Why five? Innovation from Iteration, pt 1
So here were are, the start of a new series.
This series may be around 10 editions, looking at the things other industries do that we can implement into recruitment.
These were written 3 years ago, right at the start of the AI zazzle, and in some ways have dated quite a bit.
In others, the way in which they haven't dated at all, because the principles of how we live our business lives can be universal.
So, I'm not sure yet, how much editing I'll do, whether there will be any inclusions, or whether I'll leave articles intact, as a moment in time.
I've learnt all of these notions from candidates and clients, as I came to understand the function of their vacancies. Hearing about the daily practice from people doing jobs, I couldn't help but notice the same relevance in recruitment.
So while these articles are hardly comprehensive, perhaps they'll make you look at your candidates differently, in what we can learn from them, and how that might improve our recruitment.
Why five?
December 2022
Ask anyone involved in active recruitment what their key problems are, and they’ll likely talk about skills shortages and candidate behaviour.
On the face of it, problems which are out of our control, worthy of complaint with little opportunity to find improvement.
But what if these were issues that weren’t entirely out of our control?
What if we could apply a replicable process to understand what’s really going on, and how we can make a difference?
Fortunately, we needn’t invent the wheel, as other industries have already done this for us.
One such is 5Y, or Five Whys, a problem-solving technique that was developed by Toyota in the 1930s. It's part of the Toyota Management System that has inspired much of my work.
Five is the general number of “Why?”s needed to get to the root of a problem. Often you can get to the heart of the issue sooner, sometimes later. Often there are multiple root causes.
More than just solving problems, it’s about establishing practical countermeasures to prevent these problems from coming up in future.
5Y is an example of Toyota’s philosophy of “go and see”: working on the shop floor to find out how things work in practice to find ways for iterative improvement.
This isn’t a theoretical idea to try out on a whim – it’s based on grounded reality and almost always works.
There are two costs – time and accountability.
Here’s a practical example, then a recruitment one.
(Names have been removed to protect my identity)
Problem 1: The children were late for school.
Why? Traffic held us up.
Why? We left the house late.
Why? The children weren’t ready on time.
Why? Their school uniforms weren’t prepared.
Why? We hadn’t set them out the night before.
Here the countermeasure is to get everything ready the night before, rather than blame traffic for being late.
Perhaps we might have gotten to school on time without heavy traffic, but that is an element out of our control.
Of course, here there is another root cause – very naughty children – but better to focus on the simple changes.
And sometimes traffic is the root cause after all, once you’ve ruled out other elements in your control.
(2026 note: my eldest now often drives my youngest to school. A time laden solution I hadn't considered three years ago. Now I don't care if they're late 😆)
Problem 2: Candidates keep ghosting us.
Why? They weren’t committed to responding.
Why? They didn’t accept my requirement for a response.
Why? They saw no value in my requirement.
Why? I didn’t create an environment where this requirement has value (root cause 1). Or because they are very naughty candidates, with a bad attitude.
Why have we allowed someone with a bad attitude in our recruitment process? Because we didn’t prequalify them well enough (root cause 2)
The first root cause is something we can work on by giving candidates what they need, building trust, and working to mutual obligations.
There are many ways to do this – I’ve already talked about examples in previous newsletters.
It comes down to good candidate experience and reciprocity.
The second root cause requires us to work harder at understanding candidate needs, aspirations, behaviours and attitudes at the outset of a recruitment process.
There’s a reason for their behaviour. We can be accountable for finding it.
That’s no mean skill to develop, yet an essential one for anyone whose core responsibility is recruitment.
And it’s hard to do in a transactional volume process, so the question then becomes, does your process help more than it hinders?
You can apply 5Y to any issue you come across, as long as you are prepared to be accountable.
At worst you may find that the things that were out of your control are at fault. In this case, you are at least armed with good information to report to your stakeholders, by ruling out other possibilities.
What’s the point of doing all this?
For me it’s continually improving how I recruit, with the consequence, in the example above, that I am rarely ghosted at all.
And you can 5Y any issue you come across.
Are poor agency CV submissions their fault, or in part down to your briefing and process?
Are skills genuinely scarce, or is your requirement unrealistic?
Is it true that your agency hasn’t listened to you, or do you engage the right partners in the right way?
5Y has the answers.
Regards,
Greg
