The Great Resignation: Part 1
The five blue sky ideas below were inspired by the challenges we’re all facing in recruiting, hiring and onboarding two years into this pandemic.
As you read them, you might also want to reflect on the empowering lesson behind the Great Resignation: that nothing is “above your pay grade.” You’re either in the seat that can bring about positive change at your company or you’re in a seat that can influence whoever is.
You have real leverage because you (and your dumb seat) are more valuable than you can possibly imagine.
In other words, if you’re going to stay– and I hope you do– it’s time to agitate for real change.
Counting Down So… Drumroll Please
#5. Invest in professionalizing a small but full-time interviewer community– distinct from your recruiters and HR partners– so your dramatically increased hiring needs don’t become a broad, off-the-side-of-your-desk productivity burden across your workforce. Position the new function as a temporary, quarterly rotation to help retain the community’s business relevance.
Then focus on transparency and inclusion via the principles of participatory democracy– i.e., record all interviews, post them internally, and encourage everyone else to upvote/downvote potential hires for their respective teams.
Finally, mitigate the unconscious bias of large crowds with a digitally-enabled policy twist: if enough diverse employees anywhere in the company upvote a clip, the candidate automagically lands the gig (or the next open one). #RepresentationMatters
#4. If a candidate for any role can evidence that they’re actively improving the world, they should be hired on the spot. I don’t mean some piecemeal dedication or once-in-a-while altruism. But rather, an enduring, substantive commitment to their community or to the planet.
That’s the one thing every college admissions process actually gets right that most businesses fail to make real: the clearest indicator that someone can improve the world is that they’re actually improving the world. Duh! #CommunityMatters
Note: this one had a sister rule that I reluctantly edited out (until this version). It read “If a candidate can produce hard evidence that they’ve consistently outperformed their peers, they should be hired on the spot.” I realized that the words “hard evidence” were necessary but made the suggestion impossible because of how guarded institutions are about providing performance details about any former employees, much less a current one. Even if I were to lighten it to just “evidence,” it would still be mostly fantasy because of how poorly managers across our industry communicate peer-relative feedback.
It’s a lost opportunity because the Great Resignation isn’t doing a brisk exchange in top talent but rather, trading good folks who simply weren’t getting the challenge/support they needed. The tragedy there is that the grass is rarely greener on the other side, especially if you’re moving from big to big. That failing is endemic to all institutions that suffer from scale. A blog for another day.
#3. As soon as an offer letter is in hand and long before a new hire’s first day on the job, every company’s goal should be real, sustained human connection. And again, this is distinct from the good work being done by your recruiters and HR partners.
The two best ways to make this real are by shifting learning left (i.e., asking hiring managers and their teams to participate in joint online learning with their inbound hires); and once we’re past the pandemic, by encouraging teams to regularly break bread with their inbound folks. #ConnectionMatters
#2. Exponentially increase the number of college students your company pursues. Engage at scale via speaking gigs and event sponsorship. Help shape the next generation by thinking longer term: working to imbed your company/industry’s expertise (and their cognitive demands) into your partner schools’ curriculum. Help answer the question of how higher education is helping future leaders deal with volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity.
And the most important part: make sure that every college student you meet at an event is actively and intentionally paired with an internal career sponsor (one-on-one); not to force them into banking (or your specific company) but to help them navigate the hard decisions they’ll need to make, to land somewhere meaningful. #PurposeMatters
And…
#1. Pay the real price of inbound talent. It’s more expensive than institutions currently give it credit. The real cost of hiring someone at current market rates— someone who has similar skills to the rest of your team— should be their market cost *plus* the cost of bringing up the compensation of the rest of your team. #Heresy but #EquityMatters
One Final, Perhaps Random Note
If resumes were a cuisine, they’d be a ham and banana hollandaise casserole entombed in a green Jell-o mold. They’re a terrible and terribly anachronistic guide for some of the most important conversations we’ll ever have.
It’s a small world. If we (you and I) ever have the opportunity to interview one another, let’s do something different. Let’s sell each other on why the move is a bad idea– for you and me. Let’s give each other a comprehensive breakdown of all the ways we’ve failed at things we cared deeply about and how we used that learning later. And failed again.
Let’s demonstrate our passion and curiosity, our introspection and learning, and most importantly, our grit.
Let’s not just tell each other that we have these qualities.
Let’s do it through intimate storytelling, by sharing our journeys, and hopefully by laughing a lot.
Happy New Year!
LinkedIn Tease:
The Great Resignation is– like the larger tragedy of the pandemic itself– a real opportunity to change the world for the better. It has handed us a burning platform for treating our people better; for investing in their learning more deliberately; for supporting and challenging them more fully; for sponsoring them into the next steps of their journey more actively and intentionally.
It’s also reminded us that our inbound candidates (the primary focus of this piece) are as important to us as our clients. And like our clients, their experience matters.
I should end it here with “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” But it’s not. This is how we should always be thinking, with or without Damocles’ sword hanging precariously over our heads.
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Note: I saved one important conversation for another day— how the Great Resignation should have us reimagine internal mobility. Maybe that becomes part 2?