Seneca once said,

“If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favourable.”

If you don’t have a clear goal, no plan will likely be effective.

The mistake a lot of recruitment makes, particularly for key hires, is in establishing what that goal is.

“We need to fill this job. What are the duties? Let’s get someone on board who can do it.”

But the goal is rarely to fill a vacancy.

The goal is to solve a business problem through the people you employ.

Harder to measure when fill rate and other such metrics are quantitative. Yet a qualitative outcome that can be transformational.

Take an Administrator role, and let’s say it’s a newly created position for a start-up.

The hiring manager will see the need for someone to do their admin, and form a job description around the duties.

But in a start-up environment, these duties can be various and many, becoming a list that is impossible for any one person to fulfil expertly.

And the hire is typically someone who can fulfil part of the role, with a great attitude, because the rest of the skills required can be learnt.

This often works well enough, unless the reality of the role proves different to what what was expected. And sometimes roles change with time, so that hire now might not be right in future.

Look at the same task in a different way.

What problems does an Administrator solve?

I use this example because it’s pretty straightforward and I’m sure we’ve all felt the pain of getting caught in admin.

An Administrator

However, I also use this example because it isn’t a static hire.

The Administrator of now, is different to the role in 12 months time as the start-up grows.

Looking forward, the duties held by the exec team that are manageable now make less sense to run with. Such as admin-led HR, Health and Safety, Facilities Management.

So the future problem this solves may also be an opportunity:

Any role has dimensions beyond a job description. Even if it will never change in scope that is a fundamental aspect of the role.

An Administrator who wants to grow in their career isn’t going to hang around if that role doesn’t grow.

Whereas someone who enjoys admin, and doesn’t have plans to scale their career, might be the perfect hire now and in future.

Both might be great candidates, for very different jobs that have the same JD.

Outcomes are a time-laden dimension that runs throughout recruitment.

Another example - let’s say you need to implement a quality & compliance framework within 12 months from now, to enable a successful product launch.

When will you need your Quality Manager to start?

If a Quality Manager is on three months’ notice, not uncommon in the UK, the hypothetical earliest they could start is 24 May 2024, leaving you 9 months.

But how long does your recruitment process take?

Let’s say three stages of interview, which you can do over three weeks.

How long does it take you to flesh out your requirements before hitting the candidate market?

How long did it take you to find an acceptable shortlist of candidates to interview?

How long does it take to generate the offer paperwork for the successful candidate, have them read it, and then tender their resignation?

Maybe that will take three months, meaning you may only have six months to achieve your goal.

How long will it take your new employees to get up to speed, and learn everything they need to know before they can start putting a fit-for-purpose structure in place?

Or did you just want an off-the-shelf package that gets you the letters, but doesn’t do its job?

Perhaps you instead need an interim who can parachute in at short notice and get you what you need, before hiring a business-as-usual Quality Manager once the framework is in place.

Questions that should be probed now, rather than be opportunities missed in future.

Yet how many recruitment processes for such a key hire, instead prefer 5 CVs by Friday, as long as they match the job description?

As a final example, I interviewed a TA Manager recently who worked for a restaurant chain.

They had awful staff turnover at one of their sites, and the outcome they wanted was a stable workforce, who enjoyed what they do and gave better service to their customers.

Straightforward outcomes, so why weren’t they being achieved?

The answer, she said, came with spending a couple of days on-site to see the work environment. The one area they didn’t have staff turnover was the management, and the management was the reason for staff turnover.

With a new management team brought in, the rest of the problems took care of themselves.

Had they only relied on their job descriptions, they would have continued to have the same turnover issues.

Which no doubt would impact their customers.

By looking at the outcomes you want from your recruitment, you can assess how realistic they are against your context and needs.

You can work back realistically to find the optimal path.

And if that path isn’t right for whatever reason, you can course correct at the outset, rather than get lost along the way.

No one wants to go nowhere fast.

Regards,

Greg

p.s. I have capacity for one new client in March. Get in touch if you want to benefit from better outcomes in your recruit, and to see if we might be a good fit.