Mastering The Art Of Recruitment

Think of the person who conducts an Orchestra. He is the only person without an instrument, without a sound. But we can hear him how he delivers through other people. You can hear him through the people he has selected to be in his orchestra. Leadership thus comes down to setting up the right team & helping them achieve the results which make them successful in the role they are playing. There is an old saying which tells that people spend 10% of time recruiting & 90% of time making up for recruiting mistakes. Nobody teaches how to recruit.

What therefore can be a structured recruiting framework that will make us much better at recruiting? We have our cognitive biases. And that causes several mistakes:

• We try to hire ourselves. We believe we are the best there is. I am competitive, everyone should be competitive. I am analytical, everyone should be analytical.
• We try to hire people who can do everything. Thinking that will help us be more successful. But the truth is, selecting people is like a football team. You don’t want a person who is good at everything. You want the best attacker, the best goal-keeper & so on.
• We try to hire people who are worse than ourselves. As a leader, you don’t have to be the smartest person. As long as you can select the right people for the right position, you don’t have to be the expert in the room.
• ?We make quick decisions. In two minutes sometimes, we form a view that I like the guy & then everything further is to reinforce the justification to hire.

Considering these biases, it is recommended that an algorithm do the computing if a person is right for the role, instead of the human mind which has all the above baggage it carries. The algorithm can calculate the percentage chance of success of the person. This approach also allows the organization to give a fair chance to every candidate for the job. The resume limits the way we can understand a candidate. It might not be enough to find the diamond in the rough. It is also made with the biases of the candidate.

The use of structured tools helps find what we call “whispering talents”. To understand this, let us first define what a “shouting talent” is. A shouting talent is one which has gone to best of universities, got top grades, they worked at the best organizations, got promoted fast. Anyone can spot a shouting talent. The whispering talent is one which is as good, but not known. Not easy to see. An algorithmic approach allows an organization to open up the candidacy flow to everyone out there, who is interested.

Ultimately, we are looking for candidates & trying to determine if they can deliver outcomes, which can go into three different buckets:

• Will the person be able to do the job?
• Will the person fit our culture?
• Will we fit the person’s life?

Lastly, to go through an interviewing process in a structured way, there are three things you have to be good at.

• Need Identification. What is it that one has to be good at, to be successful.
• Right Questions. To Assess how well one will deliver on the needs.
• Right Interpretation of Information. Someone has top grades. But the need is a team play. You need some other information beyond grades. There may need to be a trade-off between being tough & being empathetic.?

A person at a high level consists of three different things.

• ?A brain. An IQ that enables you to learn, comprehend information, leverage that information.
• The Heart. Which is their personality & talents.
• Their Tool-Box. Their past experiences. What we see on the resume. The functional learnings.

Who do we look for as a person? It should be

“Hire for Talent, Train for Skills”

. With that happening, the best way to finalize a candidate can be to call them to work with your organization for two days or a week. Give them a feel for the job. Get your assessment verified. Take notes, & then look 3-6 months down the line & answer the question – Were you Right & Wrong? And assess whether your interpretation was wrong, and whether the questions asked were wrong. If you do all these things & apply rigor to it, you will get better & better in selecting the right people.

This article refers to work & thought leadership of Mads Faurholt-Jorgensen & acknowledges his contribution in this field.?