The Recruiting Process is Broken in China
If I say the recruiting process is broken, most heads nod. Most recruiters have moved to algorithm key word recruiting without any progress. Well, it sounds good and saved them a lot a labor. Just the same, people still nod that the recruiting process is still broken. Medium has up a post noting in detail the broken recruiting process. Here as some quotes from it.
Recruiting Process is Broken- Note the Data
In a survey of two hundred CEOs, only 21% felt they received the value they paid for their executive searches. Yet, the headhunter business continues to thrive.
The current practice of hiring executives is flawed. The chances of picking a winner based upon a resume, personal interviews, and a reference or three, is quite low.
Interviews are usually aced by good performers, not necessarily good candidates, and often have little relevance to future job success.
Google, which unsurprisingly carefully grades hiring interviews, found that interview scores had no correlation with performance of those who got hired. Barry Deutsch, an executive recruiter himself, notes that in his 30 years of executive search encompassing 250,000 interviews, he could not find a single correlation that links how someone interviews and their on-the-job performance.
The higher up you go the worse it gets as they get better at interviewing. Hiring managers think that people in the market should be perfect. Who in a senior role has a perfect resume? The article further notes that one recruiter said they caught 56% lying and know that there are many more they did not catch.
So of course, the process is broken. Garbage in leads to garbage out. See Hiring and Interview Process 12 Thoughts to Hire Well.
More Good Data and More Success
In 1997. I saw that hiring on resume and interview was rolling the dice, and so, started gradually to develop a rigorous recruiting process that works. We feel sorry for recruiters and hiring managers generally knowing what we know now.
We are helping hiring managers from real data, and the results are startling. Suddenly. good hiring works consistently.
We have never strongly recommended a candidate that has not turned out to be a good and usually even great hire for our customers. You may also like How to Hire Great Leaders of Any Type.
The biggest hiccup we have is customers often feel they know more than the data, and will refuse the great hire. Something beyond the data enters in and muddles the process. The customer then makes a mediocre hire and it is so unneccesary. Our great hire % is now 25% as our customers regularly will not believe us and run forward to hire the mediocre candidate. If our customers listened to us more. we would be at 50% great hires. Regardless, even when they get mediocre hires, they are good and honest and do work for many years for our customers. What they missed is highly regretable. So businesses that come to us can actually escape blind hiring with false data. When they can hear us yet more, their success will be even higher.
Been Focusing on This a Long Time
I have been recruiting in China since 1997. I started my own recruiting company in 2009. All that I have seen makes me think the recruitment process is broken.
Gradually, I have seen factory processes get better and even data focused decision making make headway. Six Sigma is well known, and many Western factories have successful implementation.
Often they fail and not because Chinese people cannot get a handle on six sigma thinking.
2 factors: Hiring and Chinese culture
Hiring -Yes, the Recruitment Process is Broken
Hiring has never become data driven. It even has no solid process. 20 years of pushing six sigma, and hiring is still done on a feeling. AI is trying to take over hiring in the West as hiring is so bad there. If managers were honest, they hire most people on gut feel. Where would six sigma be if we followed all the process but threw it out and bent the data when the guy who made them feel right walked in. They gut the process without any guilt. They hire the best at interview, but actually he is just great at the interview and politics.
What can we do? Everyone wants to take hiring in house as they are ‘experts’ on that as they made some good hires and ignore the bad hires. They would not say they are expert welders after welding three things a year. However, they hire three people, and they are ‘expert’. It is shocking to see.
We are open to 99.99 percent sometimes on quality, but in recruiting, hiring managers use batting terms like batting .400, so they fell like a superstar. SHI Group consistently places great hires and sometimes sees our client fire 6 months or a year later by a higher leader that we did not place who should have been fired themselves. Chaos reigns.
Chaos Does Not Have to Reign
We have the occasional company where we do all top hiring and peace reigns and people stay long term and do great work. It is not very common though. Companies will shoot themselves in the foot more often than not.
So even hiring us does not solve all issues as other leaders make too many gut feel hires that means politics reign. Our hires often self-select off team and leave the politicians to rule. The recruiting process is broken. See also, Why New Employees Leave
Chinese Culture Has Gaps – So Great Hiring is Needed
Chinese people are wonderful and some of my best friends are Chinese. However, let’s talk about their behavior in HR and line leadership.
HR – We often connect with overseas HR managers, and they are usually professional and capable. They can understand the top line as well as the bottom line. Chinese HR managers are so different. Virtually all are about control and only see cost and never value.
Which is to say that if we talk value with them, they blink and smile but do not understand or believe. They hire recruiters that they can beat up and order around. Many are the same with candidates as well. A certain number are even taking bribes in the hiring process.
Chinese HR and Global Are Different
Chinese HR and Global HR are amazingly different though often global HR cannot see how bad their Chinese HR is. It seems someone told HR they are a cost center, and thus they were ruined. Recruiting is a great source of value and should never be seen as a cost. (See Recruitment Agency China)
Senior Line Managers – Chinese line managers commonly have low standards on quality and like to hire people who bow and scrape to them and are no threat. They also can be too cost focused as opposed to thinking value.
Western managers will say, “We have a quality crisis!” The Chinese side will say. “It’s not so bad.” Key point is they will not usually say “not so bad within hearing of the Westerners, but when the Westerners are not present, they are unchanged and think. “It’s not too bad.”
Chinese managers in Western companies almost never hire anyone who can compare to them. They want to be the hero and hire hard working fearful peons.
Hiring an expat and checking closely is also super valuable to diffuse this problem. Extra careful hiring of senior Chinese is another way. See Why We Do Background Checks.
From the Recruitment Process is Broken to Success
China is a complicated country that grew without us for several thousand years. We need to totally rethink and redesign. They are hard to understand and hard to hire well. Beware and call us. Finally, not having a Chinese HR manager is a great way to save money and uncap value.
A new day has come, and the broken hiring process is mostly overcome. When we all can believe the data, it will be even better. We guarantee it.