Nail Removal

A writer’s muse picks very inopportune times to make her appearance. She never seems to be around when my fingers are on the keyboard and a blank screen stares me in the face. Ideas, topics, details, words, memories all swirl around when I least expect them. My muse also seems to be somewhat of a voyeur in that she often visits me when I am in bed or in the shower. A practical joker, she usually floats in when the Notability app on my iPad and my pocket digital voice recorder are somewhere else. Also, because I read so much of what someone else writes, I have to research her brain droppings to make sure that I am not stealing someone else’s ideas or at least give them appropriate credit. By the way, in the interest of full disclosure I did steal the term “brain droppings” from George Carlin.

A memory from my childhood popped into my head for no apparent reason this morning, so I began researching the story of the nails and the board only to find that it seems to have been around forever and has been subjected to all kinds of twists and reincarnations. It must have originated from that famous author, Anonymous. In my words it goes like this:

A father gives his son a plank and a bag of nails. He tells the boy to hammer a nail into the plank every time he does something bad. Next he instructs him to pull out a nail every time he does a good deed. A week later the board is full of holes but there are no remaining nails. The symbolism is memorable: No amount of good acts can remove the scars of the bad.

Maybe the modern online application of this story is looking at the whole concept of branding. A recruitment brand is the beginning of the relationship between the candidates that are the lifeblood of a company and the transfusion of that resource into gainful employment. Talent acquisition is not as simple as the act of purchasing other commodities. The order-ship time for people may be 90 days but we usually use other terms, like time-to-hire, to define it. Any time we stray from the right path or become seduced by the dark side of the process we may be making a scar that de-humanizes the importance of the task at hand.

Driving in a nail is easy: Bang! – Oh, how many ways do we do this every day! The electronic reminder to make a promised and anticipated phone call was overlooked because something else interfered. Bang! Honest, hard working and talented people have resumes that end up on the bottom of the pile because nobody told them how I like to see a resume. Bang! The umpteenth voicemail from a passionate candidate looking for an answer just gets ignored because there is not yet a decision to report. Bang! Rationalization that these are not sins punishable by death does not take into consideration that these are thinking, feeling human beings and not commodities to just push aside for later use. Later usually never comes.

Removing a nail is easy: Rip! – We intellectually know the right thing to do and honestly strive to put these best practices into action whenever we can. Every applicant gets some kind of response even if it is an electronic automated reply. Rip! Every candidate interviewed gets a personal call with a yes or no answer rather than an email reporting it as an impersonal action. Rip! A practice is put in place for face-to-face feedback meetings with candidates following an interview to allow a dialog to set expectations and clear up misunderstandings. Rip! It feels good to know that we are doing the right thing, spreading good will and enhancing the brand.

Erasing a scar is hard: Ouch! – The first step in scar removal is to know that there is a scar in the first place and to acknowledge that we can do something about the situation. Sometimes actions speak louder than words and an immediate conscious change in perspective is needed to bring things into alignment. Ouch! Recruitment branding is a collective product and not an individual action, so this requires personally setting the example and counseling colleagues who may be peers in the system. Ouch! Paying reparations for a neglected candidate means that we have to listen to their feedback, respond tactfully but honestly, and work with them for mutual solution. Ouch! Ironically the time that it takes to remove a scar would have been unnecessary if there had been no scarring events.

Emotional spackle to fill holes is not expensive, but the time that it takes to smooth the rough surface, polish it to perfection and repaint the repair is costly. If there is a lesson to be learned from this allegory it would be not to do bad stuff that requires a do-over. Life doesn’t have a refresh button. The reason that we have learned the phrase “No good deed goes unpunished” is because it is human nature to be cynical about good things that come after a history of bad things. Memories of anger, irritation, sadness and rejection are deeply rooted in our brains. Those of joy, happiness, satisfaction and pleasure co-exist there, but it is up to each individual to process the one that happens most frequently.

Image credit: Hammer removing nail davidcutts / 123RF Stock Photo