The right to silence – recruitment

The recent court case in which Cheltenham Council failed in its attempt to sue its former managing director for not declaring her history of depression attracted much comment – mostly on the side of candidates’ right not to tell all. That is fine if the matter withheld really is long in the past; then why would an ex-condition ever come to light. It was because the condition was anything other than past that the lady’s medical history was relevant.

The root of the problem was, of course, the Council’s sloppy recruitment practices. They relied on a loosely-worded medical questionnaire that included such gems as “Do you normally enjoy good health?” Well, if I suffered from depression I would enjoy my occasional days of good health very much indeed. A self-administered questionnaire (even a better-drafted one) may be sufficient for run-of-the-mill jobs but appointing an MD should be treated more seriously.

The role of HR is one of the most linked-to tags in frankly HR and here is a good example of where HR can get it wrong. Clearly, I do not know the ins and outs of Cheltenham’s recruitment and HR processes but staffing – getting the right people into the right posts should be a central plank of any HR department’s role and is key to its reputation.

All to often, HR limits itself to setting up the recruitment processes and ducks out of the decision-making. There are many regulations and considerations of ‘fairness’ that HR must impose on reluctant line managers but there is a duty to the employer as well as to potential employees. If HR is not seen to be on both sides of that recruitment equation managers will draw the obvious conclusion.

Check them out

It can be entertaining to Google the name of a long-lost friend, neighbour or work colleague (don’t forget the ” “) and see what turns up. But it can have business uses as well.

A survey of top executive headhunters, by leading UK executive careers website Experteer.co.uk, found that 86% of recruiters use the Internet to research potential candidates. Interestingly, the balance between finding good and bad news was fairly even at 63% good and 51% bad. Of course this was a survey about senior roles so you would expect there to be a lot out there on the web. Many applying for roles sufficiently senior to be headhunted are likely to be mentioned on company publicity, conference proceedings, charity committees and the like. They are probably too old to have embarrassing student pranks on facebook. Nor is it surprising that 86% of headhunters do search for information. They have a reputation to loose if a ”bad ‘un’ is put forward to clients. More odd that the other 14% do not.

But what about your own in-house recruitment? Do you routinely search the net for information about candidates? If not, why not? Should you search on all staff, just senior staff, security staff? Do you pay for a service company to check out staff for you? Do you think it is improper to do so?

Do I have four degrees and get a massive bonus?

Those of you who watched this week’s The Apprentice in which the candidates were interviewed by a number of unnecessarily aggressive interviewers may have spotted that not all of them were totally truthful on their CVs (ie, they told lies). My feeling is that people generally do not see inflating a CV to be as dishonest as once they might. I also suspect that reference checking is not always taken sufficiently seriously.

Even if you do not accidentally hire an out-and-out crook, people who under-perform because they overstated their experience, or who mess up your pay structure because you matched an untrue salary, can seriously unsettle the existing team. In my experience, it is difficult for an applicant to hide anything serious without changing some hard facts. You should check all the facts that were relevant to your decision to employ and state this intention on your application form.

So what should you check for? At a minimum: employment dates, job titles and relevant qualifications; the nature and scope of responsibilities; broadly how successful they were and why they left. Alledged self-employment, or full-time study, are common ways to hide periods of unemployment, incarceration or jobs that went wrong – so check those very carefully. And, contrary to CIPD advice on their factsheet, do check the salaries and benefits claimed. The CIPD claim that if someone can do the job they should get the appropriate salary whatever they were earning before. I say that the questions you asked at interview were conditioned by what you thought they were earning. Recruiters have a duty of fairness but that includes being fair to the employer as well.