Authentic Resourcing Blog

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Seth Godin, the Marketing author and commentator has an interesting post on his blog about the selection process he went through to hire summer interns.

He was able to use Face Book as a way of simulating the same approach many firms go through during the screeing and assesment centre process with interns. It was completely free and, from what i can see, involved little work on his part other than just observing the behaviours of the individuals in the online groups before making some quick assesments.

He could quickly see which individuals took on leadership roles, which one were the followers and which ones he describes as the ‘game show’ contestants.

Click here to read the rest…

 I came across this video of Malcolm Gladwell talking about the problems of hiring the right people.

The author of ‘Tipping Point’ and ‘Blink’ cites hiring practices within professional sport, teaching and the legal profession to highlight how so many industries today have a mismatch between the criteria set out during the hiring process and the demands of a role. A mismatch which effectively leads to hiring the wrong people

Interestingly, as a recruiter, I have increasingly found my own judgment and subjective indicators become far better indicators for a successful hire than many of the objective measures such as assessment centres and competency based interviews. These tools are useful – but not as useful as they were in the past. 

I thought it was just me – but as Gladwell points out, it’s more to do with the changing work place.

He argues that the sheer increase in complexity in the modern workplace means that there is inevitably increased uncertainty in the hiring process – an uncertainty which cannot always be managed with measured objective assesments.

But instead, organisations should focus more on subjective, human measures.

All which comes down to an increase in the quality of the people involved in the recruitment process rather than just the assessment process used.

If you have some time, click here - it’s an interesting talk.