Four mistakes that cause civilizations to self-destruct
Using a framework developed by Dr. Jared Diamond on the self-destruction of civilizations, I’m hoping to provoke some thinking here by applying his framework to … you guessed it … the recruiting function.
Dr. Diamond’s “self-destruct framework” is interesting. He maintains there are four mistakes that cause civilizations to self-destruct:
Will your recruitment function self-destruct?
The core business of an organization rarely includes recruitment technology (like Applicant Tracking Systems) or the recruitment process itself. However, many organizations still choose to own this function end-to-end in house. They design, implement and run a recruitment function that attempts to be a best practice model across technology and process – often to marginal results.
Times are changing, and they are changing at an increasing rate of change. This means we will all be pressed to keep up and in many cases we will be at a deficit for experience.
Example: “We’ve never experienced times like these before!” This lack of experience may manifest as the first mistake: failure to anticipate a problem in how your recruitment function operates. This may eventually result in losing out in the war for talent.
Let’s assume an organization believes people are core to its business and we’ll apply Dr. Diamond’s framework to an executive team in a recruitment context:
1. Executive fails to anticipate a problem in its recruitment function
e.g. - How will we handle the exodus of boomers from our aging workforce?
2. Executive fails to perceive a problem that has arrived in the recruitment function
e.g. – How do we screen through the thousands of applications we get each day?
3. Executive fails to even attempt to solve a problem that has been noticed in the recruitment function
e.g. – Our ATS isn’t really working for us anymore, but it’s all we have right now and I don’t have time to fix it.
4. Executive fails to solve a problem – full stop
e.g. – We can’t seem to attract great hires because our process is broken. Our competitors seems to be getting all the good candidates.
Many organizations are looking at ways of redeploying internal resources towards CORE business issues and increase the return on such investment. This movement makes the hunt for outsourcing partners red hot.
As organizations de-layer and regroup towards core business issues, they are weighing the business case to buy expertise and this movement includes recruitment process outsourcing. Let experts manage it for you. You will pay less in the long run and keep your head when everyone else around you are losing theirs.
