Hiring Debacles: Interviewing Dr. Jekyll and Hiring Mr. Hyde
You’ve probably made a hiring mistake at some point in your career (and if you haven’t made one yet, you eventually will). Why does this happen? You don’t know how to read the “inner” candidate. I’ve talked about aspects of this dynamic before and explained why it’s critical to clean up a mess when you make one. This post is more about avoiding the mess in the first place.
How does the interview with this candidate go? They show up all bright and shiny. Gold watch. Diamond ring. They ain’t missin’ not a single thing. And cuff links. Stick pin. Cuz ev’ry boss is crazy ’bout a sharp dressed man (please tell me you guys remember ZZ Top).
They nail the interviews. Everyone is charmed by their wiles. They’re brilliant. Engaging. Intelligent. Driven.
Fast forward six months. It’s a debacle. They’ve blown the gigantic project you gave them. They’ve alienated everyone in the office. Your boss is threatening to fire you if you don’t fire them first. You bow to the pressure and can the person who seemed so promising not so long ago. As you do you wave goodbye to all the money you invested in recruiting, hiring, relocating, bonusing, and eventually severing this person. What a waste.
So why does it happen and how do you avoid such a nasty situation?
READ THEIR RESUME. NO. REALLY READ THEIR RESUME
Sometimes we give the resume short shrift. We look for those few shiny objects that indicate this candidate might be a winner. Maybe they saved their company a bunch of money. Or they grew sales dramatically. Cool! Bring them in ASAP, right?
I’d argue you need to look for the fishy things in the resume. And I’m talking about things well beyond the stupid stuff you’ll traditionally see in bad resumes.
Look for gaps in employment. Keep an eye out for an absence of a clear description of the candidates’ role in the organization’s success (“company sales grew 15% while I was there.” – Yeah, but how much of that 15% did THE CANDIDATE contribute?). Sometimes the fishy thing is a well-overqualified candidate seeking a role well below what you’d expect their level to be. For example, in their last job they managed a budget of $100MM and 75 people but they’re applying for a job with $500k of budget and one direct report. Hmmm.
I’m not saying that fishy is bad. Many times there are clear, logical, rational explanations for things (the gap in employment was to care for a terminally ill parent. They’re taking the smaller role because they want to move closer to home and they’re not the primary earner. Etc. etc. etc.). All I’m saying is you HAVE to ask these tough questions. Sometimes there aren’t good answers and those fishy things will eventually lead to smelly situations.
SOMETHING IS “OFF” IN THE INTERVIEW
You know when you have the conversation with someone and something doesn’t click? Maybe it’s lack of eye contact. Or maybe they interrupt one or two times too many. Or you simply get that general uneasiness in your gut when you speak to this person. These feelings are your body’s equivalent of a flashing warning light on your car’s dashboard. Your body is saying “if you keep driving down this road something is going to blow up.”
I won’t go into the psychology and science of your gut actually being another “brain” beyond saying such instincts are there to protect you.
So what should you do in these situations? Have your colleagues interview the candidate too. Ask them pointedly if they had the same warning lights go off for them in their interview. If you find a consistent pattern of several people having a slight nagging in their gut, you really need to question the hiring decision and whether you make an offer or not.
THE NEGOTIATIONS GET HINKY
So they made it through the resume screen and the interviews with no warning lights going off and you’ve made them an offer. Then it gets weird. They get preoccupied with the money. Or they start playing your offer off of another one. Or they get paranoid about getting tons of guarantees in writing. Or they bring in an attorney to review their employment agreement (Yes, I’ve seen that. No, they didn’t get the job.).
Take these behaviors as indicators of how they’ll behave in other business interactions. Can you imagine them behaving this way with one of your suppliers? Or even worse, with one of your customers? Do they get overly focused on a single metric (base salary) without being able to see the broader picture (having a job)? Does their confrontational style rub you the wrong way?
Guess what? They’re not going to change. If these behaviors during negotiations bother you, they’ll be grating on you and destroying relationships in your organization within three months. So what to do? Yank the offer if things get stupid. Just because you made it doesn’t mean you can’t revoke it (especially if they’re not accepting the terms of your offer to begin with).
START THINKING ABOUT THIS NOW BEFORE YOU RAMP UP HIRING
Again, I hope the economy is starting its recovery and I hope you’re thinking about taking on new people when things settle down and growth begins again. I put this post out there as a cautionary reminder to follow solid and disciplined recruiting and hiring practices otherwise you’ll end up with a bad situation on your hands in the not too distant future. A leader’s job is to keep her/his organization out of trouble. That starts with bringing in the right people and keeping out the wrong ones.
What other indicators do you folks look for when hiring? What trips your warning lights and alarms?
– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC
Photo: Dr. Jekyll y Mr. Hyde by Oscar Palop
Excellent article. The most successful companies I have advised have had strong "No bozos allowed" policies. The definition of bozo varies based on company culture and leadership, but the rules apply to all. And that doesn't mean hiring just all "yes people" – critical thinking is still a requirement for all.
Interesting. Problem is that companies do not train hiring managers to read resumes and interview candidates. The second problem is even more troubling, there is nothing in the typical hiring process that actually gets to the core of what a hiring manager needs to know; whether the person actually possesses the skills required to do the job.
Resumes do not provide this information clearly, and job descriptions gloss over skills. Unless companies start getting smarter about understand this skills equation, they will only have their gut to depend on, and that is not a talent management strategy.
Great piece, but I'd also add a background check. Often, you'll get better answers faster and cheaper. (Full disclosure- I'm a background checker).
Ask your questions, but balance that against what a former employer says. Eliminate any chance you're sweet talked out of your gut feeling.
By the way, I don't mean calling the "references" you're given. You're just getting 3 people who think he's the best thing since sliced bread.
"Name, rank and serial number" is sometimes all a company will provide. But it's a very inexpensive way to complement your existing strategies.
Happy Hiring!
"Look for gaps in employment", this is 101 stuff. This article is pretty weak.
Food for thought @Shawn:
"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so." – Anton Ego from Ratatouille
Hey @Shawn, how about offering some 202 stuff given your perspective clearly isn't as "weak" as the one in this post? Would love to hear your ideas.
I disagree with Shawn's comment. I think this article is well-written, timely and has content which provides good insight into an interview area I haven't seen published previously.
My question to you, Mike, is won't references they provide give you some insight into their past work behavior? I'm not sure what can be asked legally these days, but if they are asked if your candidate would be considered for rehire and they say, "no," wouldn't that save you time in negotiation, further interviews, etc.?
Keep up the nice work, Julia
@Julia – thanks for the kind words. Reference checks are always a great backstop. Sure, the ones the candidate provides will sing their praises (if they don't, the candidate is an idiot for providing them as a reference). You should seek confirmation beyond the first level references provided. A way I like to do so is explicitly ask the candidate if I can speak with their last boss, a recent peer, and a few of their direct reports. Doing so increases my chances of finding a problem if one exists. I hope that helps.
@Deb – the "no bozos" rule should always apply. The problem is sometimes they're hard to smoke out during the interview process. Folks should always be sure to be on the lookout for that colored handkerchief hanging out of the candidate's sleeve…
@Mark – spot on on the failure to train folks how to interview. I've been lucky enough to work for two firms who actually DID train folks how to interview and guess what? Those companies ended up hiring some pretty solid talent. Correlated? Hmmm… Thanks for the comment.
@Kevin – good point on utilizing all resources available including background checks. Heck, these days sometimes all you have to do is Google someone and you can make a (non)hiring decision.
Another very effective tool is your network. Once narrowed in on the final 2-3 candidates I am continually amazed by how quickly the "behind the scenes" view of a candidate is provided by my network. This is often a great tool not just for screening out the "bozos" but also to confirm who has the best cultural fit with my organization.
I think this is the perfect example of hiring managers getting caught up in the process.
Who's resume is "popping" (we all know you do not read them, scanning come to mind?) Then the manager asks questions directly based on previous performance and open ended, wide range questions.
When in your life would you ever make any connection in your life this way? The human brain development does have these little filters (caution not to be too pre-judging thought) and you should listen to them.
So maybe the candidate doesn't have the best stats or best job history, but they seem genuine. A few extra minutes getting to know the person and not the business man will go along way in your hiring process.
Anyone following professional sports can see examples of previous stat guys and how well that translates to a new team.
Your column is interesting and raises two issues for me. One is that the focus is on not hiring the wrong person. Your proposed methods of reading between the lines of a resume are useful for that. However, you can use the same method to find the quality too, if you have the time to read each resume. While we were searching the listings our realtor provided, my wife singled out a profile of a house with a photo only an owner could love. I asked her why she saved the profile…she responded "I want to see if those numbers were a mistake." Those numbers were dimensions of the living room, bedrooms and the acreage. That "ugly duckling" turned out to be our new home, a great investment and a refuge from your usual topic…work.
My second point is to emphasize your suggestion that colleagues should be asked to confirm your gut or nagging feeling about a candidate. Diversity can be lost if one person's biases determine a significant proportion of hires. You don't want all yes-people and you don't want all clones in your business either! Stagnation and loss of flexibility are risks there.
Perhaps you can do a column on how diversity (combined with an environment of trust and knowing when to disagree and when to compromise) can contribute greatly to the bottom line as well as towards your own day-to-day experience at the office.
Great article, unfortunately we can never be 100% sure we are making the right decision, but this article provides some great insight into making sure we are doing everything we can to make the best hiring decision. All too often what many of us may deem common knowledge (interviewing, resume review, etc) in fact is not common knowledge at all. For those of us that interview candidates on a regular basis picking up on red flags in a candidates resume and demeanor is easy, but for the typically hiring manager that is rarely involved in the interview process this is much more difficult. Reason being, not only do they have little experience in interviewing candidates but they are also typically in a state of mind where they have an open position, the work is piling up and they are on the line to get a great candidate in the door. This is why I believe it is very important to have an impartial person involved in the interview process that can provide feedback and pose questions the hiring manager may not be focusing on. It is too easy for the hiring manager to review the resume and decide this is the right candidate…now all the candidate has to do is not screw up in the interview. So if they show up looking like a million bucks, can carry on a great conversation, you’re sold…and 6 months down the road your asking yourself how did this hiring decision go so wrong!
Hello Mike:
Interesting article as always. I would respond to Shawn's comment that one point in the article was "101 stuff." Problem with that comment is that I have worked at about 3 places where we would just gloss over gaps in employment and never ask the candidate pointed questions about it. And then we got burned. So while one might think it is "basic," it is still good to remind us that a lot of times one still has to be reminded of the basics so we don't forget them while moving onto the bigger things we want to learn about an applicant.
I have seen many disasters in hiring just because we had already made up our minds before we ever started interviewing or got impressed by something in an interview without doing some follow up about the issue. In the end, it is still kind of a crap shoot but bad decisions can be minimized by following many of the suggestions you point out.
Mike Kinney
Ah, yes- the red flags we ignore during the interview process. So often we see what we want to see, rather than what’s actually there. References are always helpful in the final vetting stages, as are the “temperature checks” from other colleagues.
Nice post!