the moment. I’ve done a little bit of digging into what this exactly means as it’s a phrase that’s used a lot but the exact purpose and meaning isn’t always completely clear, and I think this is because career development as an idea has evolved and developed in recent decades. This is due to many things including the changing nature of business in a now global environment and the increase in women on the ‘career ladder’ instead of working up to the time when family commitments take over and then dropping out of the labour market.
The CIPD describes succession planning as ‘identifying future potential leaders to fill key positions’. Three key problems with this idea come immediately to mind:
- Firstly, with the rapid pace of change in today’s business environment, it’s sometimes impossible to predict what senior positions will be available in the future, so it’s difficult to identify potential and then nurture it.
- Secondly, the idea of a ‘career’ as a succession of jobs in the one company or even one industry is completely outdated. A few weeks ago I was talking about ‘career changers’ going into the teaching profession and there’s a lot more movement between different industries and jobs now than in the past. Now you hear about ‘protean careers’ – i.e. people having more than one different career in their lives, and ‘portfolio careers’ – i.e. the people who manage a number of different roles within the one career (consultancy and teaching together, for example). And these types of careers are now more of a life choice rather than a need. So with these ideas in mind, there are fewer employees willing to stay in a company for the long term awaiting a succession of promotions as there would have been a number of years ago.
- Thirdly, the structure of organisations has changed in many places, and we now see flatter, or sometimes ‘matrix’ structures where the opportunities for progression in the traditional sense are few and far between.
So succession planning has become more of a two-way relationship. As well as attempting to consider the business needs of the future, employers need to ensure they are meeting the career expectations of those they are intending to develop into the leaders of the future, at a quick enough pace, otherwise all their good work may be wasted when the employees go off to succeed a leader in another company. Another area to be aware of is the growing acceptance that employees have family lives, and will assert their rights to these lives more now than ever. So succession planning needs to be flexible to individuals’ needs for a work-life balance and a family-friendly career.
So, after thinking about the definition of succession planning, it seems that the practice is much more complicated than you would think, and there seems to be a lot than can go wrong. However it is an important practice to think about. Whilst the labour market looks set to grow due to increasing unemployment, this doesn’t mean that the employees left behind deserve less attention and development, nor that companies should start recruiting all their leaders from outside of the company just because there is more availability of candidates. However on the other hand, some companies tend to promote from within simply because an individual has been with the organisation a long time or has shown favourable traits such as commitment and loyalty, but if this is the case across the board there is a danger of ending up with a senior team that has not had enough developmental attention or that has been poorly selected for the positions.
Tomorrow I’ll look at how companies can carry out effective succession planning within the constraints and difficulties of today’s business environment.
Lee’s not the only CV fraudster!
July 25, 2008
Remember the recent victory of Lee ‘THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT’ McQueen from The Apprentice, and the embarrassing way his embellished academic achievements were exposed by the interviewer that had phoned up his university, to find that he had only spent about 4 months there! Now an in depth study has found that occurrences of candidates lying on their CVs are increasing. Powerchex, a pre-employment screening company analysed thousands of applications submitted in one year to financial services companies and found that 17% of applicants had made something up on their CV. This figure was 4% higher than the previous year’s figure.
The study seemed to suggest that applicants felt that their academic background would be a big factor in their success, as candidates with degrees from lesser known or lower ranking universities were much more likely to embellish facts than those who graduated from one of the top 20 universities. Indeed, in Lee’s case, it was his academic background that he felt let him down so much that he needed to lie, and this led to the embarrassing and uncomfortable situation he faced when he was found out. However, Lee’s dishonesty didn’t lose him the opportunity to gain the role with the 6 figure salary at Sir Alan’s company. I think that Sir Alan could understand Lee’s reasons for mis-representing himself, and felt that Lee’s work experience and performance on the show were much more important factors to consider than his poor academic record.
Personally, I’m not really concerned which university a candidate attended, or even if they have a degree at all, as long as they can prove to me that they can do the job in question. Of course, in other industries academic achievement is much more imperative to certain roles, and some employers would argue that even if a specific qualification isn’t required, the fact that a candidate has completed a degree shows a certain level of application, commitment and ability. I would agree with this to a certain extent, although I don’t think that it means that someone who decided not to go to university is automatically less able than someone who did. There is a perception that lots of employers do think this however, and I can therefore understand why candidates sometimes feel they have no choice but to fabricate some facts on the CV and risk being caught out (I don’t think it’s right though!)
Employers worrying about candidates telling fibs on their CVs need to find ways of investigating this without it taking an unnecessary length of time. It’s not practical to phone around universities and colleges for every candidate coming through, so instead those people selecting new employees must use their questioning skills effectively at the interview stage. Effective questioning and probing can draw out the detail of what a candidate has achieved or the knowledge they have gained, and it will expose CV cheats if this is done well. See my article on effective questioning in interviews for more information on techniques and interview structures.
Some candidates will always push the boundaries of what is honest and proper when job hunting, and lots of them probably get away with it due to the relaxed attitude and approach of the employing organisation. A lot of the time this may not really matter as long as the person comes in and does a great job for the company, but there will be times that poor candidates slip through the net because they embellished facts and nobody found out. It’s these candidates that employers need to fear, and this is why effective recruitment and selection processes are very important.