‘Process of recruitment for most organisations is flawed’

Ferdinand Ibezim, managing director, I-Skill Nigeria Limited, in this interview with KELECHI EWUZIE, explains why competency-based training is key to drive organisation’s vision and mission. Excerpts

Talent management and capacity

There are so many things responsible for the seeming decline in the capacity of people that we have now. The first is our educational system which has been in a terrible state. The environment in these schools is not conducive for learning.

Another thing is that value system has changed in Nigeria. Hard work is no longer as respected as it used to be, and because of this people are no longer learning. What you now see is that when students graduate from primary school, secondary school and university, it is not the same quality of human capital you have gotten some 15 to 20 years ago that you get now.

People who recruit don’t exactly know how to recruit. The process of selection, for interview and engagement for most institutions is flawed.

The ideal thing is that you identify what the vision, mission of the company is and the kinds of people that will help you achieve the long-term and short-term of such vision and mission, the kind of people in terms of their attitude, knowledge and skills. Most interviews, whether written or oral that people conduct in most organisations, are not intensive based. So, they just select any kind of person that might not by in sync with the way the organisation wants to run.

I also think that some of our leaders have become mentally lazy to find exactly the kind of culture that they want to have. Once you don’t have a culture, people come in who don’t fit into your culture. The right recruitment process will identify people who can fit into the culture of such organisation. The culture is drawn from your mission and vision.

When people say they can’t find enough talents and that the quality of people they recruit are not right, the answer is yes. Why? I have identified two reasons, our educational system don’t produce the right kind of people that will immediately add value to organisations. Second, people who actually recruit don’t recruit the right way. Then the third leg of it is that we don’t sufficiently train people.

It is obvious to everybody who does recruitment that the kind of people they recruit are not well grounded from what they write, from what they say during interviews, but you have to engage anyway. So, when you engage people, what you now need to do is train, retrain and orientate them on a regular basis.

Training for most organisation, rather than being a solution has become a problem, because training is not done the right way. For some organisations, after the training their staff, there is no template for measuring the impact of such training based on performance. There is no way of measuring performance based on investment.

If organisations don’t have a way of measuring the impact of training, what they will keep doing is to spend money in training rather than invest in training.

Motivation

It was two or three years after I left the university that I knew that talking to people, researching on the capacity needs of companies, finding ways of building competencies that people need as professionals and individuals to improve their personal effectiveness and professional performance, is what I was destined to do.

The motivation was of course, were so much people needed to know that they don’t know which can make them better individuals and professionals. I started speaking with people as far back as 1993/94, before I-Skill identity came on board in 2005.

The coming up of the company was like the formalisation of everything that we have done in the past in trying to build capacity in people. So, I-Skill is a formal structure that was set up to accomplish that desire since the past 20 years.

In 2012 alone, we trained close to 2000 people from different organisations. Since the company started, more than 12,000 people have been trained by I-Skill. I assume that it is because these companies that we train their staff have seen a remarkable improvement in the staff they sent to us for training that they choose to send more to undergo our training.

I-Skill is relatively new, but virtually all the blue-chip firms in Nigeria have attended our training, some of them on retainer ship basis. So, I think to a large extent we have partnered institutions to improve the competencies of their staff because in everything that you do in life, whether you are selling or in human resources, the key thing is how competent are you? And to determine how competent you are, you need to ask yourself, what are the things I need to know to be able to function effectively in what I am doing? What skills do I need to have, what attitude do I need to have?

So, the gap between what you need to know and what you know is called knowledge gap. The gap between the skill you ought to possess and the skills you currently possess is called skill gap.

So, what we try to do in I-Skill is to identify the core competencies by way of knowledge, skills and attitude. We try and identify what individuals need to know and administer training that will suit such individual. I think that the relative success we have achieved in I-Skill is because it is competency-based training that we do. It is training that speaks to identify gaps; it is easy for them to apply because gaps are being filled.

Career path

I have been involved in training for the past 18 years, after a short stint with a media house and a consulting firm, before going into full-time training. Basically, what I do is try to bridge the gap between what people ought to know, the skills they need to have to be able to function where they are.

Post-graduate experience – I worked in a business magazine; basically, what we were doing there was to research and report in the area of business. I left there as an assistant editor, from there I worked in a finance company where I ran the corporate book club of the company. What we were doing there was, we meet regularly to discuss learning points from the books at the club.

After that, I set up a marketing network company that basically helps institutions and individuals with marketing support services. After this, I partnered a senior colleague to set up a publishing support service company. The firm was involved in representing publishers, especially in the areas of academics in Nigeria.    

I also ran a company that was involved in training of executives in the areas of leadership predominantly. It was from there that I and some other friends and partners set up I-Skill Company Limited.

Leadership style

I will say my leadership style is more of open leadership. In I-Skill, we run a very flat structure. We operate on first name basis. For me, managing this company is a learning process of developing human capital. My style is resident because I believe that in every individual is a capacity to produce results, once the environment is made conducive to that person.

I believe that we are all on the same level, only that someone has to provide leadership, and leadership for me is not positional, rather it is your ability to influence people.

I also believe that people ought to know exactly what you expect from them. Expectation is key, people need to know what is expected of them, what time line they have to deliver, what consequences are there if they don’t deliver and what benefits are there if they deliver.

So, once you are able to identify those performance indices, starting from clarity of purpose, what you want people to do and you clearly communicate same to them what you expect from them, when you do it to this level of proficiency and people know what you expect from them from the start, their responsiveness will show.

Dealing with competition

The is large and we deal with competition by making sure that we add value, and demonstrate that value will always be added with the kind of training we offer.

Work and family life balance

Everybody has two personalities if you are a professional. You have your professional personality and your personal personality. The challenge with some people is that they don’t know how to wear the two.

When I get home, I don’t make home an extension of the office; when I come to the office, I don’t make the office and extension of the home. When I get to the office, I focus on why I am on the pay roll; I focus on why I have come to work for that day. Now, when I get home, I play the role of husband and a father. So, it is not a very difficult thing to do, it is just for you to identify the different roles and plan your time to fit those roles very well.

Solve family problems in the family and try as much as possible not to in the middle of taking your family out for lunch cut off the lunch and say you are running back to the office to fix something. Is it always possible to achieve that?, no, but can it be achieved, yes. 

KELECHI EWUZIE