I received a call yesterday from a friend who I respect greatly. He said “You have your head up your $%^ and need to retract the post on Kevin Wheeler. It looks like you didn’t read his article at all.” Now I am fully open to the fact that I may have experienced a bad bout of cranial rectosis, and (as I mentioned in the piece yesterday) I really admire Kevin Wheeler. So I went back after a night’s sleep and reread the article and reconsidered my response.
I took into careful consideration that Kevin is NOT saying that technology is bad, or that all recruiting represents is a phone and a Rolodex. I read Kevin’s article as saying “Get back to understanding what is at the core of recruiting before you start throwing a lot of other stuff around it that just obscures the basic nature of the job.” Or, in his own words “What I mean by this is, how minimal could you go and still deliver good people in a reasonable time?” Well, I completely agree with the sentiment and with Kevin’s desire to get back to basics. I just don’t agree with his analysis or his conclusions.
Kevin takes as a given that the business of recruiting is delivering good people on time. In many places it is. In other places it is not. I am aware of more than a few places that would say the job of recruiting is to deliver the cheapest person possible before everything blows up so badly that the company gets sued (objective: cost and risk control). Other places hold recruiting accountable for delivering game changers immediately – talent that will make a significant financial impact right away (objective: driving the top line). Other recruiting departments are chartered with defining talent strategies and helping business partners go after business lines and product strategies that can be supported by the available talent (objective: drive competitive advantage), and they outsource a lot of what they consider “meet and greet” functions.
Depending on what your objective is your process is going to be different. And depending on what your process is, your activities will be different. So my fundamental issue with Kevin’s article is that he takes something pretty significant for granted (the objective of the recruiting department or function) and then builds an argument from that point. But depending on the businesses objective for the recruiting function, the “simplest form” is going to look different.
There are a couple of other issues with Kevin’s argument. Let’s say that we can all agree that “delivering good people in a reasonable time” is the recruiting function’s objective. We would then have to agree on what “good people” are. In my industry, the definition of “good people” is a lot different than the definition of good people in the sanitation and waste management industry. In my industry (digital entertainment) “good people” would not think seriously about coming to a company that could only reach them through phone or snail mail. In fact, in many high tech and creative industries the more sophisticated you are in finding and connecting with candidates, the more credibility you gain in the brand building process. Then there are industries where even getting someone on a phone is a challenge, and you have to use career fairs and paper-based advertising to reach potential candidates. Again, what “good people” means changes what is core about your recruiting process.
Then there is the problem of how you measure and communicate success. In a small shop with low volume hiring a simple single-entry ledger will suffice to record activities. You can then handwrite a note to your clients and mail it to them in order to assure them of your continued good efforts. But in a large, high-volume shop where squeezing every last nickel of value out of a process is critical at the same time that you are attempting to find every advantage in your recruiting process, the only way you can capture, manage and report the data needed is through digital systems. I am not making an argument here that technology makes for good recruiting. But if a basic, core component of your recruiting operation is to tell the people who pay the bills that you are actually doing your job, the size and nature of your recruiting operation will change what is defined as “simplest” significantly.
I thought Kevin’s analogy of the car was really a perfect insight into what I disagreed with in his analysis. Kevin says “A car is at its simplest when it consists of a chassis, four wheels, a basic engine with no electrical system, no gauges or dials, a steering system directly connected to the wheels, and a single seat. Everything else is sure nice to have but does not make the car any more functional.” Well, maybe and maybe not. If you are defining a car not by whether someone wants to buy it but instead by a dictionary, then Kevin is probably right. But very few people would buy the car he describes because they would find it of little value. Yes, there are some people who just want to get from point A to point B, unsafely, with the wind in their face and the sun on their head. But most people, while they may agree that “this is the most basic components of a car” would not buy it or want it. It doesn’t fit their needs, which include safety, comfort and enjoyment.
It’s the same thing with recruiting. If you start with “here is a basic definition of recruiting, now let’s boil it down to its simplest form” you will likely end up with Kevin’s analysis. But if you are focused on what people find of value (what they would want to buy), “a phone and a Rolodex” isn’t any more compelling than “four wheels and a seat.”
I want to reiterate: I think Kevin is absolutely right to challenge people to strip away all the fluffery that surrounds recruiting these days and challenge people to excel at the basics. But I believe the industry would have been better served by an analysis that started with “First figure out why and what your customers are buying, and then figure out what is core to delivering value.” That would lead people to figure out what their customers want and serve that in its simplest form, which is a business discipline our industry often lacks.
And did I mention that I am a big fan of Kevin Wheeler's? Just want to get that in one more time. Thanks to my friend for inspiring me to go back and look at this again. I always appreciate feedback!
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