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Who's the boss? Battles between hiring managers and HR managers hurt the company, not just candidates
By Mary Helen Gillespie, 4/24/2006
Ever been stiffed during an employment search?
I don't mean the initial group e-mail saying your qualifications basically stink and try sending your rancid resume somewhere with lower standards. Nor does this include getting knocked out of the candidate pool for a government job when some two-bit pol's second cousin gets out of the joint and needs gainful employment to fulfill probation.
This is about spending months and months - not weeks, mind you, but months - investing in a specific leadership role with an international giant's internal recruiting team and internal hiring managers plus its outside search firm. Then, when the search is narrowed to two candidates, one of whom is an external candidate, the other internal, the real political games start.
The Battle of the Recruiting Managers vs. the Hiring Managers takes place via Blackberry messages, voice mails and secret meetings in the men's room. It makes the boyos up on Beacon Hill look like they're running for CYO president.
The final score: Hiring Managers 1, Recruiting Managers 0.
And the external candidate, who during the nine interviews that took place during the five-month search, not counting the numerous e-mails and voice mails requesting further validation of credentials, is wondering if things are always this crazy over there. As is the internal candidate.
Because the day the final decision had to be made, the hiring managers called up a buddy of theirs to whom they first offered the job six months before and said "Last chance. You want it or not?" And Candidate No. 3 thinks about it for 30 seconds and says "Sure, I'll take it." Thus mortifying their own HR hiring team, enraging the commission-only, outside recruiter, and stunning their co-worker, the first internal candidate.
The proceeding is a true story. And boy, were there valuable life lessons learned by the external candidate. There was the initial shock - because after all, everyone involved in the process kept saying to the outsider from Day One: You are the strongest and best candidate we have for this position. But the foremost lesson was that working for that pack of clowns was going to be a lot more trouble than it was worth.
Why? It was apparent that internal communication systems were beyond dysfunctional. The hiring team, while wanting to ensure the "right" candidate was brought in for the business development position, presented repeated scheduling challenges to its HR counterparts due to travel, vacation and training days. But at the same time, for each month that went by with this position empty, thousands and thousands of potential revenue dollars were left on the table because there was no one there to seal a deal.
Most of the fourth-quarter of 2005 and all of Q1 2006 were dry as a bone for this line of business without this hire. For a company that is trying to break into the Top Five of its industry, this is not a good sign. The HR folks knew it. And they were not about to get thrown under the bus for failing to capture the right field of candidates or for not accelerating the process.
But, the hiring team kept tsk-tsking formal company processes, begging off with another trip to Arizona in January or refusing to answer e-mail or voice mail while on the road.
Then, in the end, they gobsmacked their own HR co-workers by going behind their backs and making an offer to a candidate who had been on the radar screen for about 40 seconds months and months ago.
So, truly, who would want to work with these inefficient, indifferent and inconsiderate bozos?
Not the first internal candidate, who immediately requested and was given a separation package.
And the external candidate was very thankful, in the end, to have seen first-hand the incompetencies that spewed through every silo of the company. Maybe it's time for an entirely new career, like the Ice Capades or a personal shopper or, dare we whisper it, housewife? It's all about the journey, isn't it?
Here's the post-script to this fable: About a month after this episode ended, the external candidate received an e-mail blast from some other internal HR people at this organization that concluded with "we will keep your resume on file in our database should an opening appear that more closely fits your skills."
Here's what our friend replied:
"Thanks for the note. Please do me a favor and delete my resume from your database. After a most unpleasant and unprofessional search experience with your company that started in November and ended in March, you are no longer my employer of choice. Thanks again for everything."
And the beat goes on.
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