A change of pace for mid-summer. A case study for you to explore and comment on. Let me know if you like this sort of challenge.
Charlene faces a challenge. One month ago, she was hired to work with a hiring manager who had about 200 call center requisitions to fill in a 90-day window. The positions weren’t unusual and did not seem hard to fill. The recruiter prior to Charlene had hired a mix of fifty new college graduates, retirees, and experienced former call center employees. Yet turnover was increasing, especially with the new college grads. So Charlene had to not only hire the 200 new employees but also replace the ones who had left and try and understand why the college grads were unhappy..
At first blush, Charlene felt confident she could meet the challenge. After all, the skills she sought were basic, and prior experience was not a requirement. The company had an excellent training program that had won awards for its use of interactive e-learning. There were also an online set of documents and FAQs that augmented the training. Most new hires were up to speed within a week or two,
Charlene was tempted to recruit more college graduates because the company had a well-regarded career path that could provide them with other opportunities later. But she was concerned because of the high turnover from the previous hires. She decided to present only candidates with previous experience or retirees until she could better understand why the college grads had resigned.
But things were not going well. The hiring manager has only agreed to hire two of the twenty candidates she has presented and has complained that they are too old or not competent enough. Charlene feels the job descriptions are very poor and misleading. From her observations of the work required she feels that the candidates she has presented are perfectly able to do the work.
She feels the manager does not really understand what the call center people do or what skills they need.
However, her boss says, “Charlene spends too much time questioning the job requirements rather than just getting to work hiring people.” He goes on to say that as far as he knows, the hiring manager wants her to “ . . . find me young, smart people and I’ll train them what to do. I don’t need old people.” He is swamped and expects her, an experienced recruiter, to be capable of hiring these people without his help.
Even though many college hires have left after only a few months, he still prefers them over others. He questions her focus on retirees because he feels they do not have enough energy and work too slowly. He would prefer she hires younger people.
This company has over 1000 employees located in the United States, with sales of more than US$1 billion. The average age of employees is around 35, with only the CEO and a few other top managers over 40. The hiring manager is close to Charlene’s age- around 30. A few recruiters focus on different hiring needs, including IT, but they are too busy to offer much advice. The company has a good reputation for customer service and is very proud of its high service standards. Customers find that response times are reasonable and that their issues get resolved quickly. This is a big difference from where she had worked before. She feels she must understand the competencies needed and assess candidates against those competencies.
New employees face the daunting prospect of meeting the time and quality demands of the position. Even with the training they received, this is still challenging. Finding the right people is essential to keep turnover as low as possible.
This company has real-time performance feedback for call center reps, who are always aware of how well they are doing compared to other call centers. All the representatives get paid partially on how quickly and well they resolve customer issues. The few who have been at the company for more than a year are well paid and enjoy the fast-paced work. Many are older and seem to work well. Charlene wants to understand what their competencies are so she can look for others with similar skills.
The issue is how can Charlene satisfy her boss and hire high-quality people? How does she deal with the discrimination issues? Is her approach the best one? If you were Charlene, what would you do in this situation? How can Charlene succeed?
Please share your thoughts in the comments. Your ideas will help others facing similar situations.
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Charlene should focus on what she can learn and use in this job to further her own career path. I like Chris Platts' proposal, because it is data and research based and provides insights that the organization can use. Charlene can do the analysis and also do a study on why the college aged recruits have a shorter workspan and higher turnover. She should publish her work on her LinkedIn as white papers and share her work by posting on community of interest boards and become known for her insights and approach. Better fitting employment will come to her.
Disputing the boss' inclinations and priorities may not be her best strategy. Rather look at this position as a way to further her own experience and knowledge base and provide those insights to her management, but do not be discouraged if those ideas are rejected. Charlene, build your own reputation for integrity, judgement, and effectiveness and do not worry if the ship does not take the navigation course you recommend.
Charlene's issues are what I've also observed in organizations, she needs to move the focus away from resumes and onto candidate capabilities. My recommendation would be as follows:
1 - Conduct a rapid job analysis by using a tool like Signal by ThriveMap (https://thrivemap.io/signal-job-analysis-tool/) - disclaimer I'm a founder - but it's free to use and it works.
2 - Sit down with the manager, with the job analysis report and show them the attributes required to do the job. Explain (nicely) that being recently out of college isn't a required attribute to do the role well, but listen to the manager's issues in respect to non-graduate talent and agree to screen certain areas ahead of interview.
3 - Consider using a pre-hire assessment to screen these attributes and skills automatically for you to save time. Use the assessment at the top of the funnel to ensure every candidate has a fair shot at being progressed to interview. Side note: If staff retention is an issue for college grads - it's probably because of the gap between candidate's expectations of the job and the reality of it (we wrote a whitepaper on it here: https://thrivemap.io/hiring-dreams-vs-reality/). In this instance I would strongly recommend creating a realistic job assessment; there should be a few providers that can do this including ThriveMap (https://thrivemap.io/) - disclaimer I'm founder.
4 - Use the assessment scores and attribute breakdown in the candidate reports to move the hiring manager away from needing to see resumes. This will typically happen automatically once they start interviewing good candidates, but you can run various studies to prove assessment effectiveness such as a double blind study on assessment scores and selection decisions or post hire outcomes.