Usted es me todos: Best of the Issue: Recruiting Is Broken

April 16, 2019

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Recruiting Is Broken

From Amy Bernstein
Editor, Harvard Business Review

Why is it so hard to hire the right people? According to Peter Cappelli in the new issue of the magazine, it's because the process is screwed up. In “Your Approach to Hiring Is All Wrong,” he writes about some of the new methods companies are using to pack their recruiting pipelines and why they fall short. Many organizations rely on staffing firms like Adecco, Manpower, and Randstad to scour LinkedIn for “passive” candidates, who aren’t even looking for jobs — and there's no evidence that these candidates do better work. Companies also subject résumés to key word searches that are fed into all sorts of algorithmic evaluations. The problem, Cappelli writes, is that it’s not at all clear whether these steps actually identify good prospects — plus, they leave talented internal candidates out of the running. He calls for greater skepticism about recruiting methods and, above all, for companies to analyze the results of these tools.

Many of us put a lot of time and energy into building some sort of expertise. But it turns out there's a downside to doing so. In “Don’t Be Blinded by Your Own Expertise,” Sydney Finkelstein argues that competence can lead to overconfidence and a lack of curiosity — qualities that add up to close-mindedness. “When we begin to identify as experts, our outlook can narrow, both in daily work and in times of crisis,” he writes. “We become reluctant to admit mistakes and failings, thus hindering our development.” In other words, knowledge is good; thinking you know it all is emphatically not.

It’s become almost cliché to say the toughest challenge in any digital transformation isn't the technology — it’s the people. The underlying assumption is that most employees don't understand what's coming and are resistant to change. Not true, say Joseph Fuller, Judith Wallenstein, Manjari Raman, and Alice de Chalendar in “Your Workforce is More Adaptable Than You Think.” Their survey of 6,500 business leaders and 11,000 workers reveals that bosses are dramatically underestimating their people. They find that employees are “much more eager to embrace change and learn new skills than their employers gave them credit for.” Workers just need their managers to support their efforts to learn and evolve with the organization.

The new issue is on its way to you now. If you want to get a head start, just click through to HBR.org, where subscribers get instant access to these articles and much more.

Thanks for reading,
Amy Bernstein

In the Issue:

Your Approach to Hiring Is All Wrong

by Peter Cappelli

Businesses have never done as much hiring as they do today. And they’ve never done a worse job of it. That’s because much of the process is outsourced to companies such as Randstad, Manpower, and Adecco, which in turn use subcontractors to scour LinkedIn and social media for potential candidates. When applications come in — always electronically — software sifts through them for key words that hiring managers want to see. And while smart-sounding tools claim to predict who will be a good hire, no one actually knows whether they produce satisfactory results.

Don’t Be Blinded by Your Own Expertise

by Sydney Finkelstein

A decade of research into top executives shows that expertise can actually severely impede performance, in two important ways. The first is overconfidence: believing that brilliance in one area leads to competence in another. The second is when deep knowledge and experience leave leaders incurious, blinkered, and vulnerable — even in their own fields. The solution: Rededicate yourself to learning and growth, and rediscover just a bit of what the Buddhists call beginner’s mind.

Your Workforce Is More Adaptable Than You Think

by Joseph Fuller et al.

A survey of 6,500 business leaders and 11,000 workers about the forces reshaping the nature of work revealed a surprising gap: While the executives were pessimistic about their employees’ ability to acquire the capabilities needed to thrive in an era of rapid change, the employees were not. The latter were actually focused on the benefits that change would bring and far more eager to learn new skills than their leaders gave them credit for.