I was supposed to attend a Recruiting Trends webinar this morning, “Big Data from References Creates Better Hiring Insight.” It was supposed to inform participants about using (term of art) “big data” for better hiring decisions. What actually came out of the experience for me was information that made me reflect on the ills of a very large transportation company (case study) with which I’ve been associated. Certain concepts made me reflect on why the case study suffers from such widespread, lingering, systemic bad service.

It was difficult to pay attention to the lesson because of so much that had relevance and need for application in the matter of the case study. My annoyance resulted in hearing the lesson as a sales pitch, which made me go deeper into reflective, analytical mode about the case study.

What I finally realized is the case study is using poor hiring practices. Their criteria are not reliable. They appear to be in a hurry to hire live bodies but devote little time and effort to actually training and monitoring for good performance. They appear to rely on customer feedback for that. The difficulty here is that customers are principally focused on attending to their consumer needs, not to helping a company provide good to excellent service. Customers are relying on (and expecting to) receive good to excellent service when they access the product or service the business is offering. The customer is not in the business of managing the company and is not employed to do so. They are a recipient of what is offered. When the offering fails to meet acceptable standards, a search for a reasonable substitute or a different provider will be the result.

Although the case study relies on customer feedback for its improvement initiatives, it doesn’t use the information or suggestions for that purpose. When the feedback is provided, the case study goes into denial in many ways. Little to nothing is done to remedy the underlying issue. It’s a bit like ignoring the elephant in the room. The problem persists.

Another issue is that middle managers don’t appear to be aware of the mission and ethical statements. Their actions are quite the contrary. And the organization is run on a “lead by example” basis. When a cover-up is done, it sets the tone for the rest of the department and associated departments. When unethical practices are followed, the workers follow suit because that is how management has demonstrated things should be done.

It’s also run on a “top-down” directive and discourages feedback from the lower ranks that have more, direct contact with circumstances. In fact, one manager essentially told someone to shut up when they merely offered additional information. One gets the impression the case study has a philosophy that they will do what they want to do, when they want to do it, and will harm whoever they want and then cover up the harm so that they escape liability for the tortious conduct.

I'll need to revisit this webinar about using big data in order to synthesize the learning points. But my intervals of listening and then interpolation as applied to the case study provided a lot. Perhaps I got what was really necessary.

The webinar is open access - it’s free. One only needs to register (another factor that emphasized the sales aspect). It's worth the time to hear the instruction and learn the lessons.

In the end, I would say this webinar was successful. Why would I say that in light of the fact that I only paid a small amount of attention to what was delivered? Because there was so much that came out of the information that could easily be interpolated and extrapolated to real world situations, even when distracted.