Having spent time with talent acquisition leaders and fielded more than a few reference check calls from hiring managers, one thing consistently stands out – the sheer amount of hubris embedded in how organizations think about hiring.
One talent acquisition team at one of the world’s largest employers insisted they only hired “the best of the best of the best.” Leaving aside how that sounds – it’s numerically impossible given how many people they hire and how many churn. There simply aren’t that many “best of the bests.”
I’ve heard of companies with policies excluding candidates from certain universities, certain companies, certain backgrounds. Everyone wants references – many references. And, in these references, hiring managers want to hire only people who’d be in the top 10% of the best people they’ve ever worked with.
It always makes me chuckle – top 10% based on what exactly? Across every role? Every context? Every kind of work? According to whom?
The reality is simpler and more honest than any of this. We hire people we think can do the job. We hire people we think can grow. And most importantly, we hire people we can work well with. When the organization is performing well, we get to have more access to people in the intersection of these three.
Everything else is mostly bullshit.
When you’re part of these kinds of hiring machines, you sometimes have to drink the Kool-Aid. That’s fine. The most useful thing you can do is stay conscious of how much of it you’re internalizing. The same holds true for candidates who have to play the game as well.
But that doesn’t mean these standard processes makes much sense.
If it smells like bullshit, trust your instincts.
A Learning a Day 