Attention Talent Hunters. The Candidate is your Client. The Company is your Partner

?HR Question of the Day, (after a long hours of software developers selection)

Who is the client in Search and Selection? 

As I move back to my routes of OP and OD I tend to remember what I said to one of my first mentors in HR Georgia Roilou (https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/georgia-roilou-043893b/) back in February 2002 when she was kind enough to find my CV www.Kariera.gr (https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/karieragr/) and soon (after 5 interviews) to give my first chance into HRM as an HR Supervisor CCHBC.

"Companies will gradually realize that they will need to fit their policies to the needs of their employees; who are also women, mothers, young, aging and disabled. The way employees are to be treated will mandate how the end customer will be treated and ultimately the company's social image. After all your brand is also the way you treat your people. Employees are part of your society and also your prospective end consumers".

I am sure you will agree that Georgia was really patient with my youth arrogance. She still is thank god and I feel blessed to have her as a friend. However, in my mind there is also no doubt, 15 years after starting my HR journey and now going back to consulting in at a more hamble stance that the above statement is more valid than ever.

Especially in the field of Software Engineers and Developers where there is a high skill shortage, understanding soon enough that your candidate is your client is a simple must. I am just an occupational psychologist who loves search and selection and need to state to all talent hunters of sotware developers /software engineers the bellow:

A. Candidates are our Clients. The Candidates do know what they like and dislike; what has hurt them in the past and what they wish to avoid. Their fears, defenses and crucial problems. They are also aware of both the positive and negative experiences that are deeply routed or sometimes have buried them on purpose to forget them. And they are also positive people who do know their learning mechanisms, their learning needs, skills sets, and do know what resourcefulness they may need to proceed. Treat them like adults.

B. Companies are our Partners. What you can do as a professional is first of all to carefully select the companies as our trusted partners. Avoid those who disrespect the employees, show no trust towards the people or just treat them as human resources and not human beings. So selecting your partners along a strong ethical measure is a must. Your Partner, the company who pays you be their representative towards your clients (i.e. the candidates) should be ethical. If they are not and you are representing them this will give an unethical personal branding to your clients. There are no shortages on that.

To put it in simple maths of the dark art of selection as Steven Fisher my MSc Supervisor in Strathclyde would put it if A+B = Matching then you are succesful.

Each of us need to be a professional coach with our clients. We are paid to represent a trusted partner to build trust with our clients/candidates in order to open up and see if they match with the environment that we represent – the target company, our partner. In simple words to support the effort of our clients to understand the culture of our partner.

If we wish to have a good match we should work with our clients to build a clear understanding of the culture, the values, challenges and expectations of our partner. And of course to inform our partners of how much penetration their current values and work conditions /climate have in the market. We are now well into the marketing era of the people processes.

Have a clear value added proposition of your partner.

If this does not fit your client’s needs do not try to make it fit. Inform the client, coach and nurture the client and allow him to move ahead. Do not make matching compromises. Our candidates are our clients who do know well in which environment they would wish to work and invest a big proportion of their live.

We need to understand that the smartest companies out there trust our skills to provide their prospective candidates a unique tailored made experience to match their needs. Make them feel unique is the key here. Matching the total person of your client with the target company is a big part of what employer branding is. That is the reason that companies are still willing to pay extra for this service of talent hunting that we falsely still sometimes call recruitment or trust many of its operations to entry level people in HR and without proper, close guidance. If you want to be a leader in this game you need to avoid doing shortcuts in your quality. And if you wish to be a trusted coach in the field of developers the technical skills will not give you a headstart but your attentive listening and active presence.

Further to the fact that now there are established systems that help you build a great feedback mechanism, personalized letters and tailor made experiences for your clients I have followed these simple rules and thought to share them with you which are winers:

1.   Your clients trust you with their CV, their stories of life and dreams. Do not betray them. Keep these data safe and ask them to trust you to keep it in your records. If they do not, delete and destroy the files. Avoid showing the compleτe CV of your client to your partner unless you have informed the client on the name of your partner and has trusted you to send the CV to your partner.

2.   Support your partner to build a short and consise Job Spec. A long wish list of technologies is not the aim of the game. The basics needed is the name of the game. So ask them a simlple question: Of the long wish list which are the 5 basics that you would need? Of the 5 basics which 4 are the absolute musts. Help your partner narrow down their wish lists

3. Support you clients on building their CVs or suggest them to go through a professional CV and or career coach if you do not have the skills or the time to invest. Again listing all the possible languages in a CV is rather useless. Guide them only to put those that they know well and are mentioned as the basic minimum in the job advert. Or go up to those technical skills that are nice to have. Request them to build an up to date protfolio of their work and projects and advice them not to put it on the CV but rather put it on Github or in a personal mini site or send them on a different document. They can also use the link of the minisite to put it on the CV or send it to other talent hunters and or companies. Teach them to work smartly and they will never forget you. Try not to compromise this step. A sloppy CV or portfolio may cause them to loose good chances now and in the future. Explain them also the importance of having at least a strong Linkedin profile.

4.   Try to coach them before going to the interview. You are well aware that the interview is very much situational related. Two people aiming to check if they match by using questions and be vigilant to body language is very much like flirting. Aim to help your clients get to at least explain their CVs. Help them to rephrase their words to pass the right message but do not change the meaning of their sentences do not paraphrase their spirit. Do not steal their voice. Do not make them be something that are not in their everyday life.

5.   Prepare your client for the interview only if you are sure that your client is a good match to your partner. Be sincere, clear and concise with your clients if you think it would not fit with your partner. An attitude or a value that may prove counterproductive at a later stage during work needs to be addressed early in the process. If there is a mismatch do not proceed further unless you are sure that the gap can be somehow filled. Be sincere with your client; s/he is an adult and deserves to know the mismatch. Of course you should never hurt or shatter your client. But you should not also aim to lie and let the client believe that it was a simple missmath if you know what the exact mismatch was you need to inform them.

6.   Respect your client and do not allow any partner to abuse its power. You are the medium. Keeping a client warm does not mean to lie to the client. You need to be professional with the client that the partner is not sure yet that they wish to proceed. Even if you do not understand the exact reason you need to keep the relationship warm by simply admiting that you do not know. But do not keep the client warm by lieing. The simple reply that the company has not decided yet is not working good. You are just lieing and the person understands it. Speak the truth.

7. Respond promptly to your clients requests for feedback. Provide professional feedback on each stage of the selection. This is what will keep your client satisfied but not necessarily happy. A rejection does not usually make one happy but feedback properly given keeps the client satisfied. and of course a satisfied client. There is a professional way to provide feedback . If you have not followed specific training in providing feedback it is time to invest in your own development. This is a social science field, you need to keep building your soft skills.

8. Listen carefully, be responsive and attentive to your clients needs and your partners demands. Treat all stakeholders with respect and make sure that you have put your boundaries. Aim to get at least trained in basic psychological defensive mechanisms. . Denial and projection of one's unconscious qualities onto others is a common process in everyday life. So be prepared to be blamed from a rejected candidate. A short training in basic psychoanalytical defenses will help you a lot to understand and build your resilience

9. It is OK to put psychometrics or technical tests. In fact for some positions you should never avoid them. But remember to have a trained person to provide feedback to your clients. Ill giving feedback is dangerous. Leaving them in complete the darkness provides for sure a negative reputation for your partner.

10. Be prepared for large attrition rates if you make the process too technical, too elaborate and/or too long. Inform your Partner that you will need to move fast. This does not mean to sacrifise the quality. To the contrary you need to increase your efficiency and quality. So use technological solutions to increase your efficiency. For instance nowadays most tests do have an automatic feedback report for the candidate. Use online rather than paper and pencil ones.  

Remember always to view the things allong the lines that the Clients are your candidates and the companies are your Partners. And you are a medium paid by your partner to do a successful matching. The more you will invest in your own training the better chances you may stand to acchieve ouststanding matches.