MONDAY | MARCH 16, 2015
Are You Hiring Predators, Or Prey?
instead, because only the sheepiest
candidates are willing to stick around for
One of the biggest changes I have
seen during my time in the working world
is the devolution of the hiring process. It
used to be fast to hire someone. You
could run a job ad on the first of the
month and make a job offer on the
twenty-second. No one would have
considered that a particularly speedy
recruiting pipeline, but today they would.
I spoke at an event not long ago and
chatted with a VP of Engineering
afterward. “The recruiting process in my
company is so bad,” he said, “that when I
first meet a job applicant, I desperately
hope they are either employed or working
a temp job so that they have an income.
“If they don’t have an income, there
is no way for them to survive throughout
my company’s hiring process.” He said
that from the time the company received
a resume to the time they made a job
offer was about four months on average.
That is horrendous. It’s a disaster for
everyone involved, from the customers
who desperately need new products to the
employees who are dying under the
weight of their workloads until a new
person comes in. I asked the VP whether
any part of that glacial recruiting process
was associated with a desire to save
money. If someone leaves on January
first and their replacement doesn’t show
up until May, then some payroll dollars
are saved.
“We have done calculations on that,”
he said. “We are not trying to save payroll
dollars by filling jobs slowly. That’s just
how broken our recruiting process is.
When we save a dollar in payroll by
four months of disrespect and delays. We
need predators in our businesses —
people who will go out and make things
happen – but we get prey animals,
instead.
We get people who are grateful just
to have a job. They don’t negotiate the
salary or benefits. They’d be afraid to.
They don’t tell you when the company is
doing something foolish and selfdestructive. They’d be afraid to speak up.
That’s our fault — we designed a
leaving a position open, we spend three or
four dollars in other costs that the
position vacancy creates.”
Many corporate and institutional
recruiting processes are designed to weed
out not only candidates without the right
skills and experiences, but also people
whose self-esteem does not allow them to
be treated like garbage.
They expect and demand to have a
more equal relationship with any
employer that is trying to recruit them,
and when they wait through a few weeks
of radio silence or receive one too many
terse auto-responder messages instead of
human communications, they exit the
recruiting pipeline.
What are the implications of that
exodus? The biggest one I see is that
companies end up hiring not the most
talented or the brightest candidates, but
the people most willing to put up with the
abysmal treatment that job-seekers get in
the maw of the recruiting machinery.
We should be hiring people with
great ideas and passion. We hire sheep,
recruiting process to bring those people
in!
Predators in your company are not
evil or vicious — they are simply people
who are awake and aware and unafraid of
their own shadow. They treat their
careers like businesses, because a career
is a business. They know how to jump on
opportunities. We need predators in our
companies to kill off our own bad
products before our competitors do. We
need predators to tell us when we’re off
base. We need wolves and tigers on our
teams to rally their teammates to
accomplish big projects.
Black Hole automated recruiting
pipelines that scan for keywords instead
of evaluating human stories Slow-asmolasses recruiting processes that take
months to complete Pre-employment
tests and assessments that substitute
algorithms for human relationships or
acknowledgement of a candidate’s time
and energy Insulting interview processes
that come from the place “It’s our
page2
Empowering Women And Artisans
Through Jewelry In India
playing with brightly colored powders
What began as a simple love for
jewelry taught one female entrepreneur
that what works in Europe does not work
during the spring Holi festival.
Another image depicting a pair of
brooches shaped liked badges of honor,
in India, as she travelled the path of
creating wearable pieces of art with an
empowering message.
Among the beautiful images of
jewelry and inspirational thoughts, Eina
Ahluwalia’s instagram account is
are slightly gorier: “with words that
redefine gender in India – ‘potential
rapist’ and ‘meat’” says the accompanying
description.
The hashtag ‘#jewelryactivist’
peppered with hard-hitting statements.
accompanies many of Ahluwalia’s posts.
The words “love has no boundaries, maps
It is probably the best way of summing up
do…” accompanies a photo of necklaces
what she does today.
indicating the word ‘love’ in Hindi, Urdu,
Conceptual jewelry artist Eina
Ahluwalia’s ‘Love, Respect, Protect’
Arabic, and Hebrew. There is a photo of
women in white – Indian widows –
typically forbidden from enjoying color,
brooch.
Despite holding an MBA degree and
a solid corporate role, Calcutta-based
conceptual jewelry artist and founder of
self-named brand Eina Ahluwalia made a
defining decision in 2003 to leave her
salaried job behind and enter the
entrepreneurial world through jewelry.
Initially working part-time as a
consultant for an international jewelry
exporter she attended trade shows
around
the
“But
atworld.
the end of the day it was all
just ornamentation,” says Ahluwalia,
“very shallow, very superficial.”
Thus marked Ahluwalia’s bold leap
into the conceptual jewelry form – where
the content and concept of the piece is
India’s first conceptual jewelry artist
EinaEina
Ahluwalia.
Ahluwalia’s Kirpan Neckpiece
what I learned
Europe did
from“But
her ‘Wedding
Vows’inCollection.
not play
in
India,”
she
says,
“theafirst
“We upped each collection
little bit,
collection was too conceptual – people
to
keep
educating
the
market,”
says.
didn’t want to buy it, I realized she
I had
to
But
while success
has comeVows’
in getting
Ahluwalia’s
2011 ‘Wedding
The younger
generation
was
collection
is a stand
against domestic
choosing
work
or as
violence –tothe
firstintofactories
really “reach
household
staff
rathertothan
people”, she
saysmembers,
– and popular
date
The their
collection
was the
result of
learning
ancestral
craft.
someone
close
to
her
experiencing
the
“These karigars (traditional artisans)
trauma
of domestic
violence.
“That it
were celebrated
in Royal
courts
generations ago, and today they are poor
There are however new challenges –
the dangers of being too inexpensive,
according to New York’s 5th Avenue
stores – and how to meet the demand
What has helped? “Having an MBA
opens up your mind to how things work
in the real world,” she says, “it teaches
you to think laterally and realistically,