You can’t Handle the truth

Innovation from Iteration, pt 6

‘True and Fair’ is an accountancy concept that lies at the heart of reporting, and can be applied effectively in recruitment.

Its meaning is that any financial statement made about a company should accurately and completely represent its financial position and performance.

The role of auditing is to confirm that documentation meets this definition.

Do so and everyone knows what they are dealing with.

HMRC, shareholders, customers, suppliers, employees – useful, and in many cases necessary, to have access to a true and fair view of a company’s accounts.

Can something be true and not fair?

In 2001, Enron went bust, a huge scandal with real-life repercussions that led to new legislation in the US.

Their accounts were true, in that they conformed with the required laws and standards.

However they had an incredibly complex reporting structure which made it impossible to see the overwhelming debt they had.

Poof!

Bye-bye a $100bn company when this all came out in the wash.

Certain US politicians may be guilty of the same.

How about fair but not true?

This can happen if a situation is described which gives a fair picture but lacks accuracy.

An example here could be the UK politician who HMRC deemed behaved fairly but made errors in his tax reporting. Only a few million quid plus penalty.

What types of recruitment documentation does this apply to?

Three key ones that spring to mind (although there’s no reason it can’t be applied everywhere):

The job description.

The job advertisement.

The CV.

If these three documents were always a true and fair representation of either a job or a candidate, you’d interview and hire better candidates who stick around longer.

With the caveat that these documents should also be ‘suitable and sufficient’.

Documents are the first step in a recruitment process, relating to a decision to apply and the decision to interview.

Is it not the case, that the second most common complaint in recruitment is “not what we expected”?

Therefore, if we nipped this complaint in the bud, with true and fair documentation, wouldn’t life be better for everyone in the recruitment process?

What does true and fair mean in recruitment documentation?

I think it has to cover three points.

1/ factually correct

2/ shows context suitably

3/ describes sufficiently

An immediate objection might be that job descriptions are always true and fair, but I’d argue this is actually rarely the case.

If you recruit for a new role, do you audit your job description against the current context?

If you have a generic job family description does it show the specific day-to-day duties of a role?

Have things changed in the current role that makes it different to the last time you recruited?

A common scenario in recruitment is that Greg resigns, and the hiring manager says “we’d love someone just like Greg”.

Yet if Greg resigned, wouldn’t someone just like Greg be at risk of resigning for the same reasons in future? Would now-Greg have applied for the same role that then-Greg applied for?

Which definition of Greg is the true and fair one you’d hire?

It feels strange writing my name like this.

There are lots of different situations in which a job description that was true and fair a few years ago is no longer so.

The only way to ensure it is true and fair, is to audit documentation prior to going live.

You may think a fully representative and accurate contextual analysis may be too time-consuming for most vacancies, especially where it doesn’t actually matter if there is some inaccuracy.

“Oh yeah, that’s not relevant anymore”.

But if you have a key hire that can make a difference in your business, ‘true and fair’ should be the starting point, each and every time.

If you have a systematic process that finds truth and fairness, you’ll see the benefit of applying the same across any vacancy – for the reason that the time invested at the outset is offset by interviewing fewer unsuitable candidates and wasting less time and resources overall.

And what should be the more important reason of better recruitment outcomes.

For any project I take on, this is the first step – getting the documentation in order.

Get it right and everything flows from there.

It’s a key reason behind my 100% fill rate. It’s also one of the reasons my average tenure is over 4 years for key hires.

These achievements don’t come down to chance. They come from my process.

I mentioned the caveat that documentation should also be ‘suitable and sufficient’, a risk assessment principle that documentation is fit for purpose.

While I’m writing about this in the next edition, I’ll leave you an example of its importance in a job advert:

Nineteen experiential bullet points might be true and fair but will also encourage ideal candidates to run away screaming.

See you next time.

Regards,

Greg

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:

- commercial, operational and technical leadership recruitment (available for no more than two vacancies)

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

- recruitment coaching and mentoring (one place available at £200/hr + VAT)

- recruitment strategy setting

- outplacement support

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