When my Dad’s business imploded I found myself out of work in a competitive market.

It was around 2002, with the Cambridge market reeling from the effects of the Enron scandal, 9/11 and the dot com bubble bursting.

I found myself a nice stop-gap job at the Pickerel Inn, a spit and sawdust pub with the heritage of being the oldest traveller’s inn in the UK.

The landlord said one of the beams harked back to Roman times. Mind you he was full of fibs, so who knows?

While I used job boards, in my early career I found best success from walking into shops, pubs and receptions and asking for a job.

When I walked into The Pickerel, John was amenable to employing me and asked one killer question:

“Can you pour a pint of Guinness?”

Of course, I went straight onto LinkedIn and complained about recruiting from experience not attitude… oh hang on, no.

I said I never had, to which he said Great!

His preference was not to employ people who’d learned bad habits from other pubs, in how not to pour that magnificent stout.

Better to learn from scratch than copy the poor ability of others.

A thought experiment.

Let’s imagine you’ve been tasked with recruiting a key hire.

You work for an innovative and progressive market leader.

Before now you’ve lived in a cave, with no experience of recruitment.

While this is an important vacancy, you’re not allowed to learn anything about HR or recruitment.

You aren’t allowed to speak to anyone with experience of recruitment or HR.

You aren’t allowed to outsource any part of your process.

You aren’t allowed to look at how other people recruit.

You don’t have a job description.

You are allowed full access to the business and a budget to fill the role.

What steps would you take to fill this key vacancy?

How might that help you learn to pour a better pint of Guinness?

Funnily enough recruitment is an industry built on copying what others do, often without intentional work.

Even ChatGPT type AI does exactly this in generating words for use in recruitment.

Same same, from poor first principles.

So what might recruitment look like without the legacy of others?

This is what I’d do.

1/ Speak to the person giving me the task and ask them what they can tell me about the vacancy.

2/ Speak to the line manager of the vacancy. What do they want to achieve? Why has this come about? Is this a one-off or ongoing need? What does the job entail?

3/ I’d want to understand what success is. Do we have people already doing that? How did they achieve it? How were they rewarded? Where did we fall short?

4/ Speak to other people doing this job. If not in this business, then others. What are their day-to-day duties? What do they like about the role? What not? Why did they join the company? Why might they leave? Do they know anyone I can tap up?

5/ If this is a replacement vacancy, I’d want to understand why the previous person left. Is there something we should be doing differently?

6/ I’d want to understand if our package is right for filling the vacancy.

7/ How would I recruit it??

8/ Since we don’t have access to recruitment knowledge, I’d think about what parts of the business have a common process. Recruitment is about people who make a decision to come on board. Is that like a customer?

9/ How do we win customers?

10/ I’d talk to our sales and marketing teams and learn the steps they take to gain customers.

11/ How can I emulate those steps in recruiting this role?

12/ The sales and marketing team rely on inbound and outbound activity, such as advertising and outreach.

13/ I have the budget to do both. What does that look like in recruitment? How can I advertise our role to attract the right people? What will they find appealing? How can I get my message in front of the right people?

14/ Is the 7P product marketing process relevant? What advertising strategies, tools or frameworks can I use? Would AIDA, PAS, They Ask You Answer, Before After Bridge (Your job sucks; imagine how it could be better; here’s our job!), or AICPBSAWN be effective?

15/ When we’ve found good people, how can we both confirm they are suitable and give them good reason to join us?

16/ I’d think back on my own buying journeys for something that takes commitment, investment, qualify that it is right for my needs, and proof that I am the right buyer. House buying could be one such thing. How could I do that in recruitment?

You get my drift. Recruitment from first principles.

How is it different from common approaches to recruitment?

Is it better in any way, or simply reinventing the wheel?

That’s how I’d do it. How about you?

Regards,

Greg

p.s. I read from time to time that fresh salespeople are sometimes more effective at opening doors than those who are experienced. Because they are curious, ask loads of questions, and don’t have an expectation of how things work. That’s kind of how I was in my first sales role.

p.p.s. Begin Again is a brilliant, beautiful, brilliant film. You should watch it, and if you disagree, maybe we can still be friends.