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Recruiting

At Face Value

April 12, 2022
Article, Psychology, Recruiting, Trust
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At Face Value

I’ve hired a lot of people over the years. Both for my own businesses and on behalf of clients.

One thing most of these hirings have had in common is taking the successful candidates – well, all the candidates, really – at face value.

Which is to say, believing the things they say about themselves – about their character, their abilities, their experience, their needs, etc.. A bit like UPR (Unconditional Positive Regard).

Background

At the time, we needed an IEEE 754 floating point package for our commercial Modula-2 compiler. At that time our compiler only supported integer math, and for greater commercial appeal we decided floating point support was also necessary.

So we looked for someone with floating point implementation experience. We found someone who said he had such experience, and we took him at face value.

Nicklas

Let’s dive into our experience with Niklas. He was a student from Germany looking for some summer work experience in London. We had a chat over the phone, and invited him to join us. He took us up on the offer, and came to stay and work with us. His work was outstanding. Everything he had claimed, and more. He accomplished the necessary in two months. It would have taken me six.

Trust or Doubt

How likely is it that new hires are going to be impressed that the hiring manager, team or organisation doubts their word? Is doubt any constructive basis upon which to start building a positive relationship? Lack of trust, much?

How do you deal with candidates’ claims and representation of themselves? Scepticism or respect? Doubt, or trust?

– Bob

The Organisational Psychotherapy Solution for Easier Hiring

February 9, 2022
Antimatter principle, Article, Culture change, Organisational Therapy, Recruiting, Rightshifting
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The Organisational Psychotherapy Solution for Easier Hiring

I’ve hired many people in my time, and every day it seems to be more difficult finding the right people. 

Most organisation still have the mentality that says they’re doing people a favour by considering them for an open position. Not that hiring for open positions is too smart, in any case.

The Bus

The old adage goes, “get the right people on the bus, and only then sort out where they might sit”. In other words, don’t hire into open positions, hire into the organisation at large, and then find the best fitting role for each new hire. There may not even be an existing position for the best candidates, in which case new positions must be created. 

Employer Branding

Gone are the days when a simple ad or commission for a recruiter would attract suitable candidates. These days, unless your organisation is well known and highly regardsed in the jobs market, you’re highly unlikely to attract the candidates you seek. 

Deming’s 95:5

Deming’s 95:5 implies that there is no such thing as “best candidates”. It’s the system (the way the work works) that dictates 95% of the productivity/performance of each new hire.

Collaborative Knowledge Work

The future of work is collaborative knowledge work (CKW). Potential new hires know this instinctively, and studiously avoid organisations that seem unaware or ill-adapted to this new reality.

The Organisational Psychotherapy Assist

Organisational Psychotherapy can assist in making hiring easier in a number of ways:

  • By helping the organisation build a culture that actively attracts candidates (much better to having candidates queuing round the block for positions, rather than having them ridicule your organisation as a cultural dinosaur). See also: Rightshifting and the Marshall Model.
  • By surfacing your organisation’s existing collective assumptions and beliefs – assumptions and beliefs which most typically lead to hiring the wrong people, and missing out on the candidates you really need.
  • By identifying the cognitive biases which lead to exclusion of much of the available talent pool.
  • By convincing potential candidates that your organisation takes them and their needs seriously, and that you are determined to build an environment in which they can do their best work (see also: Harter & Buckingham, 2016). 
  • By adopting well-established management practices, best suited to CKW.
  • By awareness of Management Monstrosities and how to avoid them (potential new hires can spot these monstrosities from a mile aways, even if the hiring organisation in blind to them).

Further Reading

Harter, J., Buckingham, M. & Gallup Organization (2016). First, Break All The Rules: What The World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently. Gallup Press.

 

The Great Hiring Debacle Continues

January 18, 2022
Article, Culture change, Debacles, Feedback, Quintessence, Recruiting
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The Great Hiring Debacle Continues

The debacle of hiring (cf. external hires) continues unabated. In my experience, it’s getting worse by the day. And I see every hirer totally oblivious to the data. Here’s a couple of charts:

And some data from various sources:

New Hire Failure Rates (By Job Level)

Overall failure rate – What percentage of all new hires fail within eighteen months? “46%” (Source: Leadership IQ)

Hourly new hires – What percentage of all hourly employees quit or are fired within their first six months? “50%” (Source: Humetrics)

Managment new hires– What percentage of management new hires fail within eighteen months? “Between 40% and 60%” (Source: Harvard Business Review)

High managerial talent – What percentage miss the mark on high managerial talent? “In 82% of their hiring decisions” (Source: Gallup)

Executive new hires – What percentage of executive new hires fail within eighteen months? “Nearly 50%” (Source: The Corporate Leadership Council)

CEO failure – What percentage of new CEOs fail outright within their first eighteen months? “Nearly 40%” (Source: Centre For Creative Leadership)

Unequivocal success –  What percentage of new hires can be declared as an unequivocal success? “19%” or 1 in 5 (Source: Centre from Creative Leadership

(Table courtesy of Dr John Sullivan)

And you think you’re so smart?

– Bob

Further Reading

Griffiths, A. (2022.). What You Need to Know About Unsuccessful Recruitment and Ways to Improve Your Hiring Success Rate – Hirenest. [online] Available at: https://hirenest.com/blog/what-you-need-to-know-about-unsuccessful-recruitment-and-ways-to-improve-your-hiring-success-rate/ [Accessed 18 Jan. 2022].

Live Interviews Suck Donkeys

January 11, 2022
Article, Culture change, Organisational effectiveness, Quintessence, Recruiting
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Live Interviews Suck Donkeys

Hiring sucks.

CVs suck.

And for many folks, myself included, who don’t cope well with live interviews, live interviews suck donkeys.

And that’s before we consider the impact of a wide variety of implicit cognitive biases and prejudices – such as sexism, racism, ageism, etc. – on the hiring process. Impacts which are inevitable when hirers get to see the candidates and their gross visible characteristics (gender, ethnicity, age, etc.).

Alternative

What’s the alternative? When I’m hiring people, I’d much rather script a list of salient and insightful questions, and give candidates the opportunity to consider them and respond, coherently, at the pace that best suits them. After all it’s not like these are the kind of questions where one can find the answers on the internet, all neatly pre-packaged and gift-wrapped.

And when being hired, I’d much rather have the opportunity to present coherent and considered responses to questions, rather than make up some lame and half-assed response on the spur of the moment.

Are we hiring people for their skills at live interviewing (i.e. politicians) or for their skills in actually doing the job at hand?

How do you feel about live interviews?

– Bob

More Employable

January 4, 2022
Article, Culture change, Improvement, Lemons, Marshall Model, Organisational effectiveness, Product development, Quintessence, Recruiting, Software development
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More Employable

Ineffectiveness is the norm (in particular in the software and collaborative knowledge work fields).

Therefore the less effective someone appears to e.g. hiring managers, the more employable they are. The ineffective fit right in, don’t challenge norms or ruffle feathers, and appear a competent “good hire” even as they join in with sustaining and compounding the organisation’s prevailing ineffectiveness.

Simple Truth

This simple truth explains why some many organisations are so poor at developing tech products, and software more generally. They unwittingly hire “good fits’ i.e. the profoundly ineffective. And never realise the productivity improvments, etc., that they’re leaving on the table.

The (modified) Marshall Model chart (below) illustrates the situation:

How might we help these organisations appreciate their dire situation? Is that even possible?

– Bob

Further Reading

Peters, T.J. and Waterman, R.H. (1982). In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-run Companies.  Profile Books.

Marshall, R.W. (2021). Quintessence: An Acme for Software Development Organisations. Falling Blossoms (LeanPub).

The Unemployables

December 14, 2021
Article, Leadership, Organisational effectiveness, Recruiting
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The Unemployables

There’s a saying in recruitment that the best jobs are never advertised.

There’s another idea, not quite a saying as yet, that the best candidates are unemployable. Allow me to explain. 

Most vacancies as advertised are shaped to fit the mediocre candidate. Any candidate with outstanding skills, experience, capabilities and insight is such a poor match for the position as advertised – with job description, education, certification and experience requirements, and all – they’ll never get past the first filters / gatekeepers (people with no understanding of what it really takes to excel in the job).

The outstandingly capable candidates are thus, for all intents and purposes, practically unemployable.

This leads to my regular refrain – the recruitment / hiring market is irredeemably broken.

Irredeemably broken? Yup. At least until those who unknowingly suffer the consequences of their organisations’ hiring mediocre candidates (CxOs, particularly) go to the gemba and begin to see what’s ACTUALLY happening in their name.

– Bob

Quickie: The Great Resignation

August 31, 2021
Quickies, Recruiting
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In 2019, Gartner reported that “more than half of all HR leaders [agreed] that improving employee experience [was] a priority.” Today, companies are still working to improve employee experiences. “Despite the global attention on and importance of employee experience, only 13% of employees indicate they are currently fully satisfied with their experience,” according to a more recent Gartner report.

Excerpted from https://fortune.com/2021/08/26/pandemic-burnout-career-changes-great-resignation-adobe/

Every Freaking Time

August 25, 2021
Article, Recruiting
1 Comment

Every Freaking Time

How internal recruiters, managers and HR people hire the wrong candidates. Every freaking time.

When hirers have no clear idea of what a company needs, candidates get hired on random criteria.

When hirers have no idea what makes e.g. software development work (or not), candidates get hired on a range of criteria other than “will this person be effective?”.

When hirers buy into the myth that individual ability is the key criterion, they’ll skip over those candidates with the ability to work within – and change – the existing system (the way the work works).

No surprise, then, that most times, hires hire the wrong candidates.

Alternatively…

Understand what the company needs from the new hire, now and more significantly six months to two years down the line. And yes, this implies some hard system 2 thinking.

Understand what makes software development work, and select on that basis. BTW As the whole software industry is unable to answer this question, good luck with this!

Understand Deming’s 95:5, and select system-savvy candidates. You do know about systems thinking, don‘t you?

– Bob

Further Reading

Antimatter Recruiting ~ Think Different blog post

Antimatter Hiring

January 18, 2018
Antimatter principle, Recruiting
2 Comments

Antimatter Hiring

When we’re hiring, why not invite candidates to actively demonstrate the core capabilities that our organisation, group, or team, needs?

Asides: How often do hiring managers know what core capabilities the organisation, group or team needs? How often are they capable of recognising and assessing candidates on those capabilities? And how aware are they of the impact the prevailing system conditions (the way the work works) has on a candidate’s ability to apply their capabilities, should they be hired?

We Want to See Jugglers Juggle

When we’re hiring e.g. coders, we’ll generally ask to see them write some code. When we’re hiring analysts we may ask to see them analyse something. When we hire testers, we’ll likely ask to see them test something. Etc..

The Antimatter Principle proposes that the core capability in all collaborative knowledge work is the capability to attend to folks’ needs. Which, by the way, implies the capability to discuss and more-or-less clearly identify those needs, as well as the capability to subsequently find effective ways to address those needs.

Under this premise, the ideal candidate would open the interview conversation with

“Hi there, what would you like to have happen, here and now, today?”

Or more directly/explicitly (at the risk of alienating the uninitiated hiring manager),

“Hi there, what needs do you have of this interview, that I might be able to attend to, here and now, today?”

To which the cooperative hiring manager might reply,

“Well, as we’re hiring for [e.g.] coders at the moment, I need to understand how capable you would be in that role if you joined us. Can you suggest some ways in which you might be able to address that need, here and now, today?”

Prompting and Reframing

I guess you’d say that the preceding dialogue is, however, most unlikely. Most candidates will not be seeking to understand the hiring manager’s needs, nor will they know how acceptable – or unacceptable – such an opening gambit might be. Much more likely, they’ll play safe and let the hiring manager lead them through the interview conversation.

So, until the world changes and conversations of the kind I’ve illustrated become the norm, the hiring manager may have to prompt the candidate, and reframe the conversation at the beginning, to open the door, so to speak. Here’s a modified opening exploring this approach:

Hiring manager:

“We believe that attending to folks’ needs is a core capability we absolutely have to hire for in all our candidates. I’d like to experience you demonstrating your capability in that area.”

“As we’re hiring for [e.g.] coders at the moment, I have a need to understand how capable you would be in that role if you joined us. Can you suggest some ways in which you might be able help me understand your coding abilities, here and now, today?”

Outcomes

If we focus explicitly on the capability to attend to folks’ needs, we might improve our chances of actually making job offers to candidates that have this capability. Surely this is the outcome we seek?

Recap for New Readers

The Antimatter Principle is “the only principle we need for becoming wildly effective at collaborative knowledge work.”

Stated simply, the Antimatter Principle says:

“Attend to folks’ needs.”

Over the years, I’ve blogged about a wide variety of the deep implications, and impacts, stemming from the application of this principle.

– Bob

Further Reading

The Antimatter Principle ~ Think Different blog post

Wanna See Me Juggle? ~ Think Different blog post

Nine Aspects Of Top Developers

September 4, 2015
Antimatter principle, Engineering, Product development, Recruiting, Software development
2 Comments

Nine Aspects Of Top Developers

Ask a hundred people what’s their definition of a “top software developer” and you’ll likely get a hundred different answers. Many definitions may cluster around “someone who can make the computer jump through hoops”, i.e. a technical virtuoso of some sort.

Personally, my definition of a top developer is somewhat different. My definition is someone who:

  1. Understands people and how they – as e.g. users – might find joy in interacting with software.
  2. Understands people and how best to get along with them – e.g. in a team, a business – to create “solutions”.
  3. Understands people and their needs – and how to attend to those needs by e.g. writing software.
  4. Understands herself or himself – e.g. her or his own biases, tastes, limitations and capabilities.
  5. Looks to improve themselves and – together with other people – the way their work works.
  6. Has a broad range of life experiences to draw upon for e.g. inspiration and insight.
  7. Is widely read and informed – and especially, not just technical books, articles, blogs, etc..
  8. Is different and thinks different – to the other people around them. A.k.a. Diversity.
  9. Seeks out and takes ownership wherever and whenever folks’ needs aren’t getting met.

Technical virtuosity, aptitude, coding talent, experience, domain knowledge, numeracy, ability to learn quickly, etc. are all nice-to-haves, but not core to being a “top developer” – at least, from the perspective of e.g. folks paying their wages.

Bottom Line

My bottom line: I’d regard someone a “top developer” if they are highly effective in attending to folks’ needs. Although, just the idea of labelling someone “top”, or not, makes me feel uneasy for its implicit judgmentalism.

“it’s not what you say, or know, or even who you are, it’s what you do that matters.”

I guess my definition is just one amongst that hundred.

– Bob

Further Reading

The Three Virtues ~ Cf Larry Wall

Cultural Fit

June 8, 2015
Marshall Model, Organisational effectiveness, Recruiting
5 Comments

Cultural Fit

I note a recent spate of articles advising employers to “recruit for cultural fit”. And the inevitable backlash against that advice. Like most advice, this simple soundbite conceals a whole can of worms.

Where Are We At?

If we’re happy with our current “culture”, then by all means hire for “cultural fit”. We will likely hire new people that look the same, act the same and think the same as those folks already in the organisation. And thereby reinforce our existing culture and status quo. Which, if we’re happy with it, is what we want, right?

But if we ponder for a moment and conclude that our current “culture” is more of a hindrance than a help, we might want to look to a future in which the culture is different from how it is now. Maybe, markedly different.

“Until I came to IBM, I probably would have told you that culture was just one among several important elements in any organization’s makeup and success — along with vision, strategy, marketing, financials, and the like… I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn’t just one aspect of the game, it is the game.”

~ Lou Gerstner

Culture Is Read-Only

Organisational culture, being a function of the prevailing collective mindset, is not amenable to direct manipulation. To change our culture, we have to pull levers that are available to us. One such lever is hiring. Another lever is the collective mindset of the organisation (yes, that IS amenable to change, if we know how).

In which case, it makes no sense to hire folks for their fit with the current culture.

“A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.”

~ Wayne Gretzky

Antici…..pation

Rather, would it not make much more sense to hire new folks for their fit with the future culture we’re wanting to see?

And how to gauge their fit into that future culture? By their mindset.

Not only will they fit well in to our future culture, their mindset will contribute to shifting the collective mindset – and hence culture – of the organisation, in the direction we want to see it moving.

However, it’s not a free lunch. The real trick is keeping the new hires on board and engaged even though the future culture we want and into which they will fit has not arrived yet. Can we do that?

– Bob

Agile Competency Is A Crock

April 16, 2015
Agile, Lamentation, Lemons, Recruiting
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Agile Competency Is A Crock

Part 1 – The Lede

The Agile Manifesto set out to make developers’ (and others’) live richer, saner and more fulfilling.

A true irony of the legacy of that Manifesto is that finding a fulfilling job or role “in Agile” is nowadays next to impossible.

Competency is not something valued by hirers and their gatekeepers. Being a “safe hire” is all.

Part 2 – The Background Story

My dear friend, the late Grant Rule, had many compelling stories to tell.

One of these concerned a large insurance company in the home counties. Let’s call them InsCo. For some reason, the powers that be became interested in the reasons why they were not doing as well as they thought they should be, business-wise.

Some number of investigations were commissioned. One concerned the type of people they were hiring, versus the type of people needed for business success.

To cut a long story short, it became revealed to them that not only were they hiring people with little to contribute in the way of the organisation’s business goals, they were actually hiring people whose general style actively undermined those goals.

In other words, their hiring practices were expressly filtering out those people best suited to make a positive contribution inside the business. And this had been going on for years, if not decades.

I always found the story fascinating, not least for its compelling ring of truth.

In todays’s business world, I see many of the organisation I visit or work with making exactly the same error.

Organisations whose hiring practices filter OUT exactly those candidates who would best contribute to the espoused goals of the organisation.

Guided by the heuristic of POSIWID, I assume that organisations – or more exactly the core group within an organisation – are not much interested in the organisation’s espoused goals. Deming said as much fifty years ago, with his First Theorem:

“Nobody gives a hoot about profit”

~ W Edwards Deming

I find this particularly noticeable in hiring for so-calle Agile positions and roles. […]

Now, I’m not about to criticise folks – senior executives and middle managers in this case – for acting in their own individual and collective (core group) best interests.

It’s what humans do – acting to get needs met.

I’m just inviting you, like the executives at InsCo did, to take a look at the consequences of your current hiring and staffing policies and processes.

And consider how those staffing policies and processes play against the things that matter to you.

Oh, and maybe consider what those things that matter to you are, too.

Part 3 – The Dilemma

For me, struggling as I am to find gainful and meaningful employment, the questions aired in part 2 raise an interesting question for all of us in the Agile field:

Do we concentrate on appearing competent, and on our abilities to help the organisation achieve its espoused goals? Or do we focus on getting a well-paid job – which demands a very different strategy and “personal brand image”?

The former strategy suggests we list our experience, results and contributions to the success of the organisations we have worked with. That we take hiring organisations’ espoused goals at face value and play to those declared goals.

The latter strategy suggests we present ourselves in terms that appeal to the needs we imagine the hirers – and their gatekeepers – have.

Needs rarely articulated and only determinable through observation of these folks’ actions. Needs which in most cases means portraying ourselves as conventional, conservative, and status-quo loving. As “safe hires”.

I’ve discovered – unsurprisingly, to me – that I just CAN’T bring myself to do the latter.

I’m NOT a safe hire, not do I ever wish to be. My value proposition is other.

Outwith the emotional consequences of pretending to be something I’m not, and setting myself up at work to live a life that’s a bald-faced lie, I just don’t want to find myself in any more jobs or roles that, in essence, are just another stupid punt.

How about you?

– Bob

Antimatter Recruiting

February 24, 2015
Antimatter principle, Recruiting
1 Comment

Antimatter Recruiting

The Antimatter Principle applies not just to software development and teams, but across the whole spectrum of business. One key area that could benefit is that of search and selection, a.k.a. Talent Management a.k.a. recruitment a.k.a. hiring.

Violence

“Classifying and judging people promotes violence.”

~ Marshall Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication

“So what?” you might say. So, I ask – is violence the first and greatest thing you want your new hires to associate with the relationship they’re building with your organisation – and you with them?

Let’s face it, the traditional recruiting process is nothing if not a prime example of classifying and judging people. Is there any way we can get away from that?

The Default Pattern

Traditional recruiting almost always gets a new-hire relationship off on the wrong foot. By the time the selected candidate has been through the process and starts their new job, the pattern for disengagement has pretty much been set.

How might we approach recruiting such that new hires might feel more engaged when they start work, rather than less?

Would you be prepared to consider the application of the Antimatter Principle to this process?

The Traditional Focus

Traditionally, recruitment is all about the needs of the hiring organisation, and what the candidates can do to meet those needs. The candidate’s needs barely get a look-in, excepting the tacit belief that compensation (salary) is all that needs be offered by way of attending to the candidate’s needs.

How It Could Work

How might it be if recruiters, hirers, etc., focused instead on the needs of the candidate? Not to the exclusion of the needs of the organisation you understand. But putting the needs of the candidate at least on a par with those of the organisation. And helping the candidates – who will have little in the way of information on how accepting the job might help them attend to their own needs – understand how taking the job might help them get their needs met?

This alternate focus would bring a number of benefits:

  • The candidates would all feel more positive about the hiring organisation. Those who were not offered the position may well speak about their experience positively to friends and colleagues, and candidates and their contacts may feel more inclined to pursue other opportunities with the organisation in the future.
  • More engaged new hires, from the get-go.
  • An organisation with more connections, joy and humanity.

– Bob

Further Reading

Stop the Machine. Engagement is Human ~ Simon Terry
The War With Talent ~ Dr. Charles Handler