“Businesses have never done as much hiring as they do today. They’ve never spent as much money doing it. And they’ve never done a worse job of it.” says Peter Cappelli, professor of management at the Wharton School, in the May-June 2019 issue of HBR. The same sentiment was echoed in The Economist 9th May 2019 issue, which quoted Peter Cappelli and even raised the question, “Why companies are so bad at hiring?”
The search and recruitment practice, as we know it today, started nearly a century ago, after the second world war. So, eight long decades of practice should have made it perfect, and in recent times, with the advent of LinkedIn, big-data and behavioural analytics, it should ideally have been better than ever before. However, if we take a strong and hard look at the success rate of leadership-level hire, we cannot but admit (albeit reluctantly) that the comments are well deserved. As an avid reader of Tibetan Buddhism, my mind goes back to the Search for the Tulku, if I may call it so, the 1000 year old predecessor of today’s executive search practice, a practice which still seems to be getting it right, every time, while our approach is getting it “all wrong”?
The Tulku for Tibetan Buddhists is the reincarnate Lama and the search for the Tulku, is the search process for the future Lama. It has been in practice for centuries, yet, there have been no known complaints or hiring mistakes reported, so far!
As I started comparing the two practices, three significant differences struck me as worth pondering over.
Creation of the Search Mandate
When searching for the ‘Tulku’, what exactly to look for, is often shrouded in riddles and hyperboles; these are not very different from what we recruiters often receive as job descriptions. What is significantly different however, is ‘who’ creates the job description and the search criteria? In case of the ‘Tulku’, it is the current Abbott or Head Lama who himself pens down what exactly to look for, in his next incarnation. Given that many of the leadership-level searches are essentially backfill, how is it that we almost never ask the present or the previous incumbent what we should look for in the person who will eventually succeed him in the given role?
Even though most organizations have a system of succession planning and exit interviews, it is extremely rare to find a connect between the information gleaned through these systems and the search mandate. When has a recruiter / hiring manager asked the current or the last incumbent on what would it take for his/her successor to be more effective? What are the challenges that he / she has to handle on Day 1? What areas of competency and behavioural sets would be critical differentiators?
Sadly, the answer is, almost never.
Culture Trait of the Target Organisation
When searching for the ‘Tulku’, the second aspect to strike me was the emphasis on first identifying the family or clan and the traits of its members. In some search briefs, we do get a list of target companies. However, what is almost never found, is a brief about the culture traits or the gene pool of the organization of the potential candidate.
As culture and cultural fit becomes a hot button issue in most progressive organizations, one recognizes the need for search mandates that include the culture trait of the target organization. Recruiters and hiring managers will then do well to identify methods to compare the traits of the candidate’s current or past organization to find the culture match. This should be a critical part of the search process, as, at the very least, it will create a post-hiring-bridge intervention for known gaps, even if we end up hiring “not-a-culture-matched” candidate.
Locating the Moral Compass as a Predictor of Future Behaviour
When searching for the Tulku, the final stage of the process requires a check to find out – if the reincarnate / “yangsi” has already gone or is likely to go ‘dirty’ before he is ordained as the ‘Tulku’. In May 2019, a PwC study, found that, ethical lapses led the causes of CEO turnover, for the first time, in the study’s 19-year history. Thus, it is amply clear that traditional reference check and web scraping is no longer enough. While I agree with Peter Cappelli’s opinion that data science driven algorithms are quite far from coming out with a panacea anytime soon, I feel that big data driven assessment tool can be used to predict whether the chosen one has a strong enough moral compass, likely to endure in the mandated job. Such assessment tools must be a critical element in the search process to avoid a spectacular and very public faux pas at a later stage.
If you are still thinking success of Tulku has anything to do with magic, think twice. The search for Tulku follows the three practices:
1. Involve the current or immediate ex-role holder to create the job description
2. Check for the culture-quotient match
3. Check for a moral compass, where big data-based assessment tools might help
So, if you are one of those recruiters and hiring managers, who would do anything to make the “wrongs” right again, these three practices might just show you the way, and a trip to a Tibetan Monastery might help you more than anything else!
