Giving & Getting Information: Mistakes Job Seekers Make

In the June 27, 2017 Ask The Headhunter Newsletter, we consider two mistakes job seekers make. One is about how much information readers give to employers, and the other is about how little information they expect to get.

mistakes

Question #1

One of the mistakes I think I make is I give employers too much of my information. How far back (in years) should you go when constructing your resume or your LinkedIn profile? For example, when you list dates and years, is it important to include the years that you attended each university?

Nick’s Reply

You can include as much as you want in your resume or LinkedIn profile. Some persnickety HR people want to see everything – and that just reveals incompetence. They don’t need everything.

Information mistakes

In fact, too much information on a resume easily leads to confusion, mistakes, and decision paralysis. Very often, personnel jockeys are so unfamiliar with the details of a job that they have no idea what information about the candidate is important and useful. So they ask for too much, which gives them more basis to reject the applicant. (See How HR optimizes rejection of millions of job applicants.)

If you think listing certain dates will hurt you, leave them out. Is that risky? With some employers, yes. But relying on your LinkedIn profile or resume to get you in the door is a fool’s errand, because it’s just one of millions floating in an ocean of job applicants. The chances that someone will even read it are slim — most of the time an algorithm will reject you with no human review. So when you’re deciding what to put on your resume, you’re gambling.

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Help them ask you for more

Give an employer specific information about your skills and abilities — information you’ve carefully selected to show how you will help the employer tackle its problems and challenges. Tease the employer intelligently. That will trigger a request to learn more, so they’ll call you in for a meeting. No matter how much information you provide, if you don’t address the employer’s specific problems and challenges, they won’t see any reason to bring you in. So tease them with just enough of the right information to make them want the rest. That’s where interviews come from. (See Tear your resume in half.)

Please: Don’t count on your LinkedIn profile or resume to get you interviews. (Don’t help employers make mistakes about you.) Most interviews come from personal contacts that you initiate. There’s no way around that.

(Here’s my own teaser: I’ll share some interesting statistics about the value of personal referrals in the next edition — July 11. Ask The Headhunter will be on vacation for the July 4 holiday!)

Question #2

In Forget Glassdoor: Use these killer tips to judge employers, you give job applicants a list of questions to ask in interviews, including “What’s it really like to work here?” You also advise asking to meet people you’d be working with, as well as key managers in the company. But how many companies will allow you to make requests of that nature? Maybe in smaller towns, but certainly not in large metropolitan cities.

Nick’s Reply

“Allow you?”

Who cares what they allow you to ask? As the applicant, you can and should ask anything you want in an interview. A company reveals a lot in its response (or lack of one), and your goal is to learn all you can so you can make an informed decision about working there. Unfortunately, once most job seekers make their way into a job interview, they forget that. Suddenly, their prime goal is to get an offer — when it should be to vet the company.

From Fearless Job Hunting, Book 8: Play Hardball With Employers, p. 12:

“Job hunters don’t often think to check the boss’s (and department’s) reputation inside the company, or how that department interacts with the rest of the organization. Likewise, job hunters usually fail to carefully inspect a company’s reputation on the street. Investigate, and avoid disaster.”

A job interview is business

I find it troubling that job applicants are fearful of asking questions that any good business person would ask a prospective business partner, customer or vendor in the normal course of vetting a deal. This is your life and career we’re talking about! And a job interview is a business meeting.

Being in a big metro area doesn’t give an employer a pass. This is important stuff! Serious job applicants must realize a job interview is a two-way street. Hence the prefix “inter-“ as in “between.” It’s not a one-way interrogation where the employer holds the upper hand and unilaterally decides what’s allowed. (While vetting an employer is critical, as far as the job itself goes, I think there’s one general-purpose question both the employer and the applicant should ask — and not much more!)

Get the information you need

To make an informed judgment about an employer, ask anything you need to, and if you don’t get good answers — or if the employer gets annoyed — then tell them you’re not going to make them an offer to work there. They’ve been rejected. They made a mistake. They don’t meet your requirements.

Ever wonder why employers ask for the kitchen sink — your entire resume — rather than just certain, specific information they really need to determine whether you can do the job? Who cares what you did 15 years ago? How much information do you give to — and get from — an employer? Do employers go overboard, while job applicants don’t ask for enough? What information is reasonable to request?

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HR’s Submission To ZipRecruiter

ZipRecruiterJust how much can ZipRecruiter insult its HR customers and still get their business? And how many arm’s lengths away from federal employment law violations can employers get?

HR: We pay ZipRecruiter to insult us

ZipRecruiter, a venture-funded, privately held company, markets itself to employers as “The Fastest Way to Hire Great People.” It lets HR departments “Post to 100+ Job Boards with One Submission.”

What’s so insulting about that? In a long-running Bloomberg radio ad, ZipRecruiter features an employer who says:

“Hiring people is probably the worst part of my job. It’s such a hassle — the searching. The sorting through resumes.”

Man, doing HR work really sucks. Is that an HR manager grousing? Or maybe it’s a hiring manager? Imagine a sales rep at your company complaining about what a hassle it is to sell.

HR executives ponied up over $100 million in 2016 to ZipRecruiter for help filling jobs so Zip could cast them as dopes who hate the most important part of their work — recruiting and hiring talent. That’s submission.

According to USA Today, “Zip makes most of its money by charging $249 monthly to employers to post [their job] listings.” That’s a lot of job ads. That’s a lot of passing the buck.

What’s it like when the vendor you rely on to do your job for you blares to the world that your job is one big bother? Do HR execs love being insulted? Well, they keep paying for it. “Revenue is up 270% since 2013,” says USA Today.

HR seems to love being abused.

“We started using ZipRecruiter about 3 months ago. Right from the start you could tell it was going to make hiring a lot easier.”

HR also loves getting millions of job applications that no human ever needs to touch. Candidates “roll in.”

“One click and my job was posted to 100+ job boards — all the top sites.”

One click and a job is sprayed all over kingdom come. Says one job seeker:

“I heard an advertisement for ZipRecruiter on the radio. In short, you can post a job on this site and it simultaneously posts it on other job boards and social media outlets. Does HR really need that many applications? Especially in these times?”

The challenge is not picking good hires. The challenge is wiping away the mess of unemployed lemmings dying for interviews. Who needs to learn how to recruit when you can have “all of the candidates” from all of the job boards in your “dashboard”?

What do you do with them?

“All of the candidates came to my dashboard and it’s easy to compare them. Thumbs up if I liked them, thumbs down if I didn’t. No e-mails and attachments, printing up docs, phone calls, none of that.”

Imagine: None of that. No “docs” — no resumes, no application forms. No communications with applicants — “no e-mails, attachments… phone calls…” Nada. 100% keywords, no humans need apply. And HR can go home.

Zip takes care of everything — including turning job applicants into your own private digital beauty pageant.

Except really ugly stuff happens in beauty pageants when there’s no regulation. And while some venture-funded firm sucks up the profits, humans submit and are sent home to clean themselves up for the next opportunity.

What job seekers are saying about ZipRecruiter

While ZipRecruiter’s investors are cleaning up, job seekers are left drowning in the mess.

One job seeker says it for many:

“My Gmail inbox is littered with e-mails from ZipRecruiter, Indeed.com, and others. It is so frustrating to go through the daily search and submission only to get the robo-e-mails from ‘Phil@ZipRecruiter.com’ — the Job Seeker Advocate — and similar messages from Indeed and others. Sometimes I think it’s all one big bizarre video game and I am the hapless mark helping to feed the Monster(.com?). At first, I viewed them hopefully, but now I see them as a part of a giant ruse.”

Another job seeker peals out:

“Things have changed too much for the worse. The old, tried and proven Agencies have gone to wayside and replaced with kids calling me…Saying, ‘Hey, I saw your resume on Indeed or Ziprecruiter or LinkedIn, etc.’ If you put enough monkeys in a room with keyboards eventually semblance of a word will be achieved. If this is how Americans get a decent job nowadays….OMG.”

And then it hits the fan.

H1-B Only: No Americans wanted

Employers operate in today’s “employment system” at arm’s length, enjoying seeming legal insulation by using “third-party” employers — known as consulting or contracting firms — to avoid violating labor laws. And these third-party firms in turn use services like ZipRecruiter to “recruit” at arm’s length while pretending they have no idea that the machine is cranking out Soylent Green.

Now here’s the backlash employers have exposed themselves to. My good buddy Suzanne Lucas, aka The EvilHRLady, just reported that the veil has been “accidentally” parted to reveal what’s really going on: legal violations.

What would you say to a job posting for a “Java Developer – H1-B Only?”

In her Inc. column last week, Iowa Company Accidentally Says No Americans Need Apply, Lucas turned up the heat on IT consulting firm American Technology Consulting, which posted the job. “In case you’re wondering what the problem is with the ad,” writes Lucas, “it’s that it violates one and possibly two laws.”

Lucas reported that Tara Jose, the president of ATC, said, “a third-party vendor recently used language when posting an advertisement on our behalf that was inappropriate and absolutely unacceptable to American Technology Consulting.”

Uh, “a third-party vendor?” (By press time Ms. Jose had not responded to an e-mail query for details.)

 

Jose told Lucas that her firm “did not write, condone, or authorize this language in the ad.”

So who wrote and authorized it? (An e-mail to Jose well before press time yielded no response.) More important, this ad is on ZipRecruiter. And as Lucas points out, it’s illegal. Possibly twice.

Was this an accident?

Is this accidentally at arm’s-length illegal?

When we were kids we’d walk up to a buddy, smack him, and chortle, “Sorry! I did it accidentally on purpose!” After we got smacked back a few times, we learned you can’t do that and get away with it. But in today’s employment industry, you can.

A company wants to hire Java developers on the cheap. As Lucas points out, it’s illegal to misuse the H1-B visa program to hire foreign labor cheaper than American labor.

But, can you “hire” a consultant from a “consulting” firm that in turn uses “a third-party vendor” that finds the Java developer by posting an illegal “H1-B Only” ad on ZipRecruiter — an ad that’s not written, condoned or authorized by the consulting firm? And besides, ZipRecruiter’s written policy says all ads must follow the law.

How many arm’s lengths from the l-o-n-g arm of the law are we now? Was that ad an accident? A one-off mistake?

Chatting with ZipRecruiter

I opened a chat with ZipRecruiter. Here’s what they told me.

The chat with Jason timed out. So I asked Taylor.

Is this accidentally on purpose?

I could have ended the chat there and we could have had an ad just like ATC had. But I kept asking the question in different ways. Finally, I was told it was up to me to make sure my job posting complied with “OFCCP and EEOC regulations.”

But here it was, three days after the Inc. article appeared, and on one screen I was chatting with ZipRecruiter and on another I was looking at that “H1-B Only” job posting — it was still there. The fastest way to hire H1-B Java Developers.

Sometimes Zip can also be the fastest way to scam people: Job seekers on ZipRecruiter being targeted by scams via email and text. Zip’s representatives blame it on “the front-end” and “the back-end.” But that’s just how the employment industry works — nobody’s fault. It’s all accidental: “No system is perfect, no matter how sophisticated or well intentioned,” says Zip.

Is this accidentally on purpose?

Are American employers using services that are largely unregulated to manipulate the job market? I don’t think there’s any doubt.

While state and federal legislatures feign interest in equal pay and equal opportunity, they condone a seemingly l-o-n-g arm’s-length chain of “contracting” relationships that seem to add no value to America’s employment system. How many middlemen can collect a fee to put you in a job working for someone other than who signs your paycheck?

This tawdry chain of consulting pimps seem to be sucking value out of the employment system and the economy — while government looks the other way. (See Consulting: Welcome to the cluster-f*ck economy.)

Notable companies that trade in profitable key words, profiles, resumes, and job postings are the front-facing businesses that are highly admired by a stock market that doesn’t give a rat’s ass about who’s getting a job, who they actually “work” for, where they came from, and who’s getting screwed by salaries that are manipulated in an international game of  “How low can you go?”

“All Candidates In One Place”

Joshua Brustein, writing for Bloomberg, exposes the state-of-the-art in the nebulous jobs cloud: The Secret Way Silicon Valley Uses the H-1B Program.

Far from some of the transparently political H1-B conspiracy mongering that’s become the click-bait of the blog world, Brustein takes us on a wild tour that exposes the systematic manipulation of the job market being practiced and vaunted as a laudable “industry.” These are the consulting and contacting companies, and the slimy job boards, that big tech firms hide behind.

“Contractors are also submitting many applications for foreign visas for work at other large American technology companies, according to a recent analysis of Department of Labor records covering eight major tech businesses between October 2015 and October 2016. Applications submitted by contractors accounted for half of the H-1B visa applications for jobs at PayPal Holdings Inc.’s headquarters, 43 percent of those on Microsoft Corp.’s campus, 29 percent at EBay Inc.’s headquarters, and about a quarter of those at the Googleplex.”

Brustein outlines the work of one researcher who “found that American tech companies are also utilizing large numbers of H-1B workers that are not highly skilled — they are just doing it through intermediaries.”

Do you need a pedestrian Java programmer — but prefer a lower-cost “H1-B Only” variety? Someone’s willing to write an “unauthorized” and illegal job ad for you under yet someone else’s name — but nobody knows who exactly we’re talking about. But we know where to find that ad — it’s posted on an intermediary. Or, as ZipRecruiter’s crack marketing team likes to say: “All candidates in one place.”

LinkedIn? Indeed? ZipRecruiter? The applicants just roll into your dashboard, and they answer your secret questions before you have to interview them. How’s that for arm’s-length?

No “docs” — no resumes, no application forms. No communications with applicants — “no e-mails, attachments… phone calls…” Nada. 100% keywords, no humans need apply. No need for HR.

And the candidates? Scrub ’em up and get ’em ready.

Nobody knows

ZipRecruiter says job postings must follow the law. ZipRecruiter says you can post jobs for foreign applicants only. An “H1-B Only” ad appeared for a reason — somebody approved it. Who? Nobody knows.

The impact on pay is dramatic. Bloomberg’s Brustein makes it clear. Businesses use H1-B to save money. Imagine you could tell your board of directors you’ve cut your costs by a third. Well, now you can.

“They paid an average of $88,500, which is about two-thirds the average salary for visa applications for jobs the companies submitted directly.”

“Hiring people is probably the worst part of my job. It’s such a hassle — the searching. The sorting through resumes. We started using ZipRecruiter about 3 months ago. Right from the start you could tell it was going to make hiring a lot easier. One click and my job was posted to 100+ job boards — all the top sites.”

Who needs more regulating?

When a privately held company like ZipRecruiter can knock the HR profession entirely out of the recruiting and hiring process, and HR both swallows the insult and relinquishes its job entirely, it’s game over for job seekers, employees, and managers who actually produce value to create profit. (Should HR get out of the hiring business?)

When HR funds the radio ads that reduce the profession’s most important functions to “a hassle,” and ZipRecruiter’s representatives tell you in a chat that you can post jobs for “foreign applicants only” and for “H1-B Only,” none of this is an accident.

What needs more regulating? Employers and HR execs who let an industry of digital job-board pimps sell out American job hunters? Or vendors that insult and abuse them all the way to the bank? How many arm’s lengths away from federal employment-law violations can employers get?

Are we all nuts, or what? There’s an emperor running around buck naked, and the hue and cry is that there’s a shortage of clothes. Or is that a talent shortage? One click, and it’s all going to be a lot easier. You’ll just roll right into the dashboard head-first, and it’ll be no accident. It’s one great big submission. What do you think? What do we need to do to fix this?

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The Job Posting Test: Can a 12-year-old understand it?

In the June 13, 2017 Ask The Headhunter Newsletter, a reader calls out employers for jargon in job descriptions. Should a job posting be intelligible?

Question

job postingNick, please look at the job posting below. Was this written by a computer? Why can’t employers just use common sense and plain English? If it was written by a computer, no wonder the jobs aren’t getting filled! Maybe it makes sense to you? Not me!  Why not just say: “We need a school teacher?” That’s what the requirements are basically asking for but not directly saying.

So many job postings are filled with meaningless jargon and double-talk. I realize there are special vocabularies in some fields, but how does double-talk attract job applicants? Can you imagine how this company delivers training to its customers if it talks like this?

Customer Service Learning Delivery Consultant will bring innovative, solutions-driven learning solutions to life in delivery across: Small to large scale multi-site training project deployments and cross-functional training initiatives, New team member onboarding (across all levels), Team member enrichment and skill building that drive results across key operational metrics, including First Contact Resolution, Average Handle Time, Customer Experience, and Team Member Engagement.

Additionally, this position will

  • Deliver learning activities for team members through a variety of formal and informal learning channels including instructor-led, web-based, virtual and other delivery approaches.
  • Provide feedback on team member participation to managers.
  • Drive continuous improvement through feedback on current training practices and programs based on classroom experience and operational feedback – help bring these suggestions to life in partnership with program owners.
  • Work with business partners to identify and anticipate upcoming communication and training needs.
  • Support the development of systems, process, and soft skills training for team members.
  • Support project deployments by recommending and/or coordinating communication and training needs.
  • Translates adult learning theory into practical learning experiences and works successfully within cross-functional teams to plan, deploy and embed the knowledge and skills in the target audience.
  • Serves as a Master Trainer for specific courses by participating in program development as a subject matter expert for delivery and/or content, conducting Train-the-Trainer sessions and supporting Trainers and Leaders in the delivery of courses.
  • Prepares business leaders and other SMEs as instructors. Observes, evaluates and gives feedback.
  • Develops and educates other Delivery teammates through peer-to-peer coaching and mentoring.
  • Identifies and shares opportunities to reinforce knowledge and skills in the workplace after the learning event concludes, leveraging learning interventions as levers to drive higher levels of workplace performance.
  • Develops learning reinforcement tools such as job aids and other learning tools.

Maintain excellent knowledge of content, effective facilitation and delivery skills, and latest knowledge of the education environment for effective delivery.

Nick’s Reply

I don’t think this job posting was written by a computer. It was written by a bureaucrat and blessed by an HR department.

I do workshops for employers, hiring managers and HR managers to help them recruit and hire more effectively. When we discuss job descriptions and interviews, I offer them a rule of thumb: Explain it so a 12-year-old can understand it.

Job posting jargon drives away good candidates

When a recruiter relies on jargon, potentially good candidates are turned off and lost, not because they don’t understand the jargon, but because they understand perfectly well that the employer can’t explain exactly — and clearly — what it wants. That’s a risky company to work for, because it means the employer itself is confused.

As you point out, in many kinds of work there are legitimate, specialized vocabularies. For example, in technical jobs like engineering, information technology, and medicine — among others — insider jargon has specific, well-defined meaning. It serves as shorthand for complex ideas.

Then there’s business double-talk like we see in this job posting: high-falutin’ language that implies sophistication where there is no clear meaning. It drives away people who might be able to do the work if it were described plainly.

I’m not kidding when I suggest, “Say it so a 12-year-old will understand it.” That’s a good way to make sure the employer itself understands the job it wants to fill. There is no question that many HR managers — who write those painful job descriptions — have no idea what a job is really all about. How can they possibly select the right applicant?

So, for the astute job seeker, the kind of job posting we’re looking at here is usually a signal to steer clear of a company where confusion and double-talk prevail.

I think jargon drives away the best candidates.

A confusing job posting reveals bigger problems

Insider jargon is often a cover for poor management practices. An employer that uses a lot of jargon often fails to understand its own needs. For example, in the job posting you submitted, the employer keeps referring to the importance of bringing something to life:

  • The new hire will “bring innovative, solutions-driven learning solutions to life…”
  • The new hire will “help bring these suggestions to life in partnership with program owners.”

What does that mean? If this employer asked you to submit a paragraph explaining how you’d bring things to life, what could you say? What could you say in a job interview? How does “bring it to life” help the employer attract the workers it needs — and satisfy its customers?

Double-talk is not impressive. It often reveals a failure to communicate. Worse, it suggests the jargonating manager and department are making stuff up.

B.S.

Some jargon is simply b.s. What do you think this b.s. means?

  • “innovative, solutions-driven learning solutions” [Tautology is often a sign of confusion!]
  • “Small to large scale multi-site training project deployments and cross-functional training initiatives”
  • “effective facilitation and delivery skills”

What does this b.s. mean, at this company and in this job?

  • “Drive continuous improvement through feedback”
  • “works successfully within cross-functional teams”
  • “embed the knowledge and skills in the target audience”
  • leveraging learning interventions as levers to drive higher levels of workplace performance” (Another tautology!)

Nothing in those words and phrases helps a job seeker judge the job or decide whether they can do it. As you suggest, this seems to be a teaching or training job. The problem is that the jargon in the posting makes it impossible to decipher the details of the job or to guess what would make a person successful at it.

B.s. in a job description also suggests loads of b.s. in a company’s sales pitch to customers. If you want to test an employer’s credibility, review the product and service offerings on its website. If fluffy wording matches jargon in the job description, you probably know all you need to.

(Employers don’t have to be boring when they post a job. See Now THIS is a job description.)

Tell it to a 12-year-old

Even a highly technical job should first be described simply so virtually anyone can understand what work needs to be done and what the objective is. This welcomes candidates from other fields, disciplines and work domains who might be able to bring something new to the job.

This:

“Customer Service Learning Delivery Consultant will bring innovative, solutions-driven learning solutions to life…”

Or this?

“We need an experienced teacher or trainer to show our customers how to do XYZ.”

Once XYZ is defined simply, any smart child should understand what the employer needs. Then more details of the work can be described, more specialized vocabulary can be introduced, and the employer and job candidate can have a productive discussion. A 12-year-old probably can’t do the job, but defining the job at that level is a good start on finding good candidates.

What’s missing in this job posting is a definition of XYZ, which might be quite detailed. What’s also missing is an answer to these questions:

  • Can any good teacher learn enough about XYZ in a reasonable time to do this job?
  • Or, is expertise in XYZ necessary?

This job ad just doesn’t tell us.

An employer that can’t tell you what it wants is very likely going to waste your time if you apply for the job.

Thanks for sharing a good example of why the employment system is so broken and why jobs aren’t getting filled. Employers can’t fill jobs they can’t describe clearly and simply.

For an example of another kind of problematic job posting, see Is this the worst job ad ever?

This is a lulu of a job description. Have you encountered worse? Tell us about it — and please share examples of the worst job-ad jargon you’ve seen! What do you look for in a job description before you’ll apply?

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How To Hire: 8 stunning tips

In the June 6, 2017 Ask The Headhunter Newsletter, a manager offers 8 stunningly clear tips about how to hire so effectively that other managers in your company steal your hires.

A hiring manager who prefers to remain anonymous teaches us how to hire. This should be required reading in every company. There’s nothing for me to add except Thank you.

how to hireA manager’s short course on how to hire

Most of my colleagues do not know how to interview anyone. They rely on rules of thumb, guts, or chicken entrails.

Actually, they have their direct reports interview the candidate and then vote on the candidate. I have a different way to hire and I think it works.

1. Recruit all the time

Always be in interview mode. Talk to prospective candidates even if you don’t have a place for them. (See The manager’s #1 job.)

2. Don’t hire by consensus

Do not allow your team to vote on candidates. The hiring manager hires. People are tribal and will pick people like themselves. Do not have a team where everyone is the same.

3. Start with all the resumes

Tell HR to send you all the resumes. Don’t let anyone edit your selection because they’re not as qualified as you are to judge the applicants. If you know what you want, you can go through them much faster than an HR clerk. (See also Sorting Resumes: A strategic hiring error and Why HR should get out of the hiring business.)

4. Hire the dancers

Don’t hire anyone for whom the job is a lateral move. That’s what contractors are for. You want people for whom the job will make a difference in their lives. You want your new hires to dance to work.

5. Interview wisely

Interview only 5 candidates to prevent interview fatigue. Schedule interviews over a 3-4 week period and make a decision within 24 hours of the final interview. (Use the phone only to confirm availability. Phone interviews are nearly worthless.)

6. Can they do the job?

Ask candidates to audition for the job. Give them a simple assignment before the interview. (See What is the single best interview question ever?)

7. Act responsibly

Write to every candidate after the interview and give them your results. It is common decency. Besides, you may want to hire the second best candidate in a few months.

8. Get better at hiring

Last, review your process and look for improvements.

The problem with hiring this way is that the people you hire are so good that other departments will poach them. But that’s really okay, because you want to bring motivated people into your organization. Be proud of the impact your hires make.

Nick’s Reply

Like I said, this is so good that there’s nothing for me to add. What I think would be incredibly productive is to hear from this community — from hiring managers, job seekers and HR folks — about how you would flesh these 8 suggestions out.

How exactly would you put these tips to work? How would you tweak, bend and shape these ideas about how to hire, to make them work best in your work environment? If you’re a manager, maybe you already do some of these things. If you disagree with some of them, please explain and offer your own tips.

I’d like to thank the manager who essentially wrote this week’s column for me. For another manager’s hiring methods, see Smart Hiring: A manager who respects applicants.


Update

Number of interviews

After this column was published, a good question was raised by readers (in the comments section below) about whether the manager (whose advice this column is based on) really means you should interview only 5 candidates in total, and how long the entire process should really take. So I asked him. Here’s his reply.

Scheduling a series of interviews with the internal stakeholders is not easy. You don’t want a candidate to return to the office multiple times to interview. Placing a line in the sand is for the benefit of the internal stakeholders telling them you will finish this task in 3 weeks. I have had SVP’s insist on interviewing a potential hire and then have their schedule full of meetings for the next 2 weeks. I have also had other managers want to interview a candidate to determine if they are good fit for their team.

I stop at 5 candidates because of interview fatigue. The candidates start to blur over time and they become difficult to compare. The interviews are at least ½ day and the cost to the team in lost work starts to show. If you try to interview 5 candidates in a week your team will not be able to get any work finished.

Also, at least 2 candidates will be from professional conferences or prior interviews. They are already known to the team and just have to run the HR gauntlet.

Salary

The hiring manager also explains how he handles the salary question during interviews.

I never ask the candidates current salary because I feel it is irrelevant.  I know the market clearing price and most of the time the candidate knows it.  The ones who don’t know it are HR and that’s where the struggle begins and ends.  That’s why it will sometimes take weeks to schedule an interview.  You don’t want to bring anyone in until HR agrees with you on the salary range.

I had one hire who told me that his new salary was 100% higher than his previous salary.   That was a person who danced to work every day.


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