A few of you have inquired about my friend who was trying to hire a marketing manager in December. I’m sorry to say, things are not going at all well for Theresa.
You may recall that in this age of strategic HR departments, hiring managers are pretty much on their own when it comes to recruitment and dealing with the onslaught of the eager when a job is posted. And you will remember that poor Theresa had plenty of representation from our five types of applicants. But after a holiday season spent reading dozens of resumes, she managed to find seven worth interviewing.
Now you need to understand that Theresa is an excellent, experienced and meticulous manager who invests considerable time preparing for interviews. So seven interviews is probably an investment on her part of more than 18 hours as she combs through resumes, writes up questions, creates her scoring rubric (seriously, she does one) and then, of course interviewing the candidates. After all that time and all those interviews, all Theresa had to show for herself was three new questions to add to her list:
Question One: Are you aware this is an interview, not a night club?
It’s a safe bet that a large pharmaceutical company is probably a fairly conservative place. And it’s a safer bet that you just can’t be too conservative in a job interview. Why then did two of her candidates show up in skirts so short they had trouble sitting down and why did one of them think it was acceptable to top it off with, well, not much top? Theresa will admit that she’s not there to interview someone’s wardrobe but she is there to evaluate whether or not someone is a good fit for the culture. Theresa believes, wisely, that skills can be taught but attitude and basic smarts are either there or they aren’t, and cultural fit is one of those know-it-when-you-see-it qualities that can only be teased out in the course of an interview, as opposed to a lap dance.
Our two Ladies-Who-Wear-Too-Little started out behind the eight ball on fit and didn’t improve much with conversation. One felt it necessary to respond to several text messages in the course of the interview, and the other wasn’t as well-acquainted with the content of her resume as she might have been. A gentleman who managed to get his suit on frontwards nevertheless thought it was okay to chew gum, let his phone ring loudly throughout and borrow Theresa’s pen to take notes.
Question Two: From which vending machine did you get your degree?
Theresa likes to ask questions about specific accomplishments because it’s a good way to get the conversation going and find out where a candidate’s passions might lie. She is less interested in the content of the response than in how the candidate constructs things and drives the conversation. So imagine her surprise when one candidate couldn’t recall having worked on the product launch he listed in his resume and then had difficulty understanding questions about COGS (cost of goods sold). Another candidate came right out and said he had almost nothing to do with a product his resume would suggest he managed. A number of her candidates had MBAs, prompting Theresa to note dryly, “You’d think they would teach them to spell MBA before they actually gave them one.”
Shockingly, almost none of her candidates had questions beyond salary, work hours and vacation allotment. Not one of them wanted to know about career paths, corporate priorities, success factors or other things that make a hiring manager’s heart go pitter-patter. Hint: If you are going to a job interview, make a list of intelligent questions. Theresa is beginning to wonder what goes on at universities these days and how people who can neither write nor converse nor ask questions manage to get through them.
Question Three: Do You Realize This Job is with Other People?
Naturally, she had her share of people who look great on paper but don’t really work in three dimensions. One had a handshake comparable to three-week-old celery; another refused to make eye contact. Almost all of them were incapable of small talk. Note to jobseekers: Hiring managers use small talk to see how you act in stressful or new situations. They want to see you smile, make eye contact and engage in a lively discussion of dryer lint, the weather, baseball or Amercian Idol. This is a skill you need to have.
Others were just plain sociopaths. Asked why they left a previous company, they told the truth. One candidate volunteered “I just didn’t get along with the manager. He kept giving me too much to do so I stopped doing it and they fired me.” Theresa asked if he knew he’d said that out loud. He knew. She asked if he thought that might be a limitation in his job search. He didn’t think so. Here’s some advice: The correct answer to why did you leave a job is this: “It wasn’t enough of a challenge for me and there were no other avenues I could see in the company.” Period. Now shut up. If your parting was not quite planned, the answer is “The company was restructuring and I took the opportunity to do some consulting.” Or something like that. What idiot tells his potentially future boss that his response to more work is to do less?
Another interesting thing Theresa noted was how few people put anything remotely personal on their resumes. No hobbies, no interests. And when asked, a lot of people had trouble coming up with anything beyond watching TV. And this makes these people either boring or liars, neither of which makes anyone a star candidate.
So after countless hours interviewing and attempting to extract a hint of passion, excitement, expertise or even ambition from promising candidates, Theresa is back to the drawing board. She has managed to get HR to repost the job (noting that many of the previous candidates have reapplied), and she’s settled in for a long, cold March full of terrible resumes.
Related Posts
Marketing Recruitment is Broken Part 1: Bethany’s Revenge
Marketing Recruitment is Broken Part 4: Guess Who Blew the Interview?
BizMarketer is written by Elizabeth Williams
I help companies have better conversations
Drop me a line at ewilliams@candlerchase.com
Or follow me @bizmkter
Eva Ivanov says
Yes indeed. All the above is scary (pardon me, frighteningly true) – or am I just getting ‘old’. Ouch. Grammar and spelling is now tightly packed away into a time capsule of the last century. Eye contact and good (young) conversationalists are a thing of the past, replaced by text messaging. Politeness and common etiquette (leave your cell phones off for once, and for goodness sake, the whole bus doesn’t have to hear your every ‘whatever’ blah blah blah what’ever’ on the bus! The “ME FIRST” generation is really becoming tiring. Or am I just a tired old bag known as the more ‘senior’ citizen of our firm, close to that ledge of retirement, and nicknamed ‘the professor’ for skills that are rapidly going extinct. How do these new generation of MBA’rs plan on communicating? By texting their prospects? Building a business by text messaging. Maybe everyone will just put their “ME TOO- ME FIRST” video on YouTube and becoming a sensational 10 year old mini Lady Gaga. Why do I want to suddenly start humming ‘Those Were the Days” my friend. Great article Ms. Biz.