When Katy was a little girl, she loved to play with Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head. Some of her creations were hilarious; an arm being in the ear hole, lips in the eye hole, or Mrs. Potato Head walking around on a hat instead of shoes. Part of the brilliance of that game is taking all of the parts and making a whole, no matter how it looks to someone else. Once, Katy dressed up Mrs. Potato Head with shoes, lips, 2 arms, 2 eyes, and… a mustache on her head. She looked up at me with those big blue eyes and said “Mommy, doesn’t Mrs. Potato Head look beautiful???”
Last week, I had a client who was getting really frustrated with the search we were conducting. He looked at me and said “If I could just take attributes from one candidate and put it with the skill set from the other candidate, I would be hiring someone today!” Although a frustrating feeling, this is good news. When you start to see what you want from an employee, even though it is in 2 people, your ideal candidate is right around the corner. All you need to do is piece together what is important to you, and that person will show up. It is indeed a beautiful thing.
After an interview with a really great candidate, my clients usually want to hire that person on the spot. They do not want to wait. They feel very strongly that they have waited long enough, and they want to get this person on board ASAP. While I completely understand their desires, I ask them to think about the interview for at least 24-48 hours. The reason for the waiting period is that your thoughts are really different outside of the interview, especially if you give your thoughts a chance to simmer. Think about it like you think about soup in a crock pot.
Similar to making a soup where you initially collect and prep all of your ingredients, a company preps by putting together an ideal list for the best candidate, writing a job description, writing a job ad, and posting the job. The job then simmers on the job boards as applicants begin to submit resumes, compared to the soup simmering in the crockpot. Then, the employers get the resumes and begin interviewing, like adding spices to the soup, continuing to let it simmer.
Throw in some vision and dreaming, your crock pot will make some pretty great soup. Eat the soup too early and the spices may have not soaked in yet. If you wait too long, the vegetables turn to mush, and the soup is not as good.
I interviewed a woman via Skype with one of my out of state clients. When my video popped up, she said “WOW! You look like Godzilla!” (Swear.)
For the past 3 weeks, I have been racking my brain trying to figure out how being compared to a slobbery, atomic mutant reptile can possibly be a compliment… maybe I am bigger than life? Loud? Dry skin?
The more important concept to consider here is how an outburst like this might affect your customers. If she said this to an important client or a big donor, those potential clients might be unwilling to sign that contract that you are wanting them to sign. They might not want to do business with you. People have pulled their business away for a lot less than being called Godzilla.
Meanwhile, we will be looking for another candidate and I will be moisturizing heavily.
Last week, I was conducting some phone interviews with a client. On particular call, the interview was going really well until the candidate surprised me with a request: “Can I put you on hold and take this other call?”
“Uh, sure,” I mumbled. While I waited, listening to really bad background music, I contemplated this question: “Does this candidate really want THIS job?”
The resounding answer came to me. No, he really does not. If he really wanted the job that my client was offering, he would have ignored any and all calls, no matter who is calling him. At this point, nothing else matters; his skills, his experience, his ability to do the job – none of those count, because if he does not WANT the job, he is not going to DO the job.
The last thing that you want to do is hire someone who is not willing talk to you long enough to find out if this is the job for them or hire someone who is not absolutely thrilled to come and work for you.
So, put this job offer on hold, just like the candidate did to me, and wait for the right candidate to come along. They will come to you if you are patient. You will be SO glad that you waited!!!
When a client calls me to help them screen and interview candidates, they are usually in a hurry. They need me to get started today, and frankly, they really needed me to start 3 weeks ago. The “hurry up” syndrome is a common issue at A-list Interviews.
However, hurrying through the interview process never works. Making a bad hiring decision just to put a “butt in the seat” is always more costly than having a little patience and truly screen and interview until you find your ideal new employee. Robert Plotkin, who wrote “Preventing Internal Theft” says “It is better to operate short-handed for a period of time and rely on your existing staff to cover… than hiring someone unqualified or inappropriate for the establishment.” I could not agree more.
As painful as it may seem to wait for the right person to come along in your interview process, it is always way more painful to bring a person onboard who is the wrong fit for your company. Consider the other factors that are included in hiring a misfit for your organization: reduce efficiency and down time for training, morale within the organization, the customer experience of a person who is not in alignment with the company just to name just a few. And in the end when you bring in a new employee just to fill a position, the likelihood that you will end up back in the interview process within the six months is incredibly high.
Stick to our A-list motto of “find the right employee the first time” and you will save yourself more time, money and headaches than you can imagine. The right employee is always worth the wait.
