People Are Stupid

My first boss when I worked in recruitment was a Lawyer by trade - he loved certainty, specificity and getting stuff right. He hated the unexpected and messyness.  "People Are Stupid" was his catch-phrase. A lot of what I learned about recruitment (and people) from Anthony over a decade ago I still rely on today - not just when I'm hiring people, but generally, in work and in life. Despite his rather misanthropic phraseology, Anthony loved people and what he really meant was "People will do all kinds of stuff that you never really expect and your job as a recruiter is to try and take away the unexpected". But that isn't as catchy. 


Anyhoo, this post is about recruiting. More specifically, my take on the Golden Rules of Recruitment. It isn't exhaustive, but it gives you a flavour of what I've learned in 10+ years of interviewing thousands of candidates. Next week I begin the rather ambitious task of attempting to impart my take on recruitment to the 40 or so managers across our business. People Managers of TMP - this one's for you:


Rule 1: The Brief Is King
There's a reason that Bono didn't find what he was looking for - he never sat down and spelled it out clearly. So you can climb the highest mountain and run through fields but if you're not really clear about exactly what you're looking for, you won't find them. Write a Job Description. A proper one. 


Rule 2: The Brief Is King
It bears repeating.  Everything comes from that brief - where you'll find them, how you'll select and interview them, how you on-board them, how you manage them, the expectations you set them. Get that bit right and you make everything else far, far easier. Long Live The King.


Rule 3: Is the King an Idiot?
Once you have your brief, sense check it. Does that person exist? If your JD describes a fantastical creature, then I need to break it to you: we ain't hiring unicorns. Think about the marketplace, our competitors, the combination of skills you've said you want, the salary you can pay. Is what you want realistic? Your HR team may be good, but they are no David Copperfield. Finally, even if you think that the perfect candidate exists - why would they want to do this job? If you can confidently answer all of these questions you may proceed to the next level...


Rule 4: Quality Trumps Quantity Every Time
Shh - don't tell the Mormons - but, as with most things in life, in recruitment quality reigns over quantity. If you've been honest with yourself about Rule 3, then you should have figured out this part anyway. And if you have Rule 1 right, you won't need to interview lots and lots of people because you'll know the right person when you see them. Better recruitment isn't about getting loads and loads of CVs or meeting lots and lots of people. In fact, I'd argue that if you're doing that, you've probably not followed rules 1 - 3 faithfully. 


Rule 5: If the Brief is King, The Selection Process is Queen
Every good monarch needs a consort. Your selection process should be your job description's faithful life partner. Stop trying to think up the perfect, clever interview questions (I'll come to that later). Take your (perfectly compiled, up to date, accurate) Job Description; read it. The clues to your interview questions, exercises, pretty much everything should be in there. 


Rule 6: Don't Be A Smart Arse
Don't make the candidate guess what the job and company are all about: tell them - in glorious technicolour detail. They aren't psychic and, anyway, unless telepathy is one of the skills you wrote down in Rule 1, you don't need them to be. Which leads well onto...



Rule 7: Keep It Real
You're marketers, I get it. Your job is to make stuff sound exciting and fun and cool. Stop it. Refrain. If you want to hire someone who wants to do the job you've described, and you want them to stick around and do it blummin' well, be honest about what the job entails. Tell them everything they need to know - warts and all. Make sure they understand it. If they don't actually really understand what it is like to work for us, what the company does, what the role entails, how can they decide whether they want to jump on board?



Rule 8: Don't Ask Stupid Questions
Questions such as "I think a passion for People Management is really important in this job - how do you feel about that?" will rarely elicit an honest answer. See also, "How would your friends describe you?" ("Oh, as a bit of a tosser actually..."), "Are you good at XXX?" ("Terrible, hate it, ask me another") and "How do you like to be managed?" ("Badly: micro-manage me, take credit for my work, never, ever praise me...")
Also, there is no such thing as a Killer Interview Question - only the right questions for the job you're hiring for. Unless you're hiring for a Head of Comedy,is it really relevant to know what makes them laugh? 


Rule 9: Listen, Listen, Listen
If you have done the majority of the talking in an interview, I guarantee that you haven't found out everything you need to know to be able to make a hiring decision. You have two ears and one mouth; use them in that order. Interviewing is a little bit like being a Crime Scene Investigator. Do you ever hear Grissom blethering on about himself? No; he lets the evidence do the talking. Ask the right questions to get the evidence you need - probe and investigate if need be. But above all else, Listen. Listening involves checking you've understood, asking for specifics, asking for clarity. It doesn't involve telling the funny story about how exactly the same thing that the candidate is trying to describe happened to you last Tuesday. Zip it. 


Rule 10: People Are Stupid
This is Anthony's rule. There is no method, or combination of methods of selecting people that will predict with 100% accuracy how they will perform in the job (actual scientific fact). People are complex creatures, they bring their own complex emotions and psyches to work every day. They are impacted by equally complex environments. They will do stuff out of the left field. Accept it. If you are looking for Mr or Mrs Perfect you will never find them. If you think you've found them you will be disappointed. 


So there you have it - my not very comprehensive views on recruiting. As a post script, I asked people on Twitter last week for their views on the Golden Rules of Recruitment and one of them is a perennial debate sparker: 


"Hire for potential - don't fall into the trap of wanting someone who can 'hit the ground running'". I'd agree with this one wholeheartedly and it takes real cohones to do that as a hiring manager. Are you brave enough?

What's New, Pussycat?

Maybe it's the hesitant, teasing arrival of Spring. Maybe it's figuring out at my last birthday that I'm halfway to 70 and better get a wriggle on in this thing called life. Whatever it is that's sparked it, I have a burgeoning passion for new things. Experiences, attitudes, people, clothes (I'm a running office joke at the moment because I seem to come back from every lunch hour waving my latest purchase frantically, declaring "THREE pounds!!!").


I like to put it down to the lambs in the field behind our office who greet me most mornings with their optimistic bleating - like a little newness alarm. Whatever it is, I'm on the newness bus and quite enjoying the ride. 


It fits quite nicely with the theme of the latest workshop we've run as part of our Leadership Programme at work - managing change & ambiguity. I'm thinking of changing the name to "Love The Newness". Because newness, by its nature, is change and it's ambiguous and sometimes you can't actually 'manage' it at all. You just have to decide if you're going to jump on board for the ride.


Yesterday, partially in this spirit of newness and partially because the person who invited me seemed like a lot of fun, I attended an Un Conference run by a group of people who go by the moniker Connecting HR. They began as a group on Twitter, expanded into what we HR professionals like to rather pompously call a 'Community of Practice'. Now they meet every so often to discuss the HR & Business topics du jour. Yesterday's topic was "Socially Connected Organisations" - looking at the impact and relevance of Social Media for HR, Organisations and people. I took one of our Account Directors who had (rather foolishly) expressed a desire to "know more about social" with me. When we walked through the doors of The Spring Project in Vauxhall, it was pretty bloody obvious we weren't in Kansas anymore. There was no agenda, no 'keynote speakers', no handouts, no goody bag. I'm quite partial to a goody bag, but I'm equally partial to newness (did I mention?) so, despite feeling a bit like we'd gatecrashed a rave, we threw ourselves in. 


When was the last time you went to a conference where the proceedings were documented not by a bored writer in the corner, but by a bunch of artists on 6 foot high boards (who interjected and heckled and entertained with song as the day unfolded)? When was the last time you went to a conference where you directed the dialogue and defined the content? When was the last time you learned a Jedi Mind trick at a conference? We had all of this yesterday, plus debate and dialogue between some really rather fascinating (and lovely) people. The conversation buzzed, the synapses sparked, the smartphones got a thorough battering...


It turns out that Social Media in organisations is one of those New Things (TM) that people are a bit cautious of. Oh, we mostly love it in our 'private' lives. We'll happily post pictures of our cat doing something amusing *again* to our (very patient) friends and family. But do Social at work? I'm not sure how sure we are about that. Or as Helen (our AD) put it "What if employees don't want to blur their personal and work?". From some of the discussions it seems as if businesses are a bit worried about this social stuff too. How do they control it? What if our employees do something stupid with it and our share price drops? What if they say something we don't like? What if they start a mutiny?


It all boils down to fear and trust, doesn't it? Do you trust your people to do the right thing? Do you trust yourself to hire and develop those kind of people? Do they trust you enough to say what they think? Do you all trust the newness that is Social Media within and without organisations? Or is it all a bit flippin' scary because its new and we can't control it?


The Arab Spring, the Riot Clean Ups, the fact that Twitter now has more users than there are people reading newspapers in the UK, tell us that we can't control it. Like a bunch of excited and confused Keanus and Sandras, the Social Media bus has left the station and is hurtling towards an organisation near you. We need to decide if we want to be on it.