Business nutrition - you are what you eat

Thinking about how people make hiring decision, specifically why people choose different methods of hiring. I wanted to link it to a decision people make every day. From here on you will have bear with me as I stretch an analogy beyond all recognition.

Essentially, I believe the decision to hire is very similar to choosing what to do when you get hungry!

As an organisation becomes hungry i.e. it needs more people or to recruit as we call it in the industry, it is broadly faced by 3 options.

Firstly, if you are very busy and don't think you have the time to spend preparing your own food, you can go out and eat at restaurants (recruitment companies), as with all of these things there are different options. Recently, there has been a huge increase in the popularity of fast food.

In a lot of ways 'fast food' restaurants resemble the plethora 'spray and pray' recruitment agencies that can quickly produce CV from their database. The great thing about fast food is it takes very little effort on your part, and you can get quick results, fairly cheap. An immediate fix you might think! Unfortunately, fast food isn't that healthy, the staff in fast food restaurants are more focused on volume than quality, and if you eat too much fast food it can get very unhealthy. For those who don't believe you need to watch 'Super Size Me'.

But what if it is a really important meal (hire) like your birthday for example, you wouldn't go to 'Joe Bloggs' recruitment for that, the quality of food wouldn't be good enough. You'd probably go to a high end restaurant with a prestigious reputation. The restaurant equivalent of an executive search company you might say (see where I'm going with this). This is where you would go to get some quality food. There are plenty of good high restaurants out there, but the problem is they can be hellishly expensive! And often it seems you don't get that much for your money...

So, fast food is unhealthy, top-end restaurants are expensive and can be disappointing... what is hungry organisation supposed to do.

Well, the most healthy option is to prepare your own meals, the problem with this is that everybody always claims that they haven't got the time, or it is so much easy to eat out.

And the truth is they are right, for most organisations preparing their own meals (or direct recruitment) can be time consuming to start with, and it will be difficult to start with, there may even be one or two disasters as you learn the ropes.

But if you stick at it, buy some recipe books from top chefs, get some top quality cooking utensils then you can really good at it. You can prepare healthy meals, quickly and effectively. Surely this has to be the future.

"So, where does Chemistry fit in to all this then?" I hear you cry, I haven't quite cracked that bit yet...Gordon Ramsey maybe ;-)

Okay, that's it, analogy over - breathe!

Congratulations if you made it here

Rowan

Comments

[Andy Young]

Good post and great analogy, one I annoyingly wish I had thought of! So to continue the theme... I see many more of the good, healthy business' aiming to cook from scratch much more, and more effectively to boot. They seem to be taking this approach with more determination and thought than ever before. Do this in tandem with a carefully chosen, well respected and ethical Michelin star chef and they'll have the balanced diet they need to survive. Where those organisations ignore the health advice of the professionals and continue to gorge themselves on a diet of fries and full english, we all know too well that they'll begin to resemble a spotty teenager - and we all know how unpleasant it is to spend time in their company!

[Management Dissertation]

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