It is said the definition of madness is doing the same thing multiple times and expecting a different result. For me, the traditional approach to recruitment is one of the best examples of a bad system that persists because it’s always been done that way.
First comes the CV and covering letter - an approach designed to find great writers who can turn their life story into a two page summary using the language of a job description.
Then comes the interview. The set up is adversarial with people expected to give perfectly formed answers off the cuff to questions they haven’t heard before as interviewers furiously write down answers into their matrix.
If you do well you get the job and then turn your focus to the skills you actually need, far removed from all those documents – problem solving, team work, relationship building. All those succinct answers get stored away for a few years until you do it all over again.
It seems mad. But worse than that, this approach puts up unnecessary walls to large swathes of the public. We test for things we don’t need, using approaches that turn away so many in our communities, and miss out on talent as a result.
That’s why, for the All In programme we totally reimagined recruitment and why that is now a corner stone of the Public Life model. Instead of qualifications and employment history, we recruited members of the public based on mindset and life experience. To show we were serious we got rid of all that paper. We wouldn’t look at a single CV.
This wasn't about giving people an easy ride, or 'prizes for all'. Places on the programme were hotly contested and those who secured a place are amongst the most talented people I have had the privilege to work with.
There were no requests for covering letters. Instead we simply asked people to share why they wanted to change their communities. We called everyone who applied to genuinely get to know them, understand more about their passions and interests and the experiences in their lives that had got them to this point.
Those we felt were right for the programme were invited to workshops where they showed their creativity and teamwork by building spaghetti towers and innovation by presenting their big ideas on how we could reimagine the everyday experience such as going to the hairdresser.
And when it came to the final interviews, we got rid of the adversarial culture by sharing questions in advance. And what we found was that conversation reached new depths, with people feeling trusted and sharing more of themselves as a result.
In the end we were 10 times oversubscribed for a programme that no-one had heard of before. And most importantly we recruited an inspiring and diverse mix of people facing social issues, reaching those who would never have previously seen themselves doing this sort of work.
What did we learn? We learnt that the systems we create shape the culture we build. If we believe in the importance of mindset and life experience, we need to value those in the way we design everything we do. That starts with recruitment and getting rid of CVs so we can get to know people through relationships not pieces of paper.
Want to empower those facing social issues to invent the solutions they need? Get in touch to work with us!
