Hack:
Experimentation Up Front

By Edna Pasher - President at www.pasher.co.il

July 17, 2013 at 1:55pm

__experimentation & learning

lean

Risk

talent

recruiting

Summary

Our hack includes 3 stories of Up Front Experiments

Edna's story:

We have given up on long and expensive recruiting processes. In our group we do it this way: we collaborate with all universities in our country and invite their graduate students to gain practice with us. We then offer the best ones - after a one day a week practice for a year - to join us.

When we interview the candidates for the trainee program, we do it up front in a team of two and if we like a candidate - we accept them right then and there, if the candidate is willing to make the decision up front too !

This way we take a risk - but we have found out that this risk is lower than the risk to lose a talent to a competitor ! We have practiced it for a few years now - and have found out that this is a great LEAN and happy recruiting process !

More stories by Mike and Nigel follow.

Problem

1. We lose talent in long recruiting processes. Adaptable organizations act fast on opportunities. We need to speed up recruiting. 2. We need to attract people who are willing to experiment and to take risks while experimenting. How should we do it?

Mike’s ideas

- Companies need to spend less time and money on traditional recruitment in order to stay agile and profitable

- It is all too easy with traditional recruitment to hire someone that turns out to be different to how they seemed and not as suited to the business (rather than the role) as first appeared

- Risk needs to be reduced wherever possible, finding ways to “try before you buy” in recruitment terms makes good business sense

- It is often stated that graduates are not “work ready”, creating project based roles for Undergraduates helps them learn about the real world of work, test and verify a range of skills and demonstrate their potential for employment

- Due to the rate of change, many companies would benefit from a succession plan that brings younger talent and newer skills (especially around tech and comfort with pace of change) into the business in a structured way

Solution

Mike’s Ideas

- Help companies to engage Universities and other sources of young talent relevant to their Business as Usual Core Competency template requirements and their Business Development project roadmap

- Outline a system for identifying individuals that have a good potential fit with the business’s ethos and vision primarily, rather than focusing on short term skills requirements

- Propose a journey whereby companies can verify the soft and hard skills of “candidates” and their fit with the businesses “wavelength” by taking on different roles in different business development projects over a suitable period of time

- Enable individuals to be identified as potential long term employees or more transient project team members based on their skills, aptitude and attitude in relation to the company’s current/future core capability focus and business development roadmap

Nigel’s story

Experimenting up front

Background

I set up Nigel Cox Consulting in 2010 to provide Human Resource solutions that helped businesses grow and operate more effectively. Initially my route to market was through the network of contacts I had developed over the years, but I wanted to explore new opportunities.

Business Challenge

As a SME (actually a one person business) how do you enter new markets where product and service requirements are undefined and the local language is not English? This is the challenge I set myself when, late in 2012, I decided to join a trade mission to China. The opportunities were said to be enormous, but was there a place for a business like mine?

It was clear that this was not something I could do on my own. Not least, I don’t speak Mandarin. I could not afford to take on a seasoned professional of any type. And, as the specifics were so unclear, it would have been impossible to define either a recruitment specification or a consultancy brief.

Solution

I had had considerable success in a former life setting up an operating centre in Germany recruiting for personal style and looking for staff who were willingness to learn and to take career risks to be part of a new business project. I decided to follow a similar template. I did not look for someone who had any Human Resources experience, nor did they need to have any other specific technical skills (except the ability to work in Mandarin at native language speaker level).

I approached the local university with a work experience opportunity. I discussed the plan (in all its vagueness) with the university and then with those they put forward. I was looking for someone who had shown interest and a willingness to take opportunities to progress their personal learning. In this environment personal chemistry was also important, as we would be one to one.

Result

I was able to find someone who met these criteria. Over the months that followed I involved her in a range of activities and with a number of contacts in UK and in China.

Since she joined me she has worked on a wide range of activities, not only working very effectively on the assignments I have given her, but also making genuine contributions to shaping the work we do and the future of my business. She has proven to be excellent at the work she does at the technical level and she has been very good at building relationships with associates and potential clients. I have no doubt that without her input I would not have been so far forward on my own business growth plan.

I have now formally offered, and she has accepted, a full time position in my business as we start to put our ideas into practice.

Practical Impact

Mike’s ideas:

- My story could demonstrate that a more fluid workforce can be managed to more efficiently and effectively deliver business growth

- Business owners can see a way to grow organically without over investing in fixed cost resource

- Managers will be more satisfied in roles as they have more autonomy in recruitment process and can build more harmonious teams

- More established businesses can find a way to inject new skills and young talent into the organisation in a low risk way that makes the company more sustainable in a fast moving world of technology and innovation

Challenges

Mike’s ideas

- Need to make time to approach this in a strategic and pro-active way rather than just reacting to perceived short term skills requirements

- Some businesses are not honest or clear about their core competencies, skills gaps and the difference between business as usual and business development

- Process driven businesses may find it difficult to think differently about recruitment and empower individual managers to select and test in this new way

First Steps

Mikes ideas

If we integrate the Skills Hive (www.skills-hive.com) tools into elements of the solution I think this could be achievable by companies that are ready to think differently about virtual team strategy involving graduates and how that can feed their core business HR template.

Credits

Edna's final notes:

I would like to thank my team and especially Nigel and Mike for co-creating this hack. I believe in recognizing personal contributions so I left the personal stories as is without trying to mix them. I also believe that people learn from specific stories, which is another reason to leave our personal stories for you to explore - this way you have some experiments you could try when experimenting up front!

I invite our team members and maybe more of our hackaton participants to add more personal stories of experiments in recruiting processes - both as recruiters and as recruits - which hacked the traditional recruiting culture and procedures!

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September 9, 2013 at 5:31am

Nigel Cox

Edna, some lessons for the Hack from our joint submission

Sometimes it seems that SMEs have few constraints when it comes to embracing new practices, sometimes it seems only the largest businesses have the resources to develop and innovate. However, from the stories we have gathered I think we can identify a number of characteristics that could be developed in organisations of any size and heritage, that don’t need radical transformation to put into place and would allow HR practitioners to move into a free, more creative model of recruitment.

For me there are 6 transferable practices:-

- Recruit “active learners” – look for potential employees who are looking for learning opportunities rather than "just a job"
- Increase job mobility – encourage and give recognition to managers who move team members into new and challenging positions
- Increase pace of change – selectively - “active learners” and “high potentials” will welcome new and opportunities
- Nurture the uncertain – not every employee is going to be fast track to the top – there will be many who come in this way who want a more stable work environment – these are critical resources who need reassurance that their contribution continues to be valued and recognised
- Protect risk takers – managers and employees who embrace change will not always be successful in every role – provide a framework that enables lessons to be learned and shared and make sure constructive risk takers are not “punished” or isolated
- Reduce barriers between teams – encourage lateral moves as well as promotional moves – the active learners may already be in the organisation but be in another team – share knowledge between teams and encourage swaps and transfers to build wider network

Although these practices could be formalised they have characteristics such that could they could be overlaid without bureaucracy onto existing recruitment frameworks. So, subject to the HR and organisational context they could be deployed at a local level to build a case for change, or could be incorporated into an existing framework if a more directed model were appropriate.

September 9, 2013 at 8:55am

Edna Pasher

Thank U Nigel. I like especially your "active learner" indicator for new recruits. We live in a world of life long learning because knowledge is constantly changing. We need "active learners". This is why I like to collaborate with universities. The recruiting process becomes so much easier this way!

September 9, 2013 at 10:15am

George Pór

> We need to attract people who are willing to experiment and to take risks while experimenting. How should we do it?

Form and host public communities of practice in each of your line of business. Invite students to participate with the potential of gaining engagement based on their contribution to the CoP. Everybody wins, the company, the industry, the students, even if those who don't get hired.