When it comes to recruitment, are you a baker or a cook?
Food. Who doesn’t love food? Whether you bake it or cook it, it’s all delicious! And when it comes to being a cook or being a baker, you end up with some delicious goodies. So, what’s the difference? I’m sure there are many differences, but the big thing that jumps out to me is how they use a recipe. A baker follows the recipe precisely and rarely strays too far from it. A cook tends to use a recipe as a guideline but mixes things up a little bit, often improvising along the way (and usually having a lot of fun in imagining the possibilities).
Imagine getting ready to go into the kitchen because you’re getting ready to hire some new talent to join your team. You know the dish — the position. You have your recipe — the job description. It’s time for you to get started and start reviewing all the wonderful applications that you’ve received. Each application has its own flavour filled with a variety of backgrounds, experiences, and qualifications. Do you review each recipe — er, I mean résumé — looking for the one that’s an exact match, as a baker often does? Or, like a cook, do you look for the ones that have some of the essential qualifications but have some differences from your original job description? As a recruiter, I can tell you that it will be difficult to find someone who matches the job description precisely, and you’re going to spend a lot of time in the kitchen if you wait for that exact-match person. You’re far more likely to find your candidate (and have more fun) if you think about the possibilities in playing with some ingredients.
I’m not recommending that you throw the recipe in the garbage and that you start putting random ingredients into the pot. I’m just suggesting that maybe instead of bread crumbs, you can use ground oats. Or maybe if the recipe calls for three cloves of garlic, two cloves will work just fine. If you’re new to recruiting, not following the recipe exactly might seem uncomfortable, which is normal. You can work with someone who has spent more time cooking, like a recruitment team, to help you with the recipe. Even if you’ve hired a hundred times, knowing when to work off book becomes important during times of candidate-driven markets. (TradingEconomics.com reports that we’re hitting the lowest unemployment rates in nearly eight years.) Being able to play with some ingredients is not only more fun, but sometimes necessary when the market is tight and the cupboard is bare. You might just end up with someone on your team whom you may not have originally envisioned, but he or she ends up bringing far more to the table than what the recipe called for. An original recipe!
I hope that you enjoyed reading this. For more recruitment related information, I recommend: