A little knowledge
The art of recruitment, pt 2
While I’m curious how much mileage I can squeeze out of this content line, there’s some good stuff to come.
I’ll avoid “all warfare is deception,” although I’m sure some jobseekers might feel that of recruitment.
This quote on the other hand. Well, you can’t get more true than this in recruitment:
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
I expect it’s the same with any project. You have to know what you are dealing with before you document, set a strategy or execute.
And recruitment is both a project (in hiring a vacancy) and a programme (in the system of how hiring is done).
It highlights the importance of preparation - fail to plan, plan to fail.
Let’s recruitmentify the quote and break it down.
“If you know the candidate and know your company and vacancy, you need not fear the result of a hundred hires.”
This isn’t to say that every hire might be successful, but that if you get the basics right - what you have in your control - the rest will follow.
Here a candidate isn’t just what you require of them, it’s what makes them tick, what drives them, and why they might entertain a conversation with you.
While your company and vacancy are about understanding your position in the market, what you can offer, what the vacancy specifically does for you and how it might be fulfilled. It’s about context.
Get both these elements right, and you can set both the strategy and tactics, take an effective approach, and give yourself the best odds of reaching the outcome you want.
Get it wrong and:
“If you know yourself but not the candidate, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.”
What could this mean?
Someone who can do the job, but doesn’t reflect the values you work to
Someone who can do the job, but will leave for a better opportunity asap
Where you felt you could just hire for attitude, yet their skills threshold isn’t adequate to fulfil the job
Filling vacancies, in a normal market, is pretty straightforward. Retention on the other hand is as much about how you recruit, as it is about how you treat them in post.
If you don’t establish what good looks like in terms of values, skills, aspirations, needs and other dimensions like career trajectory - you risk a failed hire.
A missing line from Sun Tzu:
“If you know the candidate but not the company or vacancy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.”
Which is to say that if you go ahead with hiring and know exactly who you think you want, but forget about who you are - this can also lead to a mishire.
Such as
An A-player from an A company. But what’s to say they’ll succeed in an up-and-coming company like yours, or enjoy it no matter how much money you throw at them?
Someone who’s delivered against your long-term goal, but never put the building blocks in place
Someone who’s excelled against the goal of a vacancy, but never done it in the same context - e.g. structured corporate vs ambiguous multi-hat start-up
Again it’s a question of retention. Because just filling a vacancy isn’t the win.
“If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
At the risk of sounding sanctimonious - this is job description vs CV recruitment.
Something we’re in danger of falling into if recruitment is led by LLM-style AI, and job searches by the same, without intervention from contextual insight.
That’s all well and good, but if knowledge is key to successful recruitment, how can you gain the right kind?
For employers it’s
A full audit of your context, culture and values (if culture is actually a thing, and not what your people experience).
It’s digging into your blind spots.
Understanding the journey that leads to the outcomes you want from your vacancy
Understanding what a suitable return on your investment in your new hire is
It’s appropriate transparency.
It’s interpreting this with meaning in your documentation - job descriptions, adverts, messaging, careers page, EVP, even your contracts
For candidates, it’s about
Attraction, assessment and expectation management.
Understanding the different ways in which ‘what good looks like’ can come together
Understanding where they are likely to be found
Establishing the psychology of these good candidates, and what may appeal to them about your opportunity
Assessing their qualities in a suitable and sufficient way
Bringing them forward through appropriate communication
Offering them the right package
All the things I talk about normally.
It’s also worth pointing out that I haven’t mentioned your employment competition as ‘the enemy’. Yes, it’s worth understanding what other companies can offer, to ensure you are competitive, but I think it’s better to focus on your own strengths than who you might be racing against.
While another enemy is the state of the market and economy - points to understand and build into your strategy, given how those impact candidate availability and risk appetite.
If you find you aren’t able to gain these areas of knowledge yourself, I recommend you either seek external support or find a good teacher.
In next week’s 3rd part, we can look forward to “The Art of War on Christmas”.
Thanks for reading, and have a great festive season.
Regards,
Greg
p.s. I can’t guarantee there won’t be another newsletter next week