History of Recruiting: Part I

by
Raghav Singh
Jan 25, 2008
There are lots of jobs to fill; not enough candidates, and many are poorly qualified;
arcane laws around hiring; and fierce competition for talent. Sound familiar? You could
be a recruiter for the Roman army in the 4th century B.C.
In the collections of the British Museum, there is a decree signed by Julius Caesar in 55
B.C., promising a reward of 300 sestertii to any soldier who brought another to join the
Roman army. This is the first known example of an employee-referral program. And, its
a generous one at that: The amount represented a third of a soldiers annual pay. It
reflected how serious the Romans were about finding soldiers. They had the first known
recruiters and faced many of the same challenges we have today.
Keeping this huge organization staffed up was no small task, since wars were common,
turnover was high, and there was a constant need for soldiers and other personnel. In
addition to soldiers, the army needed engineers, medical staff, surveyors, carpenters,
veterinaries, hunters, and armorers, even soothsayers. As a consequence, the Romans
created many of the practices we have today to get the best talent.
Finding soldiers was no easy task, as the Romans had high standards, were saddled with
many arcane requirements in hiring, and had plenty of competition for talent. Anyone
joining the army had to be a Roman citizen; capable of marching 18 miles while wearing
the full uniform, armor, and weapons; and carry 60 pounds of supplies. Despite good pay
and bonuses, the somewhat hazardous work environment meant that people did not flock
to the army. So, sourcers traveled the length and breadth of the Empire to find suitable
candidates.
But laws imposed by the Roman Senate made this task more complicated. A citizen could
not just be hired into any position. Roman society was divided into five classes that
determined where one could work in the army. The most wealthy, the first class, were the
most heavily armed and were equipped with helmets and armor. They carried spears and
swords. The lower classes bore lesser armament and weaponry; the fifth class carried no
armor at all and was solely armed with slings. Needless to say, they didnt see much
action and their accomplishments were not the stuff of legends. They did perform the
vital service of digging latrines, but that didnt usually lead to being covered in glory.
Something else maybe, but definitely not glory.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Following some major defeats to the Gauls (the only known record of the French winning
a war unaided, and then they were fighting Italians) and increasing competition for

employees as more of the upper classes preferred to work in business or other

occupations, the Romans abandoned the class structure for recruitment. Soldiers could be
any citizens who were fit and willing to fight. There were also special inducements for
experienced soldiers, i.e., veterans.
But this was not enough to meet the needs of the army. Facing difficulties in their wars
against enemies like Carthage, the Romans started accepting non-citizens into the army.
Since the original purpose of this was to get soldiers for the first war against Hannibal the
Barbarian, it became known as the H1-B program. Legions had to demonstrate that
candidates met the requirements of being a soldier, were paid the prevailing wage, and no
Roman citizens were available to serve. Most who survived the campaign against
Hannibal stayed on to become citizens after completing a course in Latin.

Compensation
Since the work had the potential to lower an individuals life expectancy or quality of life
(losing one or more limbs was a common occurrence), pay had to be good to attract the
best candidates. Soldiers earned 10-12 pieces of gold per year. Benefits of working for
the army included substantial grants of cash or land upon discharge, worth as much as
200 pieces of gold, which was a really good deal and represented 15 years of pay for
soldiers who, on average, served about 20.
The Romans certainly knew the value of deferred compensation. Many soldiers also
received sign-on bonuses of a few pieces of gold and also a share of the loot from any
successful campaign. Even failed campaigns were rewarded. Caligula, after his abortive
invasion of Britain, gave all legionaries four gold pieces as a retention bonus.

The Employment Brand

Money and rewards were not enough to get people to join up. So, the army aggressively
promoted its symbols, in particular a golden eagle above the letters SPQR, the
abbreviation for the Senate and the Roman People, signifying that soldiers served these
two groups. The Roman armys symbols were held in awe and represented Roman honor,
the recovery of which the Empire itself would go to war for (or so it was claimed). As
part of joining the army, a soldier received the mark, most likely by tattooing (a benefit
available to employees of Nike and Harley-Davidson today). This supposedly meant that
a soldier had become part of an elite group. A secondary, though not minor, benefit was
that it prevented desertions since deserters could be easily identified.

Temporary Staffing
It was not always possible to obtain the required skills from available candidates or from
within the circle of accepted allies, and so the Romans found it necessary to hire
mercenaries. Germans, Arabs, Armenians, Persians, and Moors were all hired to help
with campaigns to the point at which they often exceeded the Roman legions. All the
non-Roman forces, whatever their status, became known as auxilia, or aids to citizen

legionaries. They were only supposed to be used to bolster the regular army for shortterm needs, but as Rome extended her influence over more and more countries and was
perpetually at war, these auxilia in effect became regular soldiers.
Rome found itself making demands on its forces and called an increasing number of
different kinds of auxilia into her armies. One reward for being an auxiliary was Roman
citizenship. Then, like now, there was not a standardized approach and not every group or
tribe was treated alike.

Best Practices
For a long time, all hiring for the army was directed from Rome at the direction of the
Consul or leader of the Senate. Provincial governors and commanders in the field had no
authority to recruit anyone.
That changed around 50 B.C., when they were allowed to hire locally. Giving the hiring
managers the authority to pick their own employees made recruitment faster and more
efficient, and also made them more responsible for their own successes or failures.
Loyalty of the soldiery was transferred from Rome itself to its commanders, the men who
could provide them with the loot. This made the army more effective, since the soldiers
had been chosen for the tasks their commanders were entrusted with and without regard
to consideration for rules imposed by bureaucrats in Rome.

Conclusion
Two thousand years later, how little things have changed. Were still dealing with the
same problems in more or less the same way. There are lessons here. The most significant
is that recruitment practices were developed and changed to meet the Empires needs for
human capital. How little of our own laws support that. They are rooted in conditions and
practices that, while not entirely having disappeared, are no longer as relevant today as
they were when those laws were enacted.
Successful recruitment is a complex task. It requires knowledge of sources, creativity,
and a willingness to make the changes necessary. How many organizations saddle their
recruiters with requirements that have little to do with the companies purposes and
goals? Hiring managers in the field are often supported by a recruitment team in a distant
corporate office that has little appreciation of the conditions they face. Employee-referral
bonuses are miserly and are doled out with all sorts of preconditions. The biggest changes
we have seen in recruitment have been in technology, but not fundamentally in how we
recruit.
Yet, for all the innovations in Applicant Tracking Systems, job boards, etc., were no
better off than Caesar was in 50 B.C. Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are
condemned to repeat them.

History of Recruiting: Part II

by
Raghav Singh
Mar 19, 2008
Innovations in recruiting have been occurring for over several millennia. I recently wrote
about some in an earlier article about the Roman army. The Romans were by no means
alone. Other societies (the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Chinese) also contributed to the
developing recruiting practices, some of which are still with us today.
These practices almost invariably developed to support the recruitment of soldiers, since
the army was the only formal organization of any size and consequence. These societies
faced many of the same problems we have today: a shortage of talent, laws, and
regulations that attempted to benefit one group over another, and the need to have a
reliable mechanism for keeping their armies at the level of readiness they needed to
achieve their goals.
As a consequence, they also developed practices around compensation, evaluation, and
sourcing, to enhance the effectiveness of their recruiting efforts.
My earlier article on this subject was not meant to be the start of a series. The title was
borrowed from the Mel Brooks movie History of the World, Part I. Apparently, hardly
anyone picked up on that. I did receive a deluge of email from ERE readers who asked
for a follow-up piece, and so I decided to write one.

Ancient Egypt
Formal recruitment practices existed as far back as 2686 B.C. in Egypt during the period
known as the Old Kingdom. There existed a system for recruiting a militia from the
nomes (tribes) and there were officials responsible for training and for logistics, which
already displayed a high level of organization. By 1550 B.C., the period known as the
New Kingdom, recruiting had become part of the formal duties of the king.
An inscription from the reign of Amenemhat II from Memphis (in Egypt, not Tennessee)
included the requirement that the king was responsible for recruiting manpower for the
kingdoms needs. This required the Pharaoh to ensure that there were enough men of
appropriate talent for an expedition to destroy Syria and other enemies.
Formal recruitment had become a necessity because the system of the tribes providing
soldiers was unreliable in terms of both quantity and quality of talent.

Ancient Greece

The Greeks had huge needs for recruitment for their armies. The Hellenistic states were
small, with small populations, and frequently at war. They relied heavily on mercenaries,
which had to be recruited from elsewhere. By 35 A.D. large numbers of non-Greeks were
being hired as soldiers.
Two types of recruitment were common in this period. It was either carried out by
recruiting agents or through diplomatic channels and interstate treaties that included
clauses allowing citizens to serve as troops for the contracting parties. These mercenaries
were well-paid, and usually only hired for nine- or 10-month contracts.
The Greeks limited the term of the contracts of mercenaries because they did not want
non-citizens getting too deeply involved in their society. It was the first guest worker
program. But reality proved otherwise. Mercenaries were just that, mercenary?hired guns.
Their loyalty was questionable, readily undermined by more lucrative offers. Integrating
them into the regular army without proper training limited their effectiveness. There was
a constant need to acculturate and train them, which was expensive given their short
tenure. This ultimately forced a situation where these temps were more or less
permanently domiciled within a state and given grants of land to keep them there. It was
a way of securing a supply of troops and linking them to their employers.
Recruitment was a serious business. For many of the Greek states, their survival, and the
lives of their citizens, literally depended on it. In one instance, in 318 A.D, Eumenes of
Cardia, being faced with an advancing enemy, sent out a force of recruiters with large
sums of money to hire soldiers from surrounding states.
To ensure the success of this effort, much publicity was given to the high pay offered and
particular groups were targeted to hear about it. One recruiter went to Crete, because the
population on that island was isolated and poorer. In a short time they had recruited over
2,000 infantry and 2,000 cavalry.
Part of the reason the Greeks were short of soldiers was because of some restrictive laws
and unusual practices. Laws in some cases limited much of the citizenry to working in
only police roles. One of the more interesting practices was the requirement in ancient
Sparta for a soldier to have an older male lover as his mentor! He was even fined if the
older lover was not a reputable sort. Plato had made the case for this in his Dialogues that
the best army of all would be made up of pairs of male lovers who when fighting at
each others side, although a mere handful, they would overcome the world. Apparently
the policy in the Spartan army was do ask, do tell.

China
The contribution of the Chinese to recruiting was the development of formal employment
testing. The Chinese had introduced a system of examinations for entry to the civil
service as early as the seventh century A.D., but it was used to only hire a very small
number of civil servants, and then only from the aristocracy. Starting in the 10th century,

during the Sung dynasty the system was expanded to fill most positions and to recruit
commoners.
The tests were long. First a candidate had to take the regional examination. It was closely
proctored, recopied, assigned a number, and then graded. Only a very small number of
candidates passed. Next came the metropolitan exam, taken at the capital city, which was
also closely proctored, recopied, assigned a number, and graded. About 15% to 20% of
the candidates passed this second exam (around 200 per year).
The exam was based entirely on the Confucian Classics. The candidates had to memorize
the Five Classics, interpret passages, master their literary style, and use Confucian
philosophy to interpret the Classics and construct political advice. The tests were so
rigorous that the candidates who passed represented the very best minds in the country.
Statistically, it would be far easier for a person to be admitted into Harvard than it would
be to pass the civil service exam in ancient China. The government bureaucracy
represented the top one percent of the top one percent of the population in terms of talent,
education, intelligence, and, above all, ethical training. Contrast that with what
government bureaucracies are today, anywhere in the world. Weve come a long way.

Conclusion
In researching this article, it has been interesting to learn how ancient societies developed
recruiting practices. The reasons for these were not always the right ones, and in some
cases, the effects were not positive. For example, a lot of labor law developed in response
to problems with recruiting.
During the Middle Ages, shortages of talent and the problems with finding qualified
workers gave rise to the first employment laws. The Black Death had ravaged Europe,
with some countries losing as much as half their populations. This caused massive
shortages of labor, and the survivors found they could charge a premium for their work
and choose what to accept.
The result was the creation of the first labor law in 1350 that set wages and restricted
mobility. Touted as a way to maintain stability, it was nothing but an attempt to reduce
competition for talent and keep the working class in its place. Europe is still dealing with
the legacy of that law seven centuries later.
Still, much of what occurred in recruiting was of positive value. Its humbling to think
that centuries ago, recruiters were doing what we do today. The next time you have a
difficult recruiting assignment, think of that recruiter setting off across the Mediterranean
to recruit soldiers on Crete, sending out town criers ahead of him to drum up interest. We
have it easy.