I have recently been involved in a bit of a departmental rejig – with me contributing to a couple of new job descriptions that would split my responsibilities as I transition out of role:
The recruitment process is always an interesting one. Yet again I found myself falling into some familiar traps, such as the focus on experience – as one of my friends recently posted on Facebook:
This is particularly troublesome considering my professed belief in the growing importance of values based recruiting and, if I was to follow the logic in my Strengthscope certification, recruiting for strengths.
The thing that really shone through in the process was how varied (and in many ways wonderful) “we”, as an L&D community/profession, are – we had excellent candidates who brought with them a huge variety of experience and personality. Some candidates had clearly been focused on leadership/management development, some on digital learning, some on establishing learning in organisations whilst some were focused on the delivery or design. Qualifications to have developed (or certify existing) skills and knowledge varied enormously. No one had the joy of two learning related masters (like me) but there was a full gambit from masters to, basically, no qualifications. Arguably ‘we’ don’t do ourselves any favours with this wide church, and it contributes to the idea that anyone can ‘do’ learning so it will be interesting to see what comes of the new apprenticeship standards as a de facto standard:
Thus recruitment can quickly become about apparent personality combined with experience with qualifications (for now at least) reduced in importance (compared to most industries). This is an issue for me which I’ll post about in my second post on this topic…
Whose Education Is It Anyway? 
One thought on “Thoughts on L&D Recruitment 1 of 2: Hiring”