I was once engaged to take over the recruitment process for a business where the person responsible for recruitment had become ill and left the business suddenly.
Having already advertised the posts, there were several hundred applications, and a first round of interviews from the early applicants had already been done. Now, inheriting such a process at this stage is never straightforward, because you don’t have a full understanding of what the first interviewer had in mind, or how he felt about the individuals so far interviewed. Also, in this instance, I had no opportunity to discuss with him where he was in the process, or what were his personal thoughts, so I was more or less back to the beginning. Having been briefed by the business owner on what positions they wanted to fill, and explored my own extensive questions about the business ethos and the position the candidates would be expected to fill, as well as their scope for advancement within the business, I invited the already interviewed candidates to a further second meeting with me. Unfortunately, I have to say, I was not particularly impressed. To be quite honest, I would very likely not have invited half of these people for interview in the first instance.
So, back to square one, and I decided to review all the applications again, including those in the rejected pile, and others which had arrived more recently. I had three positions to fill, and wanted to provide the Owner of the business with around nine people I would recommend for hiring. From the original pile of around two hundred and fifty applicants previously rejected, I invited twenty three for interview, and another twenty interviewees came from the more recent applications. In due course, these were cut down to twelve possibles, then to a final nine to present to the business owner, along with my personal thoughts on their suitability, for his final decision. Effectively, that was my job done; my contract fulfilled for that particular task.
However, I found myself thinking at great length, and sleeping restlessly worrying about the recruitment process used by many businesses. In this particular case, no less than five of the candidates I eventually presented came from the pile of applications that had originally been rejected. To expand a little, these are trainee retail management roles in a department store type of business, with the successful candidates moving to management positions within three to six months, and with a very good career path for those individuals most capable and who fitted the company ethos best. Amongst the original interviewees, there were no females, and no-one over the age of 30. In the final shortlist I presented, three were women, and four were over the age of 30; one was 49 and another 56, and with a wealth of experience that any employer could be very proud of.
I think the big issue sometimes is that Managers and others involved in recruitment have a very narrow and fixed idea of who they believe they want, based on the type of people who currently work and have worked for the business in the past. And perhaps even worse than that, the kind of person they personally feel that they could Manage. (Let’s not shortlist him or her, he sounds too good, might just challenge me too much, and maybe even threaten my job). I know about this latter thought process, because it troubled me when I was in my early twenties and hadn’t developed my own strengths fully. Also, it’s easy to set false criteria; for example, we sell fridges, and girls can’t hump fridges around, so it has to be a bloke! Or, people over 40 are losing their drive and ambition. Or, he’s too experienced, and he’ll be off to another job with a better salary very soon. Or he’s got no experience in our industry. (So why are you advertising a trainee management position then???) What a load of rot most of this is! I know a girl of 24 who manages a white goods store, extremely well in fact, and capably delegates the moving of washin-machines usually before anyone else even realises they need to be moved. And I regularly see guys of 60 doing a much better job than their younger counterparts, usually because they have the experience to deal with most situations relaxed and easily, and customers seem to more readily take the advice of more mature people who know how to communicate well. (Not that I would normally recommend a sixty year old man for your cosmetics or fashion chain though). And I know a mid thirties guy who used to work in a munitions factory who now very successfully sells hi-fi and audio equipment, and did so from day one in the job.
I think the bottom line in recruiting, and in deciding who to interview, is that you really have to train yourself to challenge your own thoughts and decisions. The main essential is to define real criteria that applicants have to meet, based on what the business needs, not what someone (you?) thinks it wants. When it comes to the interview stage, one of my techniques to fight the prejudices of my own human nature, is to allow myself to make a decision around first impressions, then spend the rest of the interview searching for reasons to overturn that initial impression. And a lot of the time I find those reasons too!
Now, this is where I am going to get quite controversial. Are you excited yet? Most of the Retail Recruitment agencies I have ever had experience of are really not very good at the job at all, despite what they may claim. Why? Because, they don’t want to fail you. They want to define the criteria for the position as narrow as possible. The whole process of using a recruitment consultant in the retail marketplace can be a bit like using a dating agency. A box ticking exercise. With the worst of them, I always feel that it would delight them if you could specify the applicant’s Christian name. “Must be called George or Mildred, have green eyes and worked for X, Y or Z company”. Well, perhaps that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the picture. It’s all about being able to type the details into their database and bring forth a list of prospective applicants. They typically don’t want to make too big a job of it, and will often brutally exclude otherwise ideal candidates because they don’t fit the profile precisely. There are, of course, exceptions to these generalisations I’m making; but it will be a very rare event if you ever hear these words from your recruitment consultant: “I know you asked for an Apple, but here’s an Orange, and I’m introducing him or her to you because I think he or she is exceptional and could adapt to your requirements and be a superb fit in your organisation”.
It’s my opinion that recruitment consultants are probably very effective in the IT industry, or coal mining. Naturally, it’s easier; no point in presenting you with a sewing-machine engineer when you need someone who knows how to excavate coal, or showing you a miner when you need someone who creates bespoke programming for whatever computer system you run. But Retail is a different game. Now, just maybe if you are running a chain of fashion outlets, what you need for your front line staff is a chain of people who fit a very tight criteria. And just maybe an agency could provide that chain for you, especially if you employ three thousand sales staff across a dozen different brand names. But that’s not what I’m discussing here, as I’m sure you realise.
So why am I telling you this story? Well, guess what’s one of the aspects of my work I most enjoy? Yup, recruiting people for specific jobs. Jobs in businesses where I can take a little time to get to know the business and the people involved in it, understand the culture and ethos, and be able to come back to you with the occasional Orange when the strict criteria might just be Apples. Oh, and I work on an agreed-fee basis too, rather than a percentage of the recruited individuals salaries. That means I won’t try to sue you if I think you later took on someone I believe I introduced to you. http://excelretail.com.au/Recruitment.htm
