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| Robyn Jackson |
Robyn Jackson is the CEO at Skills-Café and Founder at The Business Couch. She’s also a Business Advisor, Governance and Leadership Coach offering a track-record of practical business structuring, strategic, operational and leadership experience; of driving growth and profitability; of building high- performance teams and entrenching a culture of accountability, continuous improvement and staff empowerment.
Since 2012, she’s been managing a portfolio of professional roles as a business consultant and advisor, executive coach, mentor and non-executive director for the following companies : Non-executive director (chairperson), Elgin Free Range Chickens (Pty) Ltd. (2015 - present), Non-executive director, ethical leadership, Net Value Holdings (Pty) Ltd. (2015-2016), Non-executive director, Dejon Distributors (Pty) Ltd. (2014-2015), Outsourced non-executive director, business mentor and consultant, Sirdar South Africa (Pty) Ltd. (2013 - present).
Recruitment isn’t really my thing. What I’m really passionate about is people, and I’m equally excited about people feeling empowered and finding the opportunities that will work best for them. I’m also motivated by people finding the right people they need to get a good job done and done well. That may sound a bit like recruitment to you, but it’s not - it’s way simpler and, paradoxically, a lot smarter than that. You see, as you well know, the recruitment processes these days have many loops we have to jump through and boxes to tick before we find the candidate we’ve been looking for.
We have to screen for several things to ensure that this person has the skills, experience, qualifications and ethical characteristics we need them to have, but historically this filtration system has left people in HR (in this case, my friend Thembi) with a mini mountain of admin to wade through before she can even think of hosting a face-to-face interview with a candidate.
Oh dear, Thembi is staring wide-eyed at the growing pile of paperwork on her desk and considering making a run for it. Don’t do it Thembi, there has to be another way!
Thembi knows that to adequately deal with situations that involve human interaction,
character is needed. That’s why Aristotle called the character traits that deals most
effectively with this interaction ‘practical wisdom’. So, when Thembi considers Randal for a
new position, she knows it’s not enough that he has all the right skills and educational
background. The department he will be working in is a wild bunch of extroverted
powerhouse personalities, and they may very well chew him up and spit him out if she
doesn’t do a proper due diligence of just who he is and how compatible he might be with this
rowdy team. She needs to suss Randal’s personality out, and him turning out to be short-tempered and prone to extreme introversion may mean that Randal would be better off at
the company down the street. This is just one chunk of a process that Thembi will have to
navigate to find the right person for the job.
Other than people, the next thing I am most passionate about is ethics. Ethics are a new form of currency when it comes to human capital. Thembi has had a strong cup of coffee and half a muffin and is ready to take on the world again. This time she’s vetting Cassandra for a new position in Finance. She needs Cassandra to agree to a comprehensive credit check for a few reasons. If Cassandra is blacklisted with several companies she may not be the best ethical choice for Thembi to consider for a senior Finance position. Thembi can only get the credit check done once Cassandra has signed and authorised her to do so. That will take some more time so Thembi finds she is drinking way too many cappuccinos as she waits for these checks to be verified, and now it’s even harder for her to sleep at night.
Thembi is starting to feel a bit like she is conducting a police investigation in her efforts to keep her company well-stocked with the best workforce. It’s par for the course, she needs to make sure that her candidates don’t have any criminal skeletons in the closet that might put the company at risk. Now she has to get police clearance and fingerprints sorted and nobody likes getting ink on their hands. Even the new biometric system doesn’t provide her with the clearance she needs to consider the candidate as soon as she needs it, which is right now!
Thembi has had hundreds of applications for various positions in the company and now she needs to start filtering out who qualifies and who doesn’t. Many of the applicants don’t have the qualifications or skills needed to make it through even the first consideration hoop. Thembi wonders how her friend Sibs manages to make her job in HR look so easy. Sibs mentioned something about an app that allowed candidates to filter themselves, so she didn’t have to do it. Thembi sets a reminder to call Sibs for more info as soon as she’s made it through at least 50 applicants. She’ll need a break by then anyway.
Thembi could kick herself for not calling Sibs sooner. Sibs told her about a new app that (for less than R50) makes her life much easier and actually empowers candidates to facilitate their own police clearings and credit checks without any nasty surprises at a job interview. Candidates can see for themselves what they are qualified for and how attractive they may be to a potential employer. Thembi has decided to treat Sibs to a coffee and a muffin by way of thanks, but this time she’ll make it a decaf, she has a decent night’s sleep planned for later.