Recruitment

It scares me sometimes when I think about the big decisions I’ve made on gut feel and will probably continue to make relying on my instincts.

How many research papers do we need to read or edicts from top class CEOs before we get the message that in every organisation, it all comes down to the people?

One of the challenges involved in building a high performing team is selecting the right people. You can’t build a high performing team with low performing people so who you let into your organisation matters. It is arguably one of the most important decisions you make especially if your team is small.

Hiring someone is supposed to give your team (and you) a great level of capability. You should be able to deliver more. But if you get it wrong and hire the wrong person you will create management challenges that take up your time rather than ‘free up’ your time. 

The traditional role of the CISO is changing.

It is being challenged by emerging new regulations such as GDPR, which are impacting all industry sectors, and the arrival on the scene of the new role of the DPOin many firms.

Once upon a time, ATS systems stored millions of stale resumes of any candidate that happened to cross its path. When new roles opened and well-meaning human beings attempted to apply or refer, these systems would mostly say, “Resume already exists in database.” If one were lucky, the ATS would say, “Hey! New resume. Let me replace the old one” and if luck had truly run out, it would save two versions leaving the poor recruiter confounded. Then suddenly, GDPR happened.

The jobs market is flooded with embellished CVs, fake references and dirty data. 86% of employers have uncovered lies or misrepresentations on a resume, and the other 14% presumably don’t look hard enough. Candidate verification is expensive and slow for the recruiter, and off-putting for the candidate – hence why we are witnessing an upsurge in movements like Hiring Without Whiteboards, and a disdain for HR and recruiters in general.

There is some form of management reality beyond the “100 days” journalistic cliché: How does an incoming executive make an impact in a new role? What are the real timeframes to look at, and what can be expected and over what horizon? What are the key issues that should raise a red flag during the first few months in a new senior position? and those which can be ignored?

Through this series, we have examined how an incoming CISO can create the conditions to truly make a difference in their new job.

Of course, as we stated in the introductory article, all companies are different from one another and so are most individuals. Each will be at their particular stage in terms of security or managerial maturity.

This is the point when you really get stuck in. By now, you would have been in the new CISO job for about 2 months and it should start to feel less and less like a new job. Of course, this is not really about 100 days, and you should also start to realise it.

This is really the time-horizon over which the new CISO must start assessing their new position. Once again, many of the management tips we will be building up in this series could apply to any executive taking up a senior job in a new organisation.