Paleontologists – best or worst recruiters in the world?

BadConsultant has been a little busy recently, bringing his non-evil-twin back to life in the virtual community. Now, that’s all underway, BC is free to cast his discerning eye over the business landscape in search of nuggets of wisdom, observation or just sheer lunacy.

Which brings us to paleontologists.

Can there be a single academic discipline in the world that is better at building a ready pool of available, willing talent than paleontology?

Early in BadConsultant’s own career planning, paleontology featured pretty heavily. As a child, visiting Blackgang Chine on the Isle of Wight over several summers, BC was taken by the life-size models of dinosaurs. I knew ALL the names

[and, yes, at the age of 6, BC could spell archaeopteryx]

however once I entered

[the social conditioning factory]

school, that dream career very quickly went by the wayside. The subject of paleontology just did not feature in any core, peripheral or otherwise organized curriculum in the UK.

One dinosaur-crazed kid was lost to paleontology.

Fast forward a few more years than BadConsultant would care to mention.

As part of our long-term, strategic workforce plan, BadConsultant has currently engaged two intern BadConsultants, one at 8 years-old and the second at 5. This exercise in talent development appears to be proceeding to plan, with a net depletion in current assets based upon our belief in the potential for future ROI.

Needless to say both our senior and junior interns are dino-crazy

[partly because BadConsultant is engaged in formal knowledge transfer, of course]

because every kids television channel from commercial-centric Disney to publicly-funded PBS runs several series based upon dinosaurs. Dino-toys are everywhere – from the cheap plastic, to the plush fluffy.

It’s fair to say that the market for dino-interest pre-high-school is as saturated and energetic as it can be

[like soccer]

Our 8-year-old intern proudly proclaims that she will be a paleontologist on graduating from college.

Yet, it is a fairly safe bet that the subject of paleontology will not feature in any core, peripheral or otherwise organized curriculum in the US.

And two dinosaur-crazed interns will be lost to paleontology.

By the evidence in hand, BadConsultant would have to conclude that paleontologists are the worst recruiters in the world for failing to convert such a ready, willing pool into practicing professionals.

However.

A quick google on the term ‘talent shortage paleontology’ reveals that paleontology just doesn’t seem to get the focus that other sciences do when talent is under discussion, suggesting that there is no problem filling the pipeline of paleontologists.

Maybe paleontologists are the best recruiters in the world after all?

However.

A secondary google on ‘shortage of paleontologists’ turns up a question as to whether there is an impending shortage of industrial paleontologists – an excellent paper on ‘Paleontology in the 21st Century’ from a conference in 1997 suggests that there isn’t enough being done to prepare for a demographic cliff facing industrial paleontology.

So, it would appear that paleontologists are the worst recruiters in the world after all.

So what’s the point.

There isn’t one.

Though imagine someone in 150 million years’ time trying to draw logical conclusions as to what BadConsultant was one about.

If there are still paleontologists to recruit, that is…

Wishing you all a nice sedimentary resting place,

BC

All right – I’ll say it… most posts on recruitment effectiveness are gumpf

BadConsultant declares a vested interest in the subject of this post, yet will post anyway in the hope of generating thought and discussion.

We just went browsing for the umpteenth time in the past few weeks for blogs, articles, ezines, etc. on recruitment effectiveness. And, after a little while found we were grinding our teeth.

Here’s the problem.

Efficiency = doing something well (usually against cost, quality and time measures)

Effectiveness = doing the right thing to make the impact you want to make (usually against outcome measures)

Efficiency and Effectiveness are NOT the same thing, simply because it’s possible to do the wrong thing really, really well.

People who post about recruitment effectiveness

[you... yes, you... stand STILL laddie!]

please read that sentence above again. And again.

And again.

If I have to read one more post anywhere purporting that the following metrics measure recruitment effectiveness, I will officially scream blue murder:

• Cost per hire
• Time to hire
• Offer – Fill ratio
• Voluntary turnover of new hires in year 1
• Promotion rates in year 1
• Performance rating in year 1

Let’s take a look at these:

Cost per hire, Time to hire and Offer-Fill ratio

These are fine and dandy as efficiency metrics, although I would argue that they are always subjective based upon the talent pool – it might take longer and cost more to hire a neurosurgeon than a pond cleaner, after all.

The problem with these metrics from an effectiveness standpoint is that they are not markers of impact. Let’s paint a short, sweet scenario.

I have a job to fill. I wander to the area in town with the highest unemployment rate, grab someone and offer them the job, starting the very next day. Voila! $0 cost-per-hire, 1 day to hire and 100% acceptance. You know the punchline. So I won’t bother repeating it. The metrics don’t guarantee effective recruitment.

Voluntary turnover in year 1

Given the sheer number of people who work in a culture of resentment, the idea that everyone leaves a job as soon as it becomes a problem is laughable. The idea that the only people on board with a company are those who are fully capable of, and delivering, performance. It’s delusional!

Put simply, using voluntary turnover in year 1 to measure recruitment effectiveness is like assessing how great a surgeon is by the number of deaths in his/her operating theatre. It’s the crisis scenario.

Performance rating and Promotion rating in year 1

Grrrrrr… Ask most, if not all, new starters what they were told at their first performance review and pretty uniformly you’ll hear some version of:

“… you’ve had a very good year, but no-one gets an above expectation in their first year”

Like it or not, most corporate performance management approaches and systems steadfastly maintain a culture of averageness and the idea that objective differentiation a) exists; and b) will be systematically visible in the first year is

[excuse us... hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaahahaha]

laughable. In essence, this is the opposite of the Voluntary turnover metric – it’s the walks-on-water scenario.

Don’t even get us started on promotion in the first year…

[so you're a great recruiter because the person you hired was capable of much more than the job in hand - that's not effective recruiting, it's padding a position with an over-qualified candidate]

The BadConsultant Bottom Line

Yet, even with all of the above, it’s remarkable how widely these metrics – this mixture of subjective, inaccurate efficiency measurement and bipolar aftermath monitoring – are offered up as recruitment effectiveness.

We’re not going to retread old ground

[unless you're willing to pay us, in which case, we'll gladly open our knowledge management database and re-package existing work]

about what recruitment effectiveness means – and we’ve already posted today about how DidWe.net bridges the gap between recruitment and performance outcomes, so we won’t over-egg that particular pudding

[even though we openly declared our vested interest]

All we will ask is that purveyors of recruitment effectiveness literature listen to themselves and think about what they’re touting – recruiters deserve better and, now more than ever, businesses need the most effective decisions on who to bring on board – the single-most important decision in the human capital chain.

Rant over,

BC

DidWe.net – the revolution starts here

Well, as ever, BadConsultant has been busy rewriting rule-books, upsetting applecarts and dreaming the impossible

[the future is a glorious place]

in order to make it real.

Our latest foray in re-righting corporate abnormality?

DidWe.net

For the first time, recruiters can access a simple, impartial measure of candidate and hiring manager confidence in the hiring decision at the point-of-hire.

[pause... let that sink in...]

All right, we’ll explain.

Here is the recruiting cycle:

• Vacancy
• Sourcing
• Assessment
• Selection
• Offer
• Acceptance

Depending on company and/or recruiter, different stages of the process take precedence – often in synergy with the business being supported. So, for example, in research organizations, much is made of the data from assessment and the selection decision

[boy-oh-boy do scientists LOVE to pore over resumés]

whereas in sales recruitment, it’s all about volume and the close

[cue Alec Baldwin - do I have your attention now?]

But so long as the role gets filled, everything’s just fine and hunky-dory.

Except.

That’s not good enough, not any more. We wrote a piece for ERE Expo a couple of weeks back that covered the subject of recruitment effectiveness – you may want to head over and read it, though

[as you're likely an executive who is far too busy and important to spend time reading anything longer than three bullets on the last slide of a powerpoint presentation]

we’ll summarise here:

The business world is changing, and HR is failing to keep up with the changes. In the world that’s developing, if you are a recruiter, you will be judged on the outcomes created by the talent you hire.

What does that mean for all of us in the talent and organization capability business?

Putting someone in a job isn’t success, putting the right person in the right job at the right time in the right way is success. So we recast the cycle above, introducing some terms that aren’t common lingo for the average recruiter:

• Customer
• Strategy
• Culture
• Organization capabilities
• Workforce plan
• Talent management
• Sourcing
• Assessment
• Selection
• Offer
• Acceptance
• Onboarding
• Engagement
• Performance
• Development
• Talent management

In truth, the recruiting cycle is a wholly contained aspect of the talent cycle and can no longer be hived off into a perceived ‘second-class’ citizenship within the HR function. The talent cycle above will increasingly become the frame for hiring decisions. And recruiters will have to expand their scope to consider what happens after the decision to hire.

So, the hiring decision is no longer:

“have we found a person capable enough to do the job in hand”

[summarised in some quarters as could/would they do the job without pissing off too many people]

but instead:

“are we hiring a talent who will be willing to perform and grow to meet the evolving contribution our company makes to society”.

Do you see the difference? Are you ready to make that difference?

Measuring both candidate and hiring manager confidence in the hiring decision is what DidWe.net is all about – it’s impossible to measure absolute recruitment effectiveness, but confidence in decision bridges the gap between recruitment and performance

[and it should go without saying that we'll be pleased to submit a statement of work to help you analyse the gap and what you can do about it]

You can read more about what and how we do that at ‘Why DidWe.net?’ – and though BadConsultant is known for

[some would say gallows]

humour, we’re dead serious about the approach and toolset at DidWe.net – so serious in fact that we’re offering free lifetime use for the first 100 members to sign-up and actively use the system. Those seats are filling fast, so if you value your top and bottom lines, you want to get over there NOW and sign-up.

Meanwhile, here at BadConsultant Towers, we’ll be back to normal service very soon – getting ready to illuminate the preposterous notion that managers are your very best coaching option

[hahahahahahaha]

Hasta mañana,

BC

Happy Millionth Management Book Day!

We here at BadConsultant towers are pleased to confirm that January 14th, 2010 is Millionth Management Book Day.

Well, it finally got here. As of this moment, a search of amazon.com books yields 1,000,568 hits. Yes, that’s right…

1,000,568!!!

[Sidebar: Peter Drucker, long considered the Daddy of management thinkers, only accounts for a paltry 13,341 of those million plus hits - he hasn't really been trying, has he?]

At a low estimate of an average 40,000 words per book, that’s 40 billion words written on the subject of management.

That makes our hair hurt.

That’s around 6 words per person on this planet.

That makes my teeth ache.

So here’s a challenge, if you could give each person just 6 words on management, what would they be? Here are some early ideas:

• “Deliver results, deliver results, deliver results”
• “Make others successful, all the time”
• “Keep the boss happy, forget underlings”

BadConsultant needs to absorb the scale and scope of this important day. Suffice to say, though, that we’ll be back introducing fecal matter to rotating air replenishers shortly.

BC

Imbalanced scorecard

OK, let’s be really clear. Organizations make no sense. Organizations aren’t natural. Organizations aren’t the way it’s always been.

Organizations are an artificial construct.

So much of what assails us every day isn’t grounded in anything other than the weirdness created by the weird.

Organization politics.

Organization structure.

Organization culture

Organizational power games.

When it come to organizations, this is not a rational universe.

So, it seems to this badconsultant that the majority of management literature

[we are, after all, in countdown to Millionth Management Book Day]

is trying to make sense of irrationality – and in so doing ends up perpetuating the myths of organizations, and maintaining the madness.

So, what is the basic myth of the modern organization?

If I am above you in the structure, I’m better than you – I know what you know, can do what you do better than you can, and know that you are an extension of my thoughts and hands. I am omniscient over you.

[we hope the religious overtone isn't lost upon you - though that would depend on the depth of your denial and collusion]

We have conferred terms upon this basic myth – leadership, management, executive – but it all comes down to the same thing: the propping up of ego and self-esteem by virtue of hierarchical position. And not just at the individual level, either. The modern organization has created whole corporate functions (Finance, Operations, HR, Communications) to perpetuate the myth. Corporate functions where we see the most important players are those who support the most senior leaders, not those who are most capable at their own discipline.

And, because organizations are an artificial construct, that’s just fine and dandy. There is congruence within the system.

Executive leaders are petty pretenders to monarchy who gather a court of sycophants to reassure them of their own infallibility.

[pause... read that again... and again... Got it? Good]

So pity the poor court jesters who have tried to make sense in the midst of mythology.

Pity those management scholars who truly believed that order could be introduced in chaos, that human beings were reproducible production units and that organizations were fundamentally a naturally occurring phenomenon.

They tried. They really did.

Like with balanced scorecards. The logic of which were perfect – structured strategic objectives translated at all levels of an organization to team and individual deliverables; the seamlessness of tracking and reporting, the alignment of individual effort to corporate intent. It was (and is) beautiful in it’s simplicity.

Except for that basic myth – “… you are an extension of my thoughts and hands…”

So, why would any individual want or need specific deliverables? That would imply free will, which simply does not exist in the myth.

[and should be stamped out wherever found]

And that’s where the imbalanced scorecard began to develop (reinforced ever-so-slightly by the court of sycophancy, of course). Pretty soon, the imbalanced scored was a one-way view – averaged metrics that enabled the monarch to quickly scan the kingdom, to ensure their extensions were doing what was necessary to justify the monarch’s reward.

And for those individual workers

[and my but how we don't like to use such terms in the modern organization - let's use associates, colleagues, partners... just please don't describe the reality]

who did care to look up at the strategic objectives in the sky, they made no sense, had no connection to the day to day.

When I can’t see how what I do makes a difference, I stop working to make a difference.

Which is how, instead of accelerating performance, extending growth and setting new standards, the imbalanced scorecard led to organizational averageness and individual apathy.

Just another example of best intent management science trying to make sense of irrationality and ultimately getting sucked into the vortex.

Organizations do that. They don’t know how to do otherwise.

Pity, really.

BC

Update to our Literature Search – Part III

• Difficult Truths, Too Big to Swallow
• Update to our Literature Search – Part I
• Update to our Literature Search – Part II

OK – time to bring things up to date – it’s around 5 months since we updated the list, so let’s see just how much paper has been wasted stating the obvious:

• Change Management: 69,481 (65,689; 57,604; 47,416) +46%
• Business Strategy: 71,284 (72,959; 64,603; 56,102) +27%
• Organization Culture: 34,851 (32,944; 28,965; 23,956) +45%
• Talent Management: 11,138 (10,426; 8,970; 7,206) +55%
• People Management: 50,711 (48,019; 41,848; 33,011) +53%
• Leadership: 371,927 (350,084; 302,959; 256,503) +45%
• Management: 981,451 (960,499; Not measured; Not measured) +2.2%

So, what does our cross-indexing thematic meta-analytic framework study tell us?

Hmmmmmmm…

Well, it appears that the tried and tested, traditional stuff (management, strategy, change management) are growing at a slightly slower rate than the newer disciplines of talent and people management – though personally this BadConsultant is a little disheartened to see Organization Culture not hitting the similar growth rates to talent and people

[though it does give us an idea about a book... "BadConsultant's Guide to Building a Culture of Talented People" anyone? Anyone?]

Management books overall continue to creep towards the 1 million mark, and we can’t help but feel it fitting that at around the time that’s happening, the capitalist edifices that are the logical final extension of the 20th century’s adoration of growth through industrialized

[exploitation]

expansion are crumbling left, right and centre; leaving the path open for those smart

[smaller]

organizations that have realized that talented people driving a culture that celebrates their healthy performance IS the competitive advantage.

Oh, and finally from the literature search, note the slight decrease of 1,700 or so books in Business Strategy… Artifact of Amazon’s cataloguing system, or just the shelf of strategy books pertaining to growing through sub-prime derivatives trading?

For now, BC is out – but will be back soon with a veritable litany of observation, inference, practice and learning.

Peace and love,

BC

[and no, you won't hear those two words spoken by very many of the companies that are buying many of the books above - which is why they will fail]

What If Managers Ran Grand Central…

Tomorrow morning, BadConsultant will once again be hitting the MetroNorth-East corridor into New York, arriving at Grand Central in the midst of rush hour.

[hey, why not say "Hi!" if you spot me?]

It’s a nice trip – I get some quiet time on the train, do some thinking, listen to my iPod, get a little bit of work done – an almost zen-like zone of tranquility. And yes, I am attempting to teach the conductors to chant ‘Ommmmmm’ when they ask for the ticket. So, it was a few weeks ago, that I emerged from the train floating a little in transcendental space, thinking of everything, thinking of nothing, flowing with the energy within and without

[don't worry, there is a point coming - I just wanted you to get my mood, maaaaan]

as I stepped out of the track doorway and into the human chaos that is Grand Central in the morning.

I started walking at my usual quick pace, practising being centered, anticipating others movement, adjusting course, blending with the mass of moving humanity. Gradually I slowed. Because I noticed the absence of something (which isn’t all that easy to do in the sensory overload of New York).

There wasn’t one inter-person collision. No-one fell over. No-one was angry with anyone else. The whole thing flowed like bees in a hive, or ants in a colony. This was a society moving naturally, this was a dynamic system, self-adjusting and evolving as I watched.

I stopped walking.

How many people do you think travel through Grand Central station every day?

Hang on a second, I’ll just nip over to Wikipedia… Wow!

• Over 500,000 visitors every day
• Over 125,000 commuters every day

How big is your organization? Mine is about 75,000. Nearly twice as many people commute through Grand Central every day as my whole global organization.

And those commuters don’t seem to need managers.

No collisions. No casualties. Give and take, ebb and flow.

If managers ran Grand Central what do you think would happen?

Let’s try the obvious…

1. Each thoroughfare would be neatly organized into bi-directional walkways to ensure that people walked in the right(®) direction
2. Each of these bi-directional walkways would have designated entry and exit points with a queuing system/process to ensure smooth transition
3. Each traveler would have to have a pre-planned, approved itinerary indicating their time of departure, destination and expected seating assignment
4. Managers would stand at the doorways, to discuss the planned itinerary and to educate the traveler in question exactly how to walk – speed, gait and acceleration – as well as testing quality of footwear and appropriateness of attire
5. Each traveler would have to ensure they had necessary budget to travel prior to commencing entering the station
6. Finally (though the list could go on and on and on) there would be totally, categorically NO SIGHTSEEING – that’s right, anyone stopping to enjoy the breathtaking setting of Grand Central would be held up on a performance management infringement immediately

It’s kind of laughable, right? Yet

[sigh]

we put up with this kind of bulls*** every day in the modern organization – and assume it is the way it has to be. In fact, right now, someone reading this blog is thinking that there’s no way such anarchy/chaos could work in an organization.

[come on, I can hear the gears whirring in your brain... Even from here]

Yet, over 125,000 people get where they want to go every day without major, or even minor, catastrophe. Why is that?

1. They want (or have to) travel – i.e. there is an intention to travel
2. The destination is clear – the overhead boards tell me which train is going where I’m going, what time it leaves and which platform
3. Signage to platforms is clear
4. Nobody has a vested interest in stopping me getting where I’m going – the only time a win/lose proposition comes into play is when someone is guarding and empty seat with their bag to avoid having me sit next to them

[probably not a bad idea]

“But,” my modern organization believer screams at me, “there’s an army of people making sure that Grand Central runs smoothly so that commuters can get through quickly!”

And that’s my point. Of course there is. But I don’t see them. I don’t talk to them. I only deal with them when things are going horribly wrong because of something out of my control. And when that is fixed, they fade away again.

Hmmmm… helping me when I need it, leaving me to do my thing when everything’s running smoothly.

Maybe the question shouldn’t be ‘What If Managers Ran Grand Central?’ but instead ‘What If Grand Central Managed Your Organization?’

Oh well, I’ll see if it’s so smooth tomorrow – knowing my luck I’ve probably jinxed Grand Central and will get to watch 5 cardiac arrests, 3 broken femurs, a small brush fire (in Body Shop), 16 muggings and 1 bizarre act of biblical revelation before I get 10 yards from the platform.

[In which case I will, of course, blog about it]

Toodle-pip,

BC

Step One: Observation – You know productivity is at risk when…

… Employment becomes a spectator sport.

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