Want a Job?

As a companion piece to "You Are Who You Hire", I look at recruiting.

Now recruitment is highly speculative process. Most jobs are really filled within a span of a month. It is really is more of being at the right place at the right time than anything else. You try to get the best that's out there at a particular moment and not the absolute best. There is no such thing as an unqualified quest for the best.

Are most jobs advertised? Not really. Here's a typical cycle:

1. An opening appears. This could be replacement hiring. It could be expansion, it could headcount freeze being lifted. The decision to go ahead to hire is usually made among a handful of senior executives or some even just one person.

2. In a bureaucratic organisation, there may be headcount request forms/business cases or it could be a simply as the MD saying go ahead.

3. Almost implicit in such a decision process is whether there is a local internal candidate that could be promoted or transferred. Most organisations prefer to move someone internally than go for an outsider. So when you see an ad, that usually means no one internally is suitable or wants the job. Tells you about the lack of succession planning in that organisation. For international organisations, cross-border transfers are a possibility but usually cost is the main impediment to this occurring often. Times have changed, it used to be that Asian companies had to give out fat "expat packages" to attract talent from the West. Now, many Westerners pay their own way. Other times, hiring managers don't want to be be saddled with people they really didn't hire. As the market for talent shifts, we saw Singapore recruit from North Asia and now more vice versa. Regardless of distance, importing labour is still often low on the agenda. For client facing roles, language and cultural skills are often cited as reasons for hiring local.

4. Next is the "secret" hiring stage. Here, friends and respected colleagues of the hiring manager are targeted. A few phone calls and lunches and they know if they have to make this hire a public one. For job hunters, here is where your network and social skills come into play. Here is where your reputation, if you have any, either works for you or against you. In some organisations, they are compelled by policy or law to advertise the post but sometimes it is just a "show", as the post has already been filled. While it may be swift, secretive and cost-efficient, hiring secretly has its drawbacks. You may not be getting the best candidate, just someone's BFF.

5. Only failing to find someone secretly, the hire becomes public. It may start with an internal memo to staff. If the hire is "sensitive" (senior or replacement or strategic) then it may go to the headhunters. I call those that don't advertise (at least not in their own name) headhunters. These are people that rely on their contacts and database and search discretely and discriminately. In today's world, as soon as the hire is out there, you can consider it public. People will Tweet and blog or scream out that they were contact by so-and-so for this-n-that. If half the industry doesn't know you're hiring by day 2 then it tells you that your people or headhunter don't know many people in the industry.

6. Next or sometimes simultaneously are the job postings. Sometimes by recruiting agencies or on your website careers section. Obviously traffic to your website is relatively low compared to the big dedicated job portals. One interesting note is that some international companies are really screwed up when it comes to their websites. Due to privacy policies/law/revenue/costs/politics, some HR departments/career sections are not utilised by the local office/branch. I'm sure this drives our HR friends mad, but in reality, most hiring decisions are not made by HR or even have their input. HR is often seen as an administrative function to get the paperwork done and not part of the culture/team/human capital building role that textbooks tell them they are. An interesting decision is made whether to advertise the company or not. There are some that want to keep the company's name or details out. Pretending to be secret. Other's see their brand as a strength. It used to be that if you used your name then it had to go through your HR and therefore create a potentially huge burden on them to screen and process applicants. Nowadays, there are various models where you can outsource some of that to the agencies.

Because of the power of the internet, an advertised job could reach hundreds of thousands of people in a relatively short time, which is both good and bad. If you place a vague, highly unrestrictive ad, then you will get thousands of vaguely qualified applicants seriously impeding your ability to screen quickly. Even if you place serious restrictions like say "10 years of experience" or "must have fluent Tamil language skills" you can still end up with a lot of under-qualified people reaching, after all what do they have to lose? It takes them a few minutes to hit the send button to gain a chance. Those recruiting in the trust industry often are vague as the skill set we require are multidisciplinary and we often find value in the jack-of-all-trades. Then there will those that won't respond because of some particular sticking point/qualification you listed. A well-crafted advertisement may save you a lot of time and trouble.

The response you get to an "all out blitz" can tell you much about the market place. It tells you who's available, who's not, how much, etc. Excellent intelligence information. Of course, the longer you fail to fill the position and continue to advertise tells the world that you have a problem. It could be your pay offer, your position or even your organisation.

Regardless of who runs the ads, this is usually a 1 or 2 week affair. That means you have to find Mr.Right or Ms.Right in that time frame. If you weren't looking or contacted in those 2 weeks, then too bad.

Even your choice of headhunter or recruiting agency may play an important role. Some firms have no expertise in this field. Others have notorious reputations. Just look at some of the local job forums and chatrooms and you soon realise that job-seekers and placement firms have a love-hate relationship. Similarly there are games between the hiring company and the recruiters and you may not get a true view of candidates available. Recruiters will present who they think are the best candidates and not necessarily all the qualified candidates. I know of a great trust manager who was given lip service by his agent and never presented for a role because he lacked a language skill which was an important criterion for the hiring company. Would you prefer a competent person with a handicap or would you prefer a marginal candidate? The choice may have never presented itself for you to decide upon.

7. Screening. Here's where the one of the more important elements of a recruitment takes place, yet who does it? Is it your recruiting agency? Is it your HR? One of your senior managers? Yourself? Everyone has biases. Everyone can interpret statements on a CV differently. For certain roles, I look for certain things, certain skills, certain qualifications. So does everybody else. You have may be 2 minutes of my time to scan your CV to find the things I am looking for. For instance, if I am looking for someone to do marketing then tell-tale signs of marketing experience must jump out of else it's in the rubbish bin. [Although I might keep 1 or 2 marginal candidates on a "maybe" list, I have never heard of anyone actually going back and searching the company database. For a major international company that means there are literally thousands of candidates which they have a record of but choose to ignore. If you don't get invited and the post pops back out in 6-months, re-submit because no one else will be looking for you. Obviously recruitment agencies and the headhunters compile databases but how much they put it to use, especially after bouts of turnover themselves, you have to ask them.] If a candidate put "marketed trusts" on their CV it will probably be shortlisted by the unsophisticated recruiting agency/HR. To a hiring manager in trust marketing, it's meaningless as they would want to know to whom, how, where? etc. but you may have caught their interest. What if the candidate put "tailored solutions for UHNWI"? That may pass undetected by computer "tag/keyword" scans yet wouldn't that candidate be interesting?

Long flowery passages, list of character traits, hobbies and personal interest mean nothing to me. It might mean something to those recruiting say at an entry level or other professions but I look for almost exclusively at whether you can market. As you will discover, 90% of hiring managers have never taken a course of "proper" recruitment but rather work off years of hit and misses. I have seen "perfect" candidates on paper turn out to be woeful employees. I have seen "3 out of 10's" excel. I have reviewed thousands of CVs and interviewed hundreds of candidates. I go by what I know and not what textbooks say should be. In other words, I really don't know what makes a good candidate. I doubt anybody does either.

And of course CVs are "historical" data. What one did in the past (or didn't do) isn't exactly a good predictor what they could or can do. Similarly, what they did do doesn't mean they did it well. We, meaning myself included, really don't spend the time we should digging into the candidates' past.

8. Interviews. Nothing you have on paper will be as valuable as how you perform at the interview. I will often overlook education/technical inadequacies if the candidate aces the interview. By the same token, being great on paper means nothing if you blow it at the interview. How to ace an interview depends on you being able to read into what the interviewer is looking for. You need an angle. You need to know if they are HR doing a general screen, or a line manager or the hiring manager. Each has a different set of what they are looking for. You need to quickly ascertain what that is and tailor your responses accordingly. Some will be looking more closely at your qualifications, some at your personality, some at your actual past responsibilities. One MD professed he was looking for "people persons", those that would be pleasant to work with rather than focus on their skills. How to present your strengths and mask your weaknesses is the difference between being hired or unemployed. A dear old friend was a well respected lawyer and trust practioner and he told me a tale of how he interviewed with a local bank for the Director of Trust role years ago. He would be on my short-list if I had such a hire to make. His first interview was with a manager (not even senior manager) from HR. He had to fill out a job application form! Then he next met with the CEO of the bank who was clueless about the trust business. It did not go well and he did not get the job. He is now head of a major international trust business. Was the bank wrong? It's easy to say yes, but maybe my friend just failed to impress during his interview. Just goes to show that how fragile and error-prone the process is.

After all that, do we end up with a good hire? I think only about 25% of hires really work out. One in 4 will end up being a good long-term contributor to the organisation. And I think that is a very high number. There will be many organisations that do a lot worse, say 10%. Why? The simple answer is that there was a mismatch between the person's skills and the position. They lacked the skills, the depth or breadth and struggled with role. They move on. The recruiter failed to pick this up or decided to take a chance. We are forever trying to get tax/legal/banking/accounting people into trust roles and rarely do they fit perfectly. Some hiring managers I know, use the "splatter" approach. They have given up on hiring close or perfect fits and just hire anyone remotely qualified or interested and hope they "stick". Costly, disruptive and time consuming but they consider it a system that works for them.

Other times, it's "bad apples". There will be those that are very negative, lazy, lack accountability and are even despicable. You may have hired one or they may end up working for a manager that is one. These people will drag the rest of the team down to their level and will eventually force you to remove them or they will drive out all the good apples. One trust-zilla I know used to know use her position of power to verbally abuse staff (including the tea lady for God's sake!) and people would leave the firm because of her. While I may get flack for this, nothing compares to how petty, cruel and insulting middle-aged Asian women can get when they decide to tee off on someone. It is not a pretty sight. It's difficult to catch these "bad apples" during the interview process as they are usually on their best behaviour during those few hours you have. However, with most senior people, they will have a reputation and here's where networking and doing some due diligence may pay off.

What about the competition? The lure of a brand name or pay increase is usually too great for junior staff to withstand. This repeats itself in most industries as people try to move up and into bigger companies but I find that by the time they have been around for a few years, money and brand means less. People start to look for stability and work environment/nature. People are less likely to move on if they are in a position or part of a team that they like and have reasonable (not necessarily top) pay. Go ahead, and ask anyone who's been in the same firm for the past 5years and they say they like it more than than the pay or prospect or title or even the firm. The walls around them could fall down but if they like their job, they will stay. It usually takes next-to-nothing to recruit an unhappy senior member but a boat-load to move a happy senior member.