In this month's On Achieving Excellence Inside Report , we speak with executive recruiter Nick Corcodilos, who sheds some of our most basic assumptions about the way to hire top people - or to get hired. No manager can afford to miss what he has to say. His success as an executive recruiter has given him a first-hand, contrarian view of human resources management. Ask The Headhunter Online. Managers' business and the work they need to accomplish get lost in Byzantine job descriptions and organization charts.
Good managers wind up spending more time defining jobs than making sure the work gets done.
In a large company, by the time a manager has filled out all the forms required to justify a position, she has created a juggernaut that goes above, beyond and around the actual work. I'm convinced that traditional job descriptions are one of the roots of the downsizings we're seeing everywhere. Jobs don't last because the work changes. When hiring, an employer must keep her eye on the work that needs to be done - not on the job. If a hiring manager can't find and select the right employees, he's not doing his job.