So You Think You Have a Recruiting ‘System’?—A Systems Theory Reality Check
When asked, “How do you know what to do and how to get results?”, we are most likely to say, “I work by intuition” or “I’ve got a system”, just like any Kentucky Derby bettor who wins often enough to warrant being asked in the first place.
Other responses, such as “I work hard”, “I’m focused”, “Discipline”, “Luck” or “I have faith in myself”, while relevant, are “styles”, not fundamental methods. That’s the difference between saying, “I have an algorithm” and “I work hard at applying/I have faith in/am focused on/am disciplined in using/am lucky with my algorithm”.
If your success is entirely or mostly due to intuition—well, congratulations; you have a supernatural gift. But if you believe it is due to your “system”, a reality check may be in order to determine just how systematic your system is. That means comparing your recruiting system with a checklist of essential characteristics of any bonafide and effective system, whether an ecosystem, planetary system, political system, digestive system, air traffic control system, or somebody else’s recruiting system.
The more of these essential features your system possesses, the likelier it is to be successful as a system. As for those features it does not have, becoming aware of them may provide you with an incentive to try to incorporate them to make your system even better.
Like any other system, a recruitment system must have certain features in order to be effective. These essentials, described abstractly in “systems theoretic” terms, include
- Fixed and dependable relationships between “inputs” and “outputs”: An air traffic control system works because, for example, the radar screen images and voice data a controller has as inputs from approaching planes and their crew are processed and applied through rigid and dependable protocols into clear directives as outputs to pilots. It’s the same in natural ecosystems; the relationshp between food supply as input and species populations as output is, statistically speaking, very predictable: More of one, more of the other; less of one, less of the other—a feature that helps prevent mass species extinction through, for example, irreversible overgrazing, foraging and desertification.
Our solar system has this feature: the specific angular momentum of a planet at every point in its orbit determines (at least mathematically and in some sense causally) the angular momentum at the next moment and point. Likewise, for the most respected recruiting systems, e.g., in the dependable relationship between an incoming emailed application as an input and the courtesy of a response as an output. A recruiting system that lacks this feature may, like witch hunting, be stable, even if not rational (more on that below), but suboptimal (again, below) in comparison with rival systems. Another example: If your recruiting system’s job postings routinely flop (e.g., by attracting insufficient or inadequate applications), your “system” is failing to meet this input-output condition and may be imperiled, e.g., in terms of its long-term viability.
- Sufficient flexibility to cope with emergencies, disruptions, overload and other non-routine perturbing conditions:A pride of lions, as a kin-based social system, will migrate when local food supplies are inadequate. That’s a kind of “homeostatic” adaptability—maintaining levels of important parameters in the face of threats to them, much as our breathing depth and rate increase during strenuous exercise of our respiratory system to maintain cellular oxygenation. Discovering that your candidate has been a no-show at his interview is a similar challenge to the homeostasis of your recruiting system. How you respond to or prepare for that to restore your credibility and equilibrium is a measure of the incorporation of flexibility into your system and degree of invulnerability to disruption.
- The capacity to evolve and to grow, where warranted or required: Homeostasis is contrasted with “heterostasiis”—evolution of a system to a new standard or level of stability and equilibrium, in response to a perturbation. Imagine that with increasing insensitivity to some drug, dosages have to be increased to maintain the desired response. Although the required dosage level required to have the reaction sought increases, deviations from it, in either direction, will have the same adverse effects as at the lower level. This is a theoretical illustration of heterostasis, as a response to an external driver that pushes previous levels of stability and equilibrium up or down, to create a new norm.
If a recruiter operating a small one-man agency finds that after six months of operations that the levels of business that count as too much or too little have risen, his “system” can be described as having evolved, through heterostasis, to a new equilibrium, optimality and stability level. Introduction of video interviewing and resume scanning software represent a different kind of systems evolution—just straightforward adaptation to evolving circumstances, but with allowance for the change to amount to an advance, rather than to merely “keeping up”.Interestingly, some systems features can operate homeostatically or heterostatically.
For example, a professional code of ethics and protocols that, like the Ten Commandments, never evolves (perhaps because changes would be perceived as weakness of the code) may have homeostatic elements: Too much formality with clients may be just as bad as too little, so the code specifies the optimal amount. On the other hand, as a discriminatory code of professional conduct evolves into a more inclusive set of guidelines in barring discrimination in any form, that evolution may be viewed as heterostatic, if the guidelines
- Resources essential to functioning of the system, e.g., adequate staff numbers, training, access to technology: Every system requires resources (including metaphysical systems, which as a minimum, require brains or at least brains that think they are brainy). However brilliant or powerful the system, if its required resources are not in place when and as needed, it becomes the nominal idea of a system, like a division of battle tanks without gas or air control tower systems without functioning radar.
Hence, you always need to review your recruiting system to confirm resource availability and cost-effectiveness (since costliness of one resource may cost you access to another); merely having a nice schematic of the system and its flow may be comforting, but will hardly be sufficient.
- Stability, if not also rationality: Stability of a system is no proof of its rationality, e.g., the persistence of superstitions, foot-binding or a cult as part of a cultural system. Compare these with the “stable” depression era interest rates that despite remaining low were unable to spark investment and recovery or stable extreme paranoia that makes somebody a recluse with diminished life opportunities and experiences, exacerbated by resistance to any positive social evidence and interactions that might “cure” the condition.
The persistence of an appendix or our vestigial tail bone, the coccyx, is genetically quite stable, without in any sense being either optimal or rational, despite rational explanations for why we still have either, e.g., the absence of strong evolutionary selective pressures for or against them.In your recruitment system, are there any policies, practices or perspectives that, although stable, are, like foot-binding, not only less than optimal, but also not rational, despite being stably entrenched for some time? How about “vestigial” features—aspects of your system that although of no real use or harm nonetheless persist? One example is the colorful plastic box with now unused applicant contact information cards you used to use, before you got a computer.
- Effective feedback loops: This condition amounts to having feedback processes that ensure homeostasis or heterostasis (the latter including unbounded, yet “safe” growth). At another level of analysis, this means having control mechanisms that ensure that neither negative feedback nor positive feedback compromise or limit the functioning, survival and optimal performance of the system. In recruiting practice, an illustration would be utilization of job applicant feedback to improve and gauge service effectiveness. Another would be working with an employer to develop counter-strategies to prevent damaging rumors about imminent collapse of the company from becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy before those rumors spread among employees and demotivate and panic them.
- Additional features that ensure stability and self-correction when needed: Optimizing feedback loops are an effective, but not the only systems feature that supports stability and self correction. For example, a professional code of ethics provides safeguards against misconduct, as deviations from the stable optimum, by providing standards that are enforced or encouraged. Although, feedback in the form of sanctions, for example, guides the process, the standards per se are upheld by, but not defined as feedback.
- Synchronization of system elements and processes to ensure smooth functioning: Like stabilizing and optimizing standards, synchronization depends on feedback without itself being feedback, e.g., efficient scheduling of interviews without unacceptable gaps, conflicts or bottlenecks. “Just-in-time” services, in addition to reducing costs and inventories, also serve as synchronization mechanisms.
As a general systems concept, synchronization is vital to every possible dynamical, non-random system—one with real-time processes (as opposed to “static”, e.g., logical or taxonomic (classification) systems). Ignoring the fact that the insects in swarms are complex systems, the swarm itself can be regarded as a system, especially with respect to timing of its creation, despite the apparent randomness of the flight paths of the bugs within it.
Hence, if your recruiting system functions very nicely with random elements, e.g., random job enquiries from applicants, those elements must still be distinguished from others that require synchronization—just as emergence of locust swarms must be synchronized with respect to some season, temperature or year, despite the seeming randomness of the movements of individual locusts and groups of them.
- Pathways: It seems hard to imagine any system without pathways—whether this are physical railway systems, systems of inorganic chemical reactions, systems of metabolic pathways or systems with logical (including flow-charted, syllogistic or tree-diagrammed) paths.
Yet there are some “systems” that may appear not to have any, e.g., the system of relations in “set theory”–e.g., the “intersection” of two sets defined as all and only the elements found in both, for example, the intersection of {a,b,c} and {b,d,e} being {b}. No obvious path here. But even in that case, there are logical paths to follow, in drawing conclusions or diagrams from sets and their relations.
So, it’s virtually certain that not only does your recruiting system have pathways, but that also it must. When it must, but doesn’t, that creates what can be called an “obstacle”, “dead end”, “impasse”, or at least a bottleneck. You want to make sure that you don’t have any of those and that those you do have are “navigable”. This means that in addition to offering at least one route from application to hiring, the path(s) should be strewn only with obstacles you are intentionally placing along the way to deter or eliminate the insufficiently motivated, prepared or qualified.It also means that you don’t want to direct traffic to a non-existent path, e.g., by posting a job without specifying that only emailed applications will be considered.
- Parameter optimization: “Optimization” in systems not created by humans nonetheless sounds anthropomorphic—as though the systems have a rational human-like “purpose”, function, goals or objectives, as opposed to mere outcomes. But, the design of the hexagonal chambers of a beehive minimizes costs while maximizing benefits, without any “invisible hand” or intentions guiding the process.
Such hexagonal packing of the chambers is the mechanical result of each bee chewing wax, building a wall surface with it, rotating, and repeating the process, while surrounded by six other bees doing the same thing, like pennies surrounded by six identical pennies, with the result that the ideal isolated vertical cylinder that one bee would produce alone becomes the ideal 6-sided chamber cemented to six other identical chambers, with no wasted empty space between them, while minimizing the amount of wax needed. 
For example, when interviewing face-to-face, you, of course, are intending to optimize the psychological personal contact element, including eye contact, and engagement, but are also minimizing the risk of oral-aural miscommunication because of suboptimal orientation, e.g., head turned or diagonal seating.
Analogously, if you try harder to avoid interviewing or hiring applicants you shouldn’t, more than worrying about mistakenly rejecting those you shouldn’t, you may feel that you are merely being conscientious and cautious, when, in fact, you are also optimizing your use of time, since demands for corrective action from an employer or manager for failing to interview and hire a superior candidate are much less likely to be triggered than by failing to eliminate an undesirable one.
Now, I can appreciate that this analysis of recruiting systems may be a lot to absorb. But there’s at least one extenuating reason for having done it.
I just had to get it out of my system.