It's funny how things creep up on you. The start of the year is often a time of reflection, and I surprised myself when I realised that I attended my first elected member selection panel in the autumn of 2000. As I think back on how we used to run these things, I wondered...was it better, or worse – or perhaps it was just different, a reflection of the times.
Readers of a certain age who applied for a senior job back in 2000 might remember seeing an advert in this publication (other local government journals and chronicles were available in print at the time) or perhaps in the mammoth Sunday Times Public Sector Appointments Supplement. You would then probably pick up a telephone (perhaps a landline) and call the number on the advert. An answerphone message would invite you to leave your name and address and, all being well, a couple of days later you'd receive in the post a glossy candidate information pack to peruse.
You might then phone the recruitment consultant, speak to a secretary (sat in an office) who would put you through to the consultant (sitting in their office) to discuss the vacancy. You'd eventually email your application to a dedicated email address – although it's also possible that your secretary may have typed up your CV and supporting statement and, alongside your handwritten covering letter, popped the lot in the post for you.
Your diligent recruitment consultant would soon be reading the applications and sifting the field to produce a longlist report. Early adopters of technology might be typing their thoughts into a word document, while other members of the team would prefer to dictate their summaries onto tape and pass it to the typing pool. Remember those? In my business at the time, we had a ‘night team' – colleagues who would start work in the early evening either typing reports or listening to the answer machine, then addressing envelopes and putting candidate information packs into the post.
Our selection panels would invariably be large – a minimum of seven councillors and often more than 10. Naturally, they wanted all the applications, and our sift report, delivered to their home addresses in hard copy, or alternatively left in their pigeonhole (younger readers might need to look that term up) in the town hall. Before that point, a whole army of colleagues would be printing and binding hundreds, if not thousands, of pages.
Preliminary interviews for the chosen candidates would usually be carried out in offices, and you might have travelled (expenses paid, of course) some distance. But you would be rewarded with a cup of tea or coffee and a fine selection of biscuits before and during your interview. Sometimes we would conduct interviews over a weekend and I remember one Saturday morning when a chief executive made a 200 mile round trip (with his driver, in the council-owned car) to tell us in person that he would be withdrawing and wouldn't be attending the interview that day. Yes, that really did happen.
After the interviews, your recruitment consultant would begin dictating their very detailed interview reports and the typing pool (or our industrious ‘night team') would turn that into a shortlist report – to be once again printed out and bound. I recall travelling to a number of shortlist meetings dragging wheeled filing cases full of spare copies, in case the courier hadn't managed to find their target or a councillor had forgotten to swing past their pigeonhole that day.
Final assessment processes were often a grand affair. After the usual stakeholder meetings, the candidates would meet the selection panel over dinner – known in the trade as ‘trial by fork'. I remember a number being held in some of our wonderful high-ceilinged council houses, where the in-house catering team would serve at least a three-course meal. In between courses the candidates would stand up (not the elected members of course) and swap places. Wine would often flow and on more than one occasion a councillor had to be escorted from the table for the sake of their own reputation – and that of the council.
The next day we would enjoy the set-piece drama of the final interview panel. On one memorable occasion, the candidates were asked to sit on a raised dais behind a desk while the 12 elected members of the panel lined up below them. One of the candidates, who didn't subscribe to the playbook, came down off the stage and walked along the line of councillors. The look of mild shock was something to behold. But not all were disturbed by this blatant disregard for orthodoxy. One councillor at the end of the row (possibly still digesting the previous night's fine meal) had settled in for the day, gently dozed off and started to snore.
I seem to recall that particular candidate was offered the job.
Martin Tucker is managing partner at Faerfield
• For a more contemporary view on recruitment good practice, watch out for my short videos appearing soon
