Would You Be Willing To Pay For Interview Feedback? (Take 2)

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“I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you’re going to innovate.”

– Howard Marks

Recently I wrote an article over at Fistful of Talent, and subsequently posted on LinkedIn, that caused some people to lose their minds.  I asked what I thought was a simple question: Would you be willing to pay for interview feedback?  Not just normal, thanks, but no thanks, interview feedback, but really in depth career development type of feedback from the organization that interviewed you.  You can read the comments here – they range from threats to outright hilarity! Needless to say, there is a lot of passion on this topic.

Here’s what I know:

– Most companies do a terrible job at delivery any type of feedback after interviews. Terrible.

– Most candidates only want two things from an interview.

1.  To Be Hired

2. If not hired, to know a little about why they didn’t get hired

Simple, right?  But, this still almost never happens!  Most large companies, now, automate the entire process with email form letters.  Even those lucky enough to get a live call, still get a watered-down, vanilla version of anything close to something that we would consider helpful.

When I asked if someone was willing to pay for interview feedback, it wasn’t for the normal lame crap that 99% of companies give.  It was for something new. Something better. Something of value.  It would also be something completely voluntary.  You could not pay and still get little to no feedback that you get now — Dear John, Thanks, but no thanks. The majority of the commentators felt like receiving feedback after an interview was a ‘right’ – legal and/or G*d given.  The reality is, it’s neither.

The paid interview feedback would be more in-depth, have more substance and would focus on you and how to help you get better at interviewing.  It would also get into why you didn’t get the job.  The LinkedIn commentators said this was rife with legal issues.  Organizations would not be allowed to do this by their legal staff because they would get sued by interviewees over the reasons.  This is a typical HR response.  If you say ‘legal’ people stop talking about an idea.  They teach that in HR school so we don’t have to change or be challenged by new ideas!

The reality is, as an HR Pro, I’m never going give someone ammunition to sue my organization.  If I didn’t hire someone for an illegal reason, let’s say because they were a woman, no person in their right mind would come out and say that.  Okay, first, I would never do that. Second, if I did, I would focus the feedback on other opportunity areas the candidate had that would help them in their next interview or career. No one would ever come out and say to an interviewee, “Yeah, you didn’t get the job because you’re a chick!”

This is not a legal or risk issue.  It’s about finally finding a way to deliver great interview feedback to candidates.  It’s about delivering a truly great candidate experience.  So many HR Pros and organizations espouse this desire to deliver a great candidate experience, but still don’t do the one thing that candidates really want.  Just give me feedback!

So, do you think I’m still crazy for wanting to charge interviewees for feedback?

 

 

Is Gen Z Going To Be Worse Than Millenials?

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Is Generation Z (those born between the years 1995 – 2009, of which I own 3) going to be worse than the Millenials?  I guess to answer that question you first have to put this into some perspective.  First, you would have to think of the Millenials as a wasted, or under performing, generation.  Then, you would have to believe that Gen Z will probably follow down a similar path.

Short answer? Yes.

Gen Z will be worse than the Millenials.  Just as the Millenials were worse than Gen X, and Gen X and than the Baby Boomers.  That’s how this goes.  The youngest generation is always the worse!  By generation, you get better with age, or at least your view on generations get better.  It’s a simple concept.  When a generation is nothing more than whiny, snot nosed, rude kids, they’re all a train wreck.  Then they get older, more mature, actually do something with their lives, and amazingly become a generation of substance.

So, yes, Gen Z will be worse.  As will Gen Alpha, which comes after Gen Z and those kids are 3 and 4 years old and already a waste of space on this planet!

Does that make you feel better Millenials?  You’re no longer the worse generation to grace Earth.  Now, it’s Gen Z.  Congratulations, you can now start writing blog posts and books about how to communicate with these crazy Gen Z kids.  Know one understands them, it’s totes cray. With all their selfies and their hashtaggy things, they are going to way worse than those trophy sucker Millenials!

I’ve decided for the 2015 SHRM National Conference I’m going to submit a presentation on how to speak Gen Z.  HR Pros need this valuable information!  I need to come up with a title that completely says Gen Z, but also is very vanilla and safe, so not to scare off the HR ladies in Gen X and beyond.  I think I might go with “#GenZProbs(>_<)” — what do you think?  No, that will never fly with SHRM Gestapo.  It has to say boring, yet strategic.  Safe, yet cutesy.

I don’t know.  My brain doesn’t really work in those contexts!

Let’s crowd source this.  Give me your best Gen Z title for my 2015 SHRM National Preso.  I’ll reward the winner, which will include an inappropriate hug.

3 Highly Effective Habits of Annoying Candidates

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I’ve noticed a run on ‘Highly Effective’ list posts lately!  It seems like everyone has the inside scoop on how to be highly effective at everything! Highly Effective Leaders. Highly Effective Managers. Highly Effective Productive People. Highly Effective Teacher.  If you want a post worth clicking on, just add an odd number, the words ‘highly effective’ and a title.  It goes a little something like this (hit it!):

– The 5 Highly Effective Habits of Crackheads!

– The 7 Highly Effective Traits of Lazy Employees!

– The 13 Highly Effective Ways To Hug It Out at Work!

Blog post writing 101.  The highly effective way to write a blog post people will click on and spend 57 seconds reading.

I figured I might as well jump on board with some career/job seeker advice with the 3 Highly Effective Habits of Annoying Candidates!

1. They don’t pick up on normal social cues.  This means you don’t know when to shut up or start talking.   Most annoying candidates actually struggle with the when to stop talking piece.  Yes, we want to hear about your job history. No, we don’t care about your boss Marvin who managed you at the Dairy Dip when you were 15.

2. They live in the past. Usually, annoying candidates are annoying because they were annoying employees and like to share annoying stories about how great it was in the past, when they weren’t thought of as annoying.  I guess you can’t blame them. If there was ever a possibility they weren’t annoying, I’d probably try and relive those moments as much as possible.

3. They lack a shred of self-insight.  That’s really the core, right?  If you had any self-insight, you would understand you’re just a little annoying and you would work to control that, but you don’t.  “Maybe some would say spending a solid ten minutes talking about my coin collection in an interview wouldn’t be good, but I think it shows I’m passionate!” No, it doesn’t.

You can see how these highly effective habits start to build on each other.  You don’t stop rambling on about something totally unrelated to the interview because you don’t notice Mary stopped taking notes ten minutes ago and started doodling on her interview notes, but you plow on because you told yourself during interview prep to make sure you got out all of your bad manager stories.

Highly effective annoying candidates are like a Tsunami of a lack of emotional intelligence.  Even if I was completely unqualified for a job I think the feedback afterwards from the interviewers would be: “we really liked him, too bad he doesn’t have any the skills we need.”   Highly effective annoying candidates have the opposite feedback: “if this person was the last person on earth with the skills to save our company, I would rather we go out of business!”

What annoying candidate habits have you witnessed?

Are You ‘Entitled’ To One Mistake?

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Current NBA LA Clippers owner, Donald Sterling, got in a heap of trouble for making racist statements that were caught on tape.  The NBA is going to kick this guy out of being an NBA owner, and it’s probably about time, as he has a history of just being racist.  He doesn’t want to stop owning the Clippers, so now he’s trying to do all he can to save what he can, and possibly still hang on to the team and not be forced to sell.  What is an 80 year old racist NBA owner to do?  Why go on CNN with Anderson Cooper!

Sterling is doing PR to try and get the public on his side, which is a colossal waste of time, but when you’re a billionaire you do silly stuff. Sterling believes we should all forgive him for making one big stupid mistake.  This is his exact quote from the interview:

“Am I entitled to one mistake, am I after 35 years? I mean, I love my league, I love my partners. Am I entitled to one mistake? It’s a terrible mistake, and I’ll never do it again,”

First off, this isn’t Donald Sterling’s first mistake.  He has a history of being a bad guy.   The one mistake argument doesn’t work well for him.  But should it work for anyone? That really is the question for all of this.

Should someone, like one of your employees, get a second chance?

In the HR world this is almost a daily dilemma that is faced.  On one hand you want to say, “Yes!”, shouldn’t everyone get a second chance.  But, as HR Pros know, many times, we don’t give employees a second chance.  Of course, there are reasons of why you wouldn’t give a second chance.  Like the Sterling case, you know of a history of prior bad decisions, coupled with this evidence, you make the call to say, “Nope! No second chance!”

This is what makes HR tough.  I’m not a big believer in the concept of ‘setting precedent’.  Which means basically using a previous example to guide a decision.  HR people (notice I didn’t say Pro) love to use this concept to make tough decisions, easy.  “Well, we fired Jill when she was late three times, so we also have to fire Bill!”  No, you don’t!  Now, you might have some risk, but unless the cases are completely the same, you’re just trying to take the easy way out!  Maybe Jill was late without excuse. Maybe Bill showed evidence of going to extraordinary lengths to make it to work and just couldn’t.  Just because you made one decision one way, doesn’t mean you always have to make it that way.  That’s uninformed and naive.

You get yourself in trouble when you start making decisions differently, for similar circumstances, based on things like gender, race, etc.  That’s when you get yourself into problems.  But if Bill was a much better performer than Jill, should I give him another chance? That’s the decision I need to make with my business partners. But to go and just say “No” we need to fire Bill, doesn’t make a well informed partner.

What about true first time, one mistake, issues?  Does someone ‘deserve’ a second chance?  I tend to believe it’s all based on context.  Mess up a major presentation because you didn’t crunch the data correctly, and we don’t get the sale.  Okay, I’ll give you another chance.  Forget to turn off the power to a machine when you’re finished, and a coworker gets badly injured because of it. You’re fired.  Second chance decisions on contextual.  Donald Sterling didn’t mistakenly become a racist in a conversation once.  He should be done forever. The NBA’s main ’employee’ is predominately African American.  He’s a racist.  I have enough of the context.

 

Wrong Company, Right Interview

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If you’re in the staffing game enough, you’re bound to have strange stuff happen to you.  I’ve had employees die on the job.  I’ve had employees go postal.  I’ve had employees get caught doing almost everything imaginable, but this past week I got a first!  I like firsts. Firsts are like little HR and Talent trophies you get to show off to your HR and Talent peers when you’re out after work sharing war stories!

It seemed like a normal Thursday.  Phones buzzing, recruiters cruitin’, interviews, offers, no-shows.  Call comes in from a client, “Hey, Bill never showed for his interview!” Ugh, I hate no-shows!  In good job times, no-shows increase at alarming rate.  Candidate gets ‘sold’ on a job, then they get buyers remorse and decide instead of being an adult, they’ll just burn a bridge.  We give Bill a call to see why he hates us so.  Bill answers! (that doesn’t usually happen with no-shows, you just have to yell at their voice mail and belittle to a recording) “Bill, I just got a call from InfoGenTech what the hell!  You no-showed. Please tell me one of your kids is seriously injured!”

Then a funny, first time thing, happened.

Bill says, “Well, I went on the interview, but went to the wrong company!”  What!?  Didn’t the wrong company tell you,”Hey dude, you’re stupid and at the wrong company!”  Nope, they didn’t.  This is the D! (Detroit for all you none “D’ers'”!) This company said, “What position are you supposed to interview for?”  Bill goes, “for aprogrammer position”.  Wrong company front desk person, knowing they also need programmers, quickly calls HR and explains Bill’s situation.  Bill gets on the spot interview with wrong company.  Bill never gets the chance to make it to our client’s interview.

Score one for the D.  The war for talent is alive and well in Detroit!

I’ve had candidates get lost and not be able to find where they are going for interviews.  I’ve had candidates show up at wrong locations.  I’ve never had a candidate go to the wrong location and get stolen by the company!

When people ask me how Michigan is doing, how Detroit is doing, I’ll give them this story.  We are so short on talent, we steal interviews.

Recruiting in the D.  Silicon Valley can kiss our ass!

HR’s Dirty Little Secret #26

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If you clicked over to read Dirty Little Secret #26 and you’re looking for numbers 1 – 25, hold tight, I haven’t written those yet.  I just like picking random numbers for posts because they work, and I believe HR has at least 26 Dirty Little Secrets.  This is just one.  I’m not really ranking them.  Number 26 could be as bad or worse than number 1.  I’ll let you decide when they’re all done.

So, what is HR’s Dirty Little Secret #26?

“We check secondary references, without you knowing, all the time!”

First let me give you the line 100% of all HR Pros will give to you and all employees, all the time.  “We do not give references.  We will only give you employment verification, which includes dates of employment. Thank you.”

You’ve heard that, right?

One of HR’s most dirty little secrets is that we give out references all the time!!!  Especially, if you’re a terrible employee!  We just don’t do it publicly.  The Chairman of JetBlue Airlines, Joel Peterson, wrote a blog post on LinkedIn (first, I doubt highly he wrote it, but his PR team did a nice job with the series) titled “Top 10 Hiring Mistakes, #5 Lazy Reference Checking”, where he gives advice about checking secondary references.  Secondary references are those references that a candidate didn’t give you, but you have through your own connections. His advice was awful, but he’s a public figure, he had to give it.  He said you should always let the candidate know you’ll be checking secondary references so they can reach out and let those people know.

First, thanks for the tip Joel, but that never happens. Never.  Plus, why would I want to give away the one unfiltered piece of the selection process I can get!? You don’t!

Here’s reality.  If you interview for a position, you should assume that someone in the organization is checking secondary references behind your back.  It’s easy to do.  I call up a buddy who works at your current, or old organization,  we talk, catch up on our favorite teams, crazy employees we both know, etc. Then, she let’s me know if you’re a train wreck or not.  Of course, she also first says, “Tim, you know we can’t give references.” Then she says, “Off the record, your candidate is a psycho path!”  End of secondary reference.

You think I’m joking.  It happens just like that, and it happens every. single. day.

Don’t get me wrong, most of the time, the secondary reference actually comes back positive.  You get more of an unfiltered references than you get by checking the ‘given references’ a candidate provides to you as part of your process.  Given References are completely worthless.  I don’t even waste my time checking given references.  If someone can’t find three people who think they walk on water, they’ve got bigger problems.

If you’re going to do ‘given references’ because you can’t talk the old white guys in your leadership out of it, because it makes them feel all warm, fuzzy and comfortable, at least talk them into automating this process.  Chequed is a company that does it better than anyone, and it will totally take this worthless activity off your back. Plus, Chequed has shown that people who fill out an automated reference check, even a given reference, will be more honest about a person’s actual strengths and weaknesses.  I’m a fan of their science. (FYI – they didn’t pay to say that, although, they should!)

I won’t ask what HR Pros think about this, because they’ll mostly lie and say they don’t do this.  That’s why it’s my HR’s Dirty Little Secret #26.

The Organization With the Most Expensive Selection Mistakes is?

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The NFL.  This Thursday that NFL will perform their annual selection process on ESPN, with their annual draft.  Just like you, they have no idea what they’re doing, but act like they figured out the secret sauce to great selection.  The big difference between you and the NFL, their mistakes costs them a lot more money!  Check out this chart from BI on the NFL Draft Guaranteed Contracts:

NFL draft

This chart basically shows you that the best, or highest, first round pick will get about $22 million guaranteed, while the lower third round picks will get $600k in guaranteed money over the life of their contract.

How would you like that level of possible expense in your selection process!?

All that money, all that time, all that research, and the NFL draft is still basically a crap shoot.  The pick people, like you pick people.  “Well, we really like Johnny’s football IQ and he just seems so personable! What the hell, let’s pay him $15M!”

What!?!

“Well, we know his ‘past performance’ in college.  We know all his ‘performance metrics’.  We gave him a personality profile.  We ‘feel’ like he’s a safe bet and potential high performer.”

It’s really not that different from you picking a $50,000 per year sales professional.   Many organizations put as much into their hiring selections, as the NFL puts into picking their draft selections.  Obviously, the NFL has more resources to throw at their process, so they probably have a few more bells and whistles.  But, they have no more success than you.  The ones who do the best, like you, are not only concerned about the ‘big’ hires/selections – your executive hires, their high first and second round draft picks, but put as much research and resources into each hire.  Making a great selection in the 7th round might be as valuable, long term, as making a great first round selection.  Just as you making a great entry level sales hire, might be as valuable, or more, to making a really solid Director level hire.

The learning on all of this?  You can’t take hires off.  There are no ‘throw away’ hires, just as their are no throw away draft picks for great NFL teams.

3 Ways to Kill Comparison Interviews

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I had a great candidate interview yesterday with a client!  This person is completely money!  Close the search, game over.  Just make the offer and pay me.

Then ‘it’ happens.

Client: “Tim, we loved her!  She is perfect!  I can’t believe you guys found her!”

Me: “Awesome. Pay me!”

Client: “Well, the hiring manager would like to just see one more person so she has a comparison, before making an offer.”

Me: “You’re looking for a female Environmental Safety Engineer with an Electrical Engineering background!  I found you the only person on the planet with that profile!  You want another?!”

Client: “Yeah, we just need something to compare her to.”

Me: “Okay, I’ll send over the recruiter who found her and we’ll tell her to talk like an engineer.”

How many times have you had a hiring manager do this to you?  It sucks!  It’s hard to get them to change their mind.  Usually, what happens is it takes you weeks to find another even remotely qualified candidate, as compared to you rock star, and by then your rock star gets pissed off, or cold feet and tells you to go fly a kite!  Opportunity lost!

Comparison Interviews are garbage.  The only way to stop them, is to combat the mindset before the words even come out of the hiring managers mouth.  Here are three things you can do today to stop hiring managers from wanting to do a comparison interview:

1.  Combat the conversation by setting up another interview with another candidate before they even ask, without asking for permission.  “Hey, Jill, we have that really great candidate you liked on paper coming in Wednesday at 1pm, I also set up another candidate for 3pm who was really the next best we could find. I’ll get the paper resume to you before she shows.”

2. Create a higher sense of urgency.  “Jill, you said she’s a rock star, let’s offer now before someone else has a chance to get her before we can.  I know someone of her quality has other options, we can’t look wishy washy on this, if we want talent like this!”

3. Define what ‘great talent’ is before the interview.  Then, when you see ‘great talent’ there is no need for a comparison.  “Jill we hire great talent, that talent by our definition is great talent.  If we find more great talent, we’ll hire that as well.  What do you want me to make the offer at?”

More hires are lost to comparison interview timing, than to counter offers.  We all think we are going to lose a great candidate to counter offers, but the reality is, they don’t happen often, and recruiters have gotten good about preparing candidates for those.  Recruiters aren’t prepared for comparison interviews and the process dragging on for weeks!  The market is quickly changing from where it has been over the past 10 years.  We went almost a decade where hiring managers could take their time and drag out our process. That behavior now costs you the best talent.

Kill the comparison interview mentality now, or it’s going to kill your talent pool!

 

Apparently, It Is All About The Money!

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To have highly engaged employees who must do what?

Come on. Come on.  What have you been told for the last 10 or 20 years?

I’ll give you the synopsis:

1. Recognize solid performance

2. Provide challenging and meaningful work

3. Give frequent feedback

4. Give employees a voice in decision making

5. Flexibility

Apparently, that’s all bull shit!  From the folks who teach other companies how to become Great Places To Work, Quantum Workplace, released a study last week that show from your most engaged employee, to your least engaged employee, they really only care about one kind of recognition — MONEY!  Here’s the chart:

engagement pic

Fascinating research, check out their white paper, it’s one of the better ones I’ve read in the past five years!

Also, it looks like your personalized pleather portfolios aren’t the bang for the buck you hoped for either!   That’s alright, neither is the spin you’ve been fed the past 20 years about people getting super psyched for additional responsibility, or the annual holiday party or summer family picnic.  All the crap blows as well.  You know what doesn’t blow?  MONEY! Yeah!  So, I’m really, really the best employee, with great performance?  Great! SHOW ME THE MONEY!

Also, you leaders who think your team just wants some words of praise, motivation and encouragement?  No they don’t.  They want you to hand out $100 bills, and shut your stupid mouth!

So, why have you been told a great big lie the last 20 plus years?

Advising leadership that all they have to do is hand out more money doesn’t really sell well!  Also, most companies are horrible at pay for performance.  They are unwilling to truly pay for great performance, and kick bad performers in the teeth with nothing.  We want to reward greatness with 5% and show those bad performers how serious we are by giving them a 1% increase! Take that bad performers!

What do you think gang?  What’s is your most important form of recognition?  Are you sure?  Or, are you just telling yourself that lie?

 

 

Profiling Diversity Hires

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Entelo, a recruiting technology company, recently launched a product called Entelo Diversity. To be honest, I had to look up what Entelo actually did.  I had heard the name, but I couldn’t have told you if they were an employee engagement company or an ATS – turns out they’re neither! They’re a recruiting play, inasmuch, you have needs that are hard to find, their product claims to help you find those needs (I’ve never used it, so I not telling you it works or doesn’t).  This new product, apparently, helps you find Black People! Or Women. Or Black Women. Or a half Black-Asain Women, who used to be a man. I’m not sure, for sure, I haven’t used it, I’m just going on their press release.

Here’s what I know, that most Talent and HR people lose their freaking minds over.  It’s not a bad thing to have a product or service that can specifically find you a certain kind of diversity.  I know. I know. That makes you really uncomfortable!

“TIM! People will use those products to discriminate!”

They might.  I can’t stop that at your organization.  I can stop that at my organization!

The products just find what you want.  If you need more female recruits for your hiring pool. Bam!  A product like this will help you.  If you need more shades of color within your organization. Bam! A product like this could help you build a rainbow in your organization.  If you have a hiring manager who only wants to hire young white guys in your organization. You need to address that!  But don’t blame a recruiting product.  You own that one!

I hear the same criticism every time I show a new group how to recruit on Facebook.  There are really cool options where you could search on females, 22 years old to 28 years old, who graduated with an engineering degree from Stanford. That’s is awesome, right!?   I need more young female engineers from Standford in my engineering department! But I can also search 31-45 year old white male engineers from Stanford as well.  Oh, well, that’s not so good, right?  Wrong.  What if your entire staff was black female engineers!  While highly unlikely, you would still need to add some diversity to that staff.

This isn’t about tools getting more powerful and precise to what you are looking for.  This is about those using those tools, usually Talent and HR Pros, ensuring that your organization is doing the right things to get the best hiring pools possible.  Too many Talent and HR Pros run away from using these tools, and it only shows their own ignorance for what true diversity and inclusion is.

Smart Talent and HR Pros know what their organizations are lacking, and they’ll work to fill those needs with the best available talent.  Sometimes that means you need to get very specific on the diversity side.  Sometimes it means you don’t.  Great Pros work to always have the correct balance for their organization, their demographic and their stakeholders.

(Editor’s Note: Ha! That’s funny, you all know I don’t have an editor.  Just so we are clear, Entelo did not compensate me for this post, but if they want to send me Diet Mt. Dew, I never turn that down.)