Question
Your advice is very, very upper management biased. Presenting a “business plan” in a job interview just isn’t possible in most non-management jobs! I’m trying to picture a waiter doing an executive interview. Not everyone can be the boss. Will you acknowledge this?
Nick’s Reply
How is a waiter like a CEO? That’s really what you’re asking.
The answer was obvious 100 years ago, and probably 200 years ago: both jobs affect a company’s profits. Why is it so hard to grasp? Why is that simple idea so lost in American business today?
A waiter’s executive interview
Every job used to be assessed on how well it paid off — that is, on the success of its “business plan.” Today that’s obvious for a CEO’s job. But, when it comes to lower-level jobs, suggests Wharton labor expert Peter Cappelli in Why Good People Can’t Get Jobs, “the internal accounting systems that give companies guidance on what to do are, on one hand, pretty sophisticated when it comes to cost. On the other hand, they are really unsophisticated when it comes to benefits.”
So HR and the waiter’s boss “can tell you to the penny what it costs to fill a job and what the labor costs are.” But modern corporate accounting systems don’t reveal the “benefits” or value produced by a specific job — unless it’s a management or executive job.
However, waiters that grasp and can communicate the benefits of their work to their employer stand apart whether the modern employer measures those benefits or not. Those waiters are more worth hiring. The waiter that shows up with a business plan has an executive interview.
The executive interview is about profit
Long before corporations became so complex, and jobs so narrowly defined, virtually all employees grasped that their performance — even at blue-collar jobs — directly affected their employer’s bottom line. But today, you can hardly find a manager — even a CEO — that can tell you how a specific job (or employee) contributes to a company’s success. This is because jobs are now fully characterized by how much they cost a company, not by how much they profit the company.
Rather than address your hypothetical waiter example, I’ll tell you about a real example to illustrate my larger point that every worker “can be the boss” who must be able to explain how they profit their employer by doing the equivalent of an executive interview.
The lab technician’s executive interview
There used to be a radio talk-show host in Philadelphia named Irv Homer. Irv was an institution in Philly. He was crotchety, insanely smart, blunt and focused on educating his listeners. I was his radio guest many times. As you might guess, we did live Q&A during his broadcasts. We took unscripted questions from listeners about how to land a job.
One caller wanted to share his success story about getting a job. He was a blood lab technician and he’d recently been rejected for a job. But, using advice he’d heard me give on an earlier Irv Homer program, he called the manager who had rejected him to ask for a second chance and he knew how to say it.
How to Say It
“I know I blew it when you recently interviewed me for a job in your lab. Since then I’ve thought about your operation. If you’ll give me 15 more minutes of your time, I’ll show you how I think I can speed up processing time of blood samples by about 10% with no loss of accuracy. If you’re not satisfied, I’ll leave and never bother you again.”
The manager took him up on it. The guy showed up, went into the lab with the manager (no interview this time), looked it over, and showed how, by shifting the work space around, he could speed up the work process and boost efficiency significantly. He got the job.
I have no idea how much faster the lab was able to process samples. The technician basically created a business plan for the job, and then executed it in his second meeting with the boss.
I believe this works for any job. If a person can’t do what this technician realized he had to do, then they have no business asking for the job. Any job.
This works in an executive interview, too
Not long after I met the blood lab technician on Irv Homer’s show, I did a workshop in another part of Philadelphia — for the Wharton School of Management’s Executive MBA students. I taught them substantially what we’re discussing here. Afterwards, one of the executives reached out about how he used the “business plan” approach in a job interview:
“Your two biggest lessons (at least for me) at work in the flesh: (1) Never divulge my current salary, and (2) Talk about what I will do, not what I’ve done. The hiring manager more or less offered me the position on the spot and indicated a salary range that is roughly 40-50% more than I make now.”
Every job is a business in itself and deserves to be treated as one. Every job needs a plan for success and profitability at its own level — not just executive jobs. Every employee is the manager of their own job, and their #1 priority is to do the job profitably.
Why do we seem to have lost track of this fundamental idea?
See also Employment In America: WTF is going on?
Do you agree with the O.P.? Or are the jobs of CEOs, waiters, technicians and managers all really businesses unto themselves that require planning and profitable execution? What’s the difference between interviewing for a job and showing how you will run the job as a business? Do you believe you just don’t get paid enough to worry about your job’s profitability? Is it even possible to calculate the profitability of a single job?
: :
When AI is looked to for doing every job, as is happening in many fields such as marketing now, we reach the reduction ad absurdum of profitability. No employees=lowest cost possible=highest profits possible.Those left will be doing the job of two or three people if they even remain. Humans cost too much. Even if the end result is mediocre, buggy, and the company folds, the founder, shareholders, and investors make money.
Need a business plan? Plug in a few numbers and let AI do it and the manager maybe edits it. Need a white paper? Blog post? Social media post? And so on. Restaurants? Ultimately it’ll be order on the tablet with AI suggesting and delivery at the pickup area.
@Dee: It’s happened before. Not long ago IT operations discovered they could save loads of money by outsourcing coding and other functions overseas to highly educated (and probably talented) workers. They started out fine. Then they realized communication was a problem. The time difference was a problem. Cultural differences were a problem. And the standards of quality were very different. Projects suffered, which means customers suffered. A company’s best, most costly software developers and coders were fired – and, with no other options, many started their own businesses, never to return to corporate IT. Employers started complaining “there’s a shortage of talent!”, “it’s the schools’ fault – they’re not teaching the right stuff!”, “recruiters aren’t doing their jobs!” and so on.
Wharton labor expert Peter Cappelli explained it in short order (search his name on this site): Employers own the problem because after all that, they refused to pay market salaries to get the talent they so desperately needed. They refused to allow for traditional “onboarding” time and refused to pay for employee training. Having slashed their budgets because their work model had changed to “cheaper offshoring,” they indeed could not afford the workers they needed.
Oops. Must be somebody else’s fault.
Today, it’s phony recruiting. It costs a lot less to buy LinkedIn “recruiter seats” than to train real recruiters to actually go out into the world to find, entice, seduce, convince the best workers to come work for their companies.
So we hear it again: “there’s a shortage of talent!” Like Peter Cappelli said: YOU OWN IT.
Same has happened in the world of writing. Good writers are relatively rare and they charge enough to make a living. So when “It’s so easy!” A. I. came along, budgets for writers were quickly slashed. A.I. does the writing! It’s free!
Some of it is okay, but I can almost always pick out the A.I.-generated “content.” It’s “good enough.” We’ll see how long the customers tolerate it.
I’m shocked that the lab tech got the job and executed the plan. Usually the end of that interview is a thank you and the manager taking the suggestion without hiring the tech.
That is happening a great deal now with companies at later stages of interviews demanding free work on real problems or projects capped by one way video demos or presentations. The usual line then is that ‘we’re going in a different direction for this role’ or ‘we’re waiting for another round of funding’. Then those presentations, plans, and documents are handed off to an existing employee who’s told to sort through them, finalize them, and that they will be adding these responsibilities at little to no pay/grade increase (they may throw a title). Because the market is poor, people take it. This has happened so many times in my work career it’s predictable.
@Dee: I’ve seen the “free work” game many times and I advise job candidates to present just enough info to whet the employer’s appetite. If they ask for more: “I’d be glad to provide the rest on a consulting basis until you decide whom to hire, at $X/day (or hour). Or you can just hire me now.”
Never do free work or leave notes behind. If they insist, they’re gonna screw you even if they hire you. If they respect your position, you may have found your employer.
Unfortunately free work is the norm now, particularly in early stage companies. It’s hard to not have a ‘leave behind’ when the stipulation is to do a one-way video presentation or pitch. You can refuse and give your reason for objecting–and hear crickets. I’ve seen this demanded from CEOs who must have seen this on a TEDtalk and from HRs contracted out of Europe clearly stipulated as part of their jobs. I believe this is generational–that millenials and late gen X are wary of human contact even on a video screen. And it is a lot easier to rule out an obviously older candidate 30 seconds in as ‘not a culture fit’.
That’s always been my sticking point is how much information do you give them in an interview without giving it all away for free in a mini business plan. Also, job descriptions are so overloaded with jargon and a lot of bullet points (sometimes 20-30 “duties” for a single job). How do you get to the heart of the matter when there’s a muddled job description? Any suggestions?
Anna, I believe it tracks right back to what Nick is saying. JDs are now being written by committee, as is interviewing. Everybody wants something a little different. The SVP/VP, the VP/director, etc. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve interviewed with the HM and I pass with flying colors, then the next word I hear is that the senior management has changed direction. They want points 3 and 4 not what the HM wants which is 1 and 2. Or the HM really likes me but the group I’d be working with is lukewarm. Far easier for them to say no than yes for their own reasons. All indicators of a weak HM. No one wants to be the decider, and that’s true with proposals as well as hiring.
@Anna: Taken together, these two articles might help:
https://www.asktheheadhunter.com/16587/doing-free-work-earn-job-interview
https://www.asktheheadhunter.com/16286/get-a-job-the-4-questions
Thanks for the links Nick. I read the articles to better understand how much info should be divulged before it crosses the line to working for free.
As part of a pre interview task for a nonprofit, I was asked to redo a spreadsheet that was poorly set up, a PPT slide deck that had way too many words on each slide and an edit of a document. After I started working on these items, it seemed like free work. I did some editing on each piece and then decided to give vague suggestions for improvement. I never heard from HR. I think they were using the pre interview task as a way to get free work.
Someone told me that if it takes more than 15-20 minutes for a pre interview task, he quotes them a daily consultation rate. He said that weeds out those looking for free work vs those interested in learning more about how a candidate works.
Always be wary of ‘pre interview’ tasks that are not pure and relevant skill based. In fact, for a marketing program development job, I’ve been asked if I have coding skills which is as irrelevant as fish on a rollercoaster. With some companies, they’ll ask you for a plan for a product or service that apparently has nothing to do with them…but it turns out later that company bought another in, ha ha, that business. Free work means they’re collecting, not hiring.
@Dee: what you’re describing is the “kitchen sink” approach to interviewing candidates. A manager, or HR, thinks they might be able to “kill two birds with one stone” by throwing a few more requirements into a job AFTER the candidate agreed to interview for job WITHOUT those new requirements. That’s how employers lose good candidates. They figure, if we can find a good marketing candidate that ALSO codes, it’s a win for us! Then they reject or lose a good marketing candidate to whom they threw a stupid curve ball about coding!
In my pdf books I emphasize again and again that just because the employer “controls” the interview doesn’t mean they know what they’re doing. The applicant must deftly exert control for their own benefit AND for the employer’s benefit. It takes both sides to manage an interview.
At this point, and from what I’m reading out there, the hiring zeitgeist is keyed not into experience and learned wisdom–plus the willingness to use it, and resilience over the long term, but into “flexibility” or at least the perception of it (read: won’t rock the senior management boat), some nodding acquaintance with AI, cheap (especially), and fitting like a piece into a ‘young’ culture. There’s a real hivemind out there from which older and even not so old but experienced candidates are excluded, almost with glee.
As a reporter/writer in digital health for nearly 20 years, long ago I lost count of the promising ‘revolutionary’ tech companies that failed because the founders and their tech were just so special, took a ton of VC money, fractured a few laws, broke a few things, and they listened to no one. Theranos was a glaring example but there are many others. ‘Flexibility’ is a nice value but companies no longer value a mix of the experienced and young comers. Ethics and good governance went out the window a long time ago, in all sized companies.
I’d add that the end result of this zeitgeist is failure. Failure to perform, to develop, to lead, to create an innovative or even a good product. I’ve seen way too many companies where they go bankrupt and the employees don’t even get their last paychecks because of bankruptcy, but the founders and the top management leave with millions and are off to another scammy startup within months. Look up Babylon Health which scammed the health system of Rwanda when it shut!
@Anna: Good for you. Look, I realize that being too aggressive about turning down requests for “showing how you would do the job” might mean you’re dropped from consideration. You want to provide “enough” but not too much. Only you can decide what’s too much. It can help to explain that you’ve been subjected to unreasonable requests by some employers. “I’m assuming the best about your request and I’m happy to show you what I can do. But can we agree in advance how much you really need me to do to demonstrate my acumen? If I believe it’s too much we can reassess or I’d be glad to quote you my hourly consulting rate if you wish.”
Or something like that, that you’re comfortable with. PLEASE don’t use my exact words. It must sound like you and you must be comfortable with what you’re saying.
In any case, good for you for drawing a line!
Your initial request was about a non-exective job. Here’s how I would do it for a job as a server. The key to restaurant profits is being able to turn over the maximum number of tables during a busy period without alienating guests. This is especially true for restaurants that don’t take reservations. I would explain how I provide excellent service to my customers and reward my table bussers for speedy turn around, and cite some numbers as to how many tables of four I can serve in a two hour period.
@Lynn: Thanks for an excellent example! It doesn’t have to be complicated – and should not be. Anyone wondering about this, ask yourself, how many job candidates do you think do as much as Lynn suggests? I think this server candidate would be the ONLY one to make such a powerful, yet simple, suggestion!
Thinking back to counter-service restaurant days, some skills and habits that save money/increase sales, and that you could mention in an interview:
*Shows up a few minutes before shift starts, to make sure the team can smoothly handle the first part of a rush;
*When receiving merchandise, always checks the paperwork before signing off;
*Always conscious of the need to rotate foods so that nothing goes bad;
*Understands that if there’s time to lean, there’s time to clean;
*Accurate cash handling every time;
*Good with customers, knows how to sell without being pushy.
Etc!