Day: May 24, 2015

Tough Interview Questions: Hedge Fund Job Interview Questions

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Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter answers the questions, “How would you fight a bear,” and, “How would you kill a giraffe?”

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a recruiter for more than 40 years.

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Tough Interview Questions: If An Apple Costs 20 Cents . . .

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In this video, Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter answers this tricky interview question, “If an Apple cost $.40, a banana costs $.60, and a grapefruit $.80, how much does a pear cost?”

 

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Trying to hire someone? Email me at JeffAltman@TheBigGameHunter.us.

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Pay what you want for my books about job search

Do you need more in-depth coaching? Join my Coaching program.

Want to ask me a question via email, chat or phone ? Reach me via PrestoExperts or Clarity.fm

 

No B. S. Hiring Advice: Are They Leaving Your Firm Yet?

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If you are hiring white collar or skilled labor, I’m sure you are already noticing how difficult it is to find and hire talent for your available positions and that some of very good people (if not your best people) are starting to leave.

This often happens post recession as firms struggle to adjust from a mentality of thinking that they hold all the cards to one where employees now have choices and firms are aggressively trying to poach talent from others.

With many fewer people in the labor market, with so many having found it next to impossible to launch their careers after graduation, what can you do to retain and hire talent?

1. Appreciate your existing talent.

Appreciation doesn’t always require money, although it helps. Often appreciation is shown by a manager’s kind words and support, his or her encouragement and demands and thanks for a job well done.

2. Training and opportunity post-training.

I can’t tell you how many people are reaching into their own pockets to train themselves in new skills or functions and then going off to other firms to use those new skills. I believe many would not be leaving if firms were paying for that training and then offering people the opportunity (or timeline) to use those newly acquired skills.

3. Accelerate your hiring process.

Is the person qualified or not? If not reject them and don’t allow hiring managers (or if you are the hiring manager) to string people along because you are afraid of making a decision. One of the most (justifiably)infuriating things job hunters contend with is hiring procrastination. You never hire the people you string along anyway. Why do it? (Oh! Provide constructive feedback. Too light means nothing. Be specific as to deficiencies).

4. Actually partner with recruiters

Hiding behind a wall of vendor management systems sending job requirements and not speaking with recruiters to define the nuisances of the requirement commoditizes hiring and causes you to evaluate more resumes, not fewer. Don’t blame the recruiter. It’s your fault for communicating what you really want and prioritizing clearly what is required and not.

And by the way, I read so many job descriptions where items listed as pluses are actually requirements and vice versa, and items listed as requirements are not actually needed. If I wasn’t speaking to someone, how would I know that?

5. Hire more entry level people and veterans.

So many organizations try to hire finished products. As it stands now, in the US there are very few 4-5 year people (I’m writing this in 2014) because the recession was in full bloom and no one hired beginners for at least two years. With skilled immigration capped at low levels, the talent pool is smaller and universities are graduating an inferior product. Entry level workers need to be trained in basic workforce expectations.

On the other hand veterans may not have the specific skills sought but in most cases you will have no issue with their drive and effort. Test them and train them in the skills sought.

A friend, a 25+ year Air Force officer, relayed the story of how people leaving the service who were doing field medical work in combat did not possess certifications for EMT jobs.

That’s ridiculous. If you’re a hospital or local government, you hire these people, pay for them to study for their certifications and they work loyally for yo.

© Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter, Inc., Asheville, NC 2014, 2015

No B. S. Hiring Advice: A Smart Question to Ask When Hiring Leaders

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Some of you may know that I have been involved with an international men’s organization for more than 20 years. In our work, we spend time encouraging men to live lives of integrity, accountability, generosity and missions of service.

While spending some quiet time on the last weekend I attended, a thought came to mind about something I have been doing for years and how it can be applied to evaluating people who are being hired for leadership positions.

So I spent some quiet time and thought about about it and decided that there are missing questions that are not asked on most interviews.

Although this article is directed toward hiring leadership and management staff, the truth of the matter is it should be asked of everyone you interview.

The question is:

“Who do you mentor?”

After listening to their answer and watching their behavior for how congruent it is with their answer, follow it up with this question:

“What are you teaching them?”

You can continue this line of inquiry by asking them, “Who mentored you,” followed by, “what did they teach you?”

I believe you will learn a lot about the character of the men and women you interview from this series of questions. After all, the role of the mentor is to provide wisdom and knowledge to a less experienced person in a trusted relationship.

A leader who has no mentees is doing little to pass on the nuances of their experience and knowledge except that which can be observed.

A person who does this readily and speaks of the texture of their relationship with a mentee (plus has the ability to do the job, of course) can be the leader you need to build an organization with little turnover and strong staff.

© The Big Game Hunter, Inc. Asheville, NC 2011, 2015

Now That Google Downplays SAT Scores When Hiring, What Matters More to Them?

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I read an interesting article on BusinessInsider.com that said that Google has changed its criteria for hiring people recently.

For years, they made an organizational commitment to use SAT scores as a major criteria for selecting staff.  They decided to devalue SAT scores as a criteria because they found no correlation between them and success at their firm.

What has replaced it?

Well, by mining their data, Google was able to find out that ” the most innovative and happy workers feel like they have autonomy and a strong sense of mission, so Google looks for more than just the best grades and test scores.”

For years, I have said to firms that they would never hire Steve Jobs. Would you hire Donald Trump or Barack Obama? I suspect not, although all for different reasons.

I believe that it is important for organizations lead regular review processes of their top and bottom achievers at all levels of the organization and track common criteria of success they possess as well as the outcomes they’ve generated.

Through studying that data in your organization over many years, you will see common predictable patterns for success and failure and hopefully replicate the successes and avoid the failures.

© 2013 all rights reserved.

How to Test for Attention to Detail

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With private sector hiring in many fields picking up again, it’s important to look at your overall hiring process, break it down and re-construct it in ways that work to identify and select people who meet your organization’s needs now and in the future.

In some jobs like those in IT, attention to detail is an important quality for the success of the new hire. How can you determine whether that is a quality a person has?

Here are a few ideas:

1. How’s their spelling and grammar?

For years, I avoided using this when I would evaluate resumes of people born outside the US. With time, I realized two things.

Don’t give a pass to people who are not native born. Many have worked hard and with determination to adapt to a new language. Why shouldn’t that be recognized? After, people who are native often become lazy and incompetent at their use of grammar. Let’s acknowledge the effort that goes into excellence.

The second thing I realized is that some people are just too lazy to use the spelling and grammar checker in their word processing software. Why shouldn’t that be penalized?

2. I would do this next question of non-technical people like those in sales or finance.

What color hair does the receptionist have?

What is the paint color in the lobby?

Asking questions like these work because they are not anticipated by the candidate

3. For a web developer or those who are in a visual field, assemble a web page or some other visual device that is relevant with loads of errors.

Tell the candidate, “This page has more than 30 errors on it. Take 30 minutes and identify 30 of them.”

For non-visual professionals, a variation of this is to assemble a file with some information and ask them to identify a certain number of inconsistencies in it.

4. Ask them to tell you an example of how their attention to detail helped their firm make more money or save it money.

Some people are attentive to detail for pointless reasons like catching someone else doing something wrong for their own gain.

Find out some of the useful ways they have used this skill for the betterment of their firm.

5. Ask them what it is about their work they enjoy most

What I listen for is whether they tell me something “big picture” or something that is “in the weeds” they needed to puzzle out.

All of these ideas work. What do you do?

© 2013 all rights reserved.

Stop Selling “The Opportunity” When None Exists

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One of the things I work hard to spot with job hunters are liars–people who exaggerate what they have done or take credit for things others have done. I’m sure you find it as frustrating as I do to speak with someone who you know within a few minutes sat next to the person who did the work but didn’t actually do it.

One of the frustrations I hear job hunters have with potential employers is speaking with a firm that really wants to hire a drone to do a job, not think much, take direction and has no real plans for them beyond doing the job they are being hired to perform BUT TRIES TO PERSUADE THEM THAT THERE IS THIS HUGE UPSIDE TO THE JOB.

I spoke with one developer recently who told me of an interview they had where it was clear to him within 5 minutes that he was being hired to do nothing more than pound out code (be a code monkey) with little thought, take direction from a hiring manager who would tell him what to do and how to do it with the promise that one day, if he was a good little boy, he would grown up to be a manager of people and do the same thing!

How thrilling (can you detect sarcasm)!

But what are you supposed to say to such a person?

Have you considered the truth? Have you considered that you need to hire a consultant and not an employee? Have you considered that your manager doesn’t know how to manage and should be replaced?

Too many businesses get stuck because they have the wrong people in jobs that have no business being in those jobs. These folks kill a business from the inside out, sometimes by destroying talented subordinates with micromanagement or with “rules” that suck the life out of them.

Whether you are in HR, in a line role, a C level executive or board level role, your job is hiring the right people and giving them an opportunity to succeed and your business an opportunity to succeed. Taking remarkable people (you are hiring remarkable people and not just monkeys) and lying to them or choking them to death is a fast path to losing their brilliance.

© 2013 all rights reserved.

Audition Your Next Hire

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I find it fascinating how employers hire staff because it reminds me of being set up on a blind date.

Maybe you are introduced by someone; maybe you met online. No matter how you are introduced, each of you is trying to create a good impression with the hope of getting married to the right person.

Unfortunately, like many blind dates, the interview is often a waste of time. You talk about things you have in common. What you’ve done. How you did it. What’s going on that you need them for.

A lot of talk very little “action.”

I don’t mean action in a “dirty” way.

I mean it in the context of really being able to benchmark someone for their relevant knowledge and experience and how it really fits with your needs.

It’s why I like the Bobby Flay quote, “When I’m hiring a cook for one of my restaurants, and I want to see what they can do, I usually ask them to make me an omelet.”

Now, it isn’t the omelet that is interesting to me but the fact that he wants to see and watch them before hiring them.

A theatrical audition is the classic audition we think of people going through. One by one, people come up on stage to perform. Reality television has shown us musical auditions with “American Idol” and other shows of that genre.

But what about “The Apprentice?”

Donald Trump has constructed a simple formula where he is auditioning people and then we watch them execute a task that he judges relevant. Other shows do the same thing.

People eliminate themselves from consideration for many reasons that would never been uncovered in a typical interview.

How many of you have constructed a test let alone one that actually measures something relevant to the job.

One of my clients’ administers an industrial psychology test. They care about whether someone is meticulous and detail oriented but it isn’t really an interview about their skills or ability to execute the tasks of the job.

One of my clients’ does a few phone interviews before flying in several people to work on a project with one another. They have found that if they give these managers a program to work on together, they learn a lot about their ability to think, work with others, knowledge and capabilities beyond their ability to “tell a good story.”

What can you and your hiring team construct?

After all, if an omelet can be a way a great chef can eliminate people from consideration, why can’t you create a simple test that makes them sweat and lets you learn something useful about them?

Recruiting Lessons from Professional Sports

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9 Lessons from The Pros

 

I grew up in New York City, the home of the Yankees, Giants, Knicks and host of other teams. As a boy growing up, the newspapers in town would feed us “news” (I put news in quotes because where free agency is concerned, I’m sure a lot was wishful thinking on the part of the sports writer designed to help sell newspapers) about possible free agent signings, trades and other machinations that would make our team champions. Many of these deals and free agent signings never worked out but there are wonderful lessons about hiring that are useful to use when you go into the labor markets to hire.

1. Make Hires That Can Perform in Your System. A few years ago, the star defensive lineman in football was a man named Albert Haynesworth. He played in Tennessee in a particular defense that maximized his strengths and then signed an enormous contract to play for the Washington Redskins in a system that did not support his abilities. Washington got headaches for several years and he was eventually traded to another team after failing to perform up to his contract. Haynesworth wanted to make a lot of money and did. Washington received a lot less than they wanted from him. Instead of hiring knowledgeable and capable people, make sure to explore how things were done at their previous employers and explain how they are done at your firm. Let them be “scared off,” rather than endure adjustment problems later on.

2. Make sure you have existing strong leadership in place. A former coach, Bill Parcells, used to have a number of players on his team who had played for him before and would occupy leadership roles tat required that they mentor players who had not played for the coach before. He believed that without strong player leadership that supported him, players would find it harder to follow his system and not perform at a high level. Do you have leaders on your team that represent the right way for your new hires to perform? Do you have them meet with potential hires before they join?

3. Hire people who have been successful before. One of the best predictors of future success is previous success. There are exceptions, of course, based upon life circumstances (I always think of the person who chose not to get a college degree because a parent died and they needed to support their family), but for most organizations this should be part of any exploration of a person’s background. “Good enough seldom is” and the person who found it OK to graduate college with with a 2.5 GPA will rarely be an exceptional performer for you. Sports teams prefer to hire from successful programs because the players understand the sacrifices that go into winning.

4. Use your team to go out and recruit for you. Successful people know other successful people and, if they don’t, you need to expand their understanding of their scope of responsibilities. When the Yankees target a free agent to sign, often their star players will reach out to the targeted player to help sell the team to the potential new player. This is not an employee referral program, but active recruiting and encouragement to join. Use people in your organization who have worked for the same firm as recruiting aids.

5. Know who you are and hire people who fit with who you are. This is different than my first point which was about systems; this is about character. The Yankees are “a character team” fitting for their former manager, Joe Torre, their long term star, Derek Jeter, and a host of others who are low key. In contrast, The Jets (one of two football teams in New York) prefers to hire loud brash outgoing talent in their coach’s personality. You need to know who you are and hire people who will be comfortable “in your locker room” as well as in your system.

6. Act decisively. Sports teams have the advantage of being able to watch film of the players when making their evaluations or have the experience of having competed against them. So often, firms are afraid of making a hiring mistake that their hiring process goes on seemingly forever. If after interviewing someone for hours you are left unsure, either reject them or determine quickly what leaves you unsure, resolve it quickly and either hire them or reject them. The re-evaluate your assessment process to see if their is a deficiency in it and correct it if there is one.

7. Read the Tea Leaves and Have a Plan B. A few years ago, star pitcher, Cliff Lee, was the prize of free agency. Teams went to Arkansas to meet with he and his family. The Yankees arrived with a big presentation, a boatload of money, contact with their stars and more. The Texas Rangers who Lee was with did the same. After more than 6 weeks, Lee chose a third team, The Philadelphia Phillies with whom he played before and who offered less money to join. In the mean time, other players the Yankees might have been interested in while Lee was deciding were signed by other teams leaving the Yankees with poor choices. When you see someone taking a long time to decide there is a message being communicated that they are not sold on joining you. Have a contingency plan in place so that you do not get left with a big hole on your team.

8. Sell the opportunity and save money in the process. Players often join teams because they believe they are the difference maker in the firm winning a title. Often they do so for less money than they might had they gone to a losing team. By selling the opportunity, teams often save money because players want to be champions. Sell your opportunity to help become a champion or “a difference maker.”

9. Know the new hire’s motivations. Many want to be champions. Some want to be celebrities or ambassadors. When I think of David Beckham a footballer (soccer player for my American readers” and his signing a contract with the LA Galaxy, Beckham was the best player in his sport, married to a Spice Girl, the subject of the movie, “Bend it Like Beckham,” and financially well off. Yes, part of his reason to join was financial but part of it was to help make football (soccer) successful in the United States. Understand the motivations of the potential hire before you make the job offer.

Hiring doesn’t have to be difficult or time consuming. Follow these lessons from professional sports free agency and you will see an improvement in the quality of your new hires.

© The Big Game Hunter, Inc. Asheville, NC 2011, 2013, 2015

Are You Starting to See Resignations Yet?

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Not long ago, I wrote about the return of competition to the job offer process by relaying a story of someone I was working with, a C level professional who received multiple quality offers from substantial firms, one of whom extended an offer within 10 days of initial contact.

In that article, I encouraged you to have every participant in the hiring process “sell” a candidate on joining your firm.

Now I want to point out something that if you haven’t already experienced it, I assure you that you will– your current staff may be on the job market looking for work. What are your leaders, both executive and departmental, and your HR professionals doing to insure that your best performers are not poached or aren’t heading out the door to your firm’s competitors?

And in this time in history, what are you doing to insure that your firm’s reputation as a place to work isn’t being slammed by a disgruntled person? Remember, one disgruntled worker can keep ten exceptional talents from joining your firm by creating doubt.

In some companies you can’t even get your phone call transferred to a secretary in a department without having a specific individual’s name to mention.

The problem isn’t poaching or keeping the recruiters from contacting your staff. You can make it a little harder with one rule or another. The fact is that there is always a way for your people to contact recruiters or other firms.

After all, people who are successful at other firms can always call your people and try to hire them away. Recruiters can find your staff on LinkedIn, Facebook, Xing, social networks, Google, the newspapers, Hoovers, ZoomInfo and a host of other sites and services.

Your firm’s best advocates for joining your firm are your existing staff and leadership.

Putting these people in a position where they are blogging or posting remarks on Facebook corporate fan pages, tweeting about the good things going on at your firm . . . the list is endless for how people who are successful with your firm and promote your firm as a place to work.

© 2010, 2013 all rights reserved.