beyond recruitment
May 15th, 2011Have you ever asked the question, “How do rejected job applicants feel about our organisation? Are they going to be our champions?” When you start to see recruitment as a process of engaging with the community from which customers, suppliers, partners and employees come , disappointing all those people doesn’t look very smart.
Recruitment. Now there’s an interesting word. The original meaning of company was a group of companions. Only later did it take on its more modern meaning which still has the overtones of a company of soldiers. So too with recruitment. The original meaning was the beautiful and energetic phrase to grow again but with the shift to the command and control hierarchy of the military it is understandable that recruitment took on the current corporate meaning more akin to enlistment of soldiers. Why re-cruitment and not just cruitment? Either the war got more intense or you lost soldiers (desertion, capture, wounded, killed).
Why does this matter? Because who we are is what we say. Organisations do not exist in the physical world. They arise out of language. What we think is less important. Much is a mad jumble of nonsense. Close your eyes and watch the stream of thoughts that pass. Start thinking about the shopping and within seconds you are reliving an argument from yesterday before planning your next holiday. The internal sound track to life cannot help us transform.
The language we use when we speak shapes our reality. It is not accidental that a person of integrity is someone who keeps their word. Objectifying people by calling them human resources, treating an organisation as if it is some kind of military machine and then enlisting troops to win the war against the competition is going to have some consequences to how life occurs to us.
The current paradigm of recruitment is a defensive play. We send up smoke signals that there is a job available. However we then set in place a whole series of defences that are designed to prevent the right person from getting the job. Instead of meeting all the potential candidates we insist that they write about themselves. Then we shortlist based on who has written what we think is the right answer. Paper speaks to paper. Often we are inauthentic. We don’t tell people what the job really involves. We advertise jobs that are already filled. We hire based on expertise and experience rather than vision and values. We ask for leaders when we want managers.
Could we create a better way? To get the conversation going, try this on for size. Let’s change the context. Instead of recruit let’s make it relationship (original meaning to bring back or restore). Have a regular meeting where anyone who likes what we stand for can come and meet us. They may be partners, customers, suppliers, current or potential employees. It’s a staff meeting on steroids. We can get to know them and they can get to know us. Instead of powerpointing, let’s create an interesting and informal space that encourages conversation. Share stories of what the organisation is doing. What are we like at our best? What is the future that we are creating? Through this process of mutual discovery we understand what the other party stands for and what they are passionate about.
In Think Feel Know™ the current recruitment process starts with Think (advert, position description, selection criteria, application) and then moves to Feel (short list, job interview, rejection) and then Know (successful candidate) and back to Think (reference check, term of employment).
In the revised process we start with Know (we share the same values and vision), then move to Feel (we like and respect each other and want to work together) and finally to Think (summarise and confirm relevant experience, expertise, reference checks and terms of employment). By changing the context, notice that rejection disappears as content. All the millions of hours spent writing job applications for jobs that you will not get, disappear. In its place comes an authentic relationship. You may not get a job but you will feel that you have been invited into the organisation. Some other role may develop.
Organisations are conversations. They have no physical reality. Perhaps by reversing the process we will be more likely to create the conversations that attract the people that we want to share our business lives with.
