Note to Employers: Ask "Why?"
Sometimes, the most obvious question is the one we don't ask ...
There’s movement afoot in the Australian market for senior professionals – especially in the engineering space. After a long hibernation (especially on the resources-dependant West coast), a combination of recovering commodity markets, and stimulatory infrastructure investment is providing impetus to a new cycle of employment opportunity and potential for compensation growth.
I recently stumbled on a now somewhat dated Harvard Business Review article (Managing Yourself: Five Ways to Bungle a Job Change, Boris Groysberg & Robin Abrahams, HBR Jan-Feb 2010) that rang some bells in today’s awakening employment market. And while the article is aimed at the employee managing their individual career trajectory, it struck me that there are significant lessons for potential employers also.
Groysberg and Abrahams quote survey results garnered from Executive Search practitioners around the top five mistakes that job-changers make. Put simply, they name them as:
1. Not doing enough research;
2. Moving for Money;
3. Going “from” rather than “to”;
4. Overestimating yourself; and,
5. Thinking short term.
On balance, my experience of dealing with senior professionals who are entertaining a change in their careers would bear out this list without significant departure.
It strikes me though, that employers would do well to consider that same list when contemplating a candidate for a role in their organisation. Indeed, a key element of due diligence in the recruitment process should be built around those five factors. Failure by a candidate to honestly address each of these considerations will likely lead to a poor move.
As in all major business decisions, due diligence and rigour are centrally important in recruiting key staff. So often, employers are inclined to take the willingness / readiness of a candidate to make a move on face value. Let’s face it – who wouldn’t want to work at your company, right??
From the hiring company’s viewpoint though, a candidate that is moving for the wrong reason is a risk that may not be worth taking.
The reality is that employers, in many ways have more to lose in the short and medium term if a new hire makes an ill-judged move that could have been avoided. What is surprising is that so few actually pursue this at interview. Even more surprising and disappointing is how often recruitment professionals fail to validate the motivations of a candidate before putting them forward to their clients.
Due diligence needs to cover off more than pro-forma reference check questionnaires and cursory qualification checks. It is the role of anyone recruiting for an organisation (be they an internal or an external resource) to challenge the reasons for the candidate’s interest, their level of knowledge of the employer company and its industry, and their apparent willingness to leave their current role.
Only frank, targeted and genuinely searching lines of enquiry can give a truly informed picture of how ready the candidate is for the move. This in turn is a critical indicator of the likelihood of their quickly settling into the cultural and commercial environment and being capable of delivery to the standards required.
Simply accepting a resume and a quick interview doesn’t cut it any more for the employer than it does for the employee whose reason for moving is potentially flawed. Scratching past the surface presentation to the underlying readiness or otherwise of the candidate in front of you is an investment in the long-term success of the new hire.