Last month exactly ten years ago Jim Collins published his bestseller Good to Great (G2G), in which he describes the results of his research on Why Some Companies Make the Leap, and Others Don’t.

It’s an interesting research and an interesting read that reveals the seven characteristics of companies that made a succesful transition from being average companies to great companies, but also shows how companies can fail to make the transition to greatness. For his research Collins defined Greatness as financial performance several multiples better than the market average over a sustained period of time, and it took him and his research team 15,000 hours to analyze 1,435 Fortune 500 companies to finally select 11 Good-to-Great companies.

Getting the right people

I have always been very much intriged by Good to Great, although it hasn’t been for the eleven companies that finally got the G2G status. Some of them went in major trouble years after the research. Moreover I am not entirely convinced that for being great, companies need to have a Fortune 500 listing.

The main reason for me to be interested in the Good-to-Great concept is the number two main factor to achieve Greatness according to Jim Collins: Get the right people on the bus.

I like that, and I always have because I think that’s what every company and every great recruiter should aim for. Getting the right people in the chair. I have always believed that people are the key differentiator for our business. It’s not our brand, it’s not our products, it’s not even our technologies or our patents. It’s our people, from the lady greeting you at the reception desk, the guy that cleans the toilets (even if both of them are outsourced) to the CEO of the company. It’s about getting the right people to achieve Greatness.

Why do we still post and pray

Of course this sounds very obvious, probably as obvious as the number one key characteristic does: Level 5 Leadership – Leaders who are humble, but driven to do what’s best for the company. But if this really is so obvious, why do we still find companies, that give so little priority to their recruiting efforts? If recruiting can make a difference, why is recruitment in many cases tucked away in the HR pillar? Why do we still perceive recruitment as an administrative outlet in our business, or as a cost center as Matthew Jeffery refers to in his Recruitment 4.0 article? Why do we still have recruiters posting vacancies, praying for the right candidates to apply and spending most of their time rejecting candidates they didn’t even want to get in the first place? Even on social media. Why do we have our recruitment proces organised in a way that we fill up our ATS with dozens of candidates we don’t bother to contact for future opportunities? This is how most organisations deal with recruitment, even the ones that consider themselves to be great. Somehow many businesses remain stuck in chronic state of poor or average recruiting performance.

#greatrecruiting

So how can companies achieve Greatness in recruiting, to do recruitment exceptionally well I mean? Do they need to radically change their recruiting approach, separate recruitment from HR and report directly to the business? Or do they need to stop doing recruitment themselves at all, and start outsourcing all recruiting activities? Is that going to make a difference? I have started to talk to people in the recruiting space about what they think Great Recruiting really is or isn’t, and what they need in order to achieve Great Recruiting.

It is a discussion I would love to have with others in the upcoming weeks. It is not going to be a scientific approach, not as big a research as G2G was. It doesn’t need to be. I will share my findings here on this blog, so we can discuss further on the topic online and crowdsource other opinions in the meantime. I also like to discuss this on the events and (un)conferences I will be attending in the upcoming months. We can make this a Track at the Tru Unconferences, at the other events I will ask people to share their opinions. On Twitter you will be able to join the conversation by finding or adding relevant tweets using the hashtag #greatrecruiting (in Dutch I have started to use #geweldigrecruitment).

This way I intend to find out what makes for Great Recruiting. And with Great Recruiting I am not necessarily referring to social, neither to gamification nor the future of recruiting agencies and job boards, as I think they are they outcome of what really needs to be changed. I am thinking more of changing recruiting culture and even more of recruiting attitude. I have a feeling we perfectly well know what the key characteristics are and how we need to change, in general but also more specific for your company. I am also convinced that you know the key characteristics as well and if you don’t, we will find them. Because somehow we know we want to change, but still we don’t do it. And that needs to change as well.

We need to change recruiting now

It won’t take us 15,000 hours to find the characteristics and best practices. We can’t afford spending 15,000 hours to find them. We need to change recruiting, now. Why would we need to do that? Because the world changes and it has changed already, people have changed. They changed in how they feel about work, in what they think of you as a potential employer and how they discuss interesting employers with their friends, but also employers that they find less interesting. In how they search for jobs, if they search for jobs. And to change recruiting, to change our recruiting attitude might sound as the most difficult part. Actually it isn’t, but you need to really want to, and you need to have the right people on the bus to do that. For getting the right people on the bus, that is.

So if this sounds interesting to you and you would like to discuss Great Recruiting, don’t wait for me to call you. Just call me and we will discuss Great Recruiting. Because that’s what we are going to do from now on: Great Recruiting!