Last night, I started working on the next iteration of my research into recruiting and HR. If you’ve been following over the years, you’ll know that I don’t think much of best practices and big generalizations about our profession. Black and white lines and big universal statements are inevitably mistaken.
The world, while divided at the top level by national boundaries, is really a set of cultures defined by culture, demographics, age, costume and another 8 or 10 factors. In the united states alone, there are 400 cities with unique enough cultures and geographies to merit separate radio stations and news outlets These burgs exist on a spectrum.
Recruiting practices that work famously at Google are recipes for disaster in a factory near Macon, Ga. What works as personality assessment in Minneapolis is downright dumb in Baton Rouge. The dress codes and costumes of LA are the stuff of ridicule in DC (and vice versa). Appropriate language, the relative density of college degrees, religiosity, ethnic heritage, the role of immigrants and the embedded managerial culture all vary by region.
In this note, I’ll offer you the slides from a recent presentation on the subject. The coming weeks will be rich in the exploration of the topic.
