Invisible Man
Transparency in recruitment (reflected pt 10)
I’m sure most people would agree that transparency is both helpful and important in recruitment.
But where is the line?
Is too much information counterproductive or even misleading?
Can transparency work against you, if you’re showing the wrong things?
Don’t forget that out of a misguided attempt to do good for humankind and science, Griffin was driven mad by the drugs that made him see through.
Most people remember him only as The Invisible Man, not by his name, sadly.
Something, something, tenuous link with employer branding.
The point of transparency, in my book, is to provide clear, accurate and representative information. Typically these are answers to questions candidates should have, as well as information they need to know.
Clear, so they understand it.
Accurate, with factually correct information.
Representative in how it relates to what they’ll be doing.
Manage their expectations so that they can take the right steps.
In 2012, I ran a volume recruitment project for a tech company.
They had a lot of cool vacancies that had come out of a transformation programme, many of which I filled directly, including ones I had never done before. Always a fun learning curve.
They’d spent a fair bit of time defining their values and culture, which in turn influenced the behaviours and attitudes they looked for in their new employees.
Dynamic, creative, challenge the status quo, play for the team - that kind of thing.
It was also quite a challenging environment, and they were clear in their recruitment process what those challenges were, and who would thrive.
We filled them all.
As well as the new vacancies, they had business-as-usual recruitment.
One such was a revolving door of a temp-to-perm Purchase Ledger Assistant.
The same temp agency kept refilling the vacancy, and when I joined, their latest new starter left after a day.
The HR Director said to me ‘The agency doesn’t seem to get it, feel free to use someone else’.
I spoke to them and asked them to run through what they’d been recruiting against.
It was those values and behaviours up above.
But the purchase ledger team were a bunch of 50+ women who were quite quiet and got on with monotonous clerical work. I’m sure they were dynamic in their own way, but not in the way the temps recruiter had envisaged.
We tweaked the brief and said what it was - that hire was there for quite a few years.
See this is an example of the wrong kind of transparency - looking through rose-tinted organisational glasses, not through the lens of the requirement.
The brief that was given was clear and accurate, but not representative.
Putting myself in the shoes of the team, and the needs of the job, it was straightforward to show a better reflection of what the ‘successful candidate’ should expect.
That candidate was in her 50s as I recall, and pretty quiet. Maybe not great for diversity, but given the more diverse candidate pool wasn’t interested, is that a problem?
Surely one point of transparency is that you never need to hear the line ‘I’m leaving because it wasn’t what I expected’ when you could have avoided it.
Of course, full transparency isn’t always possible - I’ve recruited confidential vacancies through a number of change programmes.
I’ve recruited hiring managers who didn’t want to tell me the truth about their context.
I’ve recruited roles where I wasn’t told salient details, such as the HR Manager I placed in 2006 who was told she had to make everyone redundant on day 1.
It turned out it was her expertise in redundancy that got her the job.
What might have happened had they been upfront with me and the candidate?
If you can’t be transparent with the people you want to employ, should you expect them to be transparent with you?
Is it even fair to expect it when you have been transparent?
What if they are 2 months pregnant, and haven’t even told their family?
Have an ailing family member who may or may not get better, and may even need live-in care?
Come from a discriminated-against demographic, and haven’t developed enough trust to tell you?
Don’t want to tell you their salary because they are underpaid?
Showing transparency in the right way is really effective in bringing the right people forward.
Why wouldn’t you highlight your recruitment and onboarding process early on?
Why wouldn’t you show people how to make the right decisions at every touchpoint in recruitment?
Why wouldn’t you help them be successful by providing the right information?
But it isn’t as simple as just providing honest information, it has to be done intentionally and for the right reasons.
Thanks for reading.
Regards,
Greg
P.s. while you’re here, if you’re finding a vacancy difficult to fill, and your process is all about you and not about your ideal candidates - I can fix that for you.
Don’t be shy, email me at greg.wyatt@bwrecruitment.co.uk.
I can fill that vacancy directly, with employees who often exceed expectations, or help you do it better yourself.