by Beth | Mar 23, 2016 | Employee Hiring, Selecting Good Candidates
Last month I flew back to Texas to celebrate my grandmother’s 92nd birthday with the whole family. We had a blast! My favorite part of the weekend was the serendipitous hour-long conversation that she and I shared at breakfast.
My grandmother made her famous pancakes and little sausages on Saturday morning. My family eagerly poured into seats around her kitchen table to enjoy the best pancakes in the world. As luck would have it, I slept a little late and was the last one at the table. She sat down with a cup of coffee and we had one of the best conversations we have ever had.
She is articulate, smart, witty and resourceful. She texts friends and family from her iPhone, she is active on Facebook, and she could write a textbook on how to respond to anyone in a sticky situation. She walks every morning and volunteers with her church. She lives by herself, cooks lunch for several of her children most days of the week and drives herself to the grocery store to shop.
At age 92, she remains relevant. I am lucky to have her in my life.
Virginia Ann (“V.A.”) Rawlins Littleton is a class act, possesses excellent customer service skills and knows how to give advice in a way that is easy to accept. If she were a candidate I was interviewing for a position, I’d hire her in a heartbeat.
The next time you begin a job search, please keep in mind that age means nothing when you are looking for the right candidate. There is ALWAYS an exception to every stereotype out there, and V.A. Littleton is not only that exception… but simply, and in all ways, exceptional.
by Beth | Feb 26, 2016 | Employee Hiring, Selecting Good Candidates
One of my long standing, most beloved clients called wanting to meet with me to discuss some potential new hires for her company. I had not heard from her in several months, so I was grateful to hear her voice. Over chips and salsa, the conversation started like this:
“Do you remember that woman that you interviewed for me 4 months ago?” she said.
“Vaguely,” I said.
“You told me not to hire her,” she replied.
“Ummm… okay,” I replied, thoroughly confused. If I remembered correctly, the candidate had not been a cultural fit for the rest of her team. I wasn’t a part of the actual hiring process for this individual and had instead been invited into evaluate her top three candidate selections.
“Another consultant told me to hire her, so I did.” My client sighed deeply, threw her head in her hands and wailed “I am in HELL!” She promptly ordered a margarita and began to tell me the horror stories related to her bad hire.
First of all, I have such empathy for this woman. There is nothing worse than making a bad hiring decision and then have to watch how it effects the rest of your organization. From employee morale to bottom line results, a bad hire creates turmoil that feels very much like a slap in the face every time you go to work.
Second of all, my best advice to her was be kind to herself and remind her that some lessons need to be learned despite other people’s insights and experiences. Remember: interviewing and hiring is a skill set and any new skill takes time to learn. You don’t just wake up one day knowing how to staff your company. You have to practice, and that means making mistakes. A bad hire is a mistake, and just like any other mistake, learn from it, correct it and move on.
by Beth | Jan 22, 2016 | Adventures in Interviewing, Selecting Good Candidates
My daughter, Katy, received a text from a potential suitor that said “Your so pretty!” She showed me the text with a horrified look on her face and said “I’m sorry. If he doesn’t know the difference between your/you’re and to/two/too, then I am not interested!”
In my business, we receive hundreds of resumes for jobs per week and at least half of them have some sort of grammar and/or spelling error. Sometimes we interview them anyway because they have the experience that we are looking for, they wrote a “nice” cover letter or we decide to forgive that “one tiny mistake.” But here is the hard and fast truth: The easiest way to determine if the candidate is serious about the position is whether or not they took the extra 2 minutes to run spell check and proof their work. It really isn’t hard. It really doesn’t take much time. It really does make a difference.
So for those candidates that are continuously asking me for interviewing help, my best advice to get the interview is to please do a review of your materials before you send them. Better yet, have your neighbor, friend, significant other read your resume and cover letter, just for that extra set of eyes. And for my clients who ask, Yes! Grammar counts! Just ask my beloved teenage daughter!
P.S. May all boys within dating age of my daughter make grammatical errors like these. Amen.
by Beth | Sep 23, 2015 | Adventures in Interviewing, Employee Hiring, Interview Process, Selecting Good Candidates
Back in the 1950’s, many vacuum cleaners were sold door-to-door; in other words, a salesman would come to the home, be invited in, and he would stage a demonstration of the vacuum’s effectiveness. Usually, that demonstration involved dumping dirt and debris on the carpet and then using the vacuum to remove it.
But what happened if the vacuum didn’t suck up the dirt? The homeowners were left with a mess in the middle of their living room. (And of course, they did not buy the vacuum.)
Surprisingly, people today often use the job interview as an opportunity to dump unwanted “dirt and debris” all over the conference table. Candidates report how awful their past employers were, how horrible their last job was and how impossible the boss was to please. Last week, a candidate complained to me that he had “embellished” his skills when applying for his previous position and was subsequently fired. His exact quote was “if they had just TRAINED me on those skills (that he already told the boss he had), then I could have been successful!”
Just like with non-working vacuums, if there is a big pile of “dirt and debris” sitting on the conference table after an interview, then the candidate isn’t working and you need to keep searching for the right one.
by Beth | Jun 10, 2015 | Adventures in Interviewing, Employee Hiring, Interview Process, Selecting Good Candidates
Imagine being in an interview for a job that you really want. The interview team is a panel of people not talking, asking you pretty hard questions, and you are concentrating solely on impressing them. All of the sudden, one of those people points out that you have a spider crawling on your shirt. What would you do? Would you scream? Jump up and run? Brush that spider off and then kill it DEAD?
This actually happened to a poor candidate that we interviewed this past week, and he calmly brushed the spider off his shirt and continued his interview gracefully. Then, he joked about being Peter Parker.
We all laughed uproariously. He followed up later that day with a thank you email for the opportunity to interview, expressed his desire to come back for the final round as he really wanted this job, and he signed his email: “Your friendly neighborhood spider man. “
I have spent hours talking to my clients about what to look for in candidates, and the ability to handle difficult situations is invariably one of the top qualities that my clients want. An employee who can laugh at themselves and the situation, handle it gracefully and leave you impressed in an awkward set of circumstances is someone you have to hire.
And as for Spiderman? He comes in this week for his final interview for… you guessed it, a web developer.
by Beth | May 11, 2015 | Employee Hiring, Selecting Good Candidates
I love the salad bar at Whole Foods! I mean, I LOVE it! It is a luxury that I rarely allow myself, but I will eat vegetables there that I would NEVER eat at home. I love having the ability to choose which high quality ingredients go into my salad, and my mouth just waters. I get excited just by thinking about it, because I know that it will be the BEST salad I have had in a long time.
What would it be like if you could choose your next employee that way? What if you could hand pick the qualities of your potential candidate like you can the vegetables at a salad bar? What if you walked around the bar and were able to choose the qualities in a great employee that got you excited? For example, pick up the tongs over the “Loves Coming to Work” container, or pass over the “Can’t See The Big Picture” container. After all, if you don’t like mushrooms, don’t put them in your salad! It will just ruin your experience.
In essence, it really is that easy if you have a strategic interviewing process in place. You begin with the Ideal Candidate List (step one in the A-list Interview process). Make a list of all the qualities that make up your Ideal Candidate and post that list on your wall. Look at it every day, and continue interviewing until you find that person. Then your new employee experience will be just like going to Whole Foods and walking around the salad bar: exciting, full of anticipation and a wholly satisfying, memorable experience.
