Consulting Journal: Techniques - Recruitment in small companies

Techniques: Recruitment in small companies

by David Blakey

The easiest way to help small companies recruit new staff is to apply the techniques of other acquisitions.

[Monday 22 September 2003]

I work for a small not-for-profit organization. They recently appointed a new staff member. I had no influence on the decision. I observed how the decision was made.

The people responsible for the appointment had made a list of the skills and qualities that they expected of the person in that position. They did not prioritize them or even list them as ‘must have’ and ‘nice to have’. During the review of the applications and the interviews with the candidates, they gave no ‘marks’ for the degree to which the candidates possessed the skills or qualities.

Instead, they appointed someone who had worked in their sector previously, even though that person had few other skills. Although they had recognized that the position required skills in word processing and spreadsheets, the appointee lacks those skills. They had seen the need for accounting skills, but the appointee lacks those as well.

One of the roles of the position is taking the minutes of a regular meeting of senior management. The appointee has no skills in taking and producing minutes. The selectors did not consider these skills while they were recruiting.

There are some important lessons to be learnt from this appointment.

Get some independent views

First, your clients should get an independent view of their appointments. Even if you do not specialize in recruitment issues, your experience as a management consultant will be valuable. With my example, all the people involved in the selection are specialists in the sector. They are not general business managers. They were, however, recruiting a business manager.

They focused on the skills in their sector and ignored the general business skills. They believed, probably rightly, that acquiring skills and experience in their sector would take time and effort. They also believed, probably wrongly, that general business skills could be acquired easily and in a short time. Their view was that it was important to appoint someone with sector skills and that this person could somehow ‘pick up’ the other skills.

List the requirements

Second, your clients should treat recruitment as if it were any other acqusition. They should draw up lists of the skills and qualities that the appointee should have. They should divide these into two lists: the ‘must have’ list and the ‘nice to have’ list.

They should make sure that all the skills and qualities are listed. If the appointee will have to take minutes of meetings, then the list should contain ‘taking and preparing minutes’.

Prioritize the requirements

Next, your clients should prioritize these requirements. Everything on the ‘must have ’ list has top priority. This list can also be viewed as the ‘drop dead’ list: anyone who does not have all of the attributes listed on it must be rejected.

The ‘nice to have’ list can be prioritized relatively. If it is very important that the appointee should have skills in word processing, then that may rate 90%. Less important skills can have lower percentages. Anything on the ‘nice to hav’ list that gets a priority of 100% should be transferred to the ‘must have’ list.

Select on requirements

Finally, your clients should elect the appointee based on the lists of requirements and their priorities. Each candidate should be given a score for each item on the ‘nice to have’ list and the sum of the individual products of the score and the priority for each item should provide a rating for each candidate.

How you can help

You can help your clients by doing the following.

Convince them of the need for a structured procedure, as if they were purchasing systems or services. I have assumed that they have a structured procedure for these acquisitions; if they do not, then you need to get their commitment to that first.

Make sure that the procedure is performed thoroughly. If, by the time the fourth candidate is interviewed, one of the selectors discovers a quality that should have been considered for the previous three, your client may become unhappy with the entire procedure.

Make sure that judgments are based solely on the requirements, their priorities and the candidates' scores against those requirements.

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