Recruitment is like fishing - An analogy I just can't stop thinking about
I feel very lucky that I have had quite a lot of experience in recruitment, mainly at Lord’s Cricket Ground where I was for four years before opening Kaffeine, managing the staffing of the Catering department. I would have to assess 1000”s of CV’s every year in the application process to ascertain if the applicant was good enough to be invited to a group interview for the 600 or so staff we needed for every game.
I am also lucky that I am a fairly fast reader, and can skim through things and pick out the important parts, the highlights, the main points, the things that grab my attention, so when reading an application for work, I guess I can find the good or bad points pretty quickly. Obviously operating Kaffeine we see a lot of CV’s come across our emails, and now our manager Claire looks after this process very well indeed.
I also had to look for work when we first arrived on the UK in 2005, and had some very good and valuable feedback about how to write a CV from a professional recruiter. (I got rejected a lot, including by Cafe Nero to be their company trainer).
So I have been thinking about this and I may get into trouble for this analogy, but it is the only one I can think of to make this point and it goes both ways. For the applicant and the recruiter.
Recruitment is like fishing.
If you are the applicant, you are looking for the best possible employer to provide you with security, money, training, fun, reputation, leadership, opportunity, organisation etc etc. You go fishing for an employer.
If you are the recruiter you are looking for an employee who can provide you with skills, knowledge, passion, enthusiasm, honesty, work ethic, organisation, commitment etc etc. You go fishing for an employee.
So if you want to catch a good job, or if you want to catch a good applicant, it is like wanting to catch a good fish. When you want a good fish, what do you do? Well, you go fishing where there is a good possibility of catching one. And if you want to catch one, then you have to make your bait as ATTRACTIVE AS POSSIBLE!!!! And if the area you are fishing in is not known for many fish, then you have to be even smarter.
Why? Well most probably, if the spot you’re fishing/recruiting in is known for great fish, then there will be others looking to make a catch too. Imagine you are the fish, swimming past looking at all this bait. You want the best one don’t you?
So, when I am skim reading applicant’s cv’s to assess whether I should take the bait or not and call them up to see if they wish to work for us, it really, really helps if the CV (the bait) makes me want to take it.
It is absolutely astounding how many C.V”s I have seen over the years that do not properly sell the person who is doing the fishing. Your CV needs to be concise, to the point and to highlight all the amazing things you have done to make you attractive to me, the fish.
It must not have any areas of confusion, any bad photos, any strange gaps in employment. It must not be able to be pulled apart by the fish as he takes the bait and then realises that this bait is not actually any good and tries to get away.
The first thing I look for is for the application letter and the CV to be nicely written. The second thing is relevant and recent experience. Straight away, skip straight to this. Writing, then experience. Skim read, assess the either great points or not great points. Delete or keep.
If we have ascertained this applicant fits the two criteria, we can then go into more details. It is often the details, the famous 1%’s, that applicants CV’s go a bit off the rails. Some CV’s have a few great points which make you take the bait, then you meet the person and realise they have completely undersold themselves, or completely oversold. Undersold is a real shame, oversold is well, sorry.
Here are some brief examples over the past 9 years.
- Saying you’ve been the manager for 2 years when in fact you have only been a manager for 6 months but you were a waiter/ess for the 18 months before that.
- Working in 2 countries at the same time
- Doing a really hard five year course in nutrition, but only showing it as one year course (the year of graduation) on the CV
- Not showing your amazing pass rates in the courses you did
- Doing a five week pastry course at the best Hospitality college in the country but only showing it as a one week course without the name of the college
- Saying you are a lead barista, but you only work there one day per week
- Saying the reason you want to work at the cricket is so you can watch the cricket
- Really poor English and grammar
- Really bad selfie photos with your pet
- No contact details
It also helps if you are the recruiter, that when you are looking for staff, that you make your advertisement/bait as attractive as possible as well. (Gumtree is full of these tips).
It goes both ways.
Peter Dore-Smith
Director
Kaffeine Ltd
66 Great Titchfield st.
15 Eastcastle st.
