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Are we making interviews complicated?  It’s a question I’ve been asking myself for so many years, my head hurts!  And then, of course, there’s the entire recruitment process.  Hardly surprising my hair’s turned silver.  You’ll know how much I love what I do, although similar challenges return.  Sometimes, I find myself thinking back to the days of newspaper advertising and the simplicity (or discipline) of limited space in which to tell the “job story”.  I’m not advocating a return to the 70s, although I’m suggesting that our superbly slick technology partners have afforded us too much space for writing.  Put simply, electronic job descriptions, personal profiles and adverts have become too long.  They’ve lost impact,

For the time being I’m going to use the wallpaper analogy.  It looks amazing for the first few weeks and then, because it’s always there, it loses impact.  Likewise, all the averts for amazingly talented humans to fill exceptional vacancies.  Beginning to get the picture?  Everyone wants the same attributes and strengths, or so it seems.  I haven’t even got to interview questions yet.

I’ve mentioned so many times before that recruitment begins with a job that needs doing.  How we describe that job should determine who is most likely to succeed in the role.  Early training by occupational psychologists reminds me every time to ask the questions, “what’ll you expect to see this person doing or hear them saying” and “what’s a typical day all about, what’s in the diary”.  Then, as the picture begins to emerge, it’s time to ask about decision making and colleague support.

By now you’ll have guessed that this isn’t a piece about interview questions, but the challenges we create for ourselves at interview, when jobs aren’t clear in the first place. All that research and preparation wasted.  Then there’s the inevitable disappointment experienced by hiring managers and candidates alike.  Put simply, if the job’s not clear, everyone loses out. It’s time-consuming and resource hungry.

Technology has been such a gift to those of us who knew life before.  Rooms filled to overflowing with paper applications, handwriting to navigate and shortlists to be typed.  Frantic candidates calling to check that Royal Mail had triumphed, and they’d not missed a closing date.  I accept that in the intervening years, CVs have become the common currency of recruitment, although just 20 years ago, some hiring managers were still expecting to work with paper.  I have vivid memories of an i-Grasp implementation at around that time.  One of my biggest challenges as Head of Resourcing, was justifying recruitment cost savings.  Yet, behind the scenes, Partners were still printing CVs at best, or asking their PAs for help.

I’m such a big fan of automation in recruitment.  Saying goodbye to complex spreadsheets which tracked candidate progress was such a joy.  A few people reading this may recall a particular business transformation which impacted the entire organisation of 15,000.  And yes, in case you are wondering, everything was (ultimately) paper based.  There were a few Blue Peter moments as Excel trackers were printed and then taped together for Board reviews.

It seems that where we’ve gained valuable time and freedom from paper, we’ve lost it to unravelling what a job is all about and how best to attract candidates.  I accept that attraction strategies and routes to market are essential tools in the talent toolbox, but today I’m arguing that technology needs to remind us of when to stop.  Our friendly bots need to challenge us to focus only on the key elements of the role and the person who is most likely to succeed, or give us less space.  I’m all for “thinking outside of the box” as you know, so let’s leave that to creating attraction campaigns and horizon-scanning.

So here are my thoughts for today, let’s:

·       Focus on what differentiates one role from another

·       Consider which strengths are essential to delivering job success

·       Set some space boundaries for ourselves – remember “white space sells”

·       Be more discerning when it comes to writing job descriptions

·       Think social media simplicity and content creativity, rather than academic writing

·       Focus on what candidates can do, rather than on what they can’t

If you need help with recruitment, let’s talk