I had heard much of the ‘speeding train’ concept before I joined Chemistry a month ago. It was mentioned in every single one of the four interviews that it took to get me here. It’s been perennially blogged about, reiterated, reinforced and repeated ever since.

It’s a serious topic. Apparently, the original proposals for Chemistry in-house recruitment had concluded that any candidate who could jump through both sets of front windows of Roger’s Maserati (approx speed 100mph – walk in the park), and come out the other side, would get hired.

So when I sat down with Roger for my monthly review last Friday, it was with predictable pre-destined velocity that the conversation veered towards the speeding train. It was at this point that Roger informed me that this month, the train hadn’t been chugging along at the regular 800mph, it was in fact more like double: “It’s actually going at more like 1600mph”, he stated, his eyes wide open with fierce optimism and energy.

This being the case, many of the things I have managed to get done this month have been unintentionally deleted from my memory – they have been unsparingly barged out the brain by more actual/pressing (but probably no less important in the grand scheme of things) issues. Still, I can tell you I’ve certainly had some highlights, and I’ll attempt to give you a not very coherent summary of what its been like on the train so far:

 The key (memorable) stops:

·      Snow Hill – a tough climb in the first week at the beginning of January. LOTS OF SNOW. Slight altitude sickness. Taught me how to work remotely, a core predicate to the ‘working from home’ concept

 ·      London – venue shopping for our much hyped Talent Forum – date TBC

 ·      Project Management Creek – yep, this has been a frantic one. Ran Vodafone development sessions in the Talent Labs for 80+ sales managers. Prep time: 1 week

 ·      Departures lounge – Rowan gets off the train. He’s gone up north to Manchester. A big loss. The self-styled sales and marketing God is no longer. Cue humungous brain overload in attempt to manage the deficit.

 ·      New passenger – sourced a new member of the team (pretty hard to do given our ‘intolerant’ nature and time constraints). Congrats, Rosie

 ·      Fuel stop (Biscuits/Chocolate in general) – right so not really a ‘stop’, but just had to put this in. It goes without saying that if you’re in for the long haul, biscuits are a must. Have managed to overturn Roger and Rowan’s health campaign. Bringing back biscuits is a big achievement. Simon will strongly agree

Now to delve into the train analogy a bit more before I wrap up. It’s actually a great little metaphor for the jobs we find ourselves in:

Every company has it’s own train. Some are easier to catch than others – they go more slowly. If you miss one stop you can catch it up at the next one down. Either that or you wait for the next train (they’re pretty regular).

The key about being on the train for a particular company is a combination of wanting and being able to stay on it. Are you getting where you want to go? And is it getting you there fast enough? Are you fed up of constantly taking the same slow, regular train, which always ends up in the same place? What are the views like? Dull? Inspiring? Is the dull journey, for example, a worthwhile one, if where the train is going to end up is where you want to be? Is it worth getting off the train and risking not getting to your destination on time altogether?

I’m one of these people who can’t stand sitting on a slow train that stops at every corner. The great thing about being on (just about) a train of such great speed is that, as long as you can stay on it, you go places quickly. The downside? There’s not much time for reflection or for the idea of ‘getting up to speed’. Still, we are all different, and this type of journey isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Different speeds and journeys will suit different types of people. So I guess it’s lucky we have such a well-developed railway network these days…  

So I hoped I’ve managed to take this analogy to its full extent in Chemistry-esque fashion. Must fly, we’re due an announcement any second…

ATTENTION. Please stand clear of the platform – the next train is not scheduled to stop at this station.

HOWEVER. For those of you who wish to have a go at jumping on, you may do so at your own risk… Thank you.

Tom.

Ever heard the expression, “People are our No.1 asset”? Yep, me too.  I have heard it muttered by the same people who then go and hire without a job description, or ring ten agencies and ask them to all drop their trousers on the fee and send them CVs by the end of the day.  So when does hiring not knowing what you are looking for, or trawling the bottom of the candidate pool look like trying to find your No.1 assets?  The truth is it doesn’t. 

This blog was originally written written by Roger Philby for Recruiter Magazine and published on their website on December 9th 2009.

According to research the cost of mishiring an individual is 4-14x their base salary and most UK organisations are getting 75% of their hires wrong! This is why £24 Billion per annum is spent managing poor performers in UK PLC.  Except, these aren’t poor performers (disgusting label), these are individuals who have had the misfortune of being hired by the wrong company for them.

So whose fault is that?

The individual? The recruitment companies being used?  Or the companies using them?

Pick me…Pick me...I know!

Truth is a lot of companies are getting the service from recruitment companies they deserve, there you go I said it, it might not be the recruitment companies fault.  If the recruitment company is called and asked to send CVs by the end of the day, what can they do?  A thorough and accurate selection? Or a spray and pray approach?  If my first conversation with a client is, “everyone else is doing it at 12%, so you have to” what chances my heart is in the accurate selection of the right individuals?  If I am treated as one of many suppliers, not engaged with properly, not trusted, not given the full information and terrified that if I send in the wrong candidate (not that I’d know what wrong is at this stage) I’ll get canned from the PSL what chance that I’d do the best job? 

Answer is simply none.  

It is a bit of a cheek that the same people who moan about how crap our industry is, perpetuate the problem by being equally crap in how they engage us.  Seriously, if these companies put as much care and effort in to the hiring of people as they do say, a new server installation I believe the service they received would be infinitely better.  Sound stupid?

Think about it for a minute,  when installing £50,000 of servers, they would write an RFP detailing the specification (the job spec), they would detail the process for sourcing, work with the vendors on refining the spec, then put together a proper tender (selection) process, meticulously going through the pro’s and con’s of each server.  They would then select the server and put together an installation team (induction) and then have a post installation service agreement (90 day coaching). 

OK, now re-run the client process for the last £50,000 hire you made…

Figured it out?

What they actually mean is our servers are our company’s No.1 asset, simple.

This blog was originally written by Roger Philby for Recruiter Magazine on October 14th 2009.

Adversity - the mother of all invention? Lord, I hope so!

I can think of no other industry where creativity, new ideas and therefore invention is more lacking than in recruitment. If processors have Moore’s law, recruitment has ‘sod’s law’, as in sod’s law the agency will charge you a percentage of the salary which bears no relation to the work done, or sod’s law they won’t deliver what they said they would. So, if this recession is the mother of all recessions, maybe this is the one where we will see recruitment agencies reinvent themselves. Personally, I think the current model of intermediary is dying - and if not dead, on its death bed. Don’t believe me? Try reading What would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis or FREE by Chris Andersen.

The basic economics for the client do not stack up any more: why pay 25-30% to an intermediary when for far less they can employ a researcher, or use a fixed-fee job board or LinkedIn (isn’t that just what you recruiters are doing?). In the current model it doesn’t work for the client, so their reaction is, ‘drop your fees (pants)’ and there are many a recruiter today with their pants firmly by their ankles.
So as the cash cow declines, us recruiters should be doing two things, firstly:

• Demonstrate value - Listen to the client; they have the answer!

Even chickens can fly in a hurricane, and that’s been the recruitment market for the last five years. Agencies have done well, despite having no differentiating factor at all. As the calm comes, these guys are dropping out of the sky and pecking at fewer roles - literally scratching in the dirt.

However, there is hope! Clients will pay for perceived value, so we can create our own stay of execution by listening to the customer and learning from it… they are saying ‘we need to save money’. That doesn’t mean you need to drop your trousers - just articulate your value. Where can you save them money? What service could you offer for free? If the best you can offer is a salary survey - then get in the truck, as it’ll be the slaughterhouse for you!

• Innovate - Listen to the client and the candidate. They have the answer!

Your current model is dead. You can choose not to believe me, but rest assured the guys who innovate now and produce the ‘game changing’ service(s) will reap the new client and candidate zeitgeist.

These are exciting times to be in recruitment; the clients and candidates are ready for change. Steve Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, once said: “Innovation is to distinguish between a leader and a follower.” Time to decide what you want to be… Adversity - the mother of all invention? Lord, I hope so!

Essentially, I believe the decision to hire is very similar to choosing what to do when you get hungry!

As an organisation becomes hungry i.e. it needs more people or to recruit as we call it in the industry, it is broadly faced by 3 options.

Firstly, if you are very busy and don't think you have the time to spend preparing your own food, you can go out and eat at restaurants (recruitment companies), as with all of these things there are different options. Recently, there has been a huge increase in the popularity of fast food.

In a lot of ways 'fast food' restaurants resemble the plethora 'spray and pray' recruitment agencies that can quickly produce CV from their database. The great thing about fast food is it takes very little effort on your part, and you can get quick results, fairly cheap. An immediate fix you might think! Unfortunately, fast food isn't that healthy, the staff in fast food restaurants are more focused on volume than quality, and if you eat too much fast food it can get very unhealthy. For those who don't believe you need to watch 'Super Size Me'.

But what if it is a really important meal (hire) like your birthday for example, you wouldn't go to 'Joe Bloggs' recruitment for that, the quality of food wouldn't be good enough. You'd probably go to a high end restaurant with a prestigious reputation. The restaurant equivalent of an executive search company you might say (see where I'm going with this). This is where you would go to get some quality food. There are plenty of good high restaurants out there, but the problem is they can be hellishly expensive! And often it seems you don't get that much for your money...

So, fast food is unhealthy, top-end restaurants are expensive and can be disappointing... what is hungry organisation supposed to do.

Well, the most healthy option is to prepare your own meals, the problem with this is that everybody always claims that they haven't got the time, or it is so much easy to eat out.

And the truth is they are right, for most organisations preparing their own meals (or direct recruitment) can be time consuming to start with, and it will be difficult to start with, there may even be one or two disasters as you learn the ropes.

But if you stick at it, buy some recipe books from top chefs, get some top quality cooking utensils then you can really good at it. You can prepare healthy meals, quickly and effectively. Surely this has to be the future.

"So, where does Chemistry fit in to all this then?" I hear you cry, I haven't quite cracked that bit yet...Gordon Ramsey maybe ;-)

Okay, that's it, analogy over - breathe!

Congratulations if you made it here

Rowan

A pretty reasonable point I think you would agree. So my first stunning piece of insight in answer to his question was …

“Yes … possibly!”

You see, knowing that someone can do something, is not the same as knowing that someone will do something. This is the difference between competencies and behaviours. There is just no guarantee that someone will ever use a competence.

I have got to admit, I don’t really like competencies. Not the idea, the idea is fine, in fact the idea is brilliant. Of course we all need to know what people are capable of. But, what I don’t like is the way that competencies are used in organisations. They are used to allegedly tell us how good someone is, how effective they are, what they can do and can’t and worse still, what they could do. WRONG!

So here is what I said to the Geoff. Think of it this way. I am competent in dieting. I have read the books, watched the DVDs and my wife has told me everything there is to know about dieting. Truth is, I could do with losing a bit of weight (erm, he sniggered at that point). I could tell you all about how to diet and the benefits of dieting. So I am competent.

In fact, if you asked me in an interview “Simon, could you describe a time when you have lost weight through dieting?” I could. I lost a stone last March. The way that question is phrased is how all good competency questions are phrased. Tick, Simon is competent in dieting.

The problem is that I don’t value dieting. I am not motivated enough by losing a few pounds. So although I am competent, you know what? I will never diet. I won’t develop the habits. I won’t turn my competence in to a behaviour. A behaviour is the continued use of a competence – often and for ever. And unless you investigate my behaviours you have no idea if I will ever use the competence I so beautifully described.

Replace dieting with creating ambitious plans, good commercial judgement, influencing senior managers, challenging the business to do better etc. And I think you get the idea.

Either that, or this blog has been totally incompetent!!  ;-0

That was slightly unfair, the biggest issue is  and was not caused by the RPO but by accountants and the simplicity of the key internal resourcing Key Performance Indicator (KPI), that of Cost Per Hire (CPH). 

I have not found one in-house or outsource team whose key KPI is quality of hire! Cost per hire, yes; time to hire, yes; interviews : offer, yes but never quality of hire.  The first three are absolutely no measures of quality.

We are frequently asked to review recruitment processes within organisations, we are never, ever asked to reduce cost of hire, our remit is always to increase the quality.  In the end, as with most things, people will pay more for quality.

A classic example is an organisation whose outsourced partner had managed to decrease the Cost Per Hire (CPH) to £1,500 for their 250+ sales people they hired every year.  On the face of it an astounding result, actually if you know anything about recruitment, it’s not astounding at all, it’s unbelievable, no really, totally unbelievable.

The simple fact is that hiring the right talent for your business cannot be measured in CPH, it has to be total employee cost.  In this example over 50% of the hires left in the first year, at a cost to the business of £1,000,000 in wasted training costs and ultimately further £millions in lost revenue, oh plus you have to hire them all again at £1,500 per hire. In this example the CPH was driving the wrong behaviour, as it always does, and the business suffered.

So my recommendation? Do away with CPH as a KPI for an in-house or outsourced team, it’s irrelevant. Still don’t believe me?

When I took over the resourcing team at Nortel Networks my budget was $10,000 per hire. Yep a reasonable £5,000 at the time, with 3,500 hires to make, my £20M budget was a sight to behold...however it simply wasn’t true.  The CPH was actually $65,000, let me rephrase that, the total cost impact of hiring for the business was $65,000 per hire, caused by mishires, leading to wasted management time, cost of missed revenue, impact on team morale, leavers etc. So in-house or outsource, that’s one for your conscience but whatever you do, don’t use Cost Per Hire as your KPI, it’ll doom the whole thing to failure.

PS: I did in 9 months get the total cost impact of hiring at Nortel down to $10,000 per hire but that’s another story...

------------------------------

OK, so i am an observer and some might say active participant in the "recruitment industry needs to change" rhetoric/mantra.  The twitter feeds and blogs are full of pearls of wisdom on how the industry needs to change and how bad the world is.  Does appear that these people (and my guilty hands are up) are talking to each other and not changing a damn thing, after all they and I, like people who agree with me/us, we're only human!  But it's not the people who agree with us that we need to change but those that don't...the big question is how the hell do we change them!

Well, I believe it is by role modelling the change, by setting the benchmark and not compromising...so at Chemistry we are looking at every process and making sure that it lives up to the standards by which we preach.  It'll take time, and will probably (short term) cost us some cash  but if we are going to Twitter and Blog about this stuff we have to do it, we have to "be the change we want to see" (that's not my line, little guy, glasses went by the name of Ghandi i think).

Some of the areas we are whiter than white on, seriously if we were any whiter, i'd rename us Bold or Mother Teresa, except they wouldn't be at all catchy or on brand.

Others we need to tighten up on, our first area is candidate feedback.  

I know this because we recently cocked up and worded a "reject" email too bluntly, we were trying to be "different" but on reflection it lacked empathy...we take this seriously, so i personally worded an apology to all 103 rejected applicants and sent them 1 by 1 from my email account, it took 2 hours, it was important so it didn't matter how long, just that it got done with thought and care.

The response was phenomenal, it was an outpouring of unfiltered emotion, mostly in utter disbelief that a recruitment company would be so professional and dare i say it "caring" but also to a person, they questioned why they had been rejected as they were convinced they had the right experience?

So i reviewed each and every applicant again, my conclusion? We were right to reject all of them, based on the CV we received.  So i called a couple of them and lo and behold, these were good candidates...just with monumentally shit CVs, I mean bloody awful.  

The conclusion is that there are a lot of very good people who are being poorly served by their CVs, in most instances these CVs have been written for them by outplacement firms (must blog about them, awful :-)) or recruitment companies (god forbid).

So the question is do we "preach" that it's not good enough or do something about it...well guess what? We did and we are doing something about it.

Firstly over the last month or so I have been taking time out of an evening to give people advice on CVs, two of these people within 4 weeks of changing their CV had multiple interviews and both are now in new jobs (they had both been unemployed for months)...so the advice was working BUT how do we scale the process.

Well, as of next week, we will be running the first Chemistry CV Clinic, using Webex,  job seekers will receive free feedback on their CVs and how they present themselves, it will be a Q&A and practical session.  We will then run a follow up session with them to track progress and provide additional support if needed.  We plan to hold these every week for as long as people need it. 

We ain't doing it for the money (it's free), we are doing it because if we are brave enough to spout off about how crap our industry is, we better have the commitment/balls to do something about.  So it's not brave but it might just be Chemistry :-)

R

PS: if anyone would care to join us on this venture and scale it even further, we would love to form a gang...minus the parkas and vespas...so just a "trying to change the world of recruitment" gang...we can work out the uniform later....

PPS: If you are looking for a new role and would like to be included in one of the sessions, email Rowan, at rowanw@thechemistrygroup.com

The argument in this blog was that the internet has enabled accessibility to candidates that would never have been possible before the internet revolution. Therefore by posting a few ads and doing some poking around on LinkedIn HR team can now source candidates directly and cut out the middle man.

This argument is sound if you accept that a recruiter is merely a way of sourcing or aggregating candidates. However, here is where I (predictably) disagree. I believe previously organisations used recruiters because they had lots of cards in their rolodex (I'm a bit young to have seen one, but I have been told about them) and could provide them with access to their networks. Now that organisations can directly source candidates fairly successfully the question becomes, as quite rightly asked in the blog I read, what is the recruiter for?

The answer (in my humble opinion) is about selection rather than sourcing. Recruiters need to become experts in selecting candidates, they need to be better than the client at predicting which candidate will succeed in each role in each company. Sounds ridiculous?

It shouldn't, the recruitment processes of most companies (CV based interview) is about 25% accurate (according to research conducted by the CIPD). The job of a recruiter is not to find the candidates but to help the client select the right person for their business. The British Psychological Society has shown that by using the right psychometric tools and behavioural interview techniques hiring accuracy can be raised above 75%.

Therefore if you're a recruiter and you want to stay ahead of the game you need to up skill big time. Recruitment consultants of the future will not be the salesman of old flogging candidates to anyone who'll have them; they will be a mix of occupational psychologists, management consultants and project managers.

If you are an organisation currently using recruitment consultants, you may want to have a chat with them about what tools and expertise they are using to select candidates. If the answer is 'I've been doing this for years, I know a good one when I spot one' then I suggest you go looking for a new one!

Anyway back to my original point, I don't believe the increasingly easy access to candidates the internet offer will be the death of all recruiters, however, as Darwin so aptly figured out years ago, it will kill off those those who don't adapt and quick! As Rupert Murdoch put it "The world is changing. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow."

Rowan

£35-£55,000 + Bonus + Benefits

Binfield, nr. Bracknell (not too near)

OK, so let’s get specific...you will be currently today working for PA, Accenture, Deloitte or similar, you will be an analyst or consultant in an HR practice. You will be wearing a dark suit, white shirt and back pack to work and be at the beck and call of the Partner, Directors and Senior managers above you.  You would have started life thinking this is the dream job, with the dream company and are probably now thinking either:

1. I’ll be dead soon if I keep going at this rate!
   
2. I never have time for a good snog, let alone a relationship
3. Actually, what do we ever really change?

If that’s not you and you still love your job, brilliant and good luck.

If it is you, ring Colin on 01344 418300 or email him on colinm@thechemistrygroup.com.  

We can promise you eternal life (possibly) and consulting work that matters (definitely) and if you really need it...a snog :-)

Salary £27,500 + Bonus + Benefits

Binfield, nr. Bracknell (just not too near)

“They are like McKinsey but they do people stuff and the return is immediate”, is how one client described Chemistry’s services.  Given 70% of our revenue is from management consulting fees, we work globally, our people are bright and our multi-national FTSE 100 client list find us an essential partner, we kinda get the McKinsey comparison.  Then again we don’t have any oak paneling, we prefer our Wii, XBox and Mac kitted out, yet rurally chic offices in Binfield.

We are looking for razor bright graduates (fresh or a bit of wear) to join our business.  For a clue to the environment read this blog entry http://tinyurl.com/ykmoc36 

Our expectations are that you will:

• Work like you are possessed, on the right things
• Treat our customers like they are the centre of your universe
• Treat your colleagues like they are your blood kin
• Enjoy every minute of what we believe is the best place to work on the planet

Our expectations are that you have:

• A HUGE BRAIN, seriously immense, one caveat you need to be able to tie your own laces
• Cool TECH skills, one finger typing and “what’s Twitter?” like questions aren’t allowed
• You are a SPONGE - not a deep sea type, but an information absorbing one
• HUMILITY - to listen, learn, improve (and repeat)

For more information on us go to www.thechemistrygroup.com

To apply call Colin on 01344 418300 or email him at colinm@thechemistrygroup.com