dove nest group - collaborative hiring
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Dove Nest Group – Collaborative Hiring June 2016
Collaborative
Hiring
June 2016
This article explores the rising interest in Collaborative Hiring,
poses fundamental questions and provides some
considerations about how to do it meaningfully.
The BBC recently raised the profile of Collaborative Hiring in its
three part factual entertainment series Who’s the Boss
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0725xkj). However,
Collaborative Hiring originates in Silicon Valley with
companies such as Apple, Google and Facebook putting
great store in its value.
Collaborative Hiring is a move away from traditional
hierarchical selection. It involves people from all levels right
across a company collaborating in making selection
decisions about prospective candidates. In its purest form, it
involves everyone in an organisation voting on the new hire –
as seen in the BBC’s series.
Other features of the Collaborative Hiring process include
interviews and simulated tasks. The interviews include a
variety of people who may not have previously interviewed
for that post. Simulations vary but could involve any activity
relating to the companies work or the role demands.
Importantly, these are shared with the whole workforce to
help them decide on who to vote for in the final selection
decision making.
Profile raised through
the TV series “Who’s the
Boss”
Collaborative
Hiring
A move away from
traditional hierarchical
selection
The whole workforce
has a say on the final
selection decision
making
Dove Nest Group – Collaborative Hiring June 2016
The benefits of
Collaborative Hiring
are considered to
include:
■ Candidate Experience. The quality of the
experience is thought to be good for
candidates. They meet a wide variety of
people from within the company, gain insights
to the work the company does, how it does it
and what the people are like. Being selected
through exercises relating to the company and
it’s work is also thought to add value to the
candidate’s sense that the process is valid and
accurate.
■ Person-Job Fit. The level of alignment between
the person’s knowledge, skills and abilities is
considered to be high because of the way the
selection simulates the work of the organisation
and inclusion of people from across the
company.
■ Cultural Alignment. The selected individual is
considered to be more culturally aligned in
their attitudes and behaviour to the
organisation.
■ Increased retention. It is reported that those
selected tend to stay within the organisation
longer. This is thought to be related to the level
of fit and alignment resulting from the
recruitment approach.
■ Better Selection Decisions. Overall the quality
of the selection as a result of the factors above
are considered to be better.
■ Employee Engagement. It has been suggested
that through this form of distributed leadership,
where employees have more say, decisions
are more devolved and greater inclusivity,
there is an increase in engagement from the
whole employee workforce not only about
recruiting but generally.
■ Employee Support. Once recruited the new
hire receives more support from the colleagues
and direct reports who helped appoint them.
■ Recruitment Referrals. By having a greater say
in recruiting employees are more likely to refer
potential new recruits to arising vacancies or
put them in touch with the companies HR.
■ Quicker on-boarding. The new hire hits the
ground running more quickly and they deliver
better performance sooner. It is suggested this
is partly as they are more readily welcomed
and supported by those who appointed them.
■ True Reflection. The approach uses exercises
that simulate work that is done within the
organisation. This is considered to provide a
real indication of someone’s ability in tasks and
suitability culturally.
■ Reduced Bias. The increased involvement of
more people has been identified as one way
where bias arising from managers simply
selecting people like themselves has been
improved. It has further been suggested that
unconscious bias is reduced in the process as a
result of this too.
Dove Nest Group – Collaborative Hiring June 2016
Collaborative
Hiring, the
drawbacks
Transparency
The BBC places the ‘Who’s the Boss’ in its factual
entertainment category. It is important to note
this is not a documentary. There are elements of
it possibly contrived for entertainment purposes –
which in turn happen to be some of the
elements that are likely to undermine its
effectiveness as a selection method. One such
element is the candidates were unaware that
the whole workforce would be making the
selection decision. This was to ensure they
showed ‘their true-selves’. Not telling
candidates about what is occurring might be
expected to undermine their trust in the
organisation and the value it places on
transparency, openness, engagement and
honesty. In turn, this may conflict with claims
about the Candidate Experience.
Evidence-base
The positive benefits of Collaborative Hiring
appear to make intuitive sense – so it is an easy
concept to buy into. However, before you leap
in, be aware that currently there is no evidence-
base to support many of the claims for
Collaborative Hiring. Fortunately, there is a large
body of academic literature and evidence
regarding assessment, selection and
recruitment. However, this contains no studies
that we could find on the effectiveness of
Collaborative Hiring. This is not to say it does not
have the capacity to deliver some of the
benefits it has been described as having - just
that no-one has carried out any systematic work to
demonstrate the benefits exist. It’s fair to say this
would be true of any new and innovative
approach; however, this highlights a need to
consider how possible drawbacks might be
avoided and more circumspect expectations
might be taken on entering into using this
approach.
Supporters of Collaborative Hiring, including those
involved in the BBC programme, often cite
evidence from Schmidt & Hunter (1998) as
evidence for the approach. However, their work
was about the effectiveness of selection methods
which did not include Collaborative Hiring. They
found that the most effective selection method
was ‘work-sample tests’ – tests that simulate the
actual work in the target role. It is this principle of
simulations that those promoting Collaborative
Hiring are referring to rather than the approach per
se. The other evidence cited is the ‘Wisdom of
Crowds’, popularized by Surowiecki (2004), it is the
principle that groups make more accurate
decisions because they average out inaccuracies.
Cost
While some organisations may be interested in
using Collaborative Hiring, the complexity of the
process and involvement of the whole workforce is
inevitably a costly process and there isn’t an
evidence-base to show this return on investment is
beneficial.
Dove Nest Group – Collaborative Hiring June 2016
Here we provide seven steps to approaching
Collaborative Hiring in a meaningful way:
1. Assessment Standards. In 2015 the British
Psychological Society Division of
Occupational Psychology published new
standards for Assessment Centre Design and
Delivery. Assessment Centres have much in
common with Collaborative Hiring and
moreover the standards are based on the
broader ISO10667 International Assessment
Standards. Whether carrying out
Collaborative Hiring in-house or seeking a
provider you should ensure that the quality,
reliability and validity of your practice is
maximised by applying these standards.
2. Criteria. The criteria that is necessary and will
predict performance in the role and
therefore against which the appointment is
being designed and delivered should be
clear to everyone involved. This is possibly
one of the most important aspects of
removing bias. Interestingly, it was largely
absent in the BBC series.
3. Assessors. Anyone involved in making an
assessment of a candidate as part of a
selection process is an Assessor. The ability
to accurately observe someone’s behaviour,
make a good record of it to avoid biases of
memory, decide what it tells us about the
criteria for the role moreover than our own
Doing it
meaningfully
preferences and evaluate its effectiveness is a
skilled task. This requires Assessors to be trained
and supported with well designed assessment
criteria and processes.
Possibly the most complex part of Collaborative
Hiring, and something that contributes a great
deal to cost, is the involvement of all employees.
The larger the organisation the more complex
and costly this becomes.
A more practical approach may be to have a
selection, rather than all staff, involved in the
appointment. This might be managed in a
number of ways. It could be a selection from
across the company, or staff more closely linked
to the role that’s being appointed for.
Those involved in the Collaborative Hiring may
be representatives from other stakeholder
organisations. For example, partner
organisations, key customers or other parts of
the same Group.
4. Assessment Design. While simulating the
workplace sounds simple enough, doing this
well can be complicated. It requires the
identification of activities that are done by that
specific job – otherwise they are not simulations!
Tasks that are either frequent and/or critical are
a good basis for simulations. Ensuring they are
Dove Nest Group – Collaborative Hiring June 2016
designed and delivered in a way that keeps
them as realistic as possible adds to their
relevance and validity. If they become
contrived, they are no longer a simulation! It
is not possible to gain a measure of some job
requirements through simulations, so these
may need to be designed into other exercise
types (e.g. aspects of job or industry
knowledge that may be included in a
presentation).
5. Integrating Assessment Information. Primarily
Collaborative Hiring has used a one-person,
one-vote approach as shown by the BBC.
However, voting means that individual
decisions may be linked to the role, or may
be a matter of some non-related criteria
such as personal preference, attraction or
some other unrelated bias. By ensuring the
assessment is designed using criteria,
evaluation is against that criteria and then
this is integrated in some systematic way to
reach a decision; this is what the evidence-
base suggests achieves the most effective
decision.
6. Pre-selection. The BBC series had clearly pre-
selected the candidates. It was unclear how
well this was done in each of the three
programmes and whether in some instances
there was more emphasis on the
‘entertainment’ than ‘factual’ aspects of the
genre. However, meaningful Collaborative
Hiring should seek to ensure that all
candidates reaching that stage are
appointable to the position. In practice this
means careful sifting selection exercises and
measures would play an important role. These
may include cognitive ability, personality,
emotional intelligence measures, pre-
assessment interviewing, pre-assessment
exercises or shortlisting.
7. Evaluation. Some of the benefits expected of
Collaborative Hiring seem achievable
including employee engagement, employee
support, referrals and person-job fit. While
other claims may be more conditional – in
particular whether or not it is more effective
and whether there is less bias. However, if you
plan to use the approach it would be useful to
establish the return on investment you gain
and consider whether you can be one of the
first to publish a rigorous study of its utility.
Dove Nest Group – Collaborative Hiring June 2016
Effectiveness of
interventions
Reynolds is a UK leader in the
supply of fruit and veg. They
are a family owned and run
business and have first-hand
experience of Collaborative
Hiring; having been the first
to star in the BBC’s ‘Who’s
the Boss’
We had unique access to
Operations Director Paul
Pegg and Jill McDonald
Transport Manager and
collaborative hiring
candidate, to gain their
reflections on the
experience.
Paul told us that they felt
that the Collaborative Hiring
process had been a success
within Reynolds. It created a
real sense of engagement,
excitement and positive
energy within the company.
He said there was a sense that
people wanted Jill (successful
candidate) to be successful
and that they had an interest
and goodwill in making that
happen. Paul recognised that
the approach taken within the
BBC programme was probably
not sustainable as a longer
term approach to selection.
Some of the technological
requirements would be difficult
for organisations to replicate
and there would be
advantages to clearer
assessment criteria. However,
overall Reynolds and Jill are
happy with the results!
Reynolds is a UK
leader in the supply
of fruit and veg.
They are a family
owned and run
business and have
first-hand
experience of
Collaborative
Hiring; having been
the first to star in
the BBC’s ‘Who’s
the Boss’
programme.
For more information, please contact Gordon Ryan
015395 67878
www.dovenest.co.uk
Jill McDonald
(Successful Candidate):
Jill told us how she felt “very
honoured and proud that
others could see her people
management qualities as a
people person”.