Recruitment in the Security & Intelligence industry. Part 1

During my professional career I have recruited personnel from the hundreds to that one special candidate that fulfilled the niche role. I’ve asked some of those employees to work at minus 20 degrees Celsius during a Winter Olympics, some to conform to the Oil and Gas industry HSSE standards and some to delve the depths of OSINT for information to prove or disprove social media sentiment to an unfolding event and recruited directly for the Royal Navy and Royal Marines from a dedicated armed forces careers centre.

The vast array of skills in this industry can be mind boggling, but finding that magic combination of skills, experience and team fit often manifests itself into seeking a combination to a locked safe, you come very close to opening that safe door but often that final number eludes you and you accept you’re going to need to coach and mentor to bring that new team member into the fold.

Right at the beginning I’ll state that I am not a professional recruiter for a living, I just seem to have found myself in roles that have an element of recruiting built in. This does however seemed to have followed me from role to role giving me a somewhat diverse and unique perspective on recruitment in the security and intelligence industry.

Lessons learnt along the way shape our recruiting style and make us wary of tell-tale comments or behaviours exhibited by applicants during whatever recruitment process or tools are employed.

I once worked on a container ship in the Indian Ocean, looking Fwd. across the deck and stacks of steel containers; I saw one container door open and swinging back and forth in time with the roll of the vessel, I nodded towards it knowing the officer of the watch was already well aware and posed the question of whether that was a problem for him, the Chief Officer clearly in a more reflective mood on the seas remarked,

?“It’s never the 16,000 containers that give me any hassle, it’s the 19 crew on board that account for 99% of my time”

The ‘Human Element’ the ‘Nowt queer as folk’ idiom applies to every applicant as well as every recruiter, so if we’re all a little odd how on earth do, we find the right person for the job, the fit for our company culture, or the team member that slots in?

Note that, at no point did I write perfect in the above paragraph.

Notwithstanding, the first order of the process is to establish the need for the position, is it an actual need or are you just succession planning or even fantasy planning and perhaps with some organisation’s recruitment strategy and processes it now often appears they are looking for free consultations, “In 500 words how would you resolve this issue?” The identification of the role and what that role demands leads into a valuable piece of documentation that if constructed correctly can provide you a multitude of benefits.

The Job Description (JD). I place great stock in the JD, especially one that it going to be advertised publicly as it has inherent liability issues, projects the company’s culture and is the first exposure to any potential applicant what the hiring process is likely to look like.

There is a mantra to which I subscribe, it’s called Setting Expectations, this is done in every written word, every conversation, and every interaction with an applicant, it demonstrates to the applicant how much thought, planning, time, and effort the company have placed in the process of finding their preferred candidate. Note that, at no point did I write perfect in the above paragraph. In short it helps to inform an applicant how serious the company is about hiring.

The JD is a fine balance of enough information for the applicant to make a partially informed decision, (At this stage at least.) and for the company to rely on a degree of natural selection from the reader, without writing a wish list for every desirable skill, behaviour trait, experience, and social characterisation you could think of.

I once read a JD for a Security Specialist at a well-known US University, it had no less than seven pages of requirements with an applicant fluent in three languages requiring X years of experience, the advertisement was so narrowing in its requirements it effectively ruled out everyone within this industry bar a handful with its long list of Must Have’s.

This advert to me illustrated a remarkably unrealistic expectation from the recruiter’s perspective. Or more likely it just became a list of senior management’s opinions of what the incumbent should possess, an amalgamation of multiple managers’ all recruiting in their own eye to the qualities they saw in themselves. It didn’t allow scope for further improvement of work placed skills to be acquired but demanded seven pages of must have’s now, before you apply. Now that is natural selection!

It became a lesson in niche recruiting or trying to recruit the perfect candidate, (There I said it) if your JD is so niche, so specialist then speak to a specialist recruiter, engage the services of someone in the industry, look for a referral, but placing a wish list on Indeed.com or LinkedIn is a waste of time and resources. Whoever secured that role at the university was worthy of a salary at least four times the advertised one. (I did also suspect that the position was already earmarked for an internal applicant, but they felt the need to advertise it publicly because, you know,….. its policy, it was therefore decided upon, to make the position so hard to fulfil; that no one actually could.) ???

I find a balance of, key relevant experience, documenting what I would want you to do on arrival at the company and what you could likely be asked to do in the near future is a good start. I feel this short- and medium-term objectives delivers the right balance of enough information without overloading the role to make it unobtainable.

The next thing I look at is highlighting a Snapshot of the Role drilling down on key responsibilities of the role as a summary of the most important aspects of the job to attain, even if applicants fall short in other areas. It’s about prioritising what’s important in terms of skills and experience on a sliding scale with what’s important to a given organisation holistically. Is there a skill base to start from, do we have the time to train the individual, what’s the cost to us in terms of additional training and what are our losses if we have to train an applicant when they could have been instantly productive?

Once the JD has been built and signed off, I post on whatever board is most suitable for the role, which means understanding the demographic of the candidate you want to attract. Are you looking for someone with 30 years’ experience in a similar field or are you seeking a graduate straight out of university, for both these candidates are likely to look in very different places to find their respective roles. Referrals are a start, as are internal lateral moves and internal job changes, the last two may fill the spot with a safe pair of hands but are they the right pair of hands and doesn’t that just move the hole to another team of the company you need to fill like reverse wack-a-mole?

The next stage is expressions of interest from applicants, this is where the interested parties start to apply for the role or send in their CV’s for review. This is such a mixed bag of responses it always astonishes me on the length and breadth of their diversity.

This particular topic could be a whole other article but suffice to say at this stage that if one is applying for an office-based role in London, one really should consider highlighting your, office skills, IT credibility, managerial qualities, teamwork attributes, proximity to the office, in fact anything that closely, mildly or even remotely relates to the role.

I however receive CV’s from seemingly credible individuals who sought to highlight their achievements in underwater knife fighting, 15th Dan black belts and ability to strip down weapons wearing their boots on the wrong feet and all manner of lesser impressive feats of physical prowess and misspent youth, in fact avoiding as if on purpose any mention or relevancy to the role that they have applied for.

I have received a generic CV from an applicant which looked to be of sound nature, I then emailed the applicant back retuning a copy of the JD and asked that individual to tailor their CV to the JD so I could identify how their experience would match the needs of the role. They re-sent the identical CV back.

In life there is a surface and often a sub-surface context to communications, on the surface I was asking for them to spend some time re-formatting and aligning their CV to the Job Description.

The sub-surface context was,

?

1, I clearly thought that the initial CV had enough promise worthy of a second shot with instructions to formulate a revised version. Therefore, I must be viewing you as a potential applicant.

?

2. I wanted to see their ability to structure their CV to reflect the JD and how relevant their examples would be, could they draw comparisons, could they have transferable skills?

?

3. I was interested to see how keen they were by how long it took them to complete the task. Did they have a sense of urgency, was it a document they were going to return the following morning or next month?

?

4. I wanted to know whether a new document would be proofed, and the applicant had taken the right degree of care and attention before returning back, was it a grammar error and spelling free revision. Are you serious in your application?

The answer to all the above was clearly, No.

Suffice to say setting expectations is a two-way street, a CV that highlights examples from the JD is a great starting point, tailoring your experience however off-piste it may seem to the needs of the company shows that an applicant has read the JD, understands what the company is asking for and able to recognise and articulate what they have previously achieved in their professional life and how that could have relevancy in their application to the new role. This is of course is dependent on the applicant actually reading the JD, however condensed it may be, sadly this seems to be becoming a bit of a tall order for some applicants. I understand in the current market place everyone launches multiple job applications every day, no one sends a single applicant to the employer of their dreams, however I would encourage all to have a read of the JD prior to hitting send, you know just to ensure you’re applying for something you want to do could do, likely to do, on a day-to-day basis. More recently I have been tempted to write a requirement within the JD stating that the job requirements include lunch time lion taming without a chair, ice cream tester for brain freeze just to see if the applicant mentions it at all….anywhere?

?

A topic often debated is the salary in the JD, whilst this article is not going to go into the pros and cons of that decision, suffice to say a company that provides salary details upfront tends to waste the organisation’s time less as well as the applicants. Therefore, I would fall on the side of the fence of advertising the salary within the advert from the get-go. That way we are adding another layer of natural selection; the applicant comes into the process eyes wide open understanding the salary from the point of application to the point of signing the contract. In theory we can therefore weed out those with grander expectations and those that continue the process would understand from the content of the job description what our expectations are in line with what we are expecting you to produce in terms of your bang for our buck.?

We now find ourselves at the point whereby we have identified a requirement for a new role, secured funding or a purchase order and then built a job description that has been agreed by all parties in fulfilling the needs for the company.

From there we advertised, asked friends, colleagues, sourced referrals and now we have a stack of CV’s sitting in the inbox of emails. We’ve conducted a first sift of CV’s identified who has the potential to have potential and weeded out those who clearly have just had a punt or have had an accomplished but totally irrelevant background in butchering, baking or candle stick making who have applied for the role of Team Leader of the qualitative analysis section.

?

So, we are now sitting smugly with a shorter list of CV’s who have either read the JD and replied accordingly with a CV highlighting how accomplished they are in the field, those who have sent in their CV as a referral and without a doubt one or two wild cards who have somewhat limited experience in the field but could potentially bring a whole raft of other qualities to the role.

There then follows a shuffling of CV’s into what I term as the likelihood piles, these piles attempt to assert order to what is essentially a disorderly micro psychological speculative appraisal of the likelihood of a applicant succeeding and becoming an employee, another term I use is guesswork.

We look at what we know about an applicant at that stage and apply the probability filters (High Probability) (Medium Probability) (Low Probability) Shuffling the CV’s into the likelihood piles is an exercise in probability based on experience, aligning stars and planets, the current socio economic climate and the font used. This is because in the quest for the right candidate, people will surprise and delight you, as well as surprise and scare you.

Each pile however could have further subcategory headings. At this stage however we wouldn’t necessarily know what category they are going to file themselves in until we have that first conversation.

?

The following subcategories seem to crop up time after time.

(High Probability)

·???????? Lots of experience but not all the skills

·???????? They are interested, but wonder if there’s any negotiating with the salary

·???????? Most of the skills, most of the qualities and live in the same region

(Medium Probability)

·???????? All the skills but do they have enough experience

·???????? Do they live too far away, are they likely to re-locate?

·???????? They could be interested, but with a host of conditions

?

(Low Probability)

·???????? Can I have my pet cat in the office?

·???????? I’ve got multiple job applications in right now so I might opt for the other company at the last minute because I want to use your offer to leverage the other job offer

·???????? The one odd totally random category that you’ve never seen before and really didn’t see coming this time, such as Can I wear pinstripe dungarees in the office? Can I have part of my salary converted to Tesco Club Card points….

·???????? I know it’s an office based role but I really don’t have any issues commuting 200 miles each way on a daily basis

?

Which nicely segues into the next part of the recruitment process and where nearly every employer, corporation, start up and small enterprise engages in, the initial interview.

Some company’s now do it remotely, some like the face-to-face old school version and some really just aren’t ready or equipped for the process, that goes for the employer and the applicant. Putting aside the technical innovations in zoom and remote interviewing software, one should really consider what it is they hope to achieve through the interview process.

Is it just a chat to get to know people and you’re going to base your decision on likability, are you interviewing your favourite applicants’ or is it a genuine level playing field where the best applicant gets to win the role? And what or who defines the best applicant? ?

Questions and strategies that need to be discussed and agreed upon within house should happen prior to the interview in fact, as with most things’ preparation is the key and this starts long before the applicant sits down in front of you or their screen.

Those who are entrusted to conduct the interviews have a duty of care towards the company and a duty to the applicant (Or should I now refer to them as Candidates, clearly, they have applied, and decisions have been made to progress them into the recruitment process which would now make them candidates). So, what duty of care does an interviewer have to a candidate?

Surely the duty of the interviewer is to ascertain the suitability of the candidate to fulfil the role as advertised is it not? In essence Yes, but how they go about that can differ radically depending on the company, the job role, the interviewer, and the interviewee. ?I write this article based on my experience in the private sector and public roles such as being a detective for a number years and interviewing criminals and witnesses, but surely I’m not interviewing a candidate for a corporate role in the same style that I would have done when conducting a suspect interview, I’m not trying to pick apart or unravel a suspect's, oops, candidates account, however getting through the BS to the truth is surely the ultimate goal of all interviewing,……or is it?