Innovate Vancouver

The interview process is full of pitfalls and misconceptions that can undermine the company’s competitive advantages. This is not unavoidable. The homeostatic mechanisms reinforce the status quo and maintain existing comfort zones. These mechanisms need to be challenged. Only then can the recruitment process create added value for the business. Plugging ‘square holes with square pegs’ may address the current issues. However, it is unlikely to provide the necessary momentum, competencies, or commitment to change the patterns that reinforce them.

The following provides a short list of the typical recruitment process and explains the pitfalls that can befall them. A tool is provided below. It helps your team evaluate the gap between the present and future strategic vision. This tool aims to help your team avoid these vulnerabilities.

A Generic Recruitment Model

Job Posting: The company starts by posting the job description. It seeks to describe the responsibilities of the position in the current environment. Unfortunately, the candidate may be missing significant information about the company’s business model, culture, and strategic direction. Candidates that are looking for growth and advancement may pass up the opportunity in pursuit of your competitors.

The Application: Most recommendations are for candidates to change their resume based on the position applied. Unfortunately, this suggestion is often only partially followed. Candidates use a few resume templates to apply for a diverse set of unrelated jobs. This causes resumes to be filtered out at the screening stage. The desired ‘keywords’ are missing or too much interpretation is required.

Competencies: Another recommendation is for resumes and job descriptions to emphasize competencies. Unfortunately the list is often mismatched with the strategic direction of the candidates career goals and the company’s current commitment. The result is a cookie-cutter approach to evaluating candidates that fails to consider the candidate’s internal career growth. When the company must adapt to a changing environment, it may lack the necessary leadership. This absence can hinder the transition process.

Application Screening: The pace of the screening process increases with the rate of employee turnover. Research indicates that resumes are screened for only a few minutes. Decisions are made quickly, increasing the risk of hiring or rejecting the wrong candidate. Additional screening biases create added filters on top of the ones mentioned earlier. A superficial, if not totally inadequate, understanding of the candidate’s background often results.

Interview Questions

Explain the Job Description: A recent trend sweeping Canada is to ask the candidate to explain their understanding of the job description. This trend occurs before the company provides an explanation. It serves as an effective screening device for identifying candidates. These candidates have done exactly the same job in the same type of business environment. They also have experience within the same type of business model. However, it requires that the candidate is an expert in ‘all things company A’ and is not looking for advancement.

Are hiring managers able to explain what the candidate’s background and experience is without guidance?

The result will often create a list of candidates to follow-up with. These candidates have very little interest in growth. Growth is a key part for the business to create a sustaining competitive advantage. Opportunities to ‘sell the company’ to the candidate are often lost. The interview conversation becomes increasingly awkward. It is closer to an interrogation than a conversation that establishes chemistry. This strategy may work for companies that conduct business ‘the same way as everyone else.’ However, it will still likely alienate the candidate who is not yet an expert on your company.

Behavioural interviewing: A common trend is to use behavioural interviewing to help evaluate the candidate’s response to specific scenarios. These are considered useful for evaluating how the candidate would react. They also help to solve problems that may be unique to the company and/or its customers. Unfortunately, this technique often emphasizes deficits. It fails to encourage out of the box thinking. Such creative thinking is necessary for creating novel solutions.

The candidates challenge is more often to solve entrenched problems. These problems are created by the company’s business model and culture. They are thus resistant to change. These problems are often beyond the candidates control. Yet, they are used to evaluate how they would perform under given situations. Responses that challenge the status quo are often evaluated poorly.

Presentations: Another growing trend is to eventually ask the candidate to provide a presentation. This is particularly common at executive levels or with startups. The topic is usually relevant to the company’s present experience. It is considered a useful way to evaluate if the candidate’s approach would fit the current culture. Unfortunately, this approach more often celebrates presentations that reinforce existing norms. It frequently rejects those that incorporate new ideas, strategies, processes, or innovations.

Innovative approaches are just as likely misunderstood which can create an unfavorable impression of the company. Business consultants advise against such practices. The ideas presented might be borrowed by the company without hiring the candidate.

Multiple Candidates: In an ideal scenario the company has the option to choose among several highly qualified candidates. The interview process will involve multiple steps. These steps allow the company to evaluate the candidate for required qualifications. They also assess qualifications that are ‘nice to have.’ Unfortunately this can digress into conducting reference checks for multiple candidates which can create the impression of being indecisive. The candidate is thus given information that the role may ‘not be a good fit,’ warranting revaluation of other opportunities.

The on-boarding Process: Recent advocacy suggests an emphasis on leadership coaching, career development, employee empowerment, and cross-functional collaboration. However, the on-boarding process often emphasizes candidates who can ‘hit the ground running.’ Little training is required. The results can include an increasingly lackadaisical corporate culture and leadership development model that forfeits competitive leadership to other companies.

The criticism that ‘leadership does nothing’ is common. It is reinforced by the belief that the rest of the employees ‘are responsible for the company’s success’. Obviously this does nothing to improve employee morale, engagement, or retention.

Creating Momentum

The goal of the recruitment process is supposed to improve the company’s sustainable and competitive advantage.

This does not mean that positions should stay open indefinitely. It indicates that the ‘perfect candidate’ cannot be found. Instead, it means that the company recruitment and leadership development models need to be aligned.

If a position remains open for an extended time, a candidate should ask a question. Does the environment support career development? Does it have the necessary resources or competencies to respond to changes in the environment? If the answer is no the candidate may choose to consider opportunities with the competitor.

The process starts by asking two questions. What is our competitive advantage? How can we support its development, growth, and ability to support change? If leadership innovation does not exist internally to develop, evaluate, and refine this process there are external resources available. But this competency should not be outsourced indefinitely. It needs to be cultivated. It must be reinforced. It must be owned internally. These steps are necessary for the competency to stay adaptive, effective, and sustainable over time.

The following spreadsheet can be used as a gap analysis and planning tool for strengthening the company strategic competitive advantage:

Conclusion

The ‘cookie cutter’ approach towards recruitment needs to end. This neither supports business model innovation or supports the company’s ability to pursue future and strategic competitive advantages. Each new iteration in the company’s recruitment model needs to take into consideration the following:

• How it is received by the candidate

The interview process goes both way. It involves impression management from both sides. The evaluation determines if the opportunity aligns with the candidate’s vision, values, and goals. The opportunity is built from the company’s business model. It influences which values, goals, and opportunities are likely to be reinforced in the future.

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Travis Barker, MPA GCPM

[email protected]

Innovate Vancouver is a Technology and Business Innovation Consulting Service located in Vancouver, BC. Contact Innovate Vancouver to help with your new project.