Being A Rebel in Talent Acquisition Can Pay Off
Disruption, challenging the norm or even “innovation” doesn’t have to be big.
Small changes can make a massive difference, I can be a bit of a rebel at times, if I see something that doesn’t make sense or I think can be improved then I’ll usually challenge it.
But sometimes a very small change can make a huge difference.
Years ago, I walked into a new role and my job was TA Partner for all of tech, and as you’d expect I took on the tasks of my predecessor.
One of those tasks was sending a weekly report to the tech leadership team.
Every Friday afternoon, I’d spend a couple of hours pulling together a report and send to everybody on the on the distribution list.
Week 1 I got a “Thanks Lee” from one of the recipients, week 2 I got nothing, same for weeks 3, 4, 5 and 6.
Nobody was replying to any of the reports, no questions or comments, and there was stuff in there that should have probably elicited a response.
I came to the conclusion that people probably weren’t even reading them, so I decided to stop sending them and see what would happen.
Nothing happened. No messages asking where the report was. This went on for weeks.
I sent one last email that said something along the lines of “Rather than me sending weekly reports that add no value, why don’t we all get together once a month for 60 minutes and we talk through the data and what we need to do to successfully hire into your teams”
Not sending a weekly report now got me a ‘seat at the table’ with the tech leadership team, a team with whom I went on to build great relationships with, tried some really cool stuff and together we went on to successfully solve every hiring challenge they had.
On the face of it, deciding not to send that weekly report isn’t disruptive or innovative, but that very small change made a massive difference.
Disruption or innovation doesn’t have to big, sometimes just small changes can have a huge impact.
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