Choice and consequence

Technical debt in recruitment – innovation from iteration, pt 9

If you’ve worked in IT or product management you can ignore the next paragraphs.

Ward Cunningham coined the term technical debt in 1992 to describe the ‘failure to consolidate’. It’s the cost to software and technical architecture of shortcuts and poor design decisions.

Compromise now, pay the piper later.

A good example of the potentially catastrophic consequence of technical debt is Enron, which alongside MCI Worldcom’s collapse precipitated Sarbannes-Oxley.

Enron’s legacy IT systems rendered them unable to correctly track their finances, enabling wide-scale fraud, resulting in liabilities of $67bn dollars.

Ouch.

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It’s a widely used principle.

How does it apply in recruitment?

I define technical debt as the long-term consequence of short-term compromise.

And it’s a healthy question to ask of any stage in your recruitment process,

“what technical debt will this decision create?”

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Here are some examples to set the scene:

1/ “I can’t believe Chris quit! We need to find a replacement asap – let’s advertise using his old job description and see if we can get someone just like him…”

Why did Chris quit? Could it be he’d outgrown his old job description? Doesn’t hiring someone at his current level imply they’re already bigger than his old job?

What about the job description itself? If it’s old, how does it reflect the current context?

With all the achievements Chris made, is the role the same now as it was then?

What about the business climate – is the 2023 situation the same as 2019?

And yet this is a common scenario.

What if, instead, you updated the job description against the current context and the future outcomes you want to achieve?

What kind of candidate would that appeal to? Probably not Chris Mk 2, anyway.

What’s the technical debt of haste?

2/ “I can’t believe Chris quit! What was his salary? Let’s get another Chris in at the same salary!”

Why did Chris quit? Might it have been for a higher salary?

And if that’s the case, wouldn’t Chris Mk 2 already want that higher salary now?

And if you need to offer the salary level old-Chris accepted to take his new job… why didn’t you just pay Chris a salary that meant he didn’t have to leave to achieve it?

What’s the technical debt of not paying the going rate?

3/ “We can’t afford agencies, so we’ll advertise and go to our network”

Of course, I would say this, you’re thinking. Bear with me.

There’s no reason not to recruit directly, if you know what you need, have defined it clearly and make an appealing message to potential candidates.

Sometimes you can even get away with it by doing none of those.

But what kind of access does that give you to the candidate marketplace?

If you’re facing a role you consider skill short, one with impact, or one where you aren’t clear on your needs – what are the risks involved?

A direct hire, may appear cheaper, but what’s the cost of a vacancy that’s been unfilled for three months financially, culturally, and for opportunity?

What’s the technical debt?

4/ “We’ll get our HR consultant to run recruitment, that’s their domain”

Are HR consultants recruiters?

The answer to that typically relies on whether you see recruitment as an administrative requirement or a commercial opportunity.

Why else do you think recruitment is often mused to be as much marketing as HR (it’s both and neither – it’s recruitment)?

And even when commercially oriented, can HR show how to realistically define an Ideal Candidate Profile, how to appeal to candidates with a ‘you’ voice, and a candidate experience that is the consequence of good practice?

Or other principles focused on the right hire, rather than the fastest or ‘best available’ hire?

It’s rare to see HR practitioners excel at recruitment (some do and it’s a learnable skill) – it’s as different as sales is to marketing, and finance is to procurement.

Those that don’t may disagree with these points if they rely on transactional recruiters, know no other way or suffer from an illusion of explanatory depth.

What’s the technical debt of assuming one thing is another, without due diligence?

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What’s the technical debt of:

• Poor documentation

• Not having a clear plan

• Not focusing on candidate experience

• Not managing expectations

• Not focusing on post-offer, preboarding and onboarding

• And maaany mooore (sorry it was my birthday last week)?

The cost can be unfilled vacancies, lost income, reduced spending leading to higher cost, and the wrong hires with all the damage that entails – culture, opportunity, lost market share, you name it.

It’s no small thing recruitment technical debt.

And it’s something we should all establish at every step in our process.

The next YMMV is on the how and why of positioning in recruitment, and the technical debt of getting it wrong.

Regards,

Greg

P.s. watch The Last Dance (Netflix) and Limitless (Disney+). Rules for life. Discuss.

P.p.s While you are here, if you like the idea of improving how you recruit, lack capacity or need better candidates, and are curious how I can help, these are my services:

- Go-to-Market, operational and technical leadership recruitment

- manage part or all of your recruitment on an individually designed basis for one client

- recruitment coaching and mentoring

- recruitment strategy setting

- outplacement support

Just hit reply to check if my approach is right for you.