I'm involved with recruiting new colleagues, typically architects of different flavours, into the architecture practice that I'm part of, this process, like most other company's recruitment and joining processes is a multi stage, multi format process involving many different people and many different touch points with candidates. It has the potential to become complicated and unwieldy, extending itself out over undesired periods of time.

Working as an architect you tend to spend a fair bit of time looking at business processes, mostly outward facing processes, or processes that drive the overall business objectives, but every now and then we turn our eye to our own internal processes. This article examines how having a poor recruitment and joining process can have an adverse affect on both the new team member, and the existing team that are involved in the process.

The recruitment and joining experience, more important that you think

The danger here is that the people performing this process, whether that is existing team management or Human resources may see the activity as just that, a series of activities, the physical actions of the process. Often this is not the existing managers core responsibility, they have a 'normal' job to do, and this sort of thing isn't typically as important as that job. Its highly unlikely that any of them have objectives around how many candidates they recruit, or even more significantly retain, so its treated with less priority than it should otherwise have.

Typical activities might be:

1. 1. Review CV's
2. 2. Conduct telephone interview
3. 3. Conduct face to face interviews
4. 4. Make recommendations to cost centre management about candidate suitability
5. 5. Communicate offer
6. 6. Order a phone and laptop
7. 7. Request the right access privileges (AD accounts etc.)
8. 8. Order a security pass
9. 9. Send out a 'first day instructions' email

Now, there are obviously physical tasks to perform here, but most of these can, and often do have an outward facing impact on the candidate. That's the factor that is often overlooked. When times are busy, and everyone has project work, or partner relationships to manage, investing time and energy into ensuring a smooth recruitment and joining process can often be the first thing to suffer.

It's a maturity barometer

My most recent interactions with recruiters, both from agencies and in-company, have left me slightly bemused by how they perceive the balance of the employee - recruiter relationship. I've had several experiences where this newly burgeoning relationship has felt very one sided from the very first contact and has been difficult to progress very far due to significant reluctance on the recruiters part to share any information at all.

Recognizing that their objective is to locate a candidate of sufficient quality to get into the face to face interview stage I can normally give them a little leeway in their single mindedness, but there seems to be a growing trend of only providing information pertinent to the employer, not the candidate.

So with the issue above in mind I've put this article together to explain the key elements that I think recruiters MUST include in their role advertisements to ensure that both candidates and recruiters have access to the information they need to make a reasoned, informed decision on the role. I've equated this to a dating analogy, as whilst thinking this through I found that I could draw some simple parallels between the two scenarios.

Think of the 'first date' scenario. Two different individuals meeting for the first time, each giving away small items of detail about themselves, revealing information that might make them appear more attractive to the other, but not quite revealing the entire picture. Each person is judging exactly what the best pieces of information are to reveal, what information they think will portray them in the best light, what will create additional interest, causing the other person to want to dig deeper, to create a more meaningful engagement. Each person has specific expectations from the other, there are typical subject that are normally covered and it all normally happens within certain civilized constraints, i.e. everyone wants certain snippets of common information, but is also aware of staying away from controversial topics. This is all jockeying for position to assess compatibility.

Now lets apply that thinking to the initial conversation between a recruiter and a candidate. Recruiters are trying to ensure compatibility between their role and the candidate, yet often they only come to the table armed with the specifics of the activities of the role and little else. Its fine for them to have demands of candidates, but in my view they also need to cover the following things to ensure that they are giving confidence and assurance to candidates that they actually care about compatibility with them.

1. 1. Business model and moral compass: What the company actually does, how it makes its money, i.e. its business model and how it sees its self in society, i.e. its moral compass. How do you judge whether it is agreeable to your own, if this is omitted from the description?

2. 2. Company sector and product set: What types of company are they? Financial? telecoms? Marketing? What do they sell or manufacture? It's not uncommon now to find advertisements that don't actually list what type of company they are, or whether the role is specific to a certain product set.

3. 3. Salary and benefits: Always a controversial one this, but so many advertised roles do not feature a salary figure, or even a salary range to give an indication of where it sits within the market. This is a key factor for candidates, but also a key bargaining chip for recruiters so is often the last thing they give away. The other important factor with the salary figure is that it is an extremely good marker for the role's expectations. A high figure, or something that stands out from the market is likely to include other factors that in the role that warrant that figure. No salary is too good to be true, there will always be something in the role definition that has impacted that figure. An accurate figure also shows that the company advertising actually understands the role well themselves, and its position within the market. You have to balance this figure with the next point, the location.

4. 4. The role location, and travelling demands: Pair this with the point above about salary and you have two key counterpoints to each other. Location obviously dictates where you base location is, but also consider travelling requirements as these can, and should have an impact on the salary. Regional locations, cities, secure sites and remote offices all play a factor in influencing both salary expectations and the level of comfort around commuting and the lifestyle impact taking the role may have on you.

To summarise, I think we need to redress the balance between recruiters and their market. If the four points above aren't covered in an advertised role then for me, it shows a lack of attention to candidates requirements, and a misunderstanding of how to create a quality engagement situation, that communicates what each party is actually looking for. If this was a first date, you wouldn't be getting a second.

As an example of this, take a look at the following role advertisements:

Architect roles in Nationwide

A while back I took a role in mentoring some less experienced architects with an aim to solidifying their architectural thinking and moving them out of a Business analysis and design way of thinking. As part of this in-house upskilling programme I started writing an example of the 'Conceptual-Logical-Physical' views and their relationship. Whilst researching it online I found the example below, from the Zachman site. This is a great example, and clearly shows why the three views exist, and how they convey the right level of information to the correct audience, allowing each role to perform in its own space with, aiming at the same solution, but not restricted by any of the other roles around them.

Conceptual, Logical, Physical architecture example

The "Designer":  "Let me see now ... the physics of this situation would suggest that there are two LOGICAL alternatives ... either 1) you would have to have a pedestal about 10 feet high, the weight it would have to sustain is max of 100 pounds so if it was 10 square inches in area (cross-section) the material would have to hold 10 lbs per sq. inch.  You're second alternative 2) would be to hang it from something above the pot ... do you have a roof over the patio??  If not, that would mean we would have to construct a tripod to suspend the pot from the apex.  Do you care if you see the tripod? I recommend you go with the pedestal."

The "Builder:"  "The Architect is suggesting a pedestal that would be 10 feet high and sustain 10 pounds per square inch.  That Architect wouldn't recognize a lathe if he fell on one ... but here's what we could do ... we could PHYSICALLY build the thing in three pieces and then glue it together with superglue ... just in case, we could make flanges on the pieces so we could bolt the pieces together to make sure they don't come apart.  Your other alternative is to have it made in Japan and ship it in one piece and then we could install it by drilling a hole in the patio, sinking the base down 2 feet and filling in the hole with cement.

For full disclosure, I have republished this from the Zachman site, the original is here