Respecting the Candidate

Imagine you are interviewing a senior executive candidate for a position with your organization.   The candidate is an expert in her field, and the job market is good, so you expect she will receive job offers from other companies.  Naturally you are keen not to offend her, but you also want to be sure she is the right fit.  So how can you appropriately show respect for her, while still conducting a rigorous and thorough interview process? 

We get this question all the time.  Basically “How far can we push, or how much can we ask without being obnoxious or offensive?”

So let’s review what is and what is not respectful in the eyes of the most sought-after candidates:

• RESPECT:  Asking lots of tough interview questions  (and smart follow-up questions) is perfectly respectful.  Being rigorous in your selection process is fundamentally respectful.  Anything you do to reduce your hiring risk (and their corresponding risk of taking the wrong job) is respectful.  So go ahead and be demanding – you both benefit.
• DISRESPECT:  A poorly written, vague job description is disrespectful, it shows you did not care enough to outline what was expected of the person – you have shown no respect for the importance of the work.  Think hard about your expectations before you start recruiting.
• RESPECT:  A thorough interview sequence with multiple people is perfectly respectful, as long as you do not request that the candidate visit your office more than 3 times.  A group interview, or individual meetings with 5 or 10 people is fine, but don’t ask the candidate to come to your office more than 2 or 3 times.  And it is polite to estimate how long the interviews will be expected to last - that shows respect for their time. 
• DISRESPECT:  A disorganized, unplanned interview sequence is disrespectful.      Rescheduling interview times, making the candidate wait in the lobby, forgetting to include a key decision maker, and adding interview steps at the last minute … all these common occurrences are incredibly disrespectful.   Candidates notice when you don’t have your act together.  They may politely endure it, but you have wasted an easy opportunity to look good by simply scheduling intelligently.
• RESPECT:  Work sample testing is perfectly fine, as long as you do not ask them to spend more than a few hours at home on the assignment.  And I urge you to never ask something of the candidate prior to the first interview.  (Yes, I’ve heard stories of firms that make applying for a job difficult, but I do not recommend this practice.  It drives away too many good people who are simply too busy to play the game, and it is inconsistent with starting a conversation with those people you are actively recruiting).   You can ask more of someone when they know they are one of 3 finalists for a position.  When presented properly, almost nobody will take offense at work sample testing.
• DISRESPECT:  Letting weeks go by in between steps is disrespectful.   Waiting for several days to hear back from an employer after an interview does not show respect for the candidate.   Be decisive, let them know where they stand.
• DISRESPECT:  Failure to acknowledge the person’s time investment is disrespectful.  From the beginning, a simple “thank you for your resume, here is our hiring timeline” email is the minimum for all candidates who apply.  At the end, a simple “thank you the position has been filled” is enough.  And for the few people who actually interview, a more personal update is appropriate.  To do alny less is disrespectful.

In my experience people worry far too much about fundamentally respectful things like asking tough questions, including lots of people in the interview sequence and doing smart work sample testing.  Conversely, people worry far too little about actually disrespectful things like allowing vague performance expectations, running a sloppy interview sequence, and not providing candidates information about where they stand in the process.

It Ain’t What You Say, It’s the Way That You Say It

When you introduce your organization to a prospective employee, what do you tell them?  You say more than you realize with your choice of language for the ad (dull job description or interesting ad copy), how you get the word out (social media, job board, or networking through friends), how you have people apply (excruciating online application or just email a resume).   

If you doubt me for a second, I’ll prove it.  Here are three other ways I could make the same point to you: 

First Grammy-winning composer Billy May:

“It ain’t what you do it’s the way that you do it
It ain’t what you do it’s the time that you do it
It ain’t what you do it’s the place that you do it
And that’s what gets results”

Second, one of HR’s most respected bloggers – Kris Dunn: 

There’s opportunity to differentiate in every job on the planet by thinking more like a marketer, and HR and Recruiting have more opportunity than most.

Finally, and most concisely, William Zinsser, who said  “Writing is thinking on paper.” 

Now,  just observe how each of the three messages affected you.   Which one got the point across best? 

I’m not saying you need to use YouTube clips, or quote respected authorities, or write with the clarity of William Zinsser, but you do need to recognize the impact of each choice on your target audience. 

Any way you say it, candidates can tell in seconds just how much thinking you put into your recruiting efforts, and they’ll respond accordingly.

Who’s That Driving Around in Your Employment Brand?

Hiring managers, who is that behind the wheel of your employment brand?  You’ve had 5 internal meetings to discuss the language on your new website, but then you hired a contingent recruiter to work on your job opening after talking to them on the phone for what, half an hour?  

What exactly are they telling people about you, your company, and your open job?

When you engage a search firm, you hand over your reputation as an employer.  They are authorized to represent you (for the duration of their engagement).  It’s like handing over the keys to your car … with your company name emblazoned on the side of it.  They ARE your employment brand while they are behind the wheel.   And remember, they are talking to a lot of people about your company.

So how much control do you have over what they say?  In most cases, none at all.  So yeah, you probably want to know who you are dealing with, what their reputation is, and precisely what they will say about your job opportunity.

At Staffing Advisors, we craft a written marketing message for you, and give you a chance to look it over before we use it.  (You told us that you offer great work/life balance, but really don’t want to want to over-promise that?  Ok, no problem, we’ll delete that sentence…).  We want to be sure the message sets the right tone for skills, performance expectations, cultural fit … everything.  

Then, when we deliver the message, someone with real credibility reaches out.  Kelly Dingee, our Strategic Recruiting Manager has real digital credibility.  She writes well enough to meet Jessica Lee’s demanding standards at Fistful of Talent (no easy feat), she was named one of the Top HR Digital Influencers by John Sumser over at The HR Examiner, and then publicly praised this week by both Kris Dunn and Glenn Cathey - that’s doing pretty well with HR’s digital royalty I’d say. 

So yeah, Kelly looks legit when she reaches out to someone.  And that is reflected in how people respond to her.  (Test this for yourself.  Google the name of whoever you are trusting with your brand.  That’s what smart candidates do before they respond.  So how does it look?) 

We’ve connected with over 25,000 candidates this year (people who were referred to us, or people we reached out to).   I hear about every single person who has had a complaint with the service.  This year, I talked to less than a dozen disappointed people – that’s less than one in two thousand who had a complaint - and remember, 24,900 of those people ended their experience with us by getting a rejection letter.   

I’m not saying you need to hire us to protect preserve and defend your employment brand (although that is an excellent idea), and I’m not bashing how other search firms do business (Relax third-party recruiters, I’ve said for years that the contingency search model is perfectly valid).

 I’m just saying you need to think harder about who you let drive your reputation around.  Because it matters more than you may realize.

Failure to Communicate – Overused Words

Be very careful what you ask for, or you just may get it.  Almost two years ago, I wrote a post “Bad Job Ads Attract only Desperate Candidates” and I pointed out some really common (boring) words in job descriptions that are not only useless, they are the kind of words that suck all the oxygen out of the room when you use them.  Candidates don’t know precisely what you mean when you use them – so they actually detract from your message.  

Now I find that our friends at LinkedIn have done the same thing…but with the most overused words in resumes.   (Their list is below)  Note how closely the lists match up! Apparently candidates have learned to play back all those meaningless job description words in their resumes.   Hilarious.

LinkedIn’s most overused resume words:

• Innovative
• Dynamic
• Motivated
• Extensive Experience
• Results Oriented
• Proven Track Record
• Team Player
• Fast Paced
• Problem Solver
• Entrepreneurial

My two year old list of overused job description words:

• Dynamic (found in 22,000 local ads) 
• Hands On  (found in 12,000 local ads)
• Motivated (found in 10,000 local ads) 
• Fast Paced (found in 9,000 local ads)
• Exciting (found in 8,000 local ads) 
• Team Player (found in 4,000 local ads)  
• Self-Starter (found in 4,000 local ads)

So, if you use dull words in your job descriptions, I suppose you have no right to complain about all those dull resumes you receive….right?

Sharp Rise in Senior Staff Turnover Reported

CEO Update recently reported on a trend we’ve been talking about all year – the spike in executive turnover at associations and nonprofit organizations across the Washington metropolitan area.   They reported that the number of open positions posted with them is ”greater than 2008, 2007, 2006 or any other year we have tracked.”

Back in January we predicted that the local job market would be a big game of musical chairs this year, driven primarily by executive turnover. 

In August we observed that top candidates were on the move in larger numbers, and that we were seeing a spike in candidates who were receiving multiple job offers.   As you may recall, on the strength of that trend we declared the recession over  (at least as a retention tool) a full month before the economists made it official on September 20th.   (Then again, in their September announcement, they said the recession actually ended in June 2009 … so just give me 15 months and I’ll predict what happened today). 

No matter how you look at the data, this is certainly a good time to look for a job if you are an association or nonprofit executive.  Not looking?  Then now might be a really good time to update your executive succession plans and rethink your retention strategies, because your best people are getting calls.

You Can’t Always Get What You Want

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards got it right.  You can’t always get what you want.  Especially in hiring.  Especially now.

Right now (in the DC job market) candidates are gaining the upper hand.    Want proof?  Look at the number of top performers who left your firm for another job.  Next look at the number of candidates you want to hire who have multiple competing job offers – that’s the best way to measure who has the upper hand in your industry.  

So if you are like most DC employers, here is what you can expect with this market shift:

• Your perfect candidates will turn down your job offer to take some other job more often than you’d prefer.  
• More first round candidates will surprise you and decide not to proceed into the second round interviews.  
• Your new hires might even call you before their start date and tell you they accepted a counteroffer from their current employer.

What to do about it?  Like most business risks, you can “buy insurance.” 

• You buy insurance when you start with a big candidate pool of 6 or more people. 
• You buy insurance when you keep the interview process moving quickly for all the candidates and don’t prematurely lock in on just one person.
• You buy insurance when you think long and hard about making a really competitive offer to the person you want. 
• You buy insurance when you stay in touch between making the job offer and when the new hire starts. 
• You buy insurance when you make sure they feel welcomed during their first few weeks.

No, you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need .. but just in case, buy insurance.

Top Performers Are on the Move

A recent study by Right Management confirms what we have been seeing across the job market – critical talent is on the move.   54% of organizations reported losing high-performing workers during the first 6 months of 2010.  We started reporting on this trend back in November of 2009, and our predictions proved accurate.

Top performers are grativating to positions that offer better career opportunities.  So while you need to pay careful attention to retaining your top people, there is another aspect to this story that is equally important.

Top candidates are becoming far more choosy in selecting their next position.   Here is the new reality of recruiting in this job market:

• More candidates will have multiple job offers – you cannot assume you are making the only job offer they will receive.
• More candidates will receive counter-offers from their current employer.  Although it is almost always a mistake to accept a counter-offer, the reality is that many employees do.
• Job offers will become more generous.  Simply offering a good job, with a financially stable company is no longer enough.  You have to make the most competitive offer you can, or you may not see your job offer accepted.   Good enough is no longer good enough to attract great people.

This is what recovery from a deep recession looks like.  Better get used to it.

The One Question Every Top Performer Wants You to Answer

When you are recruiting a top performer to your organization, there is one big question that you must answer above all others.  Some think it’s pay, or reporting structure, or title.  Yes, those things matter, but they are not the big question.  Whoever you have posting your job ads seems to think that top performers are eager to read the dull list of job responsibilities found in your job descriptions … ummm, no – that is most definitely not the big question you need to answer. 

So what do do top performers need to know right up front?  What question must you answer for them before you can even begin the recruiting process?

You must explain why this open job is important to you.  You need to demonstrate why it is so important to the future of the organization.   To answer those questions you must outline what would happen if this job were done really well.  You need to share your success criteria – showing concretely how performance will be measured.  You have to get beyond the theoretical and into the tangible reality of the job.   That proves to the job seeker that you have thought deeply about the job, about what you need, and about who would be successful.

Whether you call them self-starters, high-achievers, or ”A” players, top performers are drawn to big, important, high-stakes jobs.  They want jobs where achievement matters, where their skills are put to the test.  And if the job is not important to you, you can be sure it will not be interesting to them.

How to Attract Candidates When Nobody Has Ever Heard of You

Hiring managers in small organizations often feel like they are at a disadvantage in competing with big firms to attract top candidates.   In reality, many top performers strongly prefer smaller organizations - but very few small organizations fully exploit their natural recruiting advantage:

Small organizations have a far greater ability to make top performers feel significant, and important to the future of the enterprise.

When we consult with small organizations I often hear the same refrains  “Nobody knows how great this place is!”  or “How can we attract the best people, when nobody ever heard of us?”  So here it is - your five step guide for how to attract top performers to your small company, association or nonprofit.  In your external job advertisements, in your recruiting emails, on your website … in every external message, do the following:

• First, tell your story  – what makes you unique?  What are 3 things that “outsiders” don’t know about working there?  If you can be interesting, you can get people’s attention.   If you only post a dull job description on job boards, please just give up now, you are beyond hope.  Seriously, stop reading now and just resign yourself to a future of anonymous mediocrity.  
• Second, outline your goals.   What do you want to accomplish this year?  What is the challenge in the work?  Top performers are attracted to challenge more than anything else, so put it out there.
• Third, what are you going to do for someone’s career?  Small firms often enable top performers to “stretch their wings” and take on more responsibility earlier in their career than big firms do.  Top people can often run with their ideas and be more entrepreneurial, being less burdened by bureaucracy.  High achievers like being more important to the future of their organization -  appreciate not feeling ”like a number” – all of which increases both your appeal, and their sense of job security.   
• Fourth, talk about your culture, but don’t try to be generically (blandly) appealing.  Instead be specific and unambiguous.  If you are “a bunch of service-driven control freaks” say it just that way.  It’s far better to be edgy and clear than vague and blandly corporate.  What gives people that “sense of belonging” to your team?  Can you be equally clear about who does *not* fit?
• Fifth, find a way to reach out beyond your circle of friends.  Think about how you are going to get the word out beyond your normal circle of influence.   Are you only going to post ads?  What have you done to really engage a wider audience?  What have you done to share your story with all those fine people who are not actively looking and never realized just how great an employer you really are?  Is your story interesting enough to share?  If not, keep working on your story. 

Social Media Only Makes Recruiting Fundamentals More Important

Every day I see more recruiters starting to engage with social media.  Understanding social media is no longer optional for recruiting professionals, your career will suffer if you are a Twidiot. But one of the most common mistakes I see from newbies is to assume the social media platforms are a strategy, or that somehow just using the tools will make much difference in their results.  (“Yup I tweeted my job posting, the resumes should be pouring in now”).   

Twitter and Facebook are not a strategy, they are tools.  And social media tools are not going replace recruiting fundamentals, instead they will only shine a bright light on everything that is already wrong with your current recruiting process – they will, in fact, make your recruiting fundamentals even more important.

• A badly written job description gets no more attention from great candidates just because you posted it on Facebook or Twitter – in fact it gets less because there is so much more competition now for people’s limited attention.
• Attracting more candidates through a clever social media outreach campaign will only make you look bad to more people if your hiring process is flawed … in any way.
• Candidates who have a poor interview experience with you now have so many more places to voice their disappointment, through Google’s Sidewiki, or Glassdoor,  Diigo, Twitter or other emerging sites.  And their comments will do more to define your recruiting brand than anything you are thinking about doing with your website.

 So the rise of social media is clearly a mixed blessing.  

Before the rise of social media I used to work for a guy who said “If the 60 Minutes News crew was filming our every action, would you do anything differently?  If so, change your behavior right now and then act like that camera is running every day.”   Now that social media is here to stay, I’d like to update that challenge to this:

If everyone who has any interaction with your recruiting process could post their experience on YouTube, what would you change about your recruiting process?  Then change it right now.

But just to be sure we’re on the same page with this idea, perhaps you’ll first want to watch this this YouTube video (watched over 7 million times) about Dave Carroll’s poor experience with United Airlines:

When is the Best Time to Recruit?

When is the best time to recruit?  Ideally you want to be recruiting when lots of good candidates are available, paying attention and willing to talk to you.  You also want to be recruiting when your competition is NOT actively trying to recruit the same people you are.   So when do you find that ideal combination of events?  

During the December holidays you have fewer employers to compete with, but you also have fewer candidates looking.   That usually makes holidays a ”wash” – you can still recruit, but you have no special advantage.  But there is a time when the odds are definitely in your favor.   

The ”golden recruiting window” is the first three weeks of January. 

On the candidate side:  You have lots of job seekers who took a bit of time off for the holidays.  Perhaps they spent time with family and complained about their job.  Perhaps on a long car trip they reflected on what they really wanted from their careers and concluded their current job did not provide the challenge or stimulation they need.  I’m not exactly sure why it happens, but I do know that every year a huge number of incredibly well qualified people come on the job market in early January.  They make a decision to consider new opportunities.  Some people even make a New Year’s resolution to get a new job.

On the employer side:  Many employers gear up their hiring in January.  Some firms have fresh new annual budget money to spend.  But most managers are swamped in December and put off until January all the nitty gritty tasks like writing a job description, or getting internal approvals signed off.   This administrivia delays the beginning of their recruiting process until late January, and sometimes February. 

That leaves a golden recruiting window in January with lots of motivated candidates who are newly “on the market” - or at least available for a conversation – and very few employers who are talking with them yet. 

So if you want a gorgeous, motivated candidate pool, with relatively little competition from other companies, get your act together in early December, and launch your recruiting initiatives right on January 1.   If you run a fast clean hiring process, you can be making job offers before your competition has even started recruiting.

Salary Negotiations Revisited

I’ve written before about botched job offers - how employers can hurt themselves by extending a job offer without considering all the factors.   In this post I want to debunk revisit the conventional wisdom about salary negotiations.  

First, while salary negotiations may feel stressful,  in today’s job market, I find that many savvy job seekers have a decent sense of their own market value - such information is much more readily available than it once was.  So there is not really much confusion about “market rate” or the market value of one person vs. another.  Second, salary negotiations are not particularly complex for most jobs.  There is little need for haggling or clever negotiating ploys.  The job seeker is always free to walk away – decline the offer or make a counter-offer, but with few exceptions, the employer decides when and how to talk money – and most employers are willing to pay pretty close to “market rate.”

So before we debunk it, let’s review the “conventional wisdom.”  When job seekers ask advice on salary negotiations, they are almost always given this (well meaning, but bad) advice:  

• “Never talk about salary in the first interview.  The longer you wait to discuss salary, the better the offer.”  (Let’s put this old chestnut to rest right away:  Yes, it’s true, your value as a job seeker goes up as the employer learns more about your capabilities, but recruiters give this advice mostly just to stop people from asking about salary in the first interview – which is a common interview mistake and is considered impolite by most employers.  This advice is not really about negotiating salary, but rather it’s about smart interview strategy – don’t impatiently skip ahead to the offer when you should still be interviewing to get the job).
• “When negotiating, always make the other party give their number first.”  (That presumes both parties have equally good information and are negotiating one to one, which is not accurate.  So let’s delve into this a bit more.)

You have to pay attention to who has the power in the negotiations – who can most easily walk away.  And in this economy, by and large, that’s the employer – they control the whole interview sequence and gather information when it suits their needs.  Frankly, even when they are not in control, most employers act this way, and most job seekers play along.  (In our searches, we always ask job seekers to share with us, up front,  either their current salary or their target salary range.  If that is near the range the employer can consider, then we are comfortable continuing the process and potentially putting someone forward to interview.  Until we gather this information, we will not proceed).   

So, while some job seekers might consider interviewing for a job without knowing the salary, frankly I don’t know any employer who will wait until the very end of the interview sequence to even begin thinking about money.   Salary budgets don’t work that way, and employment applications ask for current salary information.  So in reality, job seekers almost always give the first number and thereby set the stage for the salary conversation.  But that is not necessarily a bad thing for the job seeker … and I’ll soon explain why. 

Another factor in the negotiations is the one to many relationship of employers to job seekers.  Rarely do our searches come down to just one potential candidate – there are almost always several people being considered as finalists, so if one person is being “unreasonable” about salary, the employer can simply move down the list to the #2 or #3 candidate.  In fact I often hear employers tell me that “any of these 3 finalists are perfectly well qualified to do the job”  Hiring then becomes a simple matter of preference, not a desperate attempt to hire the only qualified person presented, which again reduces the perceived negotiating leverage of the job seeker – but not their actual advantage.   

So why do job seekers potentially still have a winning hand in salary negotiations, even if they gave their number first?  And why will employers often pay more than they budgeted in order to hire the right person?  

• First, because hiring managers tend to “stretch” to hire great people, and are often willing to pay a small premium for an ideal candidate.  (Even when 3 perfectly well qualified people are in play, managers will often stretch to hire their first choice. )
• Second, the person who speaks first in a negotiation gains the “anchor effect.”   In their book “The Art of Woo” authors Richard Shell and Mario Moussa, describe this as setting the other person’s expectations about the range of final agreements that may be possible.

In “The Truth About Negotiations” Leigh Thompson described experiments showing that the anchor effect has a powerful impact on people’s judgments - even when the number given is arbitrary!  In one astonishing experiment the anchor number was literally set by a roulette wheel, and yet it still affected people’s judgment in later conversation. 

So, in salary negotiations, I think there is a very real advantage to being the job seeker who shares their salary expectations upfront.  When they are selected for the position, they have often framed the conversation about what salary level would be acceptable.

Why You Should Not Ask People to Rate Themselves

Today I feel scientifically vindicated.  I have often said that bad candidates over-rate their abilities, while good ones under-rate their abilities.  If you ask two job applicants ”On a scale from 1 to 10, how proficient are you with Excel?” the more skilled person will often rate themselves lower than the less skilled person.   I know this because I used to work in a place that  tested people’s computer skills after they rated themselves. 

There are several explanations for this behavior.  One explanation is that top performers set higher standards for their own performance.   Another explanation is that the more a person knows about Excel, the more they realize just how much they still do NOT know about Excel.

But today, Jason Seiden wrote a post about the Dunning-Kruger effect – where Cornell scientists showed that “ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge” and ”people with true knowledge tend to underestimate their competence.”  Sweet, sweet scientific vindication for one of my long-held opinions. 

Have you ever hired someone incompetent?  Think back to the interview.  Odds are you asked them to assess their own ability to do the job.  They exuded confidence and most humans prefer to listen to and believe someone confident … (Jim Cramer comes to mind). 

But if less competent people are often more confident, and are more likely to over-rate their abilities – then asking people to rate themselves is a virtually foolproof way to hire the wrong person.  Frankly, if you ask people to rate themselves on their abilities, it would surprise me if you ever hire anyone competent to do the job.

So when you are interviewing,  instead of asking people to rate their abilities, ask them specific questions about what they have done, and then apply your own rating scale.  Their opinion of their own abilities is virtually irrelevant.

Your Resume Bias is Causing Your Staffing Problems

One of the biggest causes of your staffing problems may be your own resume bias.   No, I am not referring to age, gender, race or religious bias.  Hopefully you are not biased in that way – none of us want to think of ourselves as biased in any way, but most people are “resume biased.” 

We all form these mental pictures of what a good resume should look like, and then we reject everyone who does not fit our mental picture.   In my experience, this ”resume bias” is just as damaging to your hiring as any other kind of bias because, like other forms of bias,  it excludes highly qualified people you need to be considering. 

A resume bias overemphasizes how, where and when a candidate acquired their skills and experience while ignoring attributes than are not easily demonstrated on paper.  It assumes you know something about someone solely based on the facts presented on the resume.  Remember, you are hiring a person, not a resume.  And a resume cannot demonstrate vital work behaviors, those all important attributes that we call “fit.” 

We work hard to avoid resume bias in our search process, we celebrate the non-traditional candidates and don’t put much stock in the “perfect resume.”   In fact, about 2 weeks into every search, we give clients a status update.  It often sounds something like this:  ”So far our candidate research has uncovered 50 potential candidates who we have contacted, our social media outreach has resulted in another 200 people already sending in their resumes.  Our interviewing starts this week, we have about 20 people scheduled, and we’ll select the best 6 for your interviews next week.”  It all sounds so reassuring.  The process is underway.  The candidate pipeline looks strong.  But we always issue our standard disclaimer.  “Of course, a good resume means nothing until we talk to them.”  You see, experience has shown us that we have no idea if these people will be right for the job until we talk to them.  And we remind ourselves of that fact every time we issue the disclaimer.

While many resumes may appear to be well-aligned with a position, we know we will rule out about 90% of the people we talk to – and some of the people we rule in will have very non-traditional resumes. Often the non-traditional career path (the “bad” resume) is the best qualified candidate.

A resume is a poor representation of a person, yet a recent survey showed that “relevant work experience” is the major criteria on which top executives are hired.    And while, on the surface, that appears to make sense, the survey showed that “fit” factors - like the ability to work with teams, or learn new things – were almost completely overlooked.     That is the very definition of resume bias.

Knowing that, it’s really no wonder that executive tenure is shortening, declining to an average of just 2.3 years. 

So, if you have someone screening resumes for you, be sure to insist that they present to you at least a few “non-traditional” candidates.  You’ll be glad you did.

The Truth is Great Marketing

• We’ve had clients share scary financial data in an interview.
• We’ve had clients share information about strategies that failed, and express uncertainty about their current plans. 
• We’ve had clients tell people the workload is nearly overwhelming.

And great people stepped up and took the jobs.  Because challenge is very attractive to the right people. But challenge alone is not enough. 

It may sound paradoxical, but when you admit how difficult your problems are, you actually make your opportunity MORE attractive.  Good people look for honesty, and really appreciate humility.  They figure, “Hey, if I’m going to bust my hump working for you, I want to be sure you understand what a big accomplishment it will be when I succeed!”   They want to be important, not diminished by doing a job anyone can do.

If you have taken the trouble to think deeply about what you want someone to accomplish in their first year on the job, if you have given real thought to the challenges they will encounter, then you can draw them into a conversation about how you might achieve results together.  The candidate has to mentally “put themselves into the job” and “see themselves succeeding” in order to have a conversation about solving your business problems.  And that’s great marketing.  

Is that what your interviews feel like?