You hire an image, but you get a person

HR departments are often incapable of spotting the best candidate in a crowd of applications — and this failure is largely preventable.

The gap between employer expectations and realistic returns is growing, especially in large systems. The distance between top decision-makers and the people who make hiring decisions is negatively affecting the selection process, to the detriment of productivity and profitability. Business systems tend to get more bureaucratic and compartmentalized as they get more complex, making communication between various levels of management very formalized and erecting invisible walls separating the departments that should be working in unison.

Depending on the size of the company, recruitment and hiring could be handled by the company owners, department heads, specialized individuals or a full-blown HR department. Every additional link reduces pressure in terms of availability, but adds complexity that could negatively reflect on the quality of the chosen candidates. Let’s make one thing clear right from the start — specialization is necessary and it allows accumulation of expertise, only we should be aware that HR specialists are not the people who will be working alongside new recruits. In other words, the structural organization of a typical medium-sized to large company leaves a weak spot where the entire command chain can break down.

Without a doubt, miscommunication is the main source of noise that prevents identification of most suitable employees for a given position. Head managers and team leaders usually expect to see some practical abilities from the new employee — both in terms of technical proficiency and social adaptability. Unfortunately, these traits can be best assessed by direct observation over a longer period, not in a formal two-hour interview. That puts HR departments in a tough spot, since they often lack the manpower and know-how to conduct thorough and evenly balanced interviewing process for a large number of candidates for various positions.

Eager to collect any kind of hard data, HR managers often make a tricky situation much worse by applying a rigid and generalized formula for ranking the applicants. In cases when the hiring department operates independently from other sectors, there is a tendency to engage in tunnel vision and create a self-serving procedure that fails to take into account strategic objectives at large. Top HR executives belong to mid-management and usually take a conservative stance in a bid to protect their own job security, even when it robs the company of some productivity along the way.

Here are a couple of common problems that often accompany the recruitment and hiring process:

Problem #1: Using wrong data to determine future performance

Solution: Narrow focus on widely available measures of candidates’ aptitude can be misleading. In addition to any academic titles, grade point averages, scores on standardised tests and similar indicators, HR managers need to build a context for data analysis. Holistic approach would require all individual data sets to be compared to each other and explained on a macro scale, rather than pigeonholed to fit pre-defined notions. Understanding what drives each person is far more valuable for predictions than calculating probabilities based on incomplete or obsolete information.

Problem #2: Lack of interdepartmental communication

Solution: Department heads and key team leaders must be directly involved in the hiring procedure and their opinions should have the final word when it comes to choosing between similarly ranked candidates. Their wealth of experience is priceless for proper valuation of potential newcomers, while HR managers should provide systematic support and balance out needs of individual departments with the general plans. Of course, top management also may seek an active role when high-level employees are concerned, which means all stakeholders must be on the same page before the decision can be made.

Problem #3: Administrative barriers

Solution: Bureaucratic overload is a problem that’s been around for centuries and I don’t have a ‘one-size-fits-all’ answer to it either. Some minimal administrative interface must remain in place, but organic communication should be encouraged from the ground level up. All communication should be transparent and open-ended, so that priorities are clearly explained to people who are conducting the interviews. Reporting should be simplified and made less formal, focusing more on practical concerns than on formal qualifications and references.

Problem #4: HR department is neglected

Solution: The degree to which top HR people are involved in the strategic planning process varies, but it is rarely close to 100%. This is because HR teams are seen as strictly operational extensions of the company rather than key business units that have tangible impact on the bottom line. Raising awareness within the company about the importance of these specialists can make a big difference, while presence of a senior HR executive at important policy-shaping meetings is highly recommendable. The problem is the lack of HR responsibilities in top management, thus creating a rift between top management and middle management that aren’t always involved and act as administrators more than leaders.

Problem #5: Absence of long-term vision

Solution: Detailed projections of long-term growth are essential for a healthy human resource strategy. Few cadres arrive completely ready and it takes some time to shape them exactly to company needs, so it helps a great deal if this can be done at ease and without extreme pressure. Ideally, the company would know its staffing needs for years in advance and behave rationally, investing in the most promising candidates. This is difficult and challenging to do when priorities are changed mid flight.

Conclusion

It goes without saying that issues described above can be resolved in a number of ways. Most companies that Individuum collaborated with featured at least one of the aforementioned problems, and it wasn’t rare to see several of them at once. In each case, a combination of communication tools and practical demonstrations led to increased transparency and better collaboration on the task of recruitment. As the result, those companies soon experienced an influx of quality prospects across various departments, with the corresponding spike in productivity. In short, a far-reaching and very harmful issue can be cleared out of the way by a proactive attitude and well-targeted package of improvements.

The message is clear — don’t allow poor recruiting results anymore. If you feel you can’t fix this alone, the Individuum team would be happy to have a word with you.