http://dkarim.com/ A few years ago, my daughter came home with Harley, a fish that she saved from certain death in her science class experiment. Reviewing the saga of Harley in a Fish Bowl and Harley in a Fish Bowl continued gave me a great reminder about the power of investing in your employees. I am sad to report that Harley is now swimming in the fish bowl in the sky after a long, productive life at the Smith house… May he rest in peace.
After the fish bowl was thoroughly drained and cleaned, it sat on our kitchen counter for a few weeks. Finally, I said, “Let’s get rid of the fish bowl. There is no reason to have it without a fish in it.” My family’s response was noncommittal, so the fish bowl continued to sit on the kitchen counter. I tried again asking, “Should we move the fish bowl?” Still no response. Then, recently out of the blue, Randy says to Katy, “Let’s go get a fish.” She screamed “YES!” and they scurried out of the house. One hour later, we had Coby, short for cobalt, a blue betta who is now swimming in the fish bowl on the counter.
All too often, we may need to quickly remove an employee. We tell ourselves that we HAVE to have that desk filled ASAP, and we frantically start looking for a butt for that seat. This can (and often does) lead to poor hiring decisions. To find the A-list employee that is ideal for the position, there must be space between the old employee that left and the new one that is coming in; the fish bowl must remain empty for a period of time. Don’t rush into anything new until you are ready. Take the time to contemplate and explore the options: Maybe you don’t need that position any more, or maybe that position should morph into something else. Or maybe, just maybe, it is time to hire the absolute BEST employee EVER! When you give it space and time, you and your team get the opportunity to review the job description, determine the ideal candidate… and only THEN begin to search for the next employee.
This newsletter is dedicated to Harley, who provided hours of entertainment and fodder for my most read blogs. RIP Harley!
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.
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.
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.
In a recent interview, we asked candidates some questions about project management. One candidate was talking about how their part of a project was completed when their bosses’ portion had not been finished. I said to the potential employee, “What would you do should this happen again?” and without missing a beat, he said “I’d chew her out. Just joking!”
After the interview was over, I said to my client “You know that we cannot hire that candidate based on that statement.”
The client responded, “But he was just joking, Beth.”
I replied, “Maybe so, but chewing out your boss? That’s not funny.”
In an interview, our job as hiring managers is to listen actively to the exact words of the candidate’s response. Remember, a job seeker will attempt to put their very best foot forward to impress a potential employer. If you listen to the actual language they are using within their finely tuned responses, you can identify personality traits and core values around work. Through this knowledge, you can identify how a person will fit into your culture, what type of management style they will thrive under and more. Therefore, if you are going to listen to the candidate’s “just joking” comment, then you also have to pay attention to the “chewing out” part.
When we are conducting interviews, we tend to listen to what we want to hear because we want to hire someone. We want the candidates to succeed and become our next new employee! And we are often willing to do whatever it takes to make the candidate ideal, including dismissing a comment like “just joking.”
We do not know what the candidate meant when he said that he was just joking. Maybe he was. But maybe he was not. Can you take that chance with a critical function like a new hire? If you do take that chance and he was not joking, do you want to work with an employee who will “chew you out?” While it may appear the language being used was positioned as a joke, hiring is no laughing matter.
After the fish bowl was thoroughly drained and cleaned, it sat on our kitchen counter for a few weeks. Finally, I said, “Let’s get rid of the fish bowl. There is no reason to have it without a fish in it.” My family’s response was noncommittal, so the fish bowl continued to sit on the kitchen counter. I tried again asking, “Should we move the fish bowl?” Still no response. Then, recently out of the blue, Randy says to Katy, “Let’s go get a fish.” She screamed “YES!” and they scurried out of the house. One hour later, we had Coby, short for cobalt, a blue betta who is now swimming in the fish bowl on the counter.
“Do you remember that woman that you interviewed for me 4 months ago?” she said.
