Editor’s note: This article was first published in October 2012; its descriptions of Google+ and of the community manager as a new profession, and the pharmaceutical sales rep example, reflect that time. Google+ launched in 2011 and closed to consumers in 2019.
Hiring an external human resources department is a great option for putting a filter at the door against candidates who don’t meet the requirements the company has set for the job. Basically, through one or more interviews, this department should recognise the talent or skills candidates need in order to join the company’s workforce. However, for various reasons, what started out as talent selection often ends up becoming a talent drain (fully suitable candidates for the job who get rejected).
The main cause of this talent drain usually lies in what we have called the solid lines these departments draw (like the solid lines on a road, which you are not allowed to cross), lines that in certain specific cases ought to be broken ones.
The first problem comes from a lack of communication between the company and the human resources department. Sometimes the company tells HR which position it needs to fill and draws the first solid line: “The candidate must have a degree in ****, be aged between 25 and 35, have 3 years’ sales experience in a similar position and speak fluent English.”
Being 37 puts you outside the age range, as does having a shorter diploma instead of a full degree, or not being fluent in English, and that could leave out someone with 10 years’ experience in the sector whose professional “wins” would speak for themselves.
What’s more, most companies looking for an executive would rule out the great Warren Buffett himself for “not measuring up”.
On the other hand, the job of attracting talent is sometimes entrusted to a person whose own talent for spotting talent is unknown to us, though that would be another subject.
Broken lines are necessary today.
There’s an example I have always given: a few years ago, to work as a pharmaceutical sales rep you needed at least a diploma or degree in a field related to medicine (nursing, chemistry, etc.), for a job that has nothing to do with medicine, since it’s no different from selling insurance, books or any other kind of cold selling.
Now, faced with the fierce competition in this market, the same companies that used to look for graduates are looking for pure, hard-core salespeople, lowering the academic requirement to a high school diploma or even a basic school certificate, because what they want is a sales professional who will learn the technical side of the product they are going to sell in very little time.
This mistake is made very often when companies look for a salesperson specialised in… whatever, because a salesperson is a salesperson, and their worth lies not in what they know about a particular product but in the art of selling.
Most of the best salespeople I have known across the country have sold dozens of products from different sectors and, whether it took them longer or not, in the end they shone again in their sales results.
Sometimes we find companies asking for an intermediate level of English when they only need to use English once or twice a year.
Many companies don’t know what they’re looking for.
If we look at some job offers, we’ll see that a great many companies don’t know what they’re looking for. Some of them ask for a community manager with 10 years’ experience, or with more than 5 years’ experience on Google+, when that social network isn’t even 5 years old yet and community manager is a new profession we have only been hearing about for roughly 3 or 4 years.
Other companies fail at “crushing logic” by asking for a worker under 30 with a degree, a master’s and 5 years’ experience in a similar position. There may be someone like that, but off the top of our heads, we have just ruled out 99% of the candidates who might be suitable for the job.
When all these requirements are passed on to HR with those solid lines attached, that’s when we notice that many companies have very unsuitable people on their staff, who were probably hired after a completely suitable and competent candidate was left out.
That’s why it’s advisable to explain to the “recruiter”, properly and in detail, the exact function of the position to be filled and the tasks the candidate will have to carry out in it. Clearly you should avoid drawing that solid line and let the selection expert (that’s what we hired them for) be the one who draws whatever lines they see fit to fill the position.
If the recruiter has a talent for spotting talent, it will be much easier for them, since over the years they will have developed their own selection technique.
PS: “Talent isn’t measured by what you have, but by what you can do with what you have.”
Further reading
- Hire an outside CEO or promote one from within?
- Talent: are you born with it or is it made?
- 5 things that kill productive time at work
- What a community manager is and isn’t
Featured image: Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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