The Perfect Fit

Interviewing Exhaustion

I was interviewing a prospective Director of Marketing candidate last week and was amazed at how a company he had recently interviewed with botched the recruiting process.  Look, I know as well as you do that hiring is a very complex, expensive and essential part of every business. It’s never easy, it’s never perfect and it’s never without risk. Every company wants to try to minimize that risk and that’s understandable.  It’s the ways they do it that’s often self-defeating.

My candidate said to me “Hiring managers are unwilling to take any sort of risk with hiring”.  He said he understands how they need to closely match previous experience with the existing opening. His belief is that companies sometimes try to insure the “right” decision by having incessant interviews with “the team”.

There are too many people interviewing, in an effort to make sure that no one person is at fault. His first round of interviews with one company was with eight people.  There are instances when interviewing across departments has value.  That wasn’t the situation in this case.  The candidate decided he didn’t want to work for that company, everyone’s passing the buck and nobody seemed responsible for the actual decision.  None of the people he met with was prepped in advance of the meeting.  Most hadn’t even read his resume beforehand or had any idea why he was there.

I had a client who wanted to “make sure” that “everyone” liked the new candidate.  The candidate was employed, and I was attempting to recruit him to my client.  It was difficult for the candidate to get away from work very often without arousing suspicion.  I explained that to the client and they said they understood.

Nonetheless, they insisted on four rounds of interviews, conducted over four weeks and lasting over nine total hours with  (are you ready for this?) a total of 13 employees.  There were just over 30 in the entire company!  What’s the point?  Is everyone supposed to love this person?  Does one of these people actually have the power to veto the candidate (no!). 

The interview process wore out my candidate.  He couldn’t help but think that the company was unwilling to make a decision or, the process wasn’t important enough for them to make the time to complete it more promptly.  It became a committee decision . . . we know how those generally go.  The candidate wasn’t impressed.

The point is hiring companies need to be organized, efficient and careful in the hiring process.  They need to understand if the candidate will fit into their culture and most importantly, will they contribute.  It doesn’t take hours and hours of interviews with loads of employees to come to that conclusion. Conduct those interviews with respect, discretion, diligence and expediency!

Have you had a nasty experience interviewing or a phenomenally positive one?  We’d love to hear about it.

"Screw You!", Candidate

Client companies who don’t bother to respond to candidate inquiries and online submissions should be ashamed of themselves.  Not one week goes by where I don’t hear candidates skewer companies that haven’t had the decency to respond to their online job applications.  Who can blame them!  We all know how simple auto-responders are.  Companies simply don’t care enough to fix the issue.  I realize I’m painting with a broad brush here.  It’s unfortunate that the number of companies who conduct themselves in a caring way are such a small percentage of the whole.

I don’t understand how companies of every size, from the largest to the smallest can’t be bothered to thank someone for their time, whether there is ongoing interest in that person as a candidate or not.  This is a PR nightmare for those companies.  About 60 days ago, when we had a market where candidates were extremely difficult to find, you’d think that companies would appreciate the interest shown by someone contacting them, or applying for a position online . . . but they don’t.

Some companies are starting to get it, as evidenced in the CareerXroads 2008 Mystery Job Seeker Survey.  We can only hope the trend continues!  It’s safe to say that our regional companies are not doing as well as the companies in this survey!

I have to routinely tell candidates not to have an expectation of a response.  It’s the only way to keep their ego from being devastated, especially for those candidates who have lost a job and desperately need a new one . . .Now!  It’s no less important for a candidate expressing interest in wanting to work for a company, even if they are presently happily and successfully employed.  Maybe that target company can’t use the candidate now, but what about in the future?  Why not make that person’s experience a positive one?

It would be so simple for any company to deliver a prompt and respectful note to anyone contacting them either for employment or an information inquiry.  That company could generate positive feelings with those responses.  Candidates aren’t stupid.  They realize that they might not be right for a particular position, but they apply “just to make sure” or “you never know”.  It’s not impossible to turn a negative into a positive.  Frankly, it’s simple.  Companies should just respect everyone who shows an interest in them.

A lack of empathy for the candidate was one of the first things Kristen Weirick changed, when the director of talent acquisition for Whirlpool launched an initiative focused on improving the candidate’s experience.

“Every candidate who comes into contact with your organization is a prospective customer,” says Weirick. “There’s an old paradigm out there among some HR folks and managers that this is an employer’s market, so applicants have to conform to our process. In reality, the application process is really an extension of your employment brand. You should never underestimate the impact of negative chatter in the marketplace.” (Thanks to ERE.net for that example)

I’d be interested in hearing about your experience when contacting a prospective employer . . . whether positive or negative.

The Anonymous Resume

I’m continually amazed at the lack of detail utilized by people who are trying to find a job.  They just don’t think about a common sense approach to how it should be done.  The thing that prompted this reaction is a resume I received today that had a file name . . . “Resume”!

I get scores and scores of unsolicited resumes every week.  Maybe hundreds some months.  Anyone who’s in the business of hiring, like recruiters, HR professionals, and hiring managers in corporations all receive many, many resumes every week.  It’s difficult to keep them all straight, under the best of circumstances and even with the finest databases and support technology available.  My plea to candidates is to help us . . . please!  Save a resume document with your name as a part of the file name.  Don’t use your initials and don’t use my name!  Amazingly, I’ve had resumes sent to me named “Bishop Resume”!

All of us out there in the “people” business need your help!  Pick a file name that’s as close to your name as possible, and tell us what the file is!  In my case, it would be Bob_Bishop_Resume 9.08 . . . simple and effective.  We have some chance of remembering a name (especially if you impress us somehow), and if we can accomplish that we can probably use technology to find your resume and other information.  At least we have a fighting chance!

This same thing is true with email addresses.  I’ve been just astounded at some of the unprofessional names people pick for their email addresses.  Don’t do it.  Don’t think of it as a “personal” email address, think of it as a professional email address that you’re using personally.  Many candidates have a specific email address dedicated to the effort of searching for a new job, or professional correspondence not coming from their office.  They use a separate one for personal use.

While on the topic of email addresses.  You should not use the address you used in school, after you’ve graduated and you’re trying to get that first job out of school.  Most of those addresses have a (limited) life, and at some point (two years in many cases) are terminated after you graduate.  Establish an email address that you intend to keep for a very long time, and use it for your professional correspondence, outside of the workplace.