Recruitment is a Forecasting Exercise – But is your Hiring Process treating it like that?

We have spent time analyzing the Recruitment Processes of various companies.  This is a little bit outside the typical research, which involved several primary interviews.  As I reflected on the data emerging from this study, the Oblique Strategies cards developed by Musician Brian Eno and artist Peter Schmidt for solving creative problems came to my mind.  This is what Eno said about the oblique strategies.

“When you are in the middle of something, you forget the most obvious things.  You come out of the studio, and you think, why didn’t we remember to do this or that.”

So a pack of cards that has terms like “use an old idea” or “What should you reduce” and other relevant oblique strategies will be used in compositions.  In the middle of the project, these cards will randomly steer to a better outcome.  This is actually a brilliant algorithm to have a consultant without paying any dollars (well, other than the pack of cards itself).

In some ways, I hope that these emails have similar effects.  This week, we are reflecting on two topics

• Recruitment is a Forecasting Exercise – But is your Hiring Process treating it like that?
• How are legal jobs transforming in the digital age? An area missed by some companies