The Secret HR Director: What recruiters really think...

As an HRD, I’m often called to sit on senior appointment panels (or not-so-senior if someone goes sick and it’s a critical role, or the person has flown in from Bhutan especially), and it’s a mixed experience at the best of times. 

As HR professionals, we know that we have to be like the old Advertising Standards Authority slogan; legal, decent, honest and truthful. Trying to get panel members to behave, however, is often more of a challenge. 

And the more senior they are, the worse it can be - CEOs are some of the worst offenders. I worked in one organisation that used competency-based interviews, yet getting the senior person to focus on getting the candidates to talk through real examples was often the most difficult goal. “Tell me about yourself” was often their only question, which frequently turned into an opportunity for the candidate to grandstand for 45 minutes. 

Quite rightly, candidates will often request some feedback from the hiring manager, but here again it’s hard to muzzle those with the belief that the leader has the right to say whatever they like. If you use a headhunter they can do the job for you, but you’d better be sure that it’s the right headhunter and the hiring manager doesn’t make the wrong kind of joke – one candidate I know was told “the CEO couldn’t decide, but in the end he prefers a man working for him.”