Ethics in headhunting
Some recruitment agents have questionable practices.
Example of questionable practices in recruitment firms
I have got surprised that many companies appreciate for "unethical (at least in my perspective)" recruiters. The hiring counts on fee despite the wrong ways.
- Posting fake jobs to gather CVs into a database.
- Not telling candidates a client's name and an applying position. The job is not a confidential search.
- Sending CVs without candidate permission.
- Wrong candidate, wrong position.
- Zero research before contacting clients/candidates.
- They say they’ll call back, but they never do.
- They don’t know anything about the jobs they’re recruiting.
- Use high-pressure sales.
The filling does not always mean an ethical way.
Some agent recruiters help the hiring, but they make many candidates have negative experiences. However, many agencies appreciate the billing regardless of questionable practices. Thus, many agent recruiters tend to take whatever works for the placements. In a worse case, they make whatever works for achieving a weekly performance measurement. They must hit the weekly KPIs. They will meet the candidates without proper jobs and submit to clients without matching the job criteria.
The bad practices at other agencies annoy not only candidates but also us. For example, TI Agents always tells candidates a client's name and an applying position except for the confidential search. We get explicit permission from candidates for the application. However, we sometimes get a surprise after the submission. Our clients tell us another agency had submitted the profile before us. In the result, we have found out unethical practices as the list above.
The question raised to me 'why do agent recruiters need more ethics?'
Few clients have asked me the prevention from the damage of the employer branding. The recruitment industry is competitive, and the pressure of the speed in a game is extreme.
Four points can provide protective mechanisms.
- Self-discipline
- Managers' influence
- Peer pressure
- Environment
1. Self-discipline
It starts from a personal moral principle about right and wrong. It matters to whether the practices are beautiful or not. It depends on whether the working style makes us feel proud of ourselves or not. It is a personal preference and the professionalism each recruiter believe. Besides, the open-mindedness to other's perspective is also essential.
However, it is not easy for an individual to keep hungry in a hard time.
How many nice persons can stay positive when unethical peers and managers get a promotion, more commission, or more salary?
If a company promotes a toxic recruiter to management, it creates two issues to challenge self-discipline.
- It encourages members to achieve billing at any cost including unethical things.
- It damages an employer branding due to negative candidate experiences. Negative employer brand costs more for hiring.
2. Managers' influence
If you are in a managerial position, your subordinates follow your behaviors as a role model more than administrative rules on paper. Besides, managers are the first and the foremost where staff reports for unethical behaviors. Support, trust, and transparency from managers increase the report for ethical misconduct.
According to the 2013 National Business Ethics Survey (NBES 2013) by the Ethics Resource Centre, the NBES found that ethical misconduct is more common at upper corporate levels.
- Managers committed 60 percent of reported misconduct in 2013.
- Lower-level managers were associated with fault 17 percent of the time. It was 19 percent for middle-level and 24 percent for upper-level managers.
- More than a third of respondents (34 percent) didn’t report violations out of fear of retribution. 21 percent of employees who said violations got some punishment.
- Seventy-two percent of workers reported misconduct. They had received positive feedback from their supervisor for ethics. Only 51 percent of them said it. The second group had not received such recognition.
- Employees likely report wrongdoing when they believe they influence in the workplace.
- Eighty-two percent reported to their direct supervisor. Most (52 percent) said they wound up talking to higher management. Human Resources (32 percent), Hotlines and ethics officers (16 percent) were much down the list.
3. Peer pressure
One of the most potent social influences is peer pressure.
'Peer Pressure' is the direct influence on people by peers. We all have a social need the acceptance to belong to a group. We don’t want to disappoint team members. So, the social pressure in the workplace encourages to follow their peers. They adjust their attitudes, values or behaviors.
According to a study by University of Iowa researchers,
“Peer pressure from team members is more effective than money in prompting strong performances from workers. However, this works only when team members get along." "They work with each other, they encourage and support each other, and they coordinate with outside teams."
- Look at the bright side of peers
To make healthy peer pressure, effective communication about the expected behaviors is crucial. We often have a negativity bias. So we need to repeat to see the bright side more often. Our brain has a higher sensitivity to unpleasant news than neutral or positive things. Our capacity to weigh negative input evolved for a good reason. From the dawn of human history, our very survival depended on our skill at dodging danger. The brain developed systems to notice danger and thus, hopefully, respond to it. The problem of memorizing the negativity is causing unhealthy stress at workplace.
Look at the positive parts of a team.
- Interactive communication for ethical practices
Face to face interactive communication is ideal. However, the corporate blog is also a vivid and regularly-updated model of what a company expects.
Kathleen Edmond, the Chief Ethics Officer at Best Buy, created an open blog for company employees on ethical lapses. Employees read the company policy for ethically questionable behaviors. Members learn tips on how to best defend themselves from crossing ethical boundaries. More members active to discuss ethics, more positive peer pressure work.
- Daily habits for ethical practices
A boutique size company like us, TI Agents, has the advantage to communicate the ethical practices by a face to face discussion daily. A specific, consistent, timely, and constructive feedback brings a better outcome. Besides, a small organization is more natural than large enterprises for sticking on corporate values in hiring. Building satisfactory peer pressure may take time. One bad hiring can make a huge negative impact on the whole team. In my experience, I had negative peer pressure at the early stage of the company. I had to refresh the team against the wrong hiring until all members have a good standard and the social influence works on behind. I wrote the culture codes on Day 1 of the company. Also, I hired members based on the corporate values. However, the missing part was the intensity of the culture. I needed to make the expected behaviors embedded in daily practices rather than on paper.
4. Environment
- What matters more when it comes to personality, by genes or environment?
Research suggests that both inheritance and environmental factors shape our traits.
The study, the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart, researched 350 pairs of twins between 1979 and 1999. The participants included sets of both identical and fraternal twins who were either raised together or apart. The results revealed that the personalities of identical twins were very similar. It does not matter to whether they were raised in the same household or raised apart. It suggested that at least genetics largely influence some aspects of personality. This certainly does not mean that the environment does not play a role in shaping character. Twin studies noted that identical twins share approximately 50 percent of the same traits, while fraternal twins share only about 20 percent.
- Performance measurements in a supportive environment
An aggressive pressure on unrealistic KPIs often leads to unethical practices.
Many agent recruiters need to avoid the heat from the boss when they do not meet a daily or weekly KPIs. This situation explains why some of them invite candidates for an appointment when there isn't a proper job.
The National Business Ethics Survey said,
- 70 percent of employees identified pressure to meet unrealistic business objectives. The pressure causes them to compromise their ethical standards
- 75 percent of them noted either their senior or middle management was the primary source of trouble. They needed to compromise the rules of their organizations.
In my experience, lousy performers often try to meet the KPIs at any costs when the numbers link to their survival at a workplace. Taking the 'carrot or stick approach' works for meeting the least outcomes shortly. The supportive environment may take longer to bring positive results, but it helps the members to achieve the KPIs in ethical ways.
- Intrinsic motivation more than extrinsic
Offering both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation helps to reinforce the value of ethics.
Intrinsic motivation means intangible rewards from within and can link to our feelings.
- Feeling satisfied
- Feeling capable
- Enjoying a sense of challenge
- Reinforcing self-esteem
- Satisfaction at accomplishments
- General enjoyment in our work
- Feeling appreciated
- Satisfaction at realizing our potential
- Taking pleasure with care and consideration
Extrinsic motivation means tangible rewards that come from other people and organizations.
- Compensation
- Promotion
- Security
- Physical work environment
Daniel H. Pink, describes extrinsic motivators work only in a surprisingly narrow band of circumstances. Extrinsic rewards often destroy creativity and employee performance. The unseen intrinsic motivation drives to meaningful purposes. He picks up three elements.
- Autonomy, the desire to direct our own lives
- Mastery, the desire to continually improve at something that matters to us
- Purpose, the desire to do things in service of something larger than ourselves
The research shows that excessive extrinsic rewards can decrease intrinsic motivation.
An expected external incentive can decrease intrinsic motivation to perform a task. Once a person does not get money any longer, a person loses interest in the activity. The prior inherent motivation does not return, and the extrinsic rewards need to keep expanding to sustain the action. Besides, excessive external motivation sometimes encourages the top billers questionable ways. It has different skills between making billing and maintaining professional ethics. A variety of personality and moral discipline can make a top biller. Some of the top performers have questionable ethics, but the clients never notice the problems.
- Prevention from conflict of interest
Split-commission
One of the most tricky parts in headhunting agencies is a split-commission. Agents recruiters have the two primary responsibility; client development, and candidate engagement. Large sized recruitment firms separate the role into two positions. Boutique sized headhunting agencies likely select a 360-degree function.
If Recruiter A manages a client side, Recruiter B who find and engage a candidate may accept the split-commission. A split-commission sounds fair to 360-degree recruiters. However, it is hard to predict the actual workload to calculate the commission for each recruiter. It has a space for the negotiation, causing the conflict of interest.
For example, a recruiter A develops a new job assignment, and a recruiter B has a candidate. Each recruiter agrees with the split between 10% for sharing jobs and 90% for talking to a client and finding a candidate. It sounds each person agrees on expectation upfront. At the end of the hiring, it may turn to be 50%/50% split due to unpredictable workload. Then, two recruiters fight and negativity spread to a candidate and a client.
The split-commission makes a toxic workplace when members overestimate their contribution without transparency.
In the case of 50%/50% split, a 360-degree recruiter may say "I will submit my candidate to my client first. My candidate may fit in other clients, but I don't want to split my commission. If it does not work for my clients, then I will submit my candidate to my colleagues with a split-commission. It is better than nothing".
Do you think this scenario is unethical?
Keeping a nice person in a harsh environment is not always easy.
Thus, most of the headhunting agencies separate the territory to reduce the split. The separation is valid from the perspective of ethics. However, the number of recruiters working for your job does not depend on the company size. It often ends up only one member of a whole team work for your assignment due to avoiding the split or too small territory allocation.
Candidate ownership
At an agency side, some agencies set the candidate ownership. The rule reduces the battle within co-workers. It means if a recruiter A is working for a candidate, no other recruiters can contact the candidate. The safety net likely helps a recruiter A focus on the quality of work. However, it may end up to the blind spot when hiring.
If an agency does not set candidate ownership, the battle with coworkers often gets higher. It can be good or bad. It may result in a better result by healthy competition to reduce the hidden spots for better hiring. In opposite, no candidate's ownership may increase distrust and no cooperation with colleagues. An ethically nice recruiter will get fewer ethics sooner or later in distrust workplace. The effect of negative peer pressure is unavoidable.
Transparency in a team helps to maintain ethical recruiters.