It’s Not the How or the What but the Who
Challenge your usual practices to make recruiting more successful.
Author(s): Claudio Fernandez-Araoz
Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
Date of publication: 2014
Manageris opinion
A recruiting expert who has a 90% success rate shares his best practices!
This book gives a jolt by making us aware of the gap between our stated intentions about the importance of human capital and the mistakes we make when recruiting. Fortunately, the author goes beyond this rather harsh observation. He tallies up our most frequent errors, which are often linked to judgment biases that are difficult to escape, but also to methodological errors which can be easily avoided. For example, he advises broadening and diversifying the recruiting pool. The better the pool, the better our chances of spotting the best candidates. Rather than trying to restrict potential choices, the author encourages us to search more broadly, beyond habitual sources. In fast-moving organizations, diversity of experience and skills is a key strength.
He gives concrete tools to help us make our decisions more reliable. Borrowed from psychology, statistics, and neuroscience, these tips are easily transposable.
The author also alerts us to the importance of supporting new employees closely in their first weeks on the job. We are sometimes tempted, once the contract is signed, to consider that recruiting is over and done. Nothing could be further from the truth, especially when it comes to generation Y, more demanding of support and less attached to the employer.
The author shakes us out of our usual recruiting practices, which we seldom take time to challenge. Still, he aims to be reassuring by pointing out initiatives that will surely help us to improve!
