In the first article of this series, I outlined a specific 17 step hiring process that a Fortune corporation Client of ours was implementing. I also mentioned how their process was failing, resulting in significant lost revenue during each month that a Manager-level hire remained vacant. The company retained our services to take over the reigns in a retained recruiting capacity and oversee the contingency search firms involved in the search. At the same time, we were charged with studying the operation/procedures and reporting deficiencies back to our "boss" who was an executive in the human resource department.

Let's look at how each step actually hindered the process rather than contributing toward a successful hire.

Items #1, and #2: The Monster Ads and corporate web site ads used were lame. Even worse, they were mind-numbingly difficult to understand. Using company-specific jargon (which outsiders of the organization could not decipher) such as grade levels, etc. you were left scratching your head after reading each ad.

Since many companies face potential litigation through job-ad writing, ads written by large companies have been reduced to the ridiculous in recent years. Some of the problems included:

a. No salary or compensation info. Which left one wondering whether the position paid $75 or $175 thousand dollars.

b. Little information about the culture, expectations, goals, etc.

c. No features or benefits that would make an applicant understand why they might want to consider resigning their current job for the new one.

In a nutshell, the company's own size, and publicly-traded status restricted its ability to write ads with the flourish needed to attract the candidates they sought. Bottom line: The ads were l-o-u-s-y and screaming for a search firm to take over … one that was freer to discuss the job in greater detail.

Item #3: Search firm favoritism and inter-office politics. We discovered a certain climate of patronage among individual recruiter's selection of contingency search firms. In fact a few times we sent in a candidate as the "Retained Search Firm" … but were delayed in obtaining information for what we later discovered was favoritism toward other "preferred" contingency search firms used by different offices.

This was unfortunate as it caused certain HR folks to leverage their clout for personal benefit as opposed to overall company gain. Even the AVP of HR was powerless to cut through the favoritism for the benefit of the organization as a whole … which suffered at the expense of this culture.

Items #4-6: HR Coordinators: friend or foe? If a candidate's resume did make it past the minefield of encrypted job ads and individual corporate recruiter quirks, the next barrier was the corporate human resource coordinators. While these individuals were all very nice and courteous … they made it quite clear that an applicant had to work their way or else.

While the mangers we interacted with frequently called our office at hours that were well beyond 5 pm … the HR coordinators behaved as if they worked for an entirely different organization. They would NEVER stay beyond 5 PM. Worse yet, since they wanted to leave by five sharp no interview or telephone pre-screen could take place later than 3:30 PM or 4 PM to provide sufficient time to exit the company by 5 PM

In one case I was reprimanded by a manager because he wanted to understand "why a candidate truly interested in his company could not make himself available for an interview by 2 PM the next day!?" I explained that it was his HR coordinator creating this highly pressured condition for what we later found out was a two week vacation she had planned which began at 3:30 PM the next day. So it was either a 2 PM interview with her … or nothing for two more weeks!! This particular manager later bypassed the HR coordinator for all subsequent hiring. The manager only including her at the offer stage once this alarming revelation about her conduct and work ethic was made known.

Item #7: The telephone prescreen While the initial telephone prescreen was adequate … and probably one of the best aspects of the process as it incorporated a blended structured/unstructured and behavioral interview process combination … getting to this stage was not easy. Also, some candidates were prematurely screened "out" for reasons that HR should not have been permitted to make.

In one case a candidate got screened out because he asked for a salary level only 10% above the stated mid-point. Clearly, this individual should have been invited and such a decision should have had management's input. By the time anyone reached this stage an average of 7-14 days would have lapsed which is a disadvantage when competing against leaner, meaner and faster organizations that can react more quickly. While 7-14 days in itself was a not a big problem … it was one of many setbacks which when combined resulted in failure to hire a candidate.

Item #9: Profile Tests. Certain sales management jobs required a test similar to those given by Omnia or Caliper. More than 75% of those candidates that were invited to take the test after passing the telephone interview FAILED! Seventy-Five percent failure is too high and denotes a problem with either the test or HR's pre-screening process.

Our guess is that the test was too restrictive. This came to be highlighted one when a candidate who "failed" the test was actually promoted in her current job to a position much higher than the one she originally interviewed for. The president of this candidate's current employer, also a large multi-billion dollar organization, clearly saw talent and capabilities the "test" was not picking up. Similar examples happened throughout our research project with this client.

Items # 11 - 14: The final stages of the search and first face-to-face interview. To further underscore how unreliable the above mentioned Profile Tests were … a few candidates that were invited to a 'face-to-face' interview at an additional expense of airline tickets, cabs, shuttle services, etc. … bombed their in-person interview. Clearly if the test was accurate the person should have continued to do well. While we attempted to convince this client to ignore some marginal tests and invite the individual in for a face-to-face feeling confident this would tip the scales in favor of the candidate, the company would not hear of it. Yet when on their own accord they invited a candidate that clearly did well on the Profile test … they discovered they had wasted their time. Not once could we get anyone to buy into the notion that maybe … just maybe their testing process was being given too much credit.

Final Assessment After 6-8 weeks of knocking out candidate after candidate at each step of the process, management would reach the frustrating point of realizing they had nothing to show for their efforts (as well as our contributions made under a retainer agreement) and have to start all over again. Calls from HR execs were made, telephone conferences held explaining the hundreds of thousands the company was loosing every month these preciously sensitive jobs went vacant … yet not one person was willing to change the status quo of the current process.

In a final telephone and web conference with our client contact, a higher up in HR, we explained we did not feel they had a recruiting problem. In fact we observed at least 2-3 candidates worthy of a hire that were 'in the loop' up until one point or other. We felt they had a hiring problem. In essence, an inability to realistically reach the decision to hire as quickly as was required to secure a candidate in a competitive market place where many similar positions were open competing against theirs.

Frank G. Risalvato, CPC is president of IRES, Inc. His newly redesigned recruiter training site is updated weekly with loads of original content and is found at www.searchwizardry.com. He has been speaking and providing recruiting training materials to the search profession's trade groups since 1987. His Recruiter Training Guide is available online for electronic download. Contact Frank by phone (973) 300-1010 or email him: frank@searchwizardry.com. Be sure to sign up and be the first for his soon-to-be-released book The Kentucky Fried Secret Recipe to Recruiting Millionsฎ.

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