Why Context Matters When Hiring in Publishing

When looking at someone's career, we naturally begin with the evidence in front of us: the companies they have worked for, the positions they have held, the scale of their responsibilities and what they have achieved. In publishing, where many companies are familiar to one another, it is often possible to form an initial impression remarkably quickly. One of the things we have learnt from talking to people about their careers over the years, however, is how much more there can be to understand once you hear the story behind them.

Take a Publishing Director who has grown the revenue of a list significantly. That is an impressive achievement, but its context tells us much more about the experience behind it. They may have inherited a successful list and made a series of very good decisions that extended its growth. Another Publishing Director may have taken on a declining list, changed its commissioning strategy and begun a recovery whose full commercial benefit will take several years to emerge. Both may have done excellent jobs, but in quite different circumstances and drawing on different strengths.

The same applies in other areas of publishing. A Sales Director's turnover is more informative when considered alongside the list they inherited, the territories they were responsible for and what changed while they were there. A Production Director's cost savings become more meaningful when you understand how they were achieved. In marketing, there can be a considerable difference between successfully marketing a book that was always expected to be enormous and recognising the potential of one that wasn't. The headline achievement matters, but understanding what somebody actually contributed gives a much fuller picture of their experience.

People aren't always particularly good at conveying that on paper. Some undersell themselves; others are accomplished CV writers, while job titles themselves can disguise considerable differences in responsibility. Someone in a smaller company, for example, may have taken on work that would be divided between several people elsewhere. A proper conversation can bring out experience, judgement and qualities that are difficult to capture in a CV, and an achievement that warrants only a line on the page can sometimes prove particularly revealing.

Understanding the individual is only half of the picture. Companies recruiting for apparently similar positions can need very different people. One may want someone to develop something that is already working well; another may be looking for substantial change. The level of autonomy, the way decisions are made and the personalities within a team can all influence who will flourish there. Someone can be excellent at their job and simply be better suited to one environment than another.

This is why the closest match on paper isn't always the most suitable person for a role. Someone whose career looks slightly less obvious may have encountered exactly the challenges the company is facing, or developed relevant experience in a different setting. Understanding what someone has actually done, rather than relying solely on job titles or familiar company names, can open up a much more thoughtful view of who could succeed in the role. 

This feels particularly relevant as recruitment technology develops. LinkedIn, increasingly sophisticated search tools and AI are making it easier to identify people whose experience appears to correspond with a role. That is useful progress, but identifying a career history and interpreting it are different things. The reasons behind someone's decisions, what they learnt from difficult periods, where they have made the greatest difference and the environments in which they have done their best work are not always searchable.

For us at Think Selection, this is one of the most rewarding parts of recruitment. We get to know people's careers over the years, sometimes through several moves, while also getting to know the companies we recruit for. Bringing those two sides together is less about finding a perfect match on paper than understanding enough about the person, the role and the company to recognise a genuinely good fit.

As technology becomes better at identifying apparent matches, that understanding may become more valuable rather than less. A career is more than a sequence of employers, job titles and achievements, just as a company is more than an organisation chart and a job description. The context around both is often where the most useful insight lies.

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