Andy Haldane’s Recruitment Challenge

Founder of the 30% Club, ex-CEO of Newton Asset Management and mother of nine, Helena Morrissey is full of sage advice for business leaders and women who want to see gender balance in the workplace in her book “A Good Time to Be a Girl”. One of our favourite extracts is the re-counting of Andy Haldane’s advice on how to increase diversity in teams.

I had the opportunity to share this with the London team of recruitment consultants at Huxley/SThree last month and think it’s an idea we need to spread far and wide.

From the chapter How CEOs can break the diversity barrier:

Andy Haldane, Chief Economist at the Bank of England, gave an insightful speech on diversity in 2016, entitled ‘The Sneetches’, after Dr Seuss’ children’s story of the same name, a parody of status and discrimination first published in 1961. In his speech Haldane challenged CEOs to consider whether their recruitment process really did encourage diversity.

The Recruitment Challenge

There are two candidates for a position, A and B. They do a test based on attributes useful for the hiring organisation. These tests might be state of the art, including all the diverse attributes one would wish for in an organisation – cognitive, interpersonal and experientail skills.

In this test out of 10, candidate A scores 8 and candidate B scores 4. Which one should be hired? The answer is easy. The evidence points strongly to A as the candidate best meeting requirements for the job. They have quite literally, ticked the right boxes. But let’s add a twist. What if the answers A gets wrong are the ones B gets right? And what is the questions existing employees get wrong are also the ones B gets right? In other words, what if candidate B brings skills to the organisation which otherwise do not exist?

The right recruitment decision for the organisation is then to choose B rather than A. Candidate B adds more to the collective ability of the organisation, even though they are weaker individually. The question is, how often would existing recruitment practices deliver such an outcome? In practice I think rarely. Individuals are typically judged on the alignment between their skills and those of the existing organisation. It takes quite a leap of faith to choose the candidate whose skills are misaligned with the hiring organisation.

 

We’re hiring – seeking an account director for very flexible PT role

Taken a career break? Love to use your client care skills again? Come and join us…

The Talent Keeper Specialists are on a mission to improve the experience of people preparing to transition in and out of extended leave (maternity, shared parental leave, adoption, sickness and sabbatical).

We’re in growth mode and need another pair of hands to support our CEO in delighting existing clients as well as spotting new opportunities. We’re calling this an account director role but actually, we think it’s more bespoke and interesting than that (we’re up for you telling us what you’d like your title to be).

The Talent Keeper Specialists launched in 2012 and to date we have worked with BlackRock, ITV, the CIPR, Twinings, Boots, Ebay, Enfield Borough Council, Anglia Ruskin University, Veolia and The Law Society of Scotland amongst others. Although we’ve come this far without external account management help, we know with additional talent we’ll go further, faster.


What are we looking for and what can we give you?

The Talent Keeper Specialists are looking for someone who can dedicate 20-25 hours/month to account management and helping us develop the business. The right candidate will help us determine the most impactful activities, scope of the role and how the hours are best distributed across the month. We offer flexibility, home-working, school hours, and home-made cake when you come and work at our place (in St Albans) and are looking for someone on a self-employed basis rather than as an FTE employee. We expect to pay around £18-£20/hour depending on experience.

This will be an interesting, enjoyable role for at least six months. Should we enjoy working together it could roll on and on and become a bigger deeper role. If it’s a shot of mind fodder you’re looking for before getting back into a bigger role we think this opportunity will boost your confidence and make a great proof point for future interviews. Or perhaps it’ll be a starting point for your freelancing career? Either way it’s a great stepping stone.

Why are we seeking someone who’s taken a break?

We believe once a tenacious, client-focussed, bright mind; always a tenacious, client-focussed, bright mind. We know you’ll be energised by the prospect of helping us bring a structured, organised approach to delighting our clients, and helping us bring new ones on board, given how close our mission is to your heart. We’re certain you’ll give us your absolute best.

Who’s our ideal candidate?

We’d love to meet people who have experience in B2B relationship management. Familiarity with HR professionals or experience working with financial services or professional services companies would be a bonus. We need a vivacious, organised, self-starter who’s excited by the challenge of helping us continue to delight existing clients whilst acquiring new ones.

Our ideal candidate will definitely have the attributes we’ve listed under “cake” and maybe the things we’ve listed under “cream,” and if you’ve got the cherry on the top…well…we can’t wait to eat you! Err, meet you!

Cake (essential)

  • Relationship management experience in a commercial setting – and knowledge of relevant tools/frameworks to assist in client management
  • Good listener, enjoys making people feel special and making new connections
  • Tenacious, savvy, good at anticipating client needs
  • Keen eye for spotting commercial opportunities
  • Lover of lists, notebooks, systems and processes
  • Understanding of the world we work in – or a desire to learn about it
  • Equipped to work from home – self-starter who is comfortable working solo, has own laptop/PC and suitable work space

Cream (preferable)

  • Insight into, or direct experience of, working with a small, ambitious business
  • Insight into, or direct experience of, working in or with large organisations
  • Able to work confidently with strong characters (speak up, positively challenge and put ideas forward)

Cherry on the top (amazing but not essential)

  • Social media skills
  • Blogging experience/lover of writing to persuade/inform
  • Knowledge/insight into working with HR professionals and business leaders
  • Lives in or very close to St Albans

 

Role profile

We want to find someone who’s fired up about working with us. Someone who thinks this is a genuinely cool and enviable role, who believes in what we’re doing and wants to be part of making the world a better place for people returning to work.

You’re the client relations expert so we want to shape the role with you – we don’t know what we don’t know! You’ll be working closely with our CEO and we think the following activities will be involved:

  • Developing a strategy for how we manage our clients
  • Creating a plan for keeping in touch with our ‘top tier’ clients
  • Researching what’s happening in our clients’ worlds
  • Identifying ways to ‘add value’ and delight our clients such as signposting resources/events that might be of interest to our clients to build trust and make them feel special
  • Contributing content suggestions for our newsletters
  • Liaising with clients at key points in a project/programme to make sure everyone has the information they need at the right time
  • Liaising with our associate coach team
  • Producing feedback reports to share with clients at the end of a programme/project/pilot
  • Working with our CEO to identify business development opportunities
  • Creating proposal decks to send to potential clients
  • Suggesting new ways of doing things
  • Keeping a hand on the tiller when our CEO is on holiday/out of the office

This is absolutely not a personal assistant role. We have the brilliant Trish who takes care of scheduling meetings and admin bits and bobs, and she’ll be on hand to support you too.

 

How do I apply?

Please send us a copy of your CV and up to 300 words or 3 minutes of you talking to camera. Tell us what excites you about working with The Talent Keeper Specialists and what would get us excited about you! E-mail your intro to jc@talentkeepers.co.uk by Friday 27th April. We’ll let you know whether we’d like to meet you for an informal interview by Friday 4th May. If yes, we’ll be in touch to co-ordinate diaries for an interview w/c 7th May (or week after if that’s proving tricky).

Find out more about us

Have a mosey around the site and see what we’re sharing on Twitter @TalentKeepersUK
Jessica Chivers (founder) https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicachivers and @jesschivers