Month: May 2015

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.

Reference Checks: Why Bother?

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I’ve been a recruiter since 1972 and have checked many references.

I have never heard a former employer say, “Jeff, you would be doing a disservice to your client if you referred this person.”

or

“Jeff, tell your client to run, not walk, to the next candidate. This one is a human excrement.”

No, everyone says nice polite things about their former colleague or subordinate. Once in a while, an employer will say, “Sorry, our firm has a policy against our giving references for all former employees.”

I’ll test that by trying to reference check someone else and invariably it is a company-wide prohibition.

So why do companies bother checking references?

I know you’re trying to identify the one imbecile who turns over a manager’s name to you who will say critical things about them.

But that seldom happens.

Is it worth everyone’s time to make those phone calls or would your firm be far better off getting written authorization to do a credit check, a background check (for criminal conduct) and a Google search and call it a day?

After all, if statistically the number of failures in the process (failure to obtain adverse information and obtaining mediocre information in its stead) so greatly exceeds results, why waste time that could be put to better use?

© 2012 all rights reserved

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Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

Follow him at The Big Game Hunter, Inc. on LinkedIn for more articles, videos and podcasts than what are offered here and jobs he is recruiting for.

Visit www.TheBigGameHunter.us. There’s a lot more advice there.

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Tell Them You Are Going to Check References

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Many firms have given up on checking references because they expect to get canned answers or sometimes run into a road block of an organization that has a strict policy against giving references.

By abdicating reference checking as a practice, firms sometimes lose out on one of the key benefits of checking them–candidates who withdraw from consideration for fear of being exposed as failures.

When you do your initial phone interview or, if you are working with third party recruiter, tell the applicant and tell the recruiter to tell the applicant that you will be doing in depth background checking including wage verification.

At the time they complete the employment application, have a section on the application that allows you to check references. It can be as simple as:

AUTHORIZATION FOR PRIOR EMPLOYER TO RELEASE INFORMATION

(Please read the following statements, sign below, and return to the Human Resources office.)

I, ____________, hereby authorize my prior employer, _______________, to release any and all information relating to my employment with them to ________________ (your company’s name). I further release and hold harmless both ______________ and _____________ (your company’s name) from any and all liability that may potentially result from the release and/or use of such information. I understand that any information released by my prior employer will be held in strictest confidence, that it will be viewed only by those involved in the hiring decision, and that neither I nor anyone else not so involved will have the right to see the information.

__________________________________

Signature of Employee Date

__________________________________

Employee’s Name – Printed


Letting them know that you intend to check references AND having them complete a form like this (or incorporating it into your application) gives you legal permission and right to do so under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (Remember: Adverse information that is exposed in a reference check is just like getting a bad credit check under the law. The applicant is entitled to written notification AND the opportunity to rebut it in writing.

When you check references, tell the former manager or boss about the position you are interviewing for, particularly if they have managed the person more recently.

Listen for signs of sincerity like a statement along the lines of, “I knew her four years ago and don’t know how they developed since leaving me.” you can trust everything they tell you from that point on.

Conversely, listen for telltale signs of baloney. If you hear it, investigate it further, quoting something that the applicant told you that conflicts with the statement.

At worst,a reference will be extremely ordinary. At best, it will convince you to hire or cause someone to withdraw their candidacy.

Do you want to hire ordinary people or people who withdraw when informed?

I suspect not.

 

 

© 2007 all rights reserved

Obtain More In-Depth Intelligence on Potential Hires

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Give Job Applicants Case Studies to Dissect to Learn How They Think

 

Most interviews that firms conduct consists of little more than a series of predictable questions.

They start with the old standard, “Tell me about yourself,” continue on with administering some version of “Can you pull a rabbit out of the hat by telling us the answer to this tricky question” and conclude with, “Do you have any questions for us?”

A person is hired and there is a skill that has not been measured yet– the ability to reason through a situation.

Case study interviewing was developed by management consulting firms to do exactly that– see how someone can reason their way through a problem and demonstrate if they know how to follow the steps to determine what the problem is, frame the approach to solving it and show measured reason in developing an effective solution.

They reveal a number of attributes about a job applicant:

  • How well they identify, structure and think through problems.
  • Their ability to listen, gather information and present conclusions.
  • How they identify relevant information and ignore “the noise”
  • Their ability to “think on your feet”.
  • How well do they react to the unfamiliar
  • How they ask for additional details?
  • How well they organize their thoughts?
  • How graceful they are under pressure?

You can apply this methodology in almost job to see how someone dissects a problem and can develop a solution to it.

I think this is a lot more effective an interviewing approach than asking why a manhole cover is round and other stupid interview questions.

© 2010, 2015 all rights reserved.

What Are You Asking Them?

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I often joke with job hunters about how companies interview.

I will tell them about how firms look for people who demonstrate qualities of personal leadership and that a company isn’t going to ask them, “So (with serious expression on face), are you a leader?”

“Yes, I’m a leader.”

“Good, that’s the answer we were looking for.”

But the questioning to assess leadership style often isn’t much different and can open a firm to bias charges through the use of subjective criteria in assessment.

For example, asking people about their leadership style or greatest management challenge will really tell you nothing about a person and their capabilities, let alone how they think. References are often pointless because they have been cherry picked by the candidate.

Often missing in the assessment process is the search for honesty, self-reflection, vision and candor.

So what can you do?

Well, depending upon the role, Jack and Suzy Welsh ask a question like:

“What’s the best example of you anticipating a market change that others did not see?”

or

“When did your curiosity lead you to probe deeply and uncover a competitive trend or marketplace dynamic that others didn’t see (or didn’t want to see)?

On leadership, you can ask them about hiring successes and failures they’ve had . . .what they got right and what they missed (a test of honesty).

You can ask them about the hires who achieved great things under their leadership and have gone on to triumph.

For certain roles, you can ask about the greatest violation of integrity they have found and how they handled it. What did you do when you found yourself in the midst of a firestorm or criticism.

When exploring their capacity for growth, consider asking them about whether they have willingly ever gone through a personal or professional transformation.

As for honesty, a fun area to explore is whether they have ever been blindsided in life. What happened and why did it happen?

The Welsh’s offer a series of important suggestion–Listen carefully to the answers. Listen to what is said and not said and to the silences and pauses. Doing this essential because interview veterans will reveal what you need after you ask questions like this if you listen to their answers carefully.

 

 

© 2008, 2015 all rights reserved.

 

Do you really think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com is there to change that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

Did You Know There Was Free Job Posting on LinkedIn?

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There are three ways to place job ads on LinedIn.

The first way is if you click on their jobs tab and place an ad. A single ad is $195. If you purchase a bundle of 5 ads, the cost per ad is reduced to $145; if you purchase a bundle for 10 ads, they reduce it to $115.

Not bad . . . but not free.

The second way is free and pretty good (I’ll explain why in a second).

If you go to Facebook, there is a free application there called icims. It is 39.95 (not free)  and will allow you to post your jobs to your Facebook profile (whoopdee-doo; unless someone is online at the point your ad scrolls by, they won’t see it), posts it to your Twitter profile (probably a whoop-dee-do if you only have a small number of followers) and cross posts it to SimplyHired.com.

SimplyHired provides the feed for the web jobs offered by that tab on LinkedIn.

So, if someone is searching for a job and is finished searching their skills on LinkedIn, they will automatically be offered jobs from SimplyHired (you can also read resumes on JobMagic’s site on Facebook but, so far, what I have read has been pretty useless).

Not bad, but I don’t know many people who actually search jobs on LinkedIn.

There is a better way–go to the Groups tab and search for a tab representing the skill, function or, perhaps a target firm that you want to hire from, join and post an ad to the group.

Completely free and will be seen by all the members.

 

 

© 2009, 2015 all rights reserved.