Join Marnie Jones of TalentX and me as we unravel the ethical conundrums of the recruitment industry. Marnie transitioned into recruitment from consulting work due to clients’ recruitment challenges. She felt a responsibility to address these challenges and saw an opportunity to scale her system to help business owners effectively. Her motivation stems from her love for business owners and the frustration of seeing them waste time and money on recruiters who don’t deliver the right staff.
What is recruitment accountability?
Recruitment accountability is when recruiters should be held to standards beyond just fill rates. Marnie believes that recruiters should focus on measuring the value of a candidate in terms of productivity and accountability. She established criteria at TalentX, including staff members staying 12 months or more, meeting or exceeding role expectations, and exhibiting no toxic behavior. She implemented a replacement guarantee of up to 12 months to ensure accountability, with a 75.2% hiring and 12-month retention success rate as the standard.
If you put out something, you will attract whatever you’re communicating. – Marnie Jones
Redefining Recruitment Through Talent X
TalentX’s process is redefining recruitment by incorporating coaching and educating business owners about biases. Marnie sees this as their biggest challenges. Some biases in the process may include salary expectations, pets, backgrounds, and interview performance. Fortunately, TalentX aims to remove these biases and to create a more objective and effective recruitment process.
This is an overview of TalentX’s process:
Necessities vs Preferences
Defining roles into necessities and preferences is a key step in the hiring process. It’s important to clearly outline what you truly need from a candidate and what would be nice to have. This clarity helps avoid confusion, especially when multiple people are involved in the hiring decision. One common mistake in job ads is mixing up necessities with preferences. This can lead to missing out on potentially great candidates.
To attract the right candidates and avoid unnecessary screening, only include requirements in your job ads that are truly essential for the role. This ensures that you’re evaluating candidates based on what matters most for success in the position.
Different Hiring Archetypes
Once you’ve defined the necessities and preferences for a role, the next step is to identify different hiring archetypes. Here are a few archetypes you might consider:
Example Archetype 1: Experienced Professionals – These candidates have a solid track record in the role and bring valuable experience to the table. They can step into the position with confidence and hit the ground running.
Example Archetype 2: Ambitious Juniors – These candidates may not have held the exact title before but have demonstrated their capabilities in managing aspects of the role. They are eager to take on more responsibility and grow into a management position.
Example Archetype 3: Career Transitioners – These candidates may come from a different background, such as sales, but are looking to pivot into marketing. They bring a fresh perspective and a willingness to learn and adapt.
You can also define archetypes based on other factors, such as work preferences. For example, you might have an archetype for candidates who prefer remote work or flexible hours, or even for individuals returning to the workforce after a break, like moms re-entering the job market. Tailoring your job ad to these archetypes helps attract the right candidates who align with your role’s needs and company culture.
Writing An Ad to Each Archetype
When crafting job ads, it’s crucial to tailor them to specific archetypes of candidates. For instance, if you’re targeting moms returning to the workforce, your ad should speak directly to their needs and challenges.
TalentX takes a unique approach by highlighting challenges rather than just benefits in their job ads. This strategy attracts a different type of person who is passionate about tackling challenges head-on. While this approach may result in fewer candidates applying, the quality of those candidates is significantly higher. By targeting the right candidates who are aligned with the challenges of the role.
Screening
Candidates then undergo a performance interview that assesses knowledge, performance, and personality separately. The process provides a detailed report to the client, including candidate profiles and fit suggestions. Their process covers these bases.
Knowledge
Most of the time, it is the client’s or the company’s task to conduct knowledge checks, especially in more technical areas. For the initial checks, TalentX does cross-reference and reference check against what info they can find, most likely from previous employers.
Performance
Performance is about achieving goals, how you tackled the challenges within that project, etc. However, it can be a bit tricky for roles where it’s not as straightforward as hitting sales targets. This is where TalentX asks candidates about their achievements, how they stack up against previous employees, what their boss says about them, how they handle deadlines, and any other measurable impacts they had on the company.
Personality
TalentX relies on a highly accurate personality profile that hits around 90% accuracy. It helps them understand candidates on a deeper level, from their communication style and energy levels to their inner qualities like self-control and confidence. The tool helps them identify which candidates score well in positive areas.
Ref-checking
Anyone can claim they hit their targets, but it’s the reference checks that confirm the reality. This is the reason why TalentX has a strict policy when it comes to cross-referencing. If a claim can’t be verified through a reference check, we consider it unconfirmed. They also don’t allow the same team members, especially those who interviewed the candidates, to do the reference checks to prevent biases.
True Confidence Comes From Objective, Confirmed Outcomes
Marnie’s confidence as a leader is deeply rooted in her own success rate and tangible results. She firmly believes that genuine confidence arises from objective, confirmed outcomes, giving her the credibility to critique or celebrate aspects within her field. This mindset keeps her grounded and aligned with essential priorities.
In leadership, Marnie values measurable achievements over superficial markers like credentials. She emphasises the often-overlooked significance of acknowledging and documenting personal successes, recognising them as potent sources of confidence.
Successful leaders, according to Marnie, continually evaluate their strategies and decisions, drawing from past successes to inform future actions. When faced with situations lacking tangible results, Marnie sees it as an opportunity for humility and motivation to seek further improvement and knowledge. This ongoing cycle of confidence rooted in genuine outcomes enables her to remain focused, effective and continuously evolving as a leader.
What are your takeaways from this blog? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Marnie discusses tons of great points during our chat. You can also listen to the full Transforming Recruitment: Aligning Accountability and Authenticity in Talent Acquisition podcast episode here.