Who wrote this job description?

In a recent session for M3 Job club*, using a recent real-life experience of one of the members, I decided to demonstrate the value of knowing and clearly articulating their key unique abilities as a way of qualifying the viability of an opportunity.

The scenario was this : after two rounds of interviews, the applicant had been invited to a one hour final interview with the CEO, tasked by the Marketing Director with delivering a 15 minute presentation titled "Your approach to Launch Management”. Five minutes into the presentation, the CEO is looking bored and the Marketing Director twitchy. Picking up the signals, the applicant stopped and took the initiative to uncover what was going on, asking the CEO what he wanted the role to achieve.

Seems the CEO’s team of in-country Managing Directors collectively have a deeply seated resistance to innovation and new products, and he wanted the role to bring about cultural change across EMEA.

Clearly there’s a communication break down of significant proportions. And not on the part of the applicant. What is disappointing is the time and energy invested by all parties and especially the emotional drain on the applicant to discover the role is not viable in its current format.

As a recruiter, I work closely with my clients to understand the strategic relevance of the role, the interaction with functions and other business units, the success and fail criteria, subtly testing and challenging the ‘wish list’ against reality. Frequently I discover that the hiring manager is using a job description based on an historical one, or that the job current/recent role holder actually did bears no relation to it, or that it’s been through the ‘corporate filter’ and is so bland as to be a generic mish mash of cliches.

It would be so refreshing if clients would recognise the cost and time savings of investing half an hour upfront with their recruiter in order to achieve their objectives – a selection of well-qualified, well-briefed applicants who could actually deliver the role required to deliver the business needs.

#M3 Job Club *www.m3jobclub.co.uk

I, as many recruitment consultants do, am often challenged on the fees we charge for the service we offer. To many, the perception is that the function is easy, unskilled, and to some, profiteering. The truth couldn't be more different. Of course, it depends on the service you want. If it's just to be inundated with a lot of unsuitable, unqualified CVs, then why would you pay a lot for someone to post your job description on job boards and auto-pass the responses?

In my case, that isn't a service I offer.

My role in the recruitment process is, by using my expertise and experience, to source, evaluate and selectively qualify suitable applicants against the Client’s role specification, in return for a pre-advised, stage-based fee.

A typical recruitment process involves two to three interviews and a number of the Client’s interviewers, and throughout the process, I work closely with my client to cross-check their and the applicant’s feedback at each interview stage and through the offer, negotiation, acceptance, and resignation phases to completion and start.

Each party has responsibility in terms of the sector-specific competence, suitability, and references aspects, however, to ensure the applicant and Client bond, once the Applicant starts my role is complete and I have no contact or control over them. Neither do I have any control over the Client’s working environment and management practices.

My fee is based on my expertise, experience, and of course time. A typical process on a recent project included :

Taking the brief, creating a job description and recruitment advert, posting the advert, receiving, reading, and responding to 92 applications, phone interviewing 11 applicants, physically interviewing 4, presenting 3 applicants, managing the ongoing interview process, client and applicant feedback, applicant management throughout, discussing and presenting the offer, managing the negotiations, acceptance and resignation phase and finally, completion and start.

By contrast, the Client input and involvement with the recruiter on the functional recruitment process was as follows:

Activity	Client time involved
Phone briefing regarding the role	30 minutes
Presentation of 3 applicants to interview	10 minutes
Feedback following the interviews	10 minutes
Pre-offer discussion	10 minutes
	60 minutes

So, when considering whether the fee justifies the result, it's not as straight-forward as you might think.

If you'd like to explore how working with a professional, competent recruitment consultant with proven results, please do get in touch.

As a volunteer presenter for M3 Job Club (www.m3jobclub.co.uk) I had the privilege of attending their Virtual Christmas Gathering and hearing three inspiring speakers whose words on 2020 and the outlook for 2021 gave great hope and encouragement, addressing themes including finding opportunity created by change, utilising techniques to turn negatives into positives and using one’s network and community to help understand one’s value and expertise and reach one’s objectives.

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