|
A Categorical Denial By Michael AntmanEmail to a Friend 
When it comes to the painstaking process of hiring either an employee or a consultant, we’ve drawn a counter-intuitive conclusion: The more comprehensive the company’s list of hiring criteria is, the less likely it is that the best possible candidate will be chosen. We advance this conclusion modestly, because while we have recruited our share of marketing and marketing communications executives over the years and offer recruiting as part of our range of services, it isn’t something we do every day in high volumes, as major headhunting firms and large corporations do. Also, we’re on the other side of the equation when it comes to being hired as a consulting firm: i.e., we can see the occasional faults in the selection process from our perspective as a consulting firm competing with other consulting firms, but perhaps not quite as clearly from the perspective of the company doing the hiring. Still, it seems clear to us that, as in so many other areas of business, an over-emphasis on matching candidates to categories is subject to the Law of Unintended Consequences, in which something quite different from the intended result is achieved. In Part One of "A Categorical Denial," we take a counter-intuitive look at the process of hiring corporate communications consultants; in Part Two, we offer a similar perspective on the hiring of employees. And at the end of Part Two, we offer our own (very brief) checklist of suggestions for making the hiring process work better for you and, in the process, avoiding the age-old complaint, "but he looked so good on paper!" PART ONE: THE COUNTER-INTUITIVE WAY TO HIRE THE BEST CONSULTANTS Some time ago, we received a phone call from the marketing director of a university-based hospital consortium seeking to market to its member hospitals a new data-warehousing and data-mining initiative. The marketing director was looking for a b-to-b marcom agency with significant experience in the business of health care. Check. Over the years, in our previous agency incarnations, we’ve consulted on behalf of Humana, Health Insurance Plan of California, Ciba-Geigy, Employers Health Insurance, the Health Care Council of the New York State Catholic Conference, and Emphesys (now a subsidiary of Humana), among many others. The marketing director also wanted the agency to have experience working for a hospital consortium. Check. We’ve done extensive marketing communications work on behalf of the Catholic Health Care Network of hospitals in New York State. How about experience in data warehousing and data mining? Check. We’ve consulted Information Resources, Inc. for many years, and also have directed advertising, public relations and marketing programs on behalf of Arkidata Corporation, a data-cleansing and information-integration firm whose clients happened to include another hospital consortium, the Catholic Health Initiative. Yes, we were asked, but have you ever worked on behalf of a university-based hospital consortium? Uh-oh. Un-check. And end of conversation. Now, on the basis of our brief discussion, it seemed evident that the person we spoke to was a savvy and experienced marketing professional. But, like far too many busy and overburdened people in senior marketing positions, this executive seemed to be using an overly literal, excessively specific checklist of relevant industry experience in the decision-making process. To be clear on this point: We don’t think the marketing director was doing anything wrong in making use of an experience-based checklist as one part of that process. But the use of a hyper-specific checklist of relevant industry experience to the exclusion of all other considerations is one of the chief reasons, in our opinion, why so much business-to-business marketing communications (especially advertising) is so bland, boring, off-strategy and just plain awful. Take one of our areas of specialization – and yes, even as we decry over-specialization, we benefit from it – the derivatives business. For every on-target, well-researched and attention-getting ad, there are ten that rely on the same old stock photos of keyboard-bound investors or symbolic scenes of nature. And another twenty that use the same old exhausted wordplay about "your future is in futures" or "now you have more options," among other pointless puns. Why so much mediocrity? Because marketing communications agencies that specialize in a relatively narrow area such as derivatives figure out all the angles early – they learn what will play with most clients, and just how little fresh thinking they’ll have to do to in order to get by. So they trot out the same off-the-shelf, generic solutions that could work just as well for one firm as any other (here’s one good test for mediocrity in business-to-business advertising – try removing the company’s name and replacing it with its chief competitor. If the ad still "works," it’s generic.) Yes, relevant industry experience can be an important criterion in retaining a marketing communications agency, but it is only one factor -- and not necessarily the most crucial. Here are a few other things a company should look for:
Our suggestion to companies that are disappointed with the quality of the marketing communications work they’ve been getting from their consultants: Throw away the checklist. And make a new one. Relevant industry experience? Sure. Put it on there. But make sure you add intelligence, insight, and the willingness to develop fresh solutions for your marketing problems. PART TWO: THE COUNTER-INTUITIVE WAY TO HIRE THE BEST EMPLOYEES A couple of months back, the Wall Street Journal published a column entitled "Only Stars Need Apply: Companies Are Hiring, But Not Just Anyone," that made the seemingly inarguable point that, when there’s an oversupply of skilled executives, merely "good" candidates are no longer considered good enough. Instead, the article noted, the glut of applicants means that companies can use a much longer and more specific list of criteria, on the theory that the more closely a given candidate hews to this list, the more likely it is that he or she will be a "superstar." As we said, seemingly inarguable, and yet, in our view, just plain wrong. While it goes without saying that companies must be as selective as possible in the hiring process at all times, i.e., whether there’s a shortage of talent or an oversupply, expanding the checklist of criteria for the ideal candidate is exactly the wrong way to do so. In fact (though it may seem counter-intuitive) the more categories a particular candidate can "check off," the less likely it is that he or she will be the best possible fit. Here's why: It's our guess, and observation, that very few companies or recruiters actually assign varying weights to the various critical elements in their checklists, instead taking a fairly mechanical and arithmetic approach in which a candidate who adheres to nine of 12 criteria is automatically assumed to be superior to the candidate that meets only five of 12. The flaw in this approach is that one or two of the criteria on the list may be vastly more important than all of the others combined, so that a much-stronger candidate, who meets these criteria very well but not many of the others, may be be beaten out by another person who is able to check off most of the items, but not the vital two. A new director of marketing, for example, may understand the company, its business, its products and its competitive situation thoroughly, possess the requisite MBA, be a superb presenter and public speaker, and have a strong academic background in marketing and research, but possess little or no intuitive feel for, let's say, advertising or public relations. If the position's purview includes marketing communications, that's a big problem. It's also possible that the candidate who meets, let's say, 11 out of 12 criteria has serious personality, character or ethical flaws, which are more likely to be overlooked in the excitement of finding -- and being able to present to the board -- a seemingly "near-perfect" candidate. Finally, it's our observation that at least some of the items on the list are likely to be "filler," intended to prove to senior management or boards that the recruiter is doing a really thorough job of sourcing the ideal candidate. But in our opinion, doing a thorough job involves narrowing and de-emphasizing the checklist, broadening the search to include strong candidates that might not fit the criteria exactly, and really focusing intently (and intuitively) on the competence, character and experience of the specific individual seated across from the recruiter. The world of sports is replete with examples of athletes who, on paper, were too short, too slow or too inexperienced to play the game, but somehow managed to become great stars anyway. The same is true in business, but unfortunately is less likely to be the case in the future, as many recruiters increasingly take the easy way out under the guise of being "scientific" or "picky." Of course, a checklist of desirable traits is only one tool in the recruiter’s arsenal, and most responsible recruiters don’t take quite so mechanistic an approach. However, the trend appears to growing, driven, no doubt, by the fact that companies are in a buyer's market. But even when the "buyer" is in a position of power, there's no guarantee they'll get the best possible talent if their fundamental strategy for finding that talent is flawed. THE "ANTI-CHECKLIST" CHECKLIST When large companies received hundreds or even thousands of resumes a day, it’s impossible to begin the screening process without some sort of checklist. Ditto the company looking for corporate communications counsel that finds itself faced with dozens or even hundreds of consultancies and agencies claiming to provide the services it needs. But there are some practical ways that companies can make it more likely that they’ll make better choices in the hiring process:
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| © Copyright 2003-2004 | McSweeney & Antman | t: 847.920.1252 | e:info@mcsweeneyantman.com | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
