WHAT DOES AUTHENTICITY HAVE TO DO WITH RECRUITMENT, FOR CANDIDATES OR EMPLOYERS?

People who know me, realise that the 'Charlotte at work' and the 'Charlotte at home' are very much the same person (we'll ignore the fact that I regularly work ridiculously long hours for a second!).  I am my true self, as much as I can be, in everything I do.

Can the same be said for recruitment? Hmm, not so much.

Companies have entire divisions dedicated to what is effectively 'spin', for simplicity's sake, we'll just call this 'the marketing team'. Day in and day out creating what really amounts to a very one sided perspective of an organization.  It's flashy, and slick, uses great buzz words and likely includes a handful of lovely white papers or customer testimonials - but how real is it? You may find this as frustrating as I sometimes do. But we are all to blame.

As a job seeker, when was the last time you debated embellishing your skills? Exaggerating your impact or inflating your job title to try to secure a better position at your next company? It happens more often than you think.

Employers and candidates are both to blame for this type of behaviour and honestly it should stop. Some of my thoughts are below:

1. If companies need a massive amount of spin, to promote themselves externally, they probably should invest less in marketing and PR, and more in evaluating their weaknesses and actively addressing them.
2. Just like great leaders in business, a good company that delivers what you pay to receive, and works with integrity, requires minimal marketing. In our modern era, 'everyone's a critic' but equally, everyone has the power to elevate, lift up,  and give kudos to firms that do incredibly well.
3. Customer experience, matters. This applies not only to companies offering services or products, but also to us as individuals in how we interact with other people (see the the 'the journey to trust' post I wrote). 
4. If individuals falsely exagerrate, or promote their skills - they are at risk of 'winning' a job they are wholly incapable of retaining, resulting in damage to their reputation, damage to their employer, and a poor employment track record. Who wants that anyway?

I personally recommend, and certainly advocate for honesty, integrity and ethics all the way. As a recruiter, I am incredibly candid with people I work with, whether it be colleagues, a boss, hiring managers, or candidates. The advantage to this approach is that everyone involved, knows exactly what to expect from me, and why.

Companies would do well to follow the same process when hiring. Absolutely shout out your strengths from the rooftops, be proud of your achievements, market growth, supportive team and so on, but if there are areas of improvement, don't shy away from talking about those either. For example, if an employer has struggled with staff retention in a particular region, it may have been to do with a lack of governance, or poor leadership - so address it! "We've had some challenges in XXX location, but have recently added a very dynamic, person-centric leader that the team are really jazzed about working with, and we can't wait to continue to grow the team and watch them flourish". Honesty is key.

The same applies for job hunters and candidates. One of the joys of understanding yourself well, is to be able to lean into your expertise, and know your weaknesses, but even more importantly, have methods or approaches to overcome them. For example, if you are brilliant at sales, but can be disorganized, then you may say in a discussion with an employer "I have crushed my sales goals for the last 3 years but find logging my work data in Salesforce annoying, I just want to sell. I've drastically improved this by setting myself reminders and booking a 30 minute 'updates' slot just after lunch each day, and at the end of the day - which has been a massive help and now I get real value from looking at my sales dashboards".

The key to success, in business and as a job hunter, is to acknowledge your strengths, and manage and adapt to your weaknesses. Maybe a real super power is just being authentic. Then everyone knows what's on offer, and can make informed decisions every step of the way.

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