Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

Should You Test Potential Hires?

Pre-employment cognitive, skills and personality assessments can be valuable additions to your arsenal of hiring tools.  Not only do they assist you in finding the most appropriate candidate, but they also help you avoid the biases inherent in in-person interviewing, and better predict on-the-job success and whether a person will assimilate well into your organization.  However, there are a few “rules of the road” you’ll want to follow as you navigate this territory.

Use Tests Appropriately

First, assessments should be used as directed and in their entirety.  You should also make sure you use them consistently rather than selectively, meaning that all candidates who apply for the same job take the same test.

Second, pre-employment tests are subject to anti-discrimination regulations, and the federal agencies responsible for overseeing these regulations are increasingly interested in examining skills and personality assessments.

In order to be legally defensible, assessments must be designed for the hiring process, and all questions contained within them must have predictive validity, which means that they must accurately measure the traits they seek to measure and accurately predict behavior in the position in question.

One Size Does Not Fit All

The test vendor should also conduct either a validity study specific to your organization to justify the test’s use in this organization and for these specific jobs, or a transportability study to show that the jobs in question are sufficiently similar to jobs that have been included in other validity studies.

With respect to developing valid assessments, David Hyatt, an organizational consultant with the Center for Creative Leadership, suggests these tips:

• Be sure that a representative sample is used to validate the assessment. All groups should be represented in validation studies in order to truly understand the real-world consequences of using the tools.

• Ensure that assessments are culturally sensitive. Some words convey different meanings within different cultures. Be sure to remove all language barriers and culturally insensitive content areas. Cultural differences can impact the use of assessments in the hiring process. For example, some cultures (e.g., China, Japan) emphasize group outcomes while others tend to emphasize individual outcomes (e.g., United States, Europe).

• Personality is more closely related to the motivational aspects of work than to the technical aspects. Personality-based assessments are better for getting at what a person “will do” as opposed to what he or she “can do.”  Skills-based assessments are better suited to this latter purpose.

• Personality assessments are more predictive of performance in jobs where employees have a great amount of control as opposed to jobs where an employee has little or no control.

For questions or concerns on test validity, you can also check out The U.S. Department of Labor’s Uniform Guide on Employee Selection Procedures.

Don’t Reinvent the Wheel

If you’re thinking of rolling out pre-employment cognitive, skills and personality testing, you shouldn’t attempt to go it alone.  Talk to other human resources or hiring managers in other companies, or get advice from a third-party company or consulting psychologist specializing in these types of tests.  While outsourcing may require a significant upfront investment and a consulting psychologist can cost to $2000 per candidate, experts suggest that assessments are an aspect of hiring that you should either do well or not at all.  If you take shortcuts, you could end up worse off than when you started.

This post was originally published on Intuit's Quickbase blog.

Zappos and the Quandary of Cultural Fit

In the HR Daily Advisor, Steve Bruce recently reported on the keynote Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh gave at the SHRM Annual Conference.  Hsieh shared that the Internet shoe business places so much emphasis on hiring for cultural fit that it interviews the receptionists and shuttle drivers with whom candidates interact to see if they should get the job, and it also mandates that trainees hit the call center phones during their first few weeks.

But here’s the really interesting thing.  Once new employees are finished with training, they are offered a $3,000 bonus to quit right then and there.  According to Hsieh, this is Zappos' way of saying, “we only want people who really want to work here.”  Two or three percent of trainees take the bonus and leave, and the employees who remain are more committed to the company’s mission.

Obviously, only a certain type of employee is going to survive and thrive throughout the interview and training process at a company like Zappos, but that’s exactly the point.  Even in a poor job market like this, I still hear of organizations succumbing to desperation hiring so that they’ll have warm bodies to fill gaping holes.

As managers, you should remember that the cost of hiring and training a new employee is exorbitant, and if a candidate is not a good fit for your culture, she isn’t going to last long.  Therefore, you should do everything in your power, even if it means an investment and creative approach like Zappos’, to assess that the hire is able and willing to do well in your environment – before you officially bring her on board. Here are a few suggestions to effectively screen for cultural fit:

Understand the Culture Yourself

Brainstorm with a few top performers on your team, as well as any senior executives with whom you have the opportunity to converse.  Once you have a definition, make sure that everyone who is responsible for interviewing is on the same page.

Do the Airport Test

A manager friend shared this one with me.  You can say:  “if my team were stuck in an airport with this candidate for a whole day, would we be able to stand him?”  Along these lines, take top candidates out to dinner with your team and watch them interact.

Assign a Cultural Fit Specialist

If several people on your team are responsible for interviewing, assign one person whose job it is to specifically examine cultural fit.  Have this person develop a standard assessment process in order to improve consistency and accuracy.

This post was originally published on Intuit's Quickbase blog.

 

The Positions Are Out There, But Job Seekers Don't Fit the Bill

I talk to job seekers every day, and they have strikingly similar attitudes.  They feel frustrated that the market remains so poor. Whether they are at junior, mid-, or senior levels, they find that the jobs just aren’t out there. And I, as a career advisor, am in the unenviable position of telling them that they’re wrong.

In fact, many organizations are hiring in droves. Much as job seekers would like to think the problem is the market, and they’re perfectly qualified, that simply isn’t the case. Candidates are failing at their job search because they don’t have the skills that employers want, plain and simple.

Companies across the country report having increasing difficulty finding qualified workers, and some economists believe this skills gap is nearing a crisis.  A national survey, the Job Preparedness Indicator, conducted by the Career Advisory Board and Harris Interactive, polled 540 hiring mangers at top companies and 734 adults looking for work last month and found that only 14% of the hiring managers felt that the candidates they had seen had met their qualifications for open positions.

Honing in on Skills with the Widest Gap

As part of an effort to close the critical divide between what candidates have and what employers need, the Job Preparedness Indicator assessed the value of key skills across entry, mid-, and senior levels by determining what attributes employers consider most important but are rarely seen in candidates. Skills rated most important by employers but least common among job seekers were assigned the highest score.

At the entry level, the skills and traits with the highest indicator scores were a strong work ethic and the ability to get along well with others. For mid-level candidates, problem-solving and communication scored highest.  At the managerial level, business acumen and global outlook did.  Across all three levels, strategic perspective received the highest score.

The research found that employers were having the most trouble finding qualified candidates at the senior levels, and that 57% of the job seekers surveyed were pursuing mid-level or managerial positions that required leadership skills they didn’t have.

The implication is that the U.S. has already started experiencing the brain drain that was expected to begin in 2010 as a baby boomer first entered retirement. Many boomers have left or are leaving their traditional corporate jobs. and businesses don’t have access to the talent to replace them. Furthermore, much of their institutional knowledge isn’t being properly transferred.

Demonstrate Mastery of Critical Skills

There are three primary ways job seekers can use this research to help their careers.  First, if you’re seeking employment, you should carefully examine your level of the skills and traits with the highest indicator scores, and develop marketing materials that showcase your mastery of these skills and traits.  For example, if you’re going into a new field at the entry level, you might create a skills-based résumé that highlights team building, since getting along well with others is a skill that is perceived as rare among entry level candidates.

In the résumé, and subsequently in the interview, discuss quantifiable results you achieved as part of team building efforts.  A statement to this effect mightbe:

Organized and served as the leader of 25-member cross-functional innovation team, resolving internal differences and mining knowledge that resulted in the launch of four new profit-generating services.

Statements like that can assure a hiring manager that you have the ability to work diplomatically with different groups, a skill that is apparently rare at the entry level.

Increase Your Repertoire of Critical Skills

Second, you should actively pursue opportunities to hone the skills with the highest indicator scores. Leadership courses, which tend to stress skills like communication and problem-solving, are excellent growth vehicles for any job seeker. Stretch assignments or job rotations in a current company or volunteer roles in a nonprofit organization can also be useful. To be systematic about skill acquisition, work with a boss or  mentor to set concrete and time-bound goals for mastery.

You can also position yourself to take advantage of wide-open upper level opportunities by showcasing leadership experience, either in a previous job or volunteer role, and by regularly interacting with senior level advisers who can advise you on what the market and even specific organizations are looking for in leaders.

Predict and Illustrate the Skills You’ll Need in the Future

Finally, you should pay close attention to the desired skills and traits at the level above yours.  Look for ways acquire and demonstrate skills and traits that have high indicator scores at the mid-level and senior levels, such as business acumen and global perspective. Also, review senior title job descriptions to determine the skills that are most critical for leadership in a specific organization. For instance, if you’re applying for an entry-level job at a multinational conglomerate and can demonstrate a history of interacting with other cultures, you will likely draw the attention of a hiring manager who is eager to groom future global leaders.

Self-awareness is half the battle. Now that this research has shown you the skills and traits you must focus on to be most competitive, you can think carefully about your own strengths and weaknesses and position yourself to take advantage of the current gaps between employer needs and available talent.

15 Dos and Don’ts for Better Interviewing

Do you routinely interviews job candidates?  If so, don’t bring in any more people without first having a look at this list:

DO look for candidates who are different from you and will add variety to your team.

Recognize that human beings have the tendency to gravitate to people like themselves, but your goal should be to hire people who will complement your strengths, not duplicate them.

DON’T let first impressions get the better of you.

Sometimes, you might meet a candidate whom you decide you want to hire immediately, and you might then ignore evidence brought forth in the interview that contradicts that opinion. This is known as the “halo effect.”

DO spend at least 45 minutes with every interviewee.

Managers who think they can size someone up in 5 or 10 minutes are wrong, pure and simple. All the advance preparation in the world won’t help you if you rush to judgment on a candidate.

DON’T put too much stock in “name brands.”

Just because a candidate went to a top school or is currently with a prestigious firm doesn’t mean he or she is right for your position.

DO focus on the big picture.

A candidate might be amazing in one area, but if his skill set isn’t a good match for the whole job as defined in your job analysis, you should probably keep looking.

DON’T write someone off just because he’s quiet or unruffled.

What comes across as a low level of enthusiasm or a lack of motivation may just be his interview persona, and he could in fact be quite competent and able to do the job superbly well.

DO move on to a new question if you see that a candidate is visibly uncomfortable.

The candidate may be nervous, so give her the benefit of the doubt. Once things are back on track, you can either rephrase it or ask for the same information in a different way.

DON’T let a candidate take over the meeting with her own agenda.

If he’s talking too much and time is sliding by, politely interrupt by saying: “I’d love to hear more about that, but for now may I ask you about . . . ?”

DO look for red flags that could indicate a potential problem, and probe for explanations.

Be on the alert for blushing, sudden loss of eye contact, sudden twitching, stammering, or fidgeting, a significant change in the pace of speaking, heavy perspiring, or inconsistency between nonverbal behavior and words.

DON’T think you can change a candidate.

Her prickly personality has gotten her this far and she’s not likely to bend now.

DO assess the likelihood of retention.

It costs a lot of time and money to hire someone, so you want to be sure he’s going to stick around a while.

DON’T succumb to desperation hiring.

When your organization is hemorrhaging and your employees are crying for mercy, you may feel great pressure to get someone in now. But shotgun hiring often results in fast turnover, and you don’t want to find yourself in the same situation six months from now.

DO look for patterns.

Does a candidate have a history of making lateral moves? If so, you may be hiring someone who will want a different job in your company in a few months. Does she complain that all her previous companies were too bureaucratic? If that’s the case, then she’s likely to come to the same conclusion about yours.

DON’T tell your life story.

The candidate is not there to hear about your career and experiences, he’s there to tell you about his. Remember that when you’re talking, you’re not interviewing.

DO permit the occasional pause. We all hate silence during a conversation, but resist the urge to jump in and help the candidate with her answer.

This post was originally published on Intuit's Quickbase blog.

How to Prepare as the Interviewer

It’s that time again.  You need to interview for an open position on your team, a position that you need filled yesterday!  Giving advance consideration to the questions you will ask your candidates will go a long way in terms of making the process as smooth and streamlined as possible.

While it’s appropriate to tailor some of your inquiries to each candidate, it will be easier to compare apples to apples if you develop a core set of questions that all interviewees are required to answer.  Create at least two questions for each of the criteria identified in your job description.  Each question should also have a rating scale attached to it.  For example, you might determine that an answer will be rated from 1-5 (with 1 being poor, and 5 being superior), providing a description of what encompasses a “superior” response and a “poor” response.

What are the best types of questions to ask? Several full-length books have been devoted to this subject, but I’ll share some guidelines from Martin Yate, author of Hiring the Best:

Adaptability and Suitability Questions

These show the candidate’s skill set and test his understanding of the problems that must be solved, the problems he is there to avoid, and what he’s there to produce.  Examples:  What would you say were the most important responsibilities in your previous job?  What was the most difficult project you tackled in your previous job?  With all of your responsibilities, how have you planned and organized your workload?

Motivation Questions

These demonstrate whether the candidate will be someone who comes to work with the intention of making a contribution and wants to spend the day engaged in focused activity.  Examples: What personal qualities do you think are necessary to make a success of this job?  What have you done that you are proud of?  Think of a crisis situation in which things got out of control.  Why did it happen, and what was your role in the events, and their resolution?

Teamwork and Manageability Questions

These showcase whether the candidate will be a cohesive influence, and whether her work style will mesh with your management style.  Examples:  Describe the best manager you ever had.  In what areas could your last boss have done a better job?  Tell me about an occasion when there were objections to your ideas.  What did you do to convince others of your point of view?

Management Questions

These illustrate that the candidate will be successful at hiring and training, as well as getting work done through others. Examples:  How do you quantify your results as a manager?  Tell me about an occasion when, in difficult circumstances, you pulled the team together. What are the common reasons for resignations in your area of responsibility?

Entry-Level Questions

These test a candidate’s potential ability to do the job when she has little or no prior work experience.  Examples:  How did you spend your vacations while at school?  What have you done that shows initiative and willingness to work?  What job in the company do you want to work toward?

The Passion Variable

Richard Chang, CEO of performance improvement consulting firm Richard Chang Associates, also recommends that you ask questions that get to the heart of an individual’s passion.  Look for people who have demonstrated that they have pursued experiences they were passionate about as they have matured – particularly with their own professional development.

Involve Existing Team Members

It’s a good idea for multiple people on your team to evaluate each candidate. Organizational psychologist Ben Dattner suggests that you look for interviewers with the following attributes:

• Knowledgeable about the role, the team, and the organization
• Representative of diverse groups within the organization
• Reluctant to jump to conclusions
• Open-minded and able to revise opinions
• Self-aware and able to account for their own biases
• Accurate in their predictions of candidate success over time

Your team should be coordinated on the roles that each interviewer should play. If a candidate is interviewing with four people, each person should be designated specific questions so that all four people aren’t asking the same things.

This post was originally published on Intuit's Quickbase blog.

How a Successful Job Search is Like War

I admire creativity a a great deal, especially when there 
are only so many ways to provide the same career advice.  
So when Operation Freedom War vet and sporting goods 
entrepreneur John Durfee e-mailed me his tips for how 
surviving a job search is like surviving war, I was intrigued.  
John and I corresponded for a few weeks, and here 
are some of his suggestions:

Applying for jobs is like going on patrol.  It's repetitive, 
boring and often uneventful - but when you least expect it, 
an opportunity comes looking for you. If you get side-tracked, 
discouraged or lackadaisical, you'll miss your opportunity to 
get the first strike.

Keep your troop morale up. Whenever you start to get 
discouraged or frustrated, take a step back, stop thinking 
about how difficult job hunting is and take a little personal
time to get your spirits up.

Don't go overboard with time on leave! Keep in mind
that every moment you're not hitting the pavement, 
other people are getting hired.

Do your reconnaissance. Having a good amount 
of knowledge about the company you're applying for
can help you buffer your resume and also looks 
really good in an interview.

Don't get ambushed!  Practice interviewing before 
you go out for one.  Get some aces up your sleeves 
to impress your interviewer and land the job.

What Do You Want to Be Known For?

My friend Tim Ferriss just released his new book, The 4-Hour Body.  It contains lots of tantalizing body hacking strategies from losing 20 pounds in a month without exercise to reversing permanent injuries. 

More intriguing than the book itself is how Tim intends to keep it on the bestseller lists for the better part of this year.  As my other buddy Jonathan Fields put it on his Tribal Author blog, instead of trying to appeal to as many people as possible, Tim created an ultra-slick, James Cameron worthy book trailer that “makes a bee-line for the hearts and souls of most rabid, hyperbolic, youth and performance driven part of the market, knowing that there were more than enough of them to push the book onto the New York Times list.”

People wonder why everything Tim Ferriss does turns to gold, and here’s the reason:  he knows his audience better than himself.  He has slowly but carefully cultivated a loyal legion of fans on his blog by providing advice of a very specific nature: think extreme breath-holding and round-the-world plane tickets.  After years of using the blog to analyze what his audience wants, Tim now serves it up in The 4-Hour Body.  And it’s working.

The point is, Tim doesn’t try to be all things to all people, and neither should you.  As you progress in your career, do you have a solid understanding of your strengths, where you add the most value, and the people who most appreciate what you bring to the table?  Can you articulate what you want to be known for in your organization and your field besides pleasing people in the senior ranks?  It’s only with these insights that you will be in a position to actively drive your career forward.

Evisors: A New Networking Must

Just when I thought there were no ideas in the online career advice space, someone surprises me, and that’s what happened when I read Christine Apold’s e-mail last week.

Christine wrote to let me know about Evisors.com, an online marketplace for expertise that connects people with qualified and knowledgeable experts in their fields. 

Evisor.com’s growing collection of 500 real world experts can tell job seekers first-hand what it’s like to work at 475+ companies across a range of industries and functions. Says Christine:  “Today, when someone embarks on the job search, they scour their personal and professional networks for advice and help preparing for applications and interviews. However, if that expertise does not lie directly in their network or they are not comfortable seeking advice from friends and family for any reason, job seekers can quickly start feeling like they are wandering in the dark.”

The Evisors provide the inside scoop on a wide variety of topics within an industry or company including firm organization and culture, how make a smooth transition, what the firm really looks for in an interview and ways to make your application stand out.  Many of the experts were former interviewers as well as employees at these firms so their practice interviews and resume reviews are truly representative of what you will face in the interview. It’s like knowing somebody in every company you apply for.

Whether you’re looking for a new job or hoping to expand your network, I hope you will check this out.  Once again, a resource I wish I’d had ten years ago!

Are You Entitled to Severance?

Are You Entitled to Severance?

A WCW reader asks:  I am about to start a series of job interviews.  Should I bring up severance during the process?  How much should I get, and is there any way to negotiate a better-than-average package?

You can and should talk about severance during the interview process - it will not affect your standing.  When the employer brings up the topic of benefits, ask about the company's official severance policy then.  If they do offer severance, then a month of pay is around the minimum you should receive.  If you're at the middle management level, it's probably closer to a year.  Keep in mind that continuing healthcare insurance is just as important – if not more important – than the cash you will receive.

Severance is part of the total compensation package and should be negotiated just like anything else.  As with any negotiation, you have to prove why the skills and experience you bring to the table and the contributions you will make to the organization are worth more than the money you are asking them to shell out in the form of salary, benefits, severance, etc.  When you start to talk money and benefits, you should phrase your comments in the context of what you offer that no other candidate does, rather than what you simply deserve from a financial standpoint.  You should also have done your research to determine that someone at your level typically receives X amount of severance and be able to communicate that to the employer. 

Severance may be used as a bargaining chip in the event that you don't get the salary you want, or something about the benefit package is not ideal.  You could say, for example:  “Well, my market value is really closer to $90K, but I can make $85K work if you would be willing to add an extra two weeks of severance pay."  Good luck!

 

Screw the Cover Letter

I don’t believe that job seekers should use cover letters.

In a nutshell, I think that if you have to spend all this time composing the best-written, most persuasive cover letter ever written, you don’t know the recipient well enough to be sending her your resume.

When companies ask you to send a resume and a cover letter, it’s usually in the context of a job requisition that is posted online.  In this job market, said posting is sure to get at least two hundred responses that will inevitably sit in an HR staffer’s inbox and may or may not receive even a cursory glance.

Don’t think that you will beat the odds.  Instead, you have to circumvent the application process by establishing relationships with individuals already working inside the company.  The first step is to ask everyone you talk to if they know someone at your target company.  The contact need not be a senior executive or hiring manager – anyone in a department similar to yours will do.  If you can’t locate anyone with a friend or family member working at the company, dig a little deeper.  Search LinkedIn and look through the membership directories of third-party trade associations in your industry.

If you’ve found a name, but not a corresponding e-mail, check the company website or call reception to get the format for e-mail addresses at that organization – it’s usually firstname_lastname@company.com, firstname.lastname@company.com, or firstinitiallastname@company.com. 

Write a short, cordial message and ask for what you want up front, which should be an informational interview to talk about how that person got to where they are in their career and what advice they might have.  Do not ask them if they know of any job openings at this stage.  Your goal should be to establish a one-on-one, personal relationship inside the company.

Will this approach get you a job right away?  Probably not.  Good networking requires patience, but it works, and candidates who have been introduced internally are far more likely to get interview requests and be considered for positions that don’t even make it to the job boards.