Patty McCord is Netflix’s former Chief Talent Officer (whose departure made news at the time). She writes in this month’s HBR about hiring, presumably to plug her book on the topic but, nevertheless, valuably because she knows this topic better than many. Her high profile role in creating the culture at Netflix make her probably one of the most well-known Talent Acquisition around today. Much of what she has to say in the article fits my experiences in the hiring process:
- you should try to pay what’s right in the existing (for the market, the skills, the individual, your company, etc), not necessarily the salary banding scale you bought that is all about average. If you want someone exceptional, average is probably not a word you put in the job ad.
- recruiters are business partners: She says “They need to deeply understand the needs of the business, and hiring managers need to treat them as business partners.”. I have experienced recruiters that really get the business they are recruiting for, and that really get the hiring manager. When you get that chemistry, exceptional candidate and hiring manager experiences of recruiters are just about guaranteed. But, sadly, these types of individuals have been rare compared with most I have experienced. I must assume, based on conduct I’ve experienced from both internal and external recruiters, that the measurement metrics are still of the “pile them high, sell them cheap” variety: quantity over high quality.
- Her counsel to adopt a philosophy of “always be recruiting” is an obvious *doh* but I think very of us this this way. As emerging tech is moving so fast, in-demand skills will remain scarce and the skills you offer/have may be quickly out of date. This is good advice on so many levels: being a brand ambassador for yourself, your team, and your company is one of the things we could all be doing more of, whether as an employee, hiring manager, or recruiter.
She says: “It infuriates me when hiring managers dismiss the value of good HR people. Usually when I asked managers why they weren’t engaging more with recruiters, they’d say, ‘Well, they’re not that smart, and they don’t really understand what’s going on in my business or how the technology works.’ My response would be ‘Then start expecting—and demanding—that they do!’ If you hire smart people; insist that they be businesspeople; and include them in running the business, they’ll act like businesspeople.”. She’s absolutely right. In any successful partnership, making and receiving demands are a normal part of the development of trust and confidence. Yet, I have seldom demanded more from my recruiter than what’s been given to me. Perhaps, time to rethink this?
Her book is about creating workplaces that expect grown up behaviours. Based on the pragmatism of her advice, it’s one I will put on the pile to read.