HOW TO CAPTIVATE HIRING MANAGER

THE TIPPING HAT TO GALVANIZE HIRING MANAGER

Even when technology plays a role in the hiring process, those systems are programmed by people who have their own ideas, biases, and assumptions about what makes a candidate the best fit for the role. Understanding the psychology of the job search can give candidates a distinct advantage. Career expert Dawn Graham explores the mind of the typical hiring manager, providing insight that can help candidates create a targeted job search strategy and land an offer.

 Topics include:

·                 Unfairness in the job search

·                 Common hiring biases

·                 Using technology as a job seeker

·                 Facing hiring managers as a job seeker

·                 Creating a bias-busting career plan

·                 Engaging your allies

·                 Marketing yourself effectively

·                 Addressing red flags head on

·                 Navigating salary negotiation

·                 Building resilience as a job seeker

Job searches are so frustrating. But you know what? It's not your fault. The truth is, the hiring process is broken. Most

 job seekers believe that the hiring process is fair, linear and rational, led by people who are trained to hire, when it's not that way at all. It's unfair, circular, and confusing, led by humans who are, well, biased. You're likely aware of hiring biases that have to do with age, race or gender, but there are many other hidden psychological biases that can impede your progress. Many of which, job seekers don't know about, much less hiring managers. But when you understand what's really going on in the mind of the hirer, you'll be able to develop a proactive, targeted strategy that gives you a distinct advantage. Hi, I'm Doctor Dawn Graham, author of "Switchers: How Smart Professionals "Change Careers and Seize Success", and career director for the Executive MBA Program at the Wharton School. So join me on LinkedIn Learning where we'll dive into the hiring manager's mind and share practical strategies to help you be more competitive in the job search.

If you’ve considered changing careers, you've probably grappled with the fear that you might not have the right skills for

A new line of work. But give yourself a little credit. You’ve got skills. Plenty of ‘em in fact. And just the type employers in

all industries are looking for.

Remember the time you condensed that incomprehensible pile of data into a few key slides for a presentation? That’s

data management. Or when you nailed it in that brainstorming session on how you were going to position a few new

hires on your team? That’s critical thinking. Even that time you organized the company softball game? That counts as communication.

Many of the most transferable skills are those that enable you to relate to people and deal with challenges in your

work life. “Interviewers know that technical skills can be taught but personality traits are much more difficult to change,” says Alex Freund, a career coach in New Jersey.

So if you’re looking for a new line of work, highlight these nine skills that cross most industries—and therefore would make a boss in any field very happy.

Critical thinking

Critical thinking is the ability to make good decisions, and take appropriate action to solve problems. All employers everywhere value this ability, which also encompasses analytical skills like gathering and evaluating information.

Example: After a thorough analysis of your department’s two vendors, you decide to scale back the work of one by 25% while ramping up the other by 60% because you feel you’ll get a much greater return on that investment.

Collaboration

Collaboration is the ability to work effectively with others despite differences and opposing points of view. Teams today can be very diverse—split by politics, work styles and personalities, notes Amanda Gerrie, a career consultant in the San Francisco Bay area. So the ability to work together toward a common goal is a critical skill.

Example: You were in charge of managing your team’s intern last summer, which involved in coordination with your co-workers over the person’s workload and priorities.

Leadership

This includes teaching, motivating, coaching and supervising. Even in non-management jobs, the ability to motivate fellow employees toward a common goal, gauge priorities and manage resources is highly desirable.

Example: You helped coordinate your office's softball team—recruiting people to the team, keeping them informed about games and overall creating an atmosphere of camaraderie.

Creativity

This word can really do a lot for a candidate’s profile. Creativity, as it pertains to the working world, means having a knack for coming up with imaginative and original ways to solve problems or create new value. This is about more than just innovation. This is about seeing something that isn’t there then making it appear.

Example: It feels like everyone at your company is always asking for a copy of that one report that comes out every month. You dig on the Internet and find a free tool that would disseminate this report internally to only those people who opt in. After getting the necessary approvals, you implement the tool, saving everyone lots of time.

Written communication

Being able to effectively convey ideas in writing is valuable. This involves first synthesizing data and situations and then translating them in a way that helps other people understand and act. Even without data, if you can concisely and smartly communicate your ideas you’re pretty much golden in the eyes of a new manager.

Example: You know the vice president of your company likes to be prepared with times, dates and themes of important industry events. Anticipating this, you do a little homework and punch up a bulleted list with this info for your boss to review.

Coding

So what if you’re not yet capable of developing for Facebook yet. If you’re able to clean up a web page using your sparse knowledge of HTML or able to make a suggestion based on your limited experience with CSS, you’re in great shape in terms of this highly-transferable skill.

Example: You’re asked to contribute to a blog your company is publishing to promote the company. You provide a 500-word post, and using your knowledge of HTML, you’re able to advise the publishing team on the format and style you want your blog post to have.

Time management

This one is pretty simple: When your boss gives you an assignment, do you able to complete it— to his or her like—in the timeframe allotted? If you answered yes, you can probably include this in your arsenal of skills.

Example: Your manager asks you to deliver a three-bullet point summary on a project you’re working on by the end of the next business day, and you do it. No problem.

Data management

Understanding, researching, translating and compiling data are increasingly valued abilities in many industries. The amount of data companies collect and manage has exploded in recent years and employees need to be comfortable working with all that information. Data can be any type of information that has meaning and needs context: A study your company commissions on a specific area of industry analysis, a spreadsheet containing your company’s lapsed customers, or even a report on how a single post on a single social media platform performed.

Example: You receive six spreadsheets in your inbox, each containing a different data set to describe how a different segment of your team’s business is doing. You take this information and consolidate it for a presentation you’ll give in two weeks.

Customer service

Customers and clients keep the lights on at your business, so if you can show an employer you know how to deal with them when the going gets tough, you have a major leg up on your competition who can’t. “Whether we like it or not we are all in sales now,” says Gerry, the San Francisco career consultant. “This includes the ability to listen, speak, persuade and collaboratively negotiate.”

Example: For some reason, you’re forwarded a thread with the subject line “concerned customer.” You read the thread and feel like you have a handle on what that concern might be. You reach out directly to the customer, offer a solution to the problem and offer to be free for that customer at any time to help him solve the problem so that it doesn’t happen again.

Much better to go in the other direction: Create a smaller but better-qualified applicant pool to improve the yield. Here’s why: Every applicant costs you money—especially now, in a labor market where applicants have started to “ghost” employers, abandoning their applications midway through the process. Every application also exposes a company to legal risk, because the company has obligations to candidates (not to discriminate, for example) just as it does to employees. And collecting lots of applicants in a wide funnel means that a great many of them won’t fit the job or the company, so employers have to rely on the next step of the hiring process—selection—to weed them out. As we will see, employers aren’t good at that.

Once people are candidates, they may not be completely honest about their skills or interests—because they want to be hired—and employers’ ability to find out the truth is limited. More than a generation ago the psychologist John Wanes proposed giving applicants a realistic preview of what the job is like. That still makes sense as a way to head off those who would end up being unhappy in the job. It’s not surprising that Google has found a way to do this with gamification: Job seekers see what the work would be like by playing a game version of it. Marriott has done the same, even for low-level employees. Its My Marriott Hotel game targets young people in developing countries who may have had little experience in hotels to show them what it’s like and to steer them to the recruiting site if they score well on the game. The key for any company, though, is that the preview should make clear what is difficult and challenging about the work as well as why it’s fun so that candidates who don’t fit won’t apply.

It should be easy for candidates to learn about a company and a job, but making it really easy to apply, just to fill up that funnel, doesn’t make much sense. During the dot-com boom Texas Instruments cleverly introduced a reemployment test that allowed applicants to see their scores before they applied. If their scores weren’t high enough for the company to take their applications seriously, they tended not to proceed, and the company saved the cost of having to process their applications. If the goal is to get better hires in a cost-effective manner, it’s more important to scare away candidates who don’t fit than to jam more candidates into the recruiting funnel, Test candidates’ standard skills.

How to determine which candidates to hire—

what predicts who will be a good employee—has been rigorously studied at least since World War I. The personnel psychologists who investigated this have learned much about predicting good

Hires those contemporary organizations have since forgotten, such as that neither college grades nor unstructured sequential interviews (hopping from office to office) are a good predictor, whereas past performance is.

Since it can be difficult (if not impossible) to glean sufficient information about an outside applicant’s past performance, what other predictors are good? There is remarkably little consensus even among experts. That’s mainly because a typical job can have so many tasks and aspects, and different factors predict success at different tasks.

There is general agreement, however, that testing to see whether individuals have standard skills is about the best we can do. Can the candidate speak French? Can she do simple programming tasks? And so forth. But just doing the tests is not enough. The economists Mitchell Hoffman, Lisa B. Kahn, and Danielle Li found that even when companies conduct such tests, hiring managers often ignore them—and when they do, they get worse hires. The psychologist Nathan Kuncel and colleagues discovered that even when hiring managers use objective criteria and tests, applying their own weights and judgment to those criteria lead them to pick worse candidates than if they had used a standard formula. Only 40% of employers, however, do any tests of skills or general abilities, including IQ. What are they doing instead? Seventy-four percent do drug tests, including for marijuana use; even employers in states where recreational use is now legal still seem to do so.

Be wary of vendors bearing high-tech gifts.

Into the testing void has come a new group of entrepreneurs who either are data scientists or have them in tow. They bring a fresh approach to the hiring process—but often with little understanding of how hiring actually works. John Summer, of HR Examiner, an online newsletter that focuses on HR technology, estimates that on average, companies get five to seven pitches every day—almost all of them about hiring—from vendors using data science to address HR issues. These vendors have all sorts of cool-sounding assessments, such as computer games that can be scored to predict who will be a good hire. We don’t know whether any of these actually lead to better hires, because few of them are validated against actual job performance. That aside, these assessments have spawned a counter wave of vendors who help candidates learn how to score well on them. Lloyds Bank, for example, developed a virtual-reality-based assessment of candidate potential, and Job Test Prep offers to teach potential candidates how to do well on it. Especially for IT and technical jobs, cheating on skills tests and even video interviews (where colleagues off camera give help) is such a concern that eTeki and other specialized vendors help employers figure out who is cheating in real time.

 Revamp your interviewing process.

 The amount of time employers spend on interviews has almost doubled since 2009, according to research from Glassdoor. How much of that increase represents delays in setting up those interviews is impossible to tell, but it provides at least a partial explanation for why it takes longer to fill jobs now. Interviews are arguably the most difficult technique to get right, because interviewers should stick to questions that predict good hires—mainly about past behavior or performance that’s relevant to the tasks of the job—and ask them consistently across candidates. Just winging it and asking whatever comes to mind is next to useless.

More important, interviews are where biases most easily show up, because interviewers do usually decide on the fly what to ask of whom and how to interpret the answer. Everyone knows some executive who is absolutely certain he knows the one question that will really predict good candidates (“If you were stranded on a desert island…”). The sociologist Lauren Rivera’s examination of interviews for elite positions, such as those in professional services firms, indicates that hobbies, particularly those associated with the rich, feature prominently as a selection criterion.

Interviews are most important for assessing “fit with our culture,” which the number one is hiring criterion employers report using, according to research from the Rockefeller Foundation. It’s also one of the squishiest attributes to measure, because few organizations have an accurate and consistent view of their own culture—and even if they do, understanding what attributes represent a good fit is not straightforward. For example, does the fact that an applicant

Belonged to a fraternity reflect experience working with others or elitism or bad attitudes toward women? Should it be completely irrelevant? Letting someone with no experience or training make such calls is a recipe for bad hires and, of course, discriminatory behavior. Think hard about whether your interviewing protocols make any sense and resist the urge to bring even more managers into the interview process.

Recognize the strengths and weaknesses of machine learning models.

 Culture fit is another area into which new vendors are swarming. Typically they collect data from current employees, create a machine learning model to predict the attributes of the best ones, and then use that model to hire candidates with the same attributes.

As with many other things in this new industry, that sounds good until you think about it; then it becomes replete with problems. Given the best performers of the past, the algorithm will almost certainly include white and male as key variables. If it’s restricted from using that category, it will come up with attributes associated with being a white male, such as playing rugby.

Organizations compete fiercely in the war for talent. Many invest an enormous amount of money, time and other resources in advertising and recruiting strategies to attract the best candidates. This is because today’s executives understand that one of the most important resources in organizations—if not the most important—is human resources.

Yet, when it comes to actually assessing which job candidates are likely to perform most effectively and make the most significant contributions, a large number of organizations employ rudimentary and haphazard approaches to selecting their workforces. This represents a serious disconnect for organizations that purport to have a strategic focus on increasing their competitive advantage through effective talent management.

The disconnect stems from the fact that many organizations fail to use scientifically proven assessments to make selection decisions, even though such assessments have been shown to result in significant productivity increases, cost savings, decreases in attrition and other critical organizational outcomes that translate into literally millions of dollars. Thus, there are real and very substantial bottom-line financial results associated with using effective assessments to guide selection decisions. One reason why more organizations do not use rigorous assessments to select employees is because many executives and HR professionals have misconceptions about the value of using them. Some of the most common misconceptions are presented below.

Person-Oriented Job Analysis:

Sample KSAs for an Investigator Job

■ Ability to speak clearly, self-confidently and concisely using voice inflection, gestures and eye contact for emphasis.

■ Ability to think critically, questioning assumptions and identifying merits and deficiencies in logic.

■ Ability to gain cooperation from other individuals or organizations.

■ Ability to maintain a professional demeanor and appearance at all times.

■ Ability to remain calm and levelheaded under stress.

■ Knowledge of investigative techniques and procedures

While an in-depth discussion of job analysis procedures is beyond the scope of this report, the major steps involved in performing a job analysis for the purpose of developing or selecting assessment methods Observe or interview job experts to develop a list of tasks performed on the job.

Observe or interview job experts to develop a list of the KSAs workers must possess to perform job tasks effectively Survey a sufficiently large and representative sample of job incumbents or their supervisors, asking them to rate which   job tasks and KSAs are most critical for effective job performance.

Analyze the survey data to prioritize the most critical tasks and KSAs for the job elect or develop assessments that measure the most critical tasks or KSAs that a worker must possess upon entry to the job

Job analysis information is used as a basis for developing assessments. Specifically, assessments are developed to measure the most critical tasks or KSAs resulting from the job analysis for a given job. Some assessments involve work samples that simulate job tasks and require candidates to demonstrate that they can perform these tasks effectively. Job-oriented or task-based job analysis data are used as a basis for developing these types of assessments because they focus directly on assessing how well job candidates can perform critical work tasks. Other assessment methods focus on measuring KSAs that are required to perform job tasks effectively, such as various mental abilities, physical abilities or personality traits, depending on the job’s requirements. If one were selecting a manager, for example, it would be important to assess whether candidates could solve complex business problems, be decisive and communicate effectively. Alternatively, if one were selecting an administrative assistant, KSAs such as the ability to perform work conscientiously and the ability to perform work with speed and accuracy would be much more important for identifying capable candidates. Worker-oriented or KSA-based job analysis data are used as a basis for developing assessment methods that focus on a job candidate’s underlying abilities to perform important work tasks. Assessment Methods This section of the paper describes the various assessment methods that can be used by organizations. Assessment methods are predominantly task-based and which are predominantly KSA-based. The methods discussed here can be used for internal or external selection. Internal selection refers to situations where an organization is hiring or promoting from within, whereas external selection refers to situations where an organization is hiring from the outside. While some assessment methods are used more commonly for external selection (e.g., cognitive ability tests, personality tests, integrity tests), there are numerous examples of organizations that have used one or more of the following tools for internal selection, external selection or both.

Adverse Impact

Sackets, P. R., & Ellington, J. E. (1997). The effects of forming multi-predictor composites on group differences and

personnel Psychology, 50, 707-721. A common assumption exists that including predictors that demonstrate smaller group differences with others that demonstrate larger group differences will help alleviate the adverse impact observed. The purpose of this paper was to answer the question, “If two or more predictors are combined that have smaller and larger group differences, what will be the magnitude of group differences and, consequently, of adverse impact?” To answer this question, a set of tables, figures and formulas were presented that highlighted variables influential in affecting how combinations of predictors influenced observed group differences. A number of conclusions were drawn that clarified the extent to which combining predictors with smaller and larger group differences affected subsequent

Adverse impact.

Sackets, P. R., Schmitt, N., Ellington, J. E., & Karin, M. B. (2001).

High stakes testing in employment, credentialing, and higher education: Prospects in a post affirmative-action world. American Psychologist, 56, 302-318. Cognitively loaded tests of knowledge, skill and ability often contribute to decisions regarding education, jobs, licensure or certification. Users of such tests often face difficult choices when trying to maximize both the performance and ethnic diversity of chosen individuals. The authors describe the nature of this

quandary, review research on different strategies to address it and recommend using selection materials that assess the full range of relevant attributes using a format that minimizes verbal content as much as is consistent with the outcome one is trying to achieve. They also recommend the use of test preparation, face-valid assessments and the consideration of relevant job or life experiences. Regardless of the strategy adopted, however, they suggest that it is unreasonable to expect that one can maximize both the performance and ethnic diversity of selected individuals.

Applicant Reactions

 Gilliland, S. W. (1995). Fairness from the applicant’s perspective: Reactions to employee selection procedures. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 3, 11-19.

Applicant reactions to selection procedures were examined in terms of the satisfaction and/or violation of 10 procedural justice rules. The authors first collected 237 critical incidents describing fair and unfair treatment during selection processes from 31 individuals who had recently participated in job search and hiring. The critical incidents were categorized into 10 procedural justice rules, and the distribution of these incidents was examined for different hiring outcomes and different selection procedures. The most common procedural concerns reflected selection procedure job relatedness and the interpersonal treatment applicants had received. Accepted applicants were primarily concerned about consistency of treatment, while rejected applicants were more concerned about receiving timely feedback and blatant bias. Ease of faking was the primary procedural concern among applicants who took honesty and personality tests, while job relatedness was the primary concern among applicants who took ability and work sample tests. The authors concluded the paper by discussing future research issues and offering practical suggestions for minimizing applicants’ negative reactions to selection processes.

The premise of this research was that applicant reactions to selection procedures may be of practical importance to organizations’ attractiveness to candidates and to selection procedure validity and utility. In part one of a two-part study, 110 newly hired entry-level managers and 44 recruiting-employment managers viewed sample items or brief descriptions of 14 selection tools. They judged simulations, interviews and cognitive tests with relatively concrete item-types (such as vocabulary, standard written English and mathematical word problems) as significantly more job-related than personality, bio-data and cognitive tests with relatively abstract item types (such as quantitative comparisons and letter sets).

A measure of new managers’ cognitive abilities was positively correlated with their perceptions of the job relatedness of selection procedures. In part two, the reactions of 460 applicants to a range of entry-level to professional civil service examinactions were found to be positively related to procedural and distributive justice perceptions and willingness to recommend the employer to others.