Just one of those things – or an avoidable mistake?
A sub-optimal outcome
Imagine the following scenario. A year ago, the board decided to make a senior appointment to add capacity and capability to the senior team. Head-hunters were appointed, candidates screened, references taken, and an appointment made. However, within a few months of the new person’s arrival, it was clear that they wouldn’t meet the original expectations. The appointee also felt that the role hadn’t been presented very accurately and they seemed relieved to be exiting. Serious damage has been done: by the time a replacement can be appointed, 18 months may have passed since the original board decision and, meanwhile, the department involved has been a drag on growth. How bad should the board feel about what has happened?
On the positive side, the recruitment process was properly funded and all the process steps were ticked off. The appointee wasn’t an outright disaster from a personality perspective, and their CV was relevant. All interviewers had endorsed the candidacy and, although there were some identified gaps, those had seemed minor. Anyway, everyone knows that recruitment is a difficult activity.
In hindsight there were, however, clues to what might have gone wrong. It took the head-hunters a couple of goes to reach a shortlist because they found the original job specification too vague and, even then, some candidates were marginal. Although the successful candidate went through multiple interviews, in retrospect the coverage of certain topics was thin. The CEO joked that everyone seemed to have had essentially the same ‘get to know you’ conversation, reaching warm but fuzzy conclusions. Referees were all positive but didn’t add much concrete insight to our knowledge. Definition of successful performance were high-level. What connects all those issues is a comfortable - but ultimately self-defeating - soft focus approach to a high stakes issue.
The problem with specifying role requirements
Like any important process, recruitment requires a strong ‘spine’ to keep all the individual activities coherent. That spine is a robust role and person specification which:
Helps recruiters know clearly what they are looking for
Tells potential candidates what the role involves
Makes it easier for interviewers to divvy up topics for discussion
Provides an agenda of concrete topics to be discussed with referees
Allows decision-makers to reach a fully informed consensus.
However, in practice, recruiters too frequently receive a few bullet points and a rambling briefing and they do their best to synthesise that into a formal brief. I was once asked to support a CEO recruitment process where a prestigious head-hunting firm had created a brief with more than 30 pages: impressive looking but so complex that it was unusable in practice, including probably by their own research team.
The problem is that writing a job spec from scratch is challenging for most of us. Some important criteria are captured but then the rest of a document is padded with floating generalisations and aspirational guff. The lack of clarity on key points makes it harder to keep the essential points in mind. That ‘original sin’ then makes everything else harder and lowers the probability of a successful appointment.
What can we do?
Making things significantly better is neither especially complex nor costly. It does require a willingness to take a little time up front for larger benefits later. More concretely, we need (1) a structured specification which covers key requirements and then, (2), a process which harvests the benefits of the greater precision.
(1) There are five main things a specification needs to cover, namely identification of:
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i.e. what outcomes should we expect to see, say, after twelve months in-role?
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For example, would a candidate require deep domain knowledge, or need to bring knowledge of good processes, or have worked in a larger business or alongside private equity? In my experience, the single biggest cause of mismatches between candidates and jobs comes from ignoring these dimensions.
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For example, some FDs might need to make sure basic procedures are reinforced, others to act as a strategic right-hand to the CEO. Likewise, not all CMOs need deep digital marketing kudos – perhaps segmentation or branding are more important.
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Does our successful candidate need to bring expertise in driving strategy to a very operational team? Might they need capability in designing organisational structures or integrating acquisitions?
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This can include: stylistic elements (‘low ego’ or ‘bring some polish’?); complementarity to existing team strengths (someone good at process, or an innovative ability); personal energy or mental horsepower.
In addition, other elements may be important for a particular situation: language skills, experience of certain geographies, particular qualifications and proximity to an office/site.
For the most part, all these criteria can be captured with reasonable precision. A simple rating scale can be used to identify relative importance. For the sake of robustness and consensus, several people would ideally score against the same points and then iron out any conflicts. The tricky bit lies in getting granular enough to bring requirements into enough focus. Catalysis on-line specification tools are one efficient solution for that task, but there are various job role templates available for free on-line too.
(2) Armed with a detailed specification, next steps can be pursued with confidence:
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A hierarchy of criteria can be set to guide recruiters and for them to analyse all proposed candidates against.
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Candidates can be asked to rate themselves against the criteria to make visible where they have relative strengths and weaker areas. activities (to take home) but would also suggest areas where their home site might have an advantage. Typically, both sides would make gains at limited cost, and without the need for the Operations Director to handle the thinking.
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Interviewers can divide up topics between them to limit repetition and gaps.
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Any psychometric analysis can focus on key differentiators.
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Wash-up sessions can use the same categories from the specification to capture evidence and impressions.
Reference calls can be structured around key areas of ambiguity or greatest importance.
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Final decision-making and on-boarding plans can benefit from better grounded patterns of insight and implication which emerge from a systematic approach.
Conclusion
Recruitment will never be an error free activity but what can be eliminated is that depressing sense that a weak process has led to an avoidable mistake. Since getting specifications right is not expensive, while using a clear set of criteria can add value to each stage of making appointments, this qualifies as one of those high impact, low cost activities (Building value with less sweat and blood) I described in a previous post.
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