The art of getting to know someone is simpler and more natural than most job interviews would suggest. Job interviews should present a challenge to candidates and managers alike in a large pool of high performers, but they should never be more complex than the job itself. While networking like never before, we rarely find time to develop people or truly get to know them beyond the answers we receive based on the questions we think are most important. If you have ever been frustrated with the process of a prior job interview as a candidate, or are a hiring manager who has ever wondered why your top, most authentic candidates seem to be a different person, not engaged and leave quickly after being hired, look to be not prepared, or not genuine during your interviews despite the interest they seem to have expressed, then you should read this article below to consider new ideas to address the problems you may face and subscribe to this "InWeekend" Newsletter.
Interviewing and developing talent ought to be exciting, yet why is it so feared or dreaded by candidates? Much too often, the message must get lost somewhere between the hiring managers and their candidates. And the problem is that the message is usually never recovered. Despite unprecedented advancements in technology, our hiring practices in our pharma and medical device industry as well as in many others need remain too rigid, artificial, and archaic for our fast moving environment. In this regard, the LinkedIn EasyApply and platform recommendations as well as format in general has simplified and advanced the hiring process more than many of us in our organizations.
Unlike a casual business introduction, meeting or proposal, a job interview is a contest, an expectation or a transaction that can make a huge difference on life sustainability for an individual, and therefore explains the inherent stress. However, most seasoned candidates or hiring managers I meet become cynics of the interview process over time because though it is a contest, it is like neither a sports nor a scientific contest, because it usually lacks personality, transparency, feedback, speed, data, decision making, courage, professionalism and innovation. And the list of gaps goes on.
Increasing numbers of our colleagues in the healthcare and other sectors are now in transition searching for new jobs. So, in this article, I candidly share a list of some of the most blatant errors we make in interviewing or developing talent once they are hired through real world scenarios described to me by my friends in my industry who range from award winning executive level leaders for decades to entry level professionals as well as those I have lived through myself. The examples I have selected may be dramatic but are intended to stimulate deeper introspection and change in our approaches to hiring and managing our valuable talent. At the end of the scenarios, I provide general directions to consider in order to improve the process and the results of our job interviews.
REAL WORLD TALENT MANAGEMENT SCENARIOS AND NEEDS
- We do not have final executive approval to hire, yet we start formal interviews, misrepresent our commitment, try to gather intelligence, mislead the candidates, with no regard for their time or opportunities and lose them to different companies because we cannot accelerate our internal processes.
- We coach candidates to speak as little as possible and to listen during interviews to be successful as recruiters. We cut our candidates off as hiring managers citing various reasons or other meetings, restricting our own time and the opportunity to possibly have someone work for us by limiting ourselves to 30 or 60 minute windows. Then we say we know our candidates, and make our decisions.
- We share one story about candidate expectations or job description prior to the interview with the recruiters, but then share a different story and choose a different flow or format of discussion with the candidate, tell them as little as possible about ourselves during the interview, which leads to an uneven exchange of information, and unfair contest. Thus, we provide no clear introduction of our company or its structure, business model, partners or employees, with minimal information available publicly, yet then we ask for some specific advice or strategy expecting them to provide it based on their research. So I challenge ourselves to answer what is the true value or true meaning or relevance of a response to such question with no background knowledge or context to the company, no matter how well-prepared, well-researched, or articulated it may be? The executives who master the art of interviewing and building lasting connections with their employees aim to engage in business conversations that matter and have substance, and are deliberate about execution and time-sensitivity of decisions. Such a question without a proper introduction or overview is therefore inconsequential. As a result, without appropriate research, knowledge, resources, we receive a blanket response that is not evidence-based nor grounded on actionability, and carries little, if any value. Thus, in the process of restricting ourselves in time today, denying our candidates fundamental data, we often end up wasting our own as well as candidates' time.
- We say we interview for a static cultural fit which does not and cannot exist because culture grows and evolves over time in different environments. Thus we ask behavioral questions to describe situations in the past or hypothetical scenarios in various true or imagined circumstances, create an artificial setting, and we believe we now know that candidate’s character or “cultural fit” whom we label in our debriefs with the interview team to make a decision. Yet character is a colorful spectrum, different shades of which we express through behaviors at different times or true, real-world settings in front of different people, such that an honest person in life is not always honest all the time at work in every task, team or department.?Then we hire our employees thus confirming they are a "cultural fit" and their character is acceptable, and command behaviors and tasks that map to static company values regardless of the changing environment. Or we begin to monitor behaviors and key strokes in the background to evaluate a "worker productivity score" using new technology without giving them direct feedback because we do not trust the employees we hired nor our decisions. As a result, a recent Harvard study
from a few months ago shows that employees, when monitored, are more likely to break the rules and behave in ways that are prohibited
- We approach interviews as scripts, episodes, performances, or first dates rather than time-sensitive conversations, negotiations, business deals that require flexibility, agility, new rules, handshakes, risk, and courage. And as a result of this most common approach we end up hiring good, loud interviewers but rarely good employees who stay and give all of their efforts. Remember that practice shows that some of the best interviewers can often make the worst employees, just as the worst interviewers can sometimes make the best employees.
- We rattle off our company’s core values including “empathy” yet we abruptly end or interrupt the call despite receiving the utmost respect, curiosity, and a strong resume from a candidate, not showing any personal connection nor empathy or interest in true dialogue. When we cannot demonstrate our organization's core values we say we embrace even for 30 or 60 minutes, what level of trust, commitment, or enthusiasm can you expect from the candidate, even if he/she is hired?
- We match the candidate prior experience to the role, without assessing future potential in the same manner we grant a promotion to a person who has longer tenure or track record of performance, longer standing relationships with colleagues, despite undermining others leading to negative feedback from many other peers inside and outside the function.
- We ask questions looking to learn the answers that we have heard before or believe in ourselves, rather than looking to learn about the person we are speaking to, and their true motivations.
- We discourage internal candidates to apply for a promotion if more than one of our team members are targeting it and deny them an opportunity to interview regardless of their individual achievements or aspirations due to fear of competition or decreased engagement moving forward in at least one of the two or the entire team. Thus we deny both of them an opportunity to even interview and develop professionally. Instead we hire an external candidate with no personal context nor prior knowledge of the characters, behaviors, and needs of this team.
- We encourage a candidate to apply, tell them we will coach them through the process and help prepare for an interview, though not be involved in it, but then remove ourselves altogether and refer to another colleague, do not respond to the candidate directly because we find a different candidate
- We are willing to test, provoke, and mislead a strong, genuine candidate by telling them they are over-qualified, directly encourage them to consider a higher role during an interview, as a result of which they openly change their strategy to only pursue the higher role, only to deny them an opportunity to even interview for the higher role even though it is formally open publicly despite their clearly evident curiosity, authentic interest, and persistence.
- We do not read resumes, and do not even know our candidates, do not take the time to read their links, past articles, or prior works they may send us that they are proud of, nor ask them to describe them to us in details.
- We give our cell phone contact information to a candidate after a pleasant interview, yet never respond when they take us up on our offer, and send us a text message to ask something or make a time-sensitive comment.
- We create unfair interview conditions, ask hostile questions or allow disrespectful interruptions from our interview teams, do not ask for feedback on the interview in time to possibly change a critical decision, because after all we are the ones that have a choice to hire, and are giving the candidates the privilege to join us. We act like we are celebrity judges on the "Voice" or "Shark Tank", never apologize because our decision is always final no matter who makes the mistake. As a result we suffer from low job engagement, high attrition, and breed a generation or culture of well-rehearsed cynics who learn "to play the game of interviewing, on-boarding and working", not to be authentic, nor to be trusted.
To propose potential solutions to avoid the scenarios above, here are some strategies to challenge our current norms of interviewing and developing talent.
- Always be active as the hiring party, not passive. You are the one setting up the contest, so you make the announcements, declare it open, closed, rather than stalling, testing, or waiting for the candidate to behave in a way you expect and have seen before to demonstrate interest or persistence.
- Ask questions and do not assume someone is not interested, but do not over-glorify preparation, enthusiasm, or formal thank you notes from your candidates. There are plenty of hiring managers and jobs, not only candidates.
TIME SENSITIVITY AND MOMENTUM
- Take more time to interview, and less time between interviews to make decisions.
- Short-list your candidates regardless of how large your pool is but dedicate substantial time to them for final rounds of interviews.
- Prioritize timing and methods of decision-making over quantity of candidates in the pool (more below in the section dedicated to decision-making and feedback)
- Give yourself a public, formal deadline to make a decision, and stick to it.
LIVE AND DIRECT DECISION-MAKING + FEEDBACK
- Take more time to interview, and less time between interviews to make decisions.
- Prioritize timing and methods of decision-making over quantity of candidates in the pool.
- Make a decision live via video or in person on the spot. This is a timeless, instinctive human practice that requires no technology, saves time, shows transparency, decision-making, true confidence, creates trust, and builds momentum. The longer you choose candidates, the more likely you are to make the wrong selection, particularly in an unprecedented, fast-paced business world today. Instead, the longer you spend with one leading or short-list of candidates, and collaborate on timelines, the stronger performance and engagement you can expect from the new hire.
- Provide live feedback in person or via video during and after the interview if possible or in writing, and refer to formal interview notes recorded, facts, statements from the interview to justify your decision.
- Record your interviews with / without permission according to your local/federal laws
- If a candidate in high demand stands out and has a competitive edge, stop the interview process early, and conclude your business deal or negotiation at the right time by a live or "virtual" hand-shake or by walking away openly live, rather than via e-mail.
TESTING TRANSPARENCY AND RELEVANCE - NO INTRIGUE OR AMBIGUITY
- Run a hands-on exercise or trial that is relevant to the role, and compare candidates by adjusting for the baseline gap between their abilities and responsibilities when using the same rules for all candidates. Listen to this short episode from the Alloutcoach podcast
from a serial entrepreneur
Nathan Hirsch
and an expert on innovative, modern hiring methods to scale global teams.
- Share sufficient information about your company or pipeline to make evidence-based predictions about the candidate to build trust, do not expect miracle recommendations or fish for intelligence if you want to build trust and are serious about hiring as well as a strong reputation for your organization.
ACCOUNTABILITY, DIGNITY AND FLEXIBILITY
- Listen with patience, and do not ever demonstrate you are in a rush when you interview someone, otherwise reschedule it. Stop the interview if the candidate is disrespectful, unprofessional, or irrelevant to the role and provide your reasoning respectfully.
- Ask for feedback on the interview process and suggestions for improvements BEFORE you make a hiring decision, not afterwards, and provide another chance to the candidates to share their prior work and highlights on-demand, and provide an option for a live meeting. Make it clear that providing negative feedback will not hurt the chances of the candidate's being hired.
- Keep formal notes of all your interviews for future reference as records or data
- Record your interviews with / without permission according to your local/federal laws
- Change your mind to create opportunities, watch the tape or recordings of your interviews to edit, move and shake, acknowledge, apologize immediately, and reverse your decision quickly if needed and provide a reason why, preferably before your internal/external deadline regardless of your role, or the one for which you are hiring. Olympic judges are known to change their minds in events where reversing scores was previously unprecedented (e.g. gymnastics, 2004 Olympics in Greece, or figure skating in the recent years) and historically unfathomable (e.g. adoption of goal-line cameras in "soccer" most recently)
- Experiment by offering an employee to update their own job description upon approval from relevant colleagues after a pre-determined period of tenure
- Pair up a new hire with a sponsor incentivized on not only their own but their new hire mentee's performance
PERSONALIZATION AND PROFESSIONALISM - ONE CANDIDATE AT A TIME
- Listen with patience, and do not ever demonstrate you are in a rush when you interview someone, otherwise reschedule it. Stop the interview if the candidate is disrespectful, unprofessional, or irrelevant to the role and provide your reasoning respectfully.
- Learn the resume of your candidates prior to the interview, but if unprepared, make sure to ask about the resume in detail. Do not ever underestimate the value of the candidate in front of you and their prior accomplishments.
- Do not ever mention other candidates in an interview with the exception of a group exercise, rules, or a transparent contest for presentations, mock proposals, etc.
LONG-TERM FOCUS ON BUSINESS
- Evaluate internal gaps between aspiration and ability, and between ability and responsibility and close them through learning and development opportunities to maximize greater expression of employee identity, potential, engagement, higher performance and stronger employee experience. This approach is fundamental in eventually improving the customer experience.
- Integrate sportsmanship and scientific thinking into the interview process and mindsets of employees regardless of their function or background to maximize collaboration and innovation (read this article: Two Most Productive Mindsets to Grow Your Business
)
- Develop employees by diversifying their career portfolio and cross-functional projects
- Promote internal candidates whenever possible to execute a plan for succession, mobility, and diversity
- Create new full or part-time consulting contract and volunteering roles to create momentum, productivity, and diversity
- Build focused casual business conversations during interviews with substance rather than encouraging elevator pitches, by asking and exchanging open-ended questions that allow the candidates to share their highlight reel and showcase their philosophy
Despite the grim realities of the gaps in our accepted norms across human resources, I am absolutely inspired by the diversity of talent and self-driven new generation of leaders entering the workforce in our industry and beyond.
We can continue to test, provoke, mislead rather than simply get to know our new candidates but rest assured that we are not outsmarting them, instead we have much to learn from their open, entrepreneurial mindset because they are longing to collaborate with people regardless of who they are, their status, and where they are from. They are more free of predispositions than our current or previous generations, are looking for content, execution, and purpose rather than perceptions, delivery, politics or war.
Because when they lack it, they are the ones that leave, that outsmart us, our teams, and our future, and they are not likely to hire us anytime soon!
Leave me your comments, questions, ideas, or topics for future issues of "InWeekend"!
CEO and Co-Founder of @Amedea Pharma
Host of the @Alloutcoach Podcast and YouTube Channel
Podcast links and availability across the most popular platforms are listed below.
Psicologa | OP Veneto Sezione A. | HR Recruiter | People and Culture | People analytics
2 年Grazie per la condivisione.