This week in the Holistic Recruiter Club #021

The HR Mistake That’s Costing You Big, SIGN UP FOR THE CHRISTMAS SPECIAL

Dec 02, 2024

This week was a shorter one as I was in London from Thursday to Saturday, but what happened in those days was great we managed to find a sponsor for the Christmas special which will be announced later this week thanks.

And while you are there don’t forget to sign up for the special

Correlation Isn’t Causation: The HR Mistake That’s Costing You Big

This week I wanted to talk about problem-solving. Specifically, how to figure out what problem you’re actually solving because if you get that wrong, no solution will ever work, no silver bullet, Hermione Granger and her magic wand won’t magically appear and fix everything.

This is not the first time I’ve brought this up, but bear with me, because it’s one of the most critical concepts in HR and Talent Acquisition that I see time and time again.

Here’s an analogy, those of you that know me I bloody love an analogy:

Ice cream sales and drowning deaths are correlated. They both spike at the same time.

LET’S STOP SELLING ICE CREAMS!

Hold your horses Nelly as they say in England, should we really stop selling ice cream to reduce drowning deaths?

Of course not.

There’s an obvious third factor: sunny weather. When the sun is out, people buy more ice cream and head to the water where some, tragically, are not strong swimmers.

This is the difference between correlation and causation.

In HR and TA, we often confuse the two. When something goes wrong, the knee jerk panic reaction is to slap a solution on it. Again we spoke about this before TA and HR are people pleasers and this, in this instance is a bad idea.

More often than not, that “solution” solves a symptom, not the actual problem.

I am speaking from experience I used to do it all the time and I will most likely do it again at some point, but we need to learn and reduce the chance of falling in to this trap and doing this.

The Problem with Jumping to Solutions I’ll some real life examples

Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which humorously explores the significance of asking the correct questions.

“It’s actually the question that is harder than the answer.”

For example:

• Your Glassdoor ratings are terrible. What’s the solution? Employer branding, lets work on employer branding right now.

• No one’s using the ATS. What’s the solution? Replace it with one they “like.” I used this before its excellent.

But let’s take a step back for a minute. What if your Glassdoor problem isn’t about branding, but about a systemic culture issue? What if people aren’t using the ATS because it wasn’t configured to their workflows or because they were never trained properly?

If you don’t know what the real problem is, you’ll end up “fixing” the wrong thing. What’s worse is you’ll end up spending time, money, and energy on a something that doesn’t actually solve anything. Or may appear to for a moment but doesn’t address the core issue and it will manifest in other ways.

But what does this mean in reality?

Most HR and TA challenges are more complex than they appear. Quick fixes are tempting and sometimes right, but they won’t solve the deeper issues.

What I’m suggesting is, take the time to uncover the real problem. It’s harder, messier, and slower, but it’s the only way to create solutions that stick, work and make impact.

Next time something goes wrong in your company or team, try and resist the urge to jump straight to solutions, and this is me saying is Mr Bias to Action.

Instead learn from my mistakes, pause and ask yourself:

“What problem am I actually solving?”

Or more importantly

“What problem are we actually solving?”

And if you find yourself blaming the ice cream for the drowning… you’re asking the wrong question.

Thanks for reading The Holistic Recruiter Club! This post is public so feel free to share it.

This week I ran a poll on LinkedIn

I am really interested to see the final results but I can’t imagine it changing too much. I find it fascinating as it opens so many more questions to explore, so next week whens it’s finished I’ll be asking you for your thoughts!

🎙️ Two Tired Dads Talk Talent & Tech 🎙️

Next week Jean-Marie Caillaud and I will be talking with Damien in depth about how important Culture is to Streamline the decision- making process in TA. And we will again be joined by Jessie from Stakkd who gave us the latest on what was going on in the world of HR SaaS

📺 Register for next weeks episode here :-