198. How to Speed Up Recruitment and What to do if You are Feeling Judged with Mick Spiers

Unlock the secrets to a more efficient recruitment process and become a mindful leader in our latest episode! 

Discover the hybrid approach to talent acquisition as Richard Triggs, CEO and founder of Arete Executive, shares his expertise on maximizing internal and external recruitment strategies. Learn how to craft precise job advertisements to attract the right candidates and speed up the hiring process. We’ll tackle the common frustrations faced by companies and candidates, from the prolonged search for talent to the lack of feedback during hiring. Get ready to redefine your recruitment strategy by clearly outlining the challenges and deliverables of open roles for a quicker, better match.

But that's not all! We also explore the transformative power of mindfulness in leadership with Pam Marcheski. Uncover how mindfulness can enhance your decision-making abilities, boost leadership qualities, and create a thriving organizational culture. Plus, we dive into the intriguing Dartmouth facial scar experiment, exploring perceptions of bias in job interviews. 

This episode is packed with practical advice and expert insights to help you navigate the dynamic landscapes of recruitment and leadership. 

Don’t forget to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, and stay connected for more engaging content on YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram!

Chapters

• 0:01 Recruitment Challenges and Perception Bias
• 13:06 Mindfulness in Leadership

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Why is it that the recruitment process today is not working for most companies and for most candidates, and what can we do about it? In today's episode of the Leadership Project, I'll be sharing my own personal reflections from the interview with Richard Triggs of Arate Executive about winning the war for talent. For talent. I'll also be sharing the results of my own personal version of the famous Dartmouth facial scar experiment and we'll finish with my leadership reflections of the week. Let's start with Richard Triggs. Richard Triggs is the CEO and founder of Arate Executive and author of the book Winning the War for Talent. We discuss the differences between internal and external talent acquisition and when it's right to use internal versus external. Internal is best used for volumetric work, for when you're looking to recruit a large volume of team members and where the cost of going to an external agency is going to be prohibitive, whereas external agencies are going to be better when we're looking for someone very specific, when we're headhunting, when we're looking for a very specific set of skills and experiences that we're trying to bring into the business. That was an interesting takeaway for me. I find that many companies are either one or the other. They either do everything internal or everything external, whereas a hybrid approach may be better. We also spoke about what do we look for. What do we look for when we look for the right match for the role and Richard left us with a really interesting quote from Lou Adler around looking for someone that has done it before. They were successful in doing that thing before and they have the inspiration and motivation to do it again. End. But the real challenge was this dichotomy of where companies keep on complaining that they can't find the right people and candidates are saying that they can't find the right role. There's something fundamentally wrong in the system when it's taking so long for the right candidate to fight the right role and for the companies to find the right candidate. One key element is that the best candidates are generally not looking for a job. They're probably very settled in a role somewhere in another organization and we are going to have to go out there and headhunt them. But we still end up in this interesting tug of war where you'll hear excuses from recruitment agencies or even internal recruiters saying it's a war for talent. It's potentially become easier to use it's a war for talent as an excuse instead of looking inside and looking about. Well, are we going about this the right way. On the candidate side, it's also a terrible experience. You'll have really good candidates apply for a role and then have weeks or even months of radio silence. They look at their resume, they think they're a perfect fit for this role that's been advertised and yet they hear nothing back. They don't even know who to contact, sometimes to know whether they're still in the running and if the process is still ongoing. So we have companies taking months and months to find the right talent and we have candidates also waiting for months and months to hear back from recruiters. Something is just not right here. So what was Richard's advice about what we can do about this?

Speaker 1: 3:41

The key was to be more specific about the challenge you are recruiting for, not just a position title. Generic advertisements lead to generic results. In any job. There's more to it than just the job title. It's about being specific about what the key deliverables are of the role and what challenges the person will face.

Speaker 1: 4:03

A great example is all the way to the CEO role. You're going to look for a different type of CEO depending on the different phase that the business is in. If they're in a rapid growth phase, you need a CEO that knows how to grow businesses. If you're in a situation where you're setting up the business for sale, you need a CEO that knows how to do that situation where you're setting up the business for sale, you need a CEO that knows how to do that. If you're in a situation where the market is flat and you need to cut some costs back to maintain profitability, you need a CEO who's experienced at that. And I could say the same for any kind of role sales manager, cio, project manager. For a project manager, it might be. What size of project are we talking about? Is it a software intensive project? Is it a safety critical project? Not all project managers are the same, so the more specific that we can be in the advertisement in the first place and then in the role brief, the better yield we'll get with candidates that are better suited for the role, and it'll speed up the process for everyone. The candidate then knows what they're getting in for Before they even start the role. They understand oh okay, this is the person that they're looking for. These are the challenges I'm going to be facing, if I'm the right candidate and they'll be set up for success from the outset. Candidates will even self-select if they look at the brief and go, oh no, that's not the challenge I'm looking for, they will not apply and the recruiter will have a far better chance of finding the right candidate if they really understand what the brief is. So huge takeaway for me from the interview with Richard Triggs when we're out there recruiting, be specific. Be as specific as you can about the person that you're looking for, the challenges they're going to face, the deliverables of the role, and you're going to speed up the process and find better candidates.

Speaker 1: 6:00

Okay, let's move on to my own personal version of the Dartmouth facial scar experiment. The actual title of the study was Perceptions of the Impact of Negatively Valued Physical Characteristics on Social Interaction by Kleck and Strenter. In the study, the setup was a job interview situation very similar to what we've just been discussing with Richard Triggs. The subjects of the study were told that they're about to go into a job interview and before they go in, a makeup artist would apply a scar on their face. They were asked to look for any signs of bias or discrimination or whether they felt people were looking at the scar. But here's the thing Immediately prior to walking into the room, they were told that the makeup artist was going to touch up the scar, but in reality, the scar was removed altogether. The participants in the study reported a dramatic increase in feeling bias, discrimination and people staring, even though the scar was just in their mind and was no longer there.

Speaker 1: 7:07

So what was my experiment? Well, I've been undergoing treatment for skin cancers on my face. I've been applying a chemotherapy cream on my face and it has made all of my skin on the left side of my face red and blotchy. How did I run the experiment? For the past two weeks, I would distract myself to forget that the marks were there. On other days, I would look in the mirror prior to leaving the apartment to remind myself that it was there. My results mirrored perfectly the Dartmouth study. When I was conscious of the marks, I felt that people were staring at me. When I was forgetting and ignoring, the marks were there. There was no noticeable indication that people were staring at all. Now what are my takeaways here?

Speaker 1: 7:56

As Seneca says, we suffer more in our minds than in reality. We spend a lot of time prejudging ourselves and being worried about what others will think of us. The reality is that people are just going about their day and usually not thinking about you at all. There is a higher probability that they are sitting there worrying that you are judging them than they are judging you. You might be listening to this on the tram right now and you're worried about whether people are going to judge you by the clothes that you've picked or is your hair right today, but the reality is they're not. They're not thinking about you at all, and if they are thinking about you, they're just worried about whether you're judging them. So we need to get beyond this. It's really holding us back.

Speaker 1: 8:42

We also see what we look for. If we think someone hates us, confirmation bias kicks in and we start only seeing and hearing the things that confirm our belief. This was further confirmed in a book called the Expectation Effect by David Robson, where he explores the placebo effect in the medical industry. We are the product of our expectations, argues Robson. One of the most interesting findings in his study and in his book is the placebo effect even works on people that know they are taking the placebo. So the placebo effect itself has a placebo effect. So even if you know that you're taking sugar pills, you're expecting. The placebo effect itself has a placebo effect. So even if you know that you're taking sugar pills, you're expecting the placebo effect to kick in, and guess what it does. Now, this can be a virtuous effect or it can be a negative effect.

Speaker 1: 9:35

If we go into a meeting thinking that it will go well, it often will go well Not every time, but more often than not. If we go into a meeting thinking it's going to go badly, it almost certainly will go badly. So there's two really big takeaways from this for me. We need to stop prejudging ourselves. We need to stop thinking that other people are judging us all. The time Our identity starts getting wrapped up on this, it starts becoming like I am who I think you think I am and we've lost sight of who we really are. And we're so worried about external validation and what other people think of us that we've lost sight of our own values and our own personal pride and acceptance of who we are. And think about the expectation effect. How can you build that into your day if you're setting intentions of how you're going to show up today, if you're preparing for your meetings today, if you're setting intentions of how you're going to show up today, if you're preparing for your meetings today, if you're looking at your calendar and you're looking at all of the different events. What can you do to use the expectation effect to your personal benefit to prepare your mindset ready for each of those meetings to get the effect that you want?

Speaker 1: 10:50

Okay, we move now to my leadership self-reflections of the week. For anyone new to the show, I've asked myself the same five questions every day for the past 11 years. They are what went well today? What didn't go well? What would I do differently? What did I learn about myself and what did I learn about others In the show?

Speaker 1: 11:11

I then share a collection of these or some of the highlights that came out from the week. So what were they this week? What went well? I was very proud of how I was able to put the marks on my face out of my mind and to realize that people were not staring at me or judging me. I did have a mini script ready that, if someone asked me about the marks, that I would turn it into a lesson about skin cancer, sun protection and going to the doctor early if you notice any signs. What didn't go well?

Speaker 1: 11:45

Well, we had very sad news this week with the passing of my sister-in-law at the age of 59, which was far too young. What would I do differently? It is natural at these times to get sad and reflect on the things that you didn't do I should have called more often, for example but the key here is to remember her life, the things that we did do together and the legacy she leaves in her children and her grandchildren. What did I learn about myself? I'm stronger than I think and I should not worry so much about whether others are judging me. I should be proud of who I am. What did I learn about others? Everyone grieves in their own way. There is a temptation to want to jump in and help someone when they are going through loss and trauma, but the most important thing you can do is to tell them you are there for them and ask them what they need. There will be times where they just want space to themselves and other times where they do want to be surrounded with people that love them. So make sure you ask the question before you jump in, because you might have good intentions that fall badly. So that's it for this week.

Speaker 1: 13:06

In the next episode of the Leadership Project, I'll be joined by Pam Marcheski and we'll be discussing the role of mindfulness in leadership. If you're getting great value from our content, we would love it if you would leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or your preferred podcast service. You can also subscribe to the Leadership Project YouTube channel, where we bring you weekly videos, weekly video podcasts and a weekly live stream show. Thank you for listening to the Leadership Project at mickspearscom. A huge call out to Faris Sadek for his video editing of all of our video content and to all of the team at TLP Joanne Goes On, gerald Calabo and my amazing wife, say Spears. I could not do this show without you. Don't forget to subscribe to the Leadership Project YouTube channel, where we bring you interesting videos each and every week, and you can follow us on social, particularly on LinkedIn, facebook and Instagram. Now, in the meantime, please do take care, look out for each other and join us on this journey, as we learn together and lead together.