“Deji…I thought you said last week you were going to…”

Yeah…I know what I said, or wrote. Relax. You haven’t missed the sequel I promised to last week’s issue.  Yes, I did say I was going to share my thoughts on the absolute no nos of crafting a great CV.  But, I’m Nigerian and I just can’t help myself…it’s the election period in Nigeria, and this one has been the most intriguing, dramatic and suspense filled election years I’ve ever witnessed. Long before last Saturday’s Presidential elections, I’ve been following the electrifying discourse from either side of the divide on social and mainstream media and as the day came upon us, it simply peaked with feverish pitch, one could literally feel the ting in the air.  One guy tweeted “…I’m so excited, it feels like my wedding day!”

Yesterday was a historic day for all Nigerians. For the first time, in one sweeping action at the ballot box, coupled with courage to defend their decision against all odds and historical trends, they fired a President and hired a new one. At the end of the duel, the fired President nobly accepted the people’s decision and congratulated the hired President. I’m not sure how you see it, but that was a defining moment in our democratic history. The day we all turned the corner and became real recruiters!

So, I will digress a little and go with the flow in today’s post.  Honestly, with the kind of excitement in the air, I’m almost certain no one will want to read about résumés at the moment. Oblige me as I take on the political discourse while putting an HR spin on it.

When I started out writing this series a few weeks back, I mentioned how remarkable it is that many folks simply dislike us HR people (see http://wp.me/pgvBZ-M).  Job seekers particularly have a more-hate-than-love relationship with recruiters.  When you think recruiters, a lot of things probably come to mind, many of them negative. “Those guys who trashed my résumé” “…those crazy goons who failed me in the test”, “…those idiots who ambushed me with questions I had no answers to, giving me no chance”, “…those creeps who had made up their minds who they would hire and only needed me as statistic”, “…those freaks who refused to hire me giving some bollocks of an excuse”, “…those nitwits who fired me!” I feel you believe me. I’ve been there too.  The only difference with me is that I crossed to the other side and became one of those guys. I became a Recruiter and on behalf of other recruiters, I apologize for how you feel and how we may have treated you. But men, I have to confess it is quite a powerful feeling you get when you have that role. Allow me to elucidate.

As a recruiter, one sometimes get the feeling you have power over another’s destiny, that your yes can change a life and your no can wreck another. It’s an incredibly nostalgic feeling, a god complex of sorts.  I’d liken it to the same feeling as holding a loaded gun over a subject with life and death resting on the split second squeeze of the finger. It’s that decisive power, oozing out in the recruiter’s remarkable confidence, that the job seeker can feel a mile away and interprets as pride, haughtiness, utter rudeness (sometimes rightfully so). The stare in his eyes as he throws question after another, the emotionless glance as he listens to you banter about your accomplishments or explain the lack of it.  The consistent barrage of inquiry like bombing raids, one attack succeeded by another, until he’s finally got you where he wants you, barrel to your head, ready to pull the trigger.  And pull he must. A decision for which he feels utmost responsibility…each time hoping that he has hired the right person and rejected the wrong one.

Every time you go to the polls, you’re probably not aware, but you become a Recruiter saddled to do the exact same job many of you openly loathe.  You get the chance to collectively step into the role armed with a voter’s card and decide if one person or another is hired, retained or fired.  With your vote, you pull the trigger. You step into that position of power to make a hiring decision for national and state leadership…an opportunity that comes full circle every four years.  Those canvassing for your votes, the candidates (interestingly this is the same name we recruiters call you) have every reason to be scared of you.  They have presented their résumés to you for consideration, you have had some time to review them, you have listened to arguments and counter arguments, and you have heard debates and presentations. Some have pleaded; some have visited you, wrote directly to you, called your phones, and bombarded your airwaves, trying to get your attention.  Some have even tried to buy you off with things they think you’d need (it’s interesting some candidates actually do this in a job situation) and some have tried to use their network to intimidate you. All leading to this point…the trigger point, where you decide – hire or fire.

Congratulations to the Nigerian electorate who last Saturday, took on the recruiters role, fired the current President and hired a new one! You hired and fired many legislators as well. In a couple of weeks, you get to do the same thing…this time for the Governorship and State level legislators. With the current momentum, I can only imagine how that will go.

Hiring a Politician is much like hiring a CEO or a Top level Executive .  A country or State is a corporate entity, much like a business that must deploy its resources to produce value and post a profit.  Its Chief Executive therefore is like a CEO and its principal officers are like top level executives. Hiring into these kinds roles isn’t anything like hiring a graduate trainee. The recruiter will need to be more meticulous, scrutinize more, investigate deeper, before taking a decision. Having been in the position of recruiting into these kinds of roles, allow me to share with you a few tips on what a recruiter would consider in completing this kind of task.

1. Disabuse the mind of any bias: Because of the import of the decisions recruiters make, professional recruiters always need to take unbiased decisions and are often trained to identify and eliminate bias in their decisions. We (and I hope that most of my colleagues will agree) do not make light of the enormity of the hiring decisions we make for individuals and its implication for the futures of families. Bias is often unconscious and is likely to be present and strong when the recruiter has an affinity with the candidate. By affinity, I mean something that is common with both of you. For instance, you both attended the same school, or worked in the same organization, or come from the same region. Taking a decision when bias is present greatly reduces the chances of objectivity in your decision making. I admit, bias cannot be completely eliminated, but there are ways it can be controlled. How do you do this?
   1. Do a self assessment. Ask yourself, do I have any affinity(ies) the candidate? Identify them and list them out if you can. For example, the candidate is from your part of the country; we attend the same church, he attended my alma mata…
   2. Mentally negate the affinity. Assume the person is the opposite of the affinity(ies) you have identified. This is a mental reconditioning exercise, that’s not very easy to do but thankfully lasts only long enough for you to make an unbiased decision. For example, you know the guy is from your alma mata and you simply ask yourself, “what if he was from that other school…the one we all hated…would I feel the same way?”
   3. Put the candidate to task more. Task the candidate a little more than you would normally. When we have affinity for someone, we tend to be more tolerant and lenient. We overlook their faults and we completely miss the red flags that other people who aren’t invested with our affinities will see. Candidates are often aware of this and would likely use this to their advantage. They will play the affinities card if you give them the chance…a politician will play the ethnic, religious or even family name card just to curry more favor from you. During an interview, one candidate once told me, “I know you…I joined that company right after you left”.  I knew what he was trying to do and it was just what I needed to double his scrutiny!

2. Check the Candidate’s Track Record: Having disabused your mind of bias, or at least reduced it, you may want to consider the candidate’s track record. Checking track record is about checking historical facts (what have they done) and not futuristic possibilities or promises (what they will do). Adults are creatures of habit who are more likely to repeat what they have done before. If you want to know how people are likely to perform in the future, check how they performed in similar circumstances in the past.   Ask yourself what was the candidate’s performance record in past experience at managing.  What feedback do they have from previous work references? How do they rank on key performance indicators based on past experience and accomplishments? One key question to ask in checking track record is delivery on past commitments.  Have they delivered on past promises?  What have they done before that demonstrate they can deliver now?
3. Check the quality of the candidate’s close associates. Consider the track record and quality of the candidate’s close associates.  For top level executive hiring, this is a crucial point. People are only as good as the people they surround themselves with because influence flows in both directions. Therefore, most people in the same group over time will become alike in their actions, decisions and eventually results.  Are the candidate’s associates credible and qualitative? Have they delivered on past promises?
4. Objectively scrutinize the candidate’s commitments. In politics, we’d say promises or manifesto.  This is where you consider the futuristic outlook.  What does the candidate offer you that you do not already have?  What improvements can they bring to the table? What value can they add? The easiest way to be objective in doing this is to run the candidate’s commitments through the SMART test. In HR parlance, SMART means Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timebound. If you do hire them, you would want to be able to hold them accountable to what they said they would do.

Let me close with this. In reality, finding one candidate who ticks all the boxes is like looking for a needle in a haystack…your probability of finding it is as slim as the needle’s edge! The key is to select the one candidate that meets most of the requirements, provided you have done the scrutiny based on objective criteria and then “gamble” on the rest.  Yes…I said gamble…in “christianese”, we would say take a leap of faith, but effectively it’s just like like taking a gamble.  In my experience, an objective decision with a hint of gamble usually pays off.

So what if your gamble doesn’t work? The good thing is that in a democratic process, if that happens, in another four years, you get the chance to undo it.

So I encourage everyone, go out and vote and do so peacefully. You just fired a President and some federal legislators and hired a new President, retained some legislators and hired some new ones. Now, the power to hire, fire or retain your Governor and state Legislator is in your hands. I salute you Mr. Recruiter!

A+

Deji