The 3 Act structure of hiring

For some reason above my paygrade, stories work well in three parts.  Books and plays typically use three act structures, movie (and book) franchises work well as trilogies.  I don’t know why, maybe ask a literary scholar.  In a very mundane analogy, finding new employees follows the same process.  Maybe it’s a story too.

This is not an interesting story, and most of what you will read you already know. Recruitment is HR 101- it’s the basics we all learnt to get anywhere, so you know what you’re doing right?  Very much so, but there is a little ‘aha’ in here for everyone, including you.

Act 1:  gathering a pool of options

The stories go, that in medieval villages in days gone by, all the boys of a certain age would be gathered in a village square to be considered for apprenticeship with all of the village artisans (blacksmith, potter, cooper, etc).  This probably isn’t true, its probably a Hollywood trope, an urban myth (a modern medieval myth?); it may have happened somewhere once, maybe a lot, may never. 

Whether it happened then, it happens now.  Via different media (newspaper, job sites, social media, internal job boards, word of mouth) we metaphorically let a community know- ‘we need someone to do this for money, who’s interested?  By doing this, we are gathering a pool of options, drawing together as many options that we can choose from.

There are a couple of interesting facets worth a quick discussion.  Firstly, we don’t want to have to bother with options who won’t be suitable.  The blacksmith doesn’t want to politely pretend to consider the 60 year old as an apprentice.  We want some level of self-selection, although not too much; we discuss false negatives elsewhere, but we don’t want viable candidates dropping out, especially if the labour market is tight.

Secondly, we want as many as viable.  Sure 200+ for 1 role is too many (that’s my personal record) but generally the more the merrier.  Generally we stick to the active job market only (discussed elsewhere) but sometimes we approach passives as well, especially if we are utilising a recruitment agency or know some people.

Thirdly, ideally we only go once to the market square.  Typically we want to go once and go well, and gather up as many as possible, to avoid confusion for applicants about whether they’ve applied, been declined, perceptions that we may not be a good employer, and an unnecessarily long recruitment process.   Sometimes we do need to readvertise for various reasons, but typically once is best.

Some times we knock of doors. To thrash a metaphor- the blacksmith may be unimpressed with the scrawny kids who want to be a blacksmith, and knocks on the door of the massive kid. Sometimes we do this too- we hunt out the candidate rather than only rely on those who actively put their hands up.

Act 2: finding the suitables

Once you have the pool, a new question arises:  Suitability: can they do it.  This a very specific question. It is not who is best, who is the strongest candidate, who are we pinning our hopes on, and so forth.  Suitability = could they do the job.  I’m being very specific here for one reason; suitability is a very binary question, they are or they are not, and practically this step of the process is primarily in the first part- reading the CV/resume. 

The feedback I often to give to hiring managers is to learn to stop reading the CV, because very quickly you start ‘reading between the lines’, or drawing conclusions that may not be correct.  If you have too many applicants (.e.g 200+) you will unfortunately have to do this or else you will end up with 40+ interivews, but there is a define point to all resumes where you only need to satisfy this question- based on the core facts of their experience and qualifications, does it appear that they could do the job?  If yes, get them in for an interview, so you can answer those questions that may have been of concern.  They may be good reasons they took 5 years to complete their 3 year degree, or not, or a host of other questions that leap to your mind reading the resume.

If at this stage you have too many suitables, then re-cut, shift the criteria until you get the number of interviewees/candidate you wish to progress to the more labour intensive parts of the recruitment process. This might mean that you throw out suitables, but sometimes we’ve got to do this- narror the pool down to what we can handle. But what don’t want to do is rank within the pool.

Act 3:  deciding the preferable

You only have one job to fill, so you can only make one offer.  Most of the time, there is no real choice; one candidate establishes themselves as the best, the clear preferable option.  If you’re not get analytical when deciding between Maria and Norman, don’t worry about it. The others could do it, but this person is the most likely to succeed (remember, selection is an estimation of likelihood of being a strong performer in 6 months time).  Sometimes it’s a two-horse, or even three-horse race, with psychometrics or references making the difference. 

The important thing to remember is the leave this part to the end, because if you decide a favourite early, there is a risk you disregard other suitable candidates you may need to come back if the favourite doesn’t work out, or there is a risk of confirmation bias- that all confirming evidence is accepted, but refuting evidence is disregarded.

No ‘aha’ for you? sorry about that. I’ll owe you a beer or something I guess. Thanks for trying though, you read all the way to the end.