Deconstructing the "one size fits all" in recruitment and retention

After talking about why the big IT consultants concentrate their jobs in Madrid, this time we will focus on how attracting does not have to imply retaining, but a strand of thought does exist along the lines that hiring certain types of people and not others ensures, in a certain way, retention in our company.

Laura is a freelance professional working in both the selection of candidates and consultancy for the improvement of the selection process of client companies and so it seemed to me that she was the right person to from thom to get an in-depth insight in this regard.

However, Laura and myself talk about many aspects regarding this topic and the initial question is clear: can you recruit all people in the same way?.

Although the answer to this question might appear very obvious, I can assure you that, in the practice of recruiting, it appears that the answer is not so clear.

But for Laura the answer is a resounding: No

She is going to show us different lines of demarcation and they show a way to move on from the "one size fits all”  approach, which it appears is used on many occasions.

Differentiation in preliminary recruitment

For Laura, differentiation as regards how you select already begins before you start talking to a person; the way of communicating, the channels, the values that makes a recruiter visible attracts one type of person or another.

I think this point is very interesting because Laura is getting right to the key player: the person you attract or not, and they are given active power from the first moment in the selection process.

And although this might appear obvious, believe me, it is not such a common idea in recruitment where, normally, you think about the candidates as passive actors to whom you offer something, not who they are attracted to and, truthfully, I liked to hear it.

>>Listen audio #1<<

Types of people to be recruited?

Since we are talking about differentiation in recruitment I am interested in getting Laura's opinion regarding categorising or segregating this recruitment in some way. I ask her about it from the point of view of the potential division into "types of people".

Should we think about types of people when recruiting?; Laura does not believe that this is the most appropriate division and offers me two other alternatives:

1. The division into the types of project that you are offering; such as for example the jobs that bring development to your career.
2. The division into the type of organisation you are going to enter and the value that each can bring.

>>Listen audio #2<<

We keep talking about why it does not make much sense to divide recruitment according to "types” of people and Laura is clear that one of the impediments to this is that, in their professional development, people  go through different phases which are very distinct.

>>Listen audio #3<<

Looking for patterns and ways to recruit

Since we are talking about differentiation, the question of "patterns" comes to my mind .- Could there be patterns that repeat themselves within these differences we are talking about?.- And Laura, drawing on her experience, provides the following pattern that she recognises in the IT career based on recruitment, even within it being a generalisation that can leave out many people:

>>Listen audio #4<<

It's clear that the technical recruitment landscape is very varied, so how do we manage it? .- Laura tells me that years ago we managed it based on skills but that since 2 or 3 years ago it is  based more on values.

This means that, currently, the component of the culture and values of the candidates and companies holds a lot of weight , more even than the component of how competent we are in a specific area.

This brings associated peculiarities since we find what the company is looking for in terms of values and that it is usually very similar to what it already has within itself.

This idea, as some of you will already know, is what is known as the “cultural fit”.

>>Listen audio #5<<

Cultural fits with teams and diversity

Speaking of values and of whether they are going to hire us in a company because of whether we fit or not with the culture of the company, Laura tells me that it is a crucial point and that it is usually the reason for the rejection of a candidate.

>>Listen audio #6<<

Since we are talking about the reasons, in terms of the values and culture of a person, they are not usually included in a team, I ask Laura if she could tell me the most frequent reasons for the rejection of a candidate based on these things, and what she tells me you can hear in the following audio:

>>Listen audio #7<<

Cultural retention of people

We talked about hiring and we heard in the previous audio how Laura relates the values and diversity of people with retention in the company.

If we hire someone different in our company without a cultural change having occurred, it is very likely to go badly for both parties and for retention to be the next problem.

Are companies looking for more diversity?

It seems that we are going into issues concerning the diversity of certain groups and the question is as follows; are they asking you for more people from minority groups? .- Laura's answer is in the negative: “no, they are not looking for them and what's more…” (listen to the following audio):

>>Listen audio #8<<

Sadly, Laura has just given us an example and the question I have to ask concerns the frequency of this type of practice; is it usual for candidates to be sought who have certain characteristics and that this may imply discrimination?

>>Listen audio #9<<

It's the same the world over and by way of example

The first thing we might think is that this type of discriminatory practice may be characteristic of certain types of companies, so again I ask Laura if she could tell me if there are certain types of companies that carry out these searches more than others.

But her answer is no, that it is usually very widespread and we would be surprised where many requests from companies that we believe to be "more modern" come from. To conclude, she provides the following example:

>>Listen audio #10<<

The demarcation line between value contribution and discriminatory bias

According to Laura's experience, it is usually product companies who have more problems with the cultural fit of people and consultancy firms with the technical fit of people; this is curious because the situation could arise where there was more diversity in consultancies than in product companies, something which might surprise a few people, since  product companies have a better reputation when it comes to approaches to recruitment.

However, this is an issue which is more complex and which entails tracing a line between what we believe can add value to our business and what other things which we are evaluating in the candidates are discriminatory biases (in the following audio you will understand it better):

>>Listen audio #11<<

Can a recruiter make the difference between the good and the bad?

We are talking about decisions within a recruitment by values and in which the ethics of drawing the lines as regards up to what point we commit ourselves influences our decisions. This is no trivial matter and we must, I believe, decide what makes an “ethical recruiter” or a "good recruiter", so I ask Laura what the characteristics of a "good recruiter" would be.

>>Listen audio #12<<

Who asks that the processes be ethical?

But imagine for a moment that this request for ethical processes does not come from the company, why would a company be interested in being ethical in their hiring? Would it be necessary for a recruiter to be ethical or not?What does Laura think about this?

>>Listen audio #13<<

The candidate as a shaper of the process

Laura has worked in industry and distinguishes clearly the power that the technical candidates currently have in a market which is very different from the industrial one and where the candidate asks and is requesting more ethical processes and is shaping recruitment in turn:

>>Listen audio #14<<

Double value and hype

As you can see, the interview with Laura has been very useful in many ways, or at least, that's how I felt, because we spoke about many very specific things and actuators in the part of good practices for recruitment based on its complexity in the world of employment and with the many grey areas and controversies that arise therein.

But, what's more, what you do not know is that Laura's interview has been of double value in terms of topics and I'm keeping one of them in reserve because I think they should be given enough space; for that reason, you will have to wait for the next article to find out what the contribution from Laura is that I believe must be dealt with by itself (I think people now call this “HYPE”).

Thank you Laura.

A final thought

But let's ignore the hype and get back to this article and a  final reflection, my own, which I would like to communicate to all of you and especially to companies:

Companies are people and the different types of companies are not usually formed at random.

The diversity of professionals is the very reality of the society in which we live and hiring in companies is a way ofcreating an ecosystem which will be our house brand.

It is up to us whether we create one culture or another, opting for a model of greater similarites or greater diversity.

But what is clear is that even if we are creating a type of company (people), we cannot stop something which is in society itself and which is the rhythm of the professional career, the market, even, the life stage of the candidate, a force to be renewed every “x” time in all companies.

Denying this or getting stuck on a "single type", a “one size fits all”, is in my point of view to put sticks in the spokes of our business.

And you? What do you think