Signs of a poor recruiter or classic staffing mistakes

    Recently on Habré the topic of staff recruitment is often discussed. In particular, a good topic lies here (I especially recommend reading the comments) and the link here .

    A lot is said about the competence of recruiters, and in this part of the problem there really are. Moreover, I am sure that in about 70% of cases the work of recruiters is inefficient. And why is this happening - let's try to figure it out further.


    Where does recruiting begin? It starts with a profession. A professiogram is a list of qualities that a selected specialist must meet. These qualities are critical for work, their list is finite. Well, the qualities themselves are naturally measurable. In ancient times, when computers were large, the professiogram was also called the “description of the labor post”. The link indicates that the concept of a professiogram is applicable only to engineering specialties, but this is not true. Any description of a specialty is a professionogram.

    “Blonde secretary, from 170, breasts from 3 sizes” - and this is also a professionogram. Bad, true, because skills are not defined and how to measure them is incomprehensible :)

    In the jargon of recruiters, a professiogram is also called a "comb." For two reasons. 1. It allows you to "comb out" unsuitable candidates. 2. If you draw it, it looks exactly that way.

    1. Incorrect professionogram


    Accordingly, the first problem in the selection of personnel is a poorly drawn up profession chart. In life, it looks like this: "Turner 6 category, 25 years." Or so: "a lawyer who knows the peaceful methods of resolving international conflicts." I note that these examples are not bash.org.ru, but rather real orders for recruitment agencies. Accepted by agencies. It is clear that the manager who worked with the customer simply did not bother to determine the set of input requirements for his work. And, of course, with a vacancy so formulated, the probability of closing it tends to zero.

    The professiogram should be formulated so that it is very clear from it how the senior programmer differs from the younger layout designer and vice versa. However, there should not be anything superfluous in a professiogram - this will allow you to get the widest possible range of candidates and explore all the possibilities. Roughly speaking, if your programmer (I really liked this comment) does not communicate with customers in principle, but must code, code and code - it makes sense to give a damn about the requirements of a jacket and tie. It should work. So what it looks like doesn't matter.

    A professiogram is an accurate, complete and detailed answer to the question "who are we looking for?" All the qualities critical to work are in it. Well, or at least should be.

    2. Let's determine your IQ?


    And let's not waste time and money of the customer, dear recruiter? No, really?

    IQ is the ratio of mental to chronological age ( wiki ). That is, roughly speaking, the IQ measurement only answers the question of whether your candidate is mentally retarded. At the same time, such a measurement is useless if there are documents on education and even more useless if the candidate has impressive professional experience.

    IQ measurement only makes sense if you take a person to the project team, where he will have to work with unknown material. In this situation, the IQ parameter is essentially the only one that at least somehow indicates the ability of the potential employee's psyche to adapt to changing conditions. Even so: to unknown changing conditions.

    I'm not saying that many recruiters use the Eysenck test or even more ridiculous methods from books like “180 popular psychological tests”. Well, of course, their results come out very funny.

    3. And what personal qualities do you have?


    I will continue with psychologisms. Personal qualities must be such that a person can successfully work in this place. And no others. For example, if an employee has access to some kind of economic documents, then it makes sense to test loyalty to the employer (does it need to be said that the level of this loyalty should be firmly written in the professiogram?).

    But, in any case, this does not negate the fact that employee loyalty is the task of the manager, not the recruiter.

    The second argument against the assessment of personal qualities sounds very simple: today in psychology there are not many working tools that can reliably evaluate these very qualities. Among questionnaires, recruiters with persistence worthy of the best application continue to use 16PFand other commonly available techniques. And any publicly available technique is rapidly losing validity. At the same time, to the question “Have you tried using CPI, for example?” HR managers make such eyes as if you were offering them something indecent.

    The same thing, by the way, applies to the notorious “assessment of leadership qualities”, which often means exclusively social competence, and not the ability to motivate people and lead them.

    4. And let's draw?


    If you were asked to draw a "House-Tree-Man", then you can immediately ask the recruiter something indecent. All pictorial techniques are suitable only for the situation of individual consultation, they are irrelevant in situations of in-line testing of candidates.

    Moreover, psychoanalytic and projective methods begin to work only when you can become attached to a person’s personal history. Remember Western films about psychoanalysts - they communicate with a client for a very long time before moving on to the actual therapy. The purpose of this communication is to understand what certain symbols mean for a person. If this understanding is not there, then it is easier to wrinkle your forehead, the psychological effect will be greater.

    5. When selecting a narrow specialist, the recruiter does not resort to the services of an expert


    “Feel free to hire an expert to evaluate professional skills, YOU DO NOT KNOW EVERYTHING!” - This is a phrase of one of the people who taught me personnel management. Often, one simple experiment saves you a ton of time and money. It is stated in the resume on the place of the secretary that the printing speed is 1,500 characters per minute - take a computer and check, it's easy!

    More specialized knowledge declared - hire an expert. Yes, of course, you won’t miss all the job seekers through an expert - but for that, the personnel selection system is built as a series of successive filters. Not everyone reaches the expert, and this is normal.

    6. Interview as a way to drop out a large number of candidates


    If you come for an interview with the leader, and there are, say, 8 job seekers there, then turn around and leave. This means that the leader either does not understand who he needs, or could not explain it. In any case, you should not work with him.

    An interview with the leader is the final stage in the selection of personnel. It is understood that the candidates for the interview have equal professional competencies (otherwise why was the garden fuss?). And, if all their skills were evaluated with due attention and accuracy, then we will not see any line there. 2-3 people, and even then not at the same time. It takes time to draw up a personal opinion, it is not put on stream.

    I tried to list the most common errors, the list will be updated.

    To read on the technique of interviewing and measuring, I advise this book. Psychological education is desirable, but the book will be interesting even to non-professionals, and it ventilates the head very much :)

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