dove nest group - collaborative hiring

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

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0725xkj


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.


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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Surowiecki


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


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.


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

[email protected]

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”.

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