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The Psychologist Will See You Now

As I was browsing through the Sunday paper last week there was one article in particular that really caught my eye. It was written by Paul Sullivan of the New York Times and it shared the findings of a new academic study Money Beliefs and Financial Behaviors: Development of the Klontz Money Script Inventory published in the current issue of The Journal of Financial Therapy.

Disclaimer: this is a heavy blog post but if you finish it I think you’ll understand why I found it compelling enough to share with you as a Hiring Manager.

financial literacy, status seeker, money avoidance

The worship of money or the avoidance of it are equally as destructive

He found that some people were under stress about having too little money while others were anxious about losing what they had or felt guilty for having so much. Some people immediately disliked anyone with money, while others would spend their money immediately without regard to the future.

The Klontz study asked 422 people about 72 money-related beliefs and then analyzed correlations among the answers. This produced four broad categories that Klontz called “money scripts”: money avoidance, money worship, money status and money vigilance.

Money Avoidance: people who may be worried about abusing credit cards. They may believe that they do not deserve to have money and may sabotage their own financial well-being. People in this group tend to have low incomes and net worth. They also tend to be younger.
Money Worship: the opposite of those with avoidance, but their behaviors are equally destructive. They believe that an increase in income or a windfall will make everything better and love the status derived from the things money can buy. This belief also lands people in debt because they use whatever credit they have to buy things that will impress others. “They believe money will solve all of your problems,” Klontz said. “This is the money belief pattern that afflicts the majority of Americans.”
Money Equals Status: occurs when people’s self-worth is linked to their net worth. These people often take bigger financial risks because they want to have the stories of big gains to impress their friends. (Don’t expect them to tell you when those big bets do not pay off.)
Money Vigilance: The only affliction that did not have an overwhelmingly negative impact on people’s financial future. People with this disorder do not like to share information about their income or wealth, but they also do not spend foolishly. Still, excessive wariness about spending can keep these people from enjoying the benefits of what money can buy. On the other hand, while they did not necessarily have higher incomes, they paid off their credit card bills each month. “Maybe some anxiety and vigilance around money is good for your bottom line,” Klontz said.

As Mr. Sullivan insightfully pointed out, “Not surprisingly, the four money scripts illustrate problems that have less to do with money than with what money represents.”

Most of the people in the study identified themselves as “middle class” during their developmental years. Another common thread was how people remembered a financially traumatic moment in their life. Klontz described a case in which a family was beset by debt and about to lose its house. In one case, the grandmother bails out the family. In the other, the family figures out a way to keep the house on its own. The outcome is the same, but the takeaway can be different.

“If grandma swoops in and saves the day, you could walk away from that thinking that you don’t need to worry about money,” he said. “Or where there was a lot of talk about losing the house, that could impact you so you live your life afraid of losing everything.”

What I found most interesting for you as a Hiring Manager was this: One of the goals of the study was to use the results to create a test that therapists and financial advisers could use to quickly understand their clients’ beliefs about money. Klontz estimated that administering the test could save therapists hours of conversation and help them understand how a patient came to a particular belief about money.

Conclusion: if someone you’ve got on your team grew up in an environment where their parents demonstrated destructive behaviors but got bailed out, don’t be surprised when that employee misses deadlines and expects someone else to jump in and save them.

Tags: Credit History, hiring manager, Interview, job performance, Karl Scheible, unemployment

18 May 11 | Employment, Interviewing, Recruiting | Read on | Comments (6)

Attitude is [almost] Everything

Conor Neill, a close friend of mine and a prominent Entrepreneur in Spain, wrote this short story below for the Entrepreneurs’ Organization’s blog. It’s a great reminder of just how important attitude is in hiring.

Two men, Bill and Frank, begin working at a hotel the same day. They are intelligent, educated and ambitious. The manager of the hotel greets them and hands them both doorman uniforms. They are to begin opening and closing the doors, helping with bags, flagging taxis, etc.

Bill thinks “Doorman? I am worth more than this! I could manage this hotel better than the current guy.” But he doesn’t have an alternative offer and he needs the money, so he does the job anyway. He maintains a pained grimace on his face and deals with customers and other staff in a negative way because he is “better than this.”

Frank, in contrast, thinks “Okay, doorman. It’s not what I had in mind, but hey, I get to spend some time outside, get to meet the customers, and I’ll learn about how this hotel works.” He sets to work with a smile on his face and finds that he quite enjoys the small challenges he faces as a doorman at such a prestigious hotel.

After six weeks, a position at the front desk opens up, and the hotel manager immediately thinks of Frank. Frank is promoted and immediately brings his positive attitude to the front desk of the hotel. Several years later, Frank is the hotel manager. He leaves late one evening and there, opening the door with a hard-wired grimace, is Bill.

Is it luck, or is it fate? Bill will spend forever in a job that he hates and Frank will love every job that he is given. This story is such an inspiration, because it encourages me to always stay positive about my responsibilities and to find the reward in every remedial task. When hiring staff I spend more time exploring attitude and self-motivation than I do exploring capabilities. I also spend time looking to direct my employees toward challenges that are motivating for them.

When it comes to running a business, I’ve learned it’s not just about the results, but the work you put in. That’s where successful people thrive.

Tags: A-Players, career history, hire better, hire for attitude train for skill, hiring, hiring manager, Interview, proactive recruiting, Retention, talent acquisition, unemployment

25 Mar 11 | Employment, Interviewing, Recruiting, Retention | Read on | Comment (1)

Recruiting Season is Heating Up

In case you haven’t noticed, the hiring freeze that seemed to overtake the our nation over the last 14 months is thawing, just in time for Spring.

Here are a few of the articles that I’ve noticed in the past few days that suggest it’s time for you to pay attention and get your act together because it’s going to be time for you to start RECRUITING instead of ABSORBING…soon.

Upstaged by Younger Rivals, Google aims to Get Hip again [LINK]
Demand for Programmers has returned and Start-Ups are out of luck [LINK]
Microsoft is spending 10x that of Apple to Recruit and still struggles [LINK]
There are more than 1,000 Job Postings with the word “Java” in them on Monster [LINK]
The same keyword results in >8,000 on CareerBuilder [LINK]

The next BLS survey isn’t due until February 4, 2011 but the statistics will continue to hold true, while there is a nationwide unemployment rate of between 9-10%, the unemployment rate for college graduates is around 5% and about 2% for married college graduates.

It’s time to get your game faces on or you’re going to be forced into hiring people in the very bottom of the barrel.

And if you haven’t checked it out GlassDoor yet, you should. Your current and former employees are talking.

You’ve been warned.

Tags: A-Players, proactive recruiting, recruit don't absorb, Recruiting, talent acquisition, unemployment, unemployment rate

25 Jan 11 | Employment, Recruiting | Read on | Comments (0)

The Danger of Dispensing Reality Potions

Derek Jeter is one of the most well-known and well-respected players in all of Major League Baseball. This year, at the age of 36, his contract is up for renewal. As the Captain of the Yankees, many fans expected the Front Office to give him whatever he wanted so that he could finish out his Hall of Fame career in pinstripes.

But there’s a fly in the ointment: the Front Office does want to keep Jeter but Derek’s Agent is suggesting that he be paid $23-25mm per year for the next 5 years. His agent has said that Jeter can’t be valued the same way as other shortstops because of his leadership qualities. Why is that a problem?

A Player is “in their prime” between the ages of 29-32. They’ve got more maturity, they understand how to keep their bodies healthy through 162+ games and they have enough youth still in them to match up against the strength of a 25 year old.
There are only a handful of players making over $20mm per year – the list gets even smaller when you add the filter of being 36 years old or older. Oh, and the stats of Derek don’t come close to matching those of the players who are at this altitude.
The 2nd highest paid shortstop in the Major Leagues is Hanley Ramirez who is 10 years younger, hit 30 points higher and hit 21 home runs to Jeter’s 10.

How does this situation possibly impact you?

More and more I’m seeing Business Leaders who are making what I believe to be a major mistake: they’re hiring people who are currently unemployed and offering them significantly less than what they were previously making. They Leaders are feeling quite proud of themselves because people are accepting the positions. Karl Scheible is a close friend of mine and a Sales Guru. For years he’s pounded into my head that people make decisions for 2 reasons:

To run TOWARDS pleasure
To run AWAY from pain

The pain of unemployment is more prevalent than the pleasure of waiting for the perfect role for many people today. Here my words of caution to the people hiring the unemployed at drastically reduced rates from 12, 18 or 24 months ago: THEY WON’T STICK. Why? Because people place a perceived value on themselves that is based on both reality (their top pay throughout their career) and their distorted sense of what they think the market should pay them. As an employer, if you’re not within 10% of what they have previously earned, I don’t think they’re going to hang around because we live in a hedonic society that encourages us to live beyond our means. If that new employee is accepting a 20% pay cut, it’s unlikely they’re going to be able to reduce their lifestyle costs by that same amount. They’ll live in pain and will want to run away from it the second they believe the economy has turned around or someone calls them and offers them even $1,000 more per year to change jobs. Don’t believe me? Check out this survey that was conducted 14 months ago (and the trend is going up). It suggests that 67% of people will look for a new position as soon as they think the market shows interest in their skills.

Bottom Line: While you may think that someone is only worth $X, if that person has earned $Y before and takes your job, expect them to be gone within 18 months or less.

Tags: career history, Fortune, hire better, talent acquisition, unemployment

30 Nov 10 | Compensation, Recruiting, Retention | Read on | Comments (0)

Not All Referrals Are Created Equal

At HireBetter, we’re always looking at our processes and results to try to identify trends and figure out better ways to help our clients confidently make great hiring decisions.

One of those trends that we’ve noticed has held true over the past 6 years of business has been the SOURCE of where candidates come from and then who our clients ultimately hire. Here are our findings:

If you have 100 Candidates* that you’re considering, our experience would suggest that:

82-87 will be Direct Applicants [defined as those who see your posting somewhere and send in their resume via email]
12-15 will come from a Headhunter or Recruiting Researcher
1-3 will be Referrals [defined as anyone who you learn about through your network or the network of those you trust]

*Author’s Note: the reason I’ve chosen 100 is because it makes the %’s really easy to calculate. If you have greater or fewer than 100, look at the total % of the pipeline instead of the # of people.

For the FINAL 3 People, we’ve found that it’s very likely the make-up of that pool looks like this:

1 Direct Applicant
1 From a Headhunter
1 Referral

And when you make your Ultimate Hiring Decision – you’re at least TWICE as likely to hire the Referral versus the other 2 candidates.

Granted, there are some obvious reasons why Hiring Managers choose the referrals. Things like the stigma that might be attached to an unemployed direct applicant or the costs associated with an external headhunter that might impact your Department’s P&L. But even with those things stated, I set out to find some more answers as to just WHY a referral is so much more likely to get hired than anyone else for open positions.

To help answer this question, I turned to Thom Singer. Thom’s a well-known Author and Speaker on Professional Networking and Personal Brands and he had this to say:

[JDavis] What’s the significance in your mind of earning that referral introduction that gets you an interview?

[TSinger] Hiring Mangaers are human beings – no matter how many pre-screening tests they can use, how much training they’ve had on the psychology of hiring. At the end of the day people are drawn to do business with people they know, like and trust. When someone they know, like and trust strongly encourages them to meet with someone it’s going to get preference because ultimately what a Hiring Manager is trying to do is eliminate people so that they can have a “short list”. Being a referral from someone that the hiring manager likes and trusts, means you’re going to have a much higher likelihood of landing on the short list. If that Hiring Manager knows somebody, likes somebody – that candidate gets to ride on the coattails of those human emotions and can benefit from their referee’s reputation.

One other thought here: I’ve said for years people will do biz with people they know, like and trust (this isn’t an original thought – it’s widely accepted). The problem is that in the last two years, the definition of the word “know” has changed. Because of the mass adoption of social media, we all think we “know” everyone else. This used to be a process [getting to know someone] that took years to develop. It’s served to make the act of “know” less important but makes LIKE and TRUST significantly more important. Just knowing “Of” someone doesn’t necessarily lead to like and trust. Today, referrals need to come from someone that the referee TRULY likes and trusts.

[JDavis] What are the dangers of being a referral if the person who is referring you just KNOWS you, and you’re not SURE that they LIKE and TRUST you?

[TSinger] Asking a stranger or an acquaintance to introdce you to their company is just slightly better than picking up an employee directory and calling through it. The risks are that (a) the referral might not happen [as the candidate you may think you got referred but it didn't happen] or (b) the referee could give a “lip service” referral that indicates that they don’t really support you or won’t stand up for you. The power of a REAL referral is that the person will stand up for you and can really make a strong case for why the hiring manager should hire that person.

If you’re a Hiring Manager and you receive a referral from someone, what should you look for in that referral to know it’s “real”

1. How do you know this person? (look for the fact that they really KNOW the person, not just know “of” them. Get to the bottom of the story by asking, “Do you just follow them on Twitter?” or do they actually use statements like, “I worked with them for three years and they’re a rock star“.

2. What does their work product look like? Do they have direct knowledge? How do they know them related to the job that you’re referring them for?

It gets back again to that danger I referenced in the first section of “just because you follow them on twitter or you’re connected on facebook, that doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.”

Ultimately, it’s got to be MORE THAN “Ambient Awareness”. As a Hiring Manager your goal is to be working with a stronger foundation of knowledge versus just a marketing brochure disguised as a resume.

While the tools we use to communicate over the past 2 decades have changed, how we’re wired as humans to make decisions is still the same. How people speak about others (yourself included) and your personal brand is just as important as it has ever been.

[JDavis] Why should an interviewer or hiring manager CARE about the size of someone’s network and influence or reputation?

[TSinger] As the world has gotten more digital and electronic, the ABILITY to connect with someone and to get others to stand up and say, “I like them, I trust them” is exponentially more valuable than in previous years. This ability has become “capital” – because people just don’t do it any more (or more importantly, do it well). There’s also so much more noise. When you’ve got people who stand up and say, “I REALLY KNOW John Doe – then you’ve got a winner.” When you see that someone has real human connections that care about them, it’s more valuable because it is genuine and says people care.

But there’s more to it than just being liked! Just because someone has a lot of visibility and people like them doesn’t mean they’re good at a job. But it’s my opinion that if you have two people whose ability is equal but one of those people has great interpersonal skills and a strong network of who will stand up for them, the tie MUST go to that person because it says that they are much more well-rounded.

Bottom Line: It’s not just about the network. You still have to be good. Being good at what you do is your “admission ticket”. Too many Professionals today subscribe to what I like to call the Kevin Costner Business Model: if you build it they will come. What I tell people is, “If you’re the best kept secret in your industry, you lose”. When it comes down to a hiring decision, with all things being equal, a Hiring Manager is going with the person who has the reputation.

Thom Singer is a Professional Speaker, Consultant and the Award-Winning Author of seven books on the power of networking and business relationships. He has trained thousands of people on the art of creating a personal and professional brand. Thom’s Blog, Some Assembly Required, is widely considered one of the top resources on or off-line for Professionals and Job Seekers and his Networking Quotient Test was created to help assess and then provide the action steps needed to make networking a priority. You can also follow him on Twitter.

Tags: A-Players, hire better, hiring manager, Job Search, proactive recruiting, recruit don't absorb, Recruiting, social networking, talent acquisition, thom singer, Topgrading, topgrading methodology, unemployment, using social networking tools to get a job

02 Sep 10 | Networking, Recruiting, Topgrading | Read on | Comments (0)

Only the Employed Need Apply (Especially in Sales)

I’ve been sitting on this blog post for a while thinking that its efficacy would get better and better as the economy and job market failed to recover at the pace that the economists thought (hoped) it would. It looks like my hunch was right.

Nine months ago, the Wall Street Journal published an article called “Only the Employed Need Apply“. The premise of the article was that many employers were only interested in talking to people who were already employed – even if the candidate who had applied had lost their job even after performing at a high level.

Bobby Fitzgerald, a partner in five restaurants in three states, says these days he gets two dozen or more unsolicited résumés each day at one of his Phoenix restaurants, the White Chocolate Grill. But Mr. Fitzgerald says his top candidates, for jobs ranging from servers to management, usually are people who are employed elsewhere. He currently has 50 openings across his five restaurants and has told recruiters to bring in only people who are working.

When you consider that in March 2010 our unemployment rate is still on the precipice of 10% and the average time that someone is unemployed is still over 1/2 of a year, it would appear that Business Leaders like Bobby Fitzgerald aren’t alone.

At Hire Better, we’ve seen a significant up-tick in the number of clients who want us to assist them in hiring salespeople. For those salespeople who we see as applicants, the statistics are NOT in their favor if they’re applying for a role in which Hire Better is involved. Here’s what we’ve found:

In a typical hiring cycle, assuming that we have 100 people to consider for a role:

82-85 will be Direct Applicants
12-15 will be People who are “headhunted” or from our Network
1-3 will be Referrals from internal employees at the client company

When we get down to the Top Three Finalists, they’ll look like this:

1 Direct Applicant
1 “headhunted” Candidate
1 Referral

And when the finalist is hired: The chance of the Direct Applicant goes DOWN exponentially as the salary and responsibility goes UP.

For a Sales role, the prospects of a Direct Applicant are even WORSE. The same statistics will apply to the Candidate pool as before but I have to expand the pool to 5 people when you look for Finalists:

1 is a Direct Applicant
3 are “headhunted”
1 is a Referral

And when this is the case, the Referral has more than a 50% chance of getting hired and the Direct Applicant has less than a 10% chance. In the case of sales candidates – I believe these stats are just about right. And they’re justifiable! If you’re considering hiring an unemployed salesperson or sales manager, you should be asking yourself “Why would a good salesperson be unemployed?”

Dave Kurlan, who I haven’t mentioned in quite awhile, recently shared his findings on how long it takes to get an ROI on a salesperson. His bold mathematical formula looks like this:

If you have a 12 month sales cycle and an 8 month learning curve, it will take nearly 2 years to get your new salesperson producing consistently. In that 2 years, maybe you’ll pay out close to $150,000 in subsidies.

Using your average margin, how much revenue must be gemerated to offset that subsidy?

How much revenue must be generated to produce a satisfactory ROI?

How long must the salesperson stick around in order to produce that ROI?

To bring it all back together, if a prospective sales candidate (who, for the sake of this blog post is unemployed) has found him/herself in a new sales role every 2-3 years, what are the odds that anyone who is hiring them is going to experience a positive ROI?

When we look at candidates through this lens we find it’s a lot easier to not find ourselves getting “sold” during an interview by someone who has all kinds of great excuses for why “things just didn’t work out” at that last job they were in…

Tags: A-Player, A-Players, bad hires, Baseline Selling, challenges of hiring salespeople, Dave Kurlan, hire better, hiring, hiring manager, Interview, Kurlan, mediocre salespeople, Objective Management Group, recruit don't absorb, Recruiting, recruiting salespeople, Salespeople, talent acquisition, unemployment, unemployment rate, virtual bench

10 Mar 10 | Compensation, Employment, Interviewing, Networking, Retention | Read on | Comment (1)

When a C-Player is Better Than an A-Player

Today’s blog post comes courtesy of Brad Smart, the author of Topgrading. I remember reading his post in September of 2009 and thinking how powerful it was. When going through my list of topics for what made the most sense to blog about this week I realized that this was as timely and quite a bit more profound than anything I had come up with. He and Chris Mursau, the Vice President of Smart & Associates, write a great blog that you should definitely read on a regular basis.

I’ve taken the liberty of shortening the article down to apply more to a Hiring Manager than a job seeker so that you’re aware of the kinds of challenges that an A-Player might be having in clearly articulating how and why they’re exceptional.

A players are remarkably … um … inexperienced at job hunting, and they are remarkably inept at it.

C players, however, are nudged out of jobs and companies and they become masters at getting the next job. C players also become masters at imitating A players. They’ve read many books that teach them how to make their resumes look better and how to answer interview questions.

In this economic downturn thousands of companies have folded and hundreds of thousands of not just under-performers but high performers, A players, are out looking for jobs. The unemployed are from every industry and there are quite a few super sharp people out looking for work – sometimes for the first time in their career.

Here’s the problem: C players become masters at imitating A players; their resumes are full of hype and conceal negatives, and their interviewing behavior is well-rehearsed. So on the surface C players look like A players. And the poor A player who is looking for a job doesn’t know how to convey – “Hey, my resume is truthful and so is everything I say in interviews.”

Throughout their careers, A players needing a job have simply gone to their network and asked for connections to hiring managers. That historically has been a very productive method. “Birds of a feather …” and when A players contact their networks and say a super sharp A player they know is available … hey, job offers pop up.

Rewrite your resume, tooting your horn. Keep it to 2 pages and list ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND SUCCESSES. I’ve looked at hundreds of resumes since the economic slide and I see A players being TOO HUMBLE. Don’t include much about responsibilities and don’t state your career objective (save that for the cover letter). Don’t puff yourself up – stick to the facts. But make it clear when YOU accomplished something and not just the team, of which you were a member.
Rewrite your cover letter. Cover letters are usually boring and canned. Speak from the heart, say what you’re looking for, but here is the key…
Make it clear that your bosses in the past decade would give you rave reviews. If you have received overall performance ratings that are tops, say so. Humble A players rarely do this – too bad because C players don’t do it for a different reason (it ain’t true that bosses gave them top ratings!).
Offer to arrange personal reference calls with your former bosses (and subordinates and peers, too). Only A players CAN make such an offer and actually follow through, but again they are too humble. In the past their network got them a job and they knew that others were singing their praises, so they were simply their usual understated self. In this economy if you won Olympic gold metals, you’d better display them if you want to get on the team. It frankly impresses the heck out of recruiters and hiring managers to read and hear that your former bosses would praise you and that YOU do the work of arranging the phone calls.
Don’t accept low pay. In the past few months I’ve seen some companies take advantage of people they are recruiting and hiring, knowing that even A players are desperate. Trouble is, when the economy improves, A players who KNEW they were worth more than what they were paid, leave. Companies you would want to work for won’t try to cheat you in the short term.

Brad writes that he’s interviewed more than 6,500 people over the years as his basis point for the credibility of his thoughts. I’d make the argument that I’ve seen more than 100,000 resumes in my career and maybe 0.1% of them were well written. Takeaway value = far too many hiring managers who made snap decisions about candidates based on just a resume even though resumes have a high likelihood of not telling anywhere close to the whole story about someone.

Tags: A-Players, Brad Smart, C-Players, chris mursau, hire better, hiring, hiring manager, Interview, job postings, resume, smarttopgrading, Topgrading, topgrading methodology, TORC, unemployment, unemployment rate

10 Dec 09 | Employment, Interviewing, Topgrading | Read on | Comments (3)

Winners Never Cheat and Cheaters Never Win

I’m a HUGE St. Louis Cardinals (and baseball) fan. It struck me with a huge amount of disappointment when the Redbirds announced that they had voided a contract that they signed with a 16 year old from the Caribbean who they had been working to sign for quite some time.

Why would they void a contract after beating out a dozen other teams and offering $3.1mm (a record for the Cardinals in signing an Amateur)?

Because, as it turned out, his Agent lied about the fact that the young man had a degenerative eye disease that was robbing him of his vision. They hid it in the hopes that he could get signed fast enough to just start playing and put the money in the bank.

Yes, I understand that most business owners and hiring managers aren’t dealing with salary numbers anywhere near the millions BUT, if someone’s been unemployed for a period of time, has a mortgage that’s overdue and has bill collectors calling every day, how honest do you think they’re being during their interviews?

Some things that you should be closely evaluating to be sure that you’re getting as close to the truth out of prospective employees during the evaluation process:

Do your Job Descriptions give away too much about the job? In other words, if it was a personal ad, does it explain too much about your likes and dislikes so that someone could “fake it” on a first date?
Are your interviews structured and planned in advance? If you’re making up your interview questions on the fly based on the answers you’re getting, are you getting to the meat of what you need to learn about a prospective employee or are you having great discussions about all of their strengths and letting them withhold their weaknesses?
Are you conducting INTENSE Reference Checks? I’ve gotten a ton of positive feedback from a blog post from a couple of weeks ago about how to dig in during the Reference Process. Without really pushing to talk with previous hiring managers, are you getting the truth from candidates or just their half of the story?
Are you running Credit History Reports on candidates to evaluate if they’re in such dire straights that they are more likely to tell you whatever you want to hear?

People in tough situations will often be pushed to do things that they normally wouldn’t do. Many times, we’ve seen that this includes bold-faced lies during their interviews and on their resumes. A prime example: just this past week we had an applicant suggest that she had 10 years of Business to Business Marketing Experience. She had such a good story that an inexperienced interviewer probably would have ‘bought’ it. Because the Hire Better Team Member who was interviewing her knew how to dig in further it was discovered that her 10 years were really only 9. And that B2B experience: working as the Office Manager for a Flower Shop that had a local relationship with 1-800-FLOWERS and a $500/month budget for Google AdWords.

Bottom line: expect the best from people but, especially in this kind of economy, don’t just accept what you’re hearing as the truth.

Tags: A-Player, A-Players, career history, cheating, dishonest, hire better, lies, recruit don't absorb, Recruiting, Reference Check, talent acquisition, Topgrading, unemployment, virtual bench

19 Oct 09 | Compensation, Employment, Interviewing, Recruiting | Read on | Comments (0)

Noise Goes Up But Quality Remains The Same

It’s not often I’m floored by the comprehensiveness of a Blog Post simply because too many people write them with speed in mind or just for Search Engine Optimization.

Today I was floored.

Gina Kleinworth is one of the Team Members at HireBetter. A significant amount of her role here is being responsible for combing the web every day to find articles that reinforce our goal of helping companies confidently make great hiring decisions. (Are you following us on Twitter? You should – we invest a lot of time in making you a better leader. We’re Tweeting 2-3x per day under the moniker of @HireBetter.)

Gina found an article today written by Auren Hoffman on his blog Summation. It’s title: “Why hiring is paradoxically harder in a downturn“. Its subtitle is what I chose for this blog post’s title: “Noise goes up but the quality remains the same”. You can also read it on the Huffington Post.

His comments rang true with me again and again as I read the blog 3 full times. Here are some of the points that he makes throughout this well-written post (read it, seriously):

“Great people are more likely to be employed with a company since a great person is often over 3 times as productive as a good person. Joel Spolsky argues in Smart & Gets Things Done that an A-player is anywhere from 5-10 times as productive.”

“In troubled economic times, anyone can get laid off, but a disproportionate number of layoffs tend to fall on C-players. This is because they are the lowest performing people in a company and there generally are more C-players at a company than any other caliber. Note that this isn’t always true, as evidenced with Yahoo!, a company that has recently experienced many layoffs but doesn’t have many C-players. In Yahoo!’s case, majority of the lay-offs fell on B-players and even some A-players. Yahoo! is an exception and is an exceptional company — most large companies, however, are chock-full of C-players.”

“There are A-players that are MORE likely to leave. Tough times often paint companies into a corner and force them into maintenance mode rather than continuing to innovate. Great players love to innovate and usually NEED to innovate. It’s usually very hard to keep these type of A-players caged-up and thus this presents a big opportunity for recruiting.”

“Great people are often first to leave sinking ships. They don’t feel they need to stick around for a severance because they are confident they can always get another job.”

“Unfortunately, it is really hard to tell the difference between an A-player, B-player, or C-player just from a resume. Which means you need to engage with candidates and therefore you’ll have far more candidates to deal with given this economic climate. My guess – for a standard job announcement, you’ll have three times the number of C-players applying, twice the number of B-players, and the same number of A-players.”

Tags: A-Player, A-Players, auren hoffman, B-Player, C-Player, hire better, hiring, hiring is hard, Interview, joel spolsky, Recruiting, Scorecard, talent acquisition, topgrading methodology, tweets, Twitter, unemployment, unemployment rate

04 Aug 09 | Interviewing, Recruiting | Read on | Comments (0)

In Defense of our Culture at Hire Better

Earlier this week I found myself on the phone with one of our service providers at Hire Better. The company: Monster.com. We’ve used their service with average satisfaction for about 5 years. Every year we step back and evaluate it but ultimately, we’ve chosen to invest the $10,000-$15,000 that they want to charge for access to a huge database of largely uninteresting people – many of whom need work Visas to make career moves.

Our account comes up for renewal at the end of May. We haven’t heard from anyone in their company since last September when our account was nearly cancelled FOR FRAUDULENT ACTIVITY.

A little bit of history – Last year an interesting thing happened: their Compliance Department caught wind of a report that the “seats” that we paid for were being used by IP addresses that weren’t in Austin, TX. This set off all kinds of alarms at Monster.com and I received a disturbing voicemail from a woman who more than suggested that we were guilty of fraud because of our usage and that the legal team was looking into canceling our account without a refund – essentially a loss of $10,000 for us.

Why were they accusing us of Fraud? Because our Corporate Address is in Austin, TX. ”If your address is in Austin, why would you have anyone with an IP address in Iowa, Kansas or Arkansas?” they asked. How very 1993 of them. I challenged that same Legal Team and their Compliance Team by asking,

“Have any of our seats EVER been logged into by more than one person simultaneously and in different geographic regions?”

“No, never once.” they responded.

“And is our usage on any of these accounts outside of our terms of use or so heavy that it would make you think that we were trying to be fraudulent or mis-represent ourselves in any way?”

“No, not at all.” was their answer.

It took me a week and about 20 hours of our senior team’s time to explain to their Legal Department that we’re a Virtual Company that’s built around team members who work from their homes because of the Balance that it provides to each and every one of us. We finally settled on an agreement with their team that we could give each and every one of our employees their own usernames and passwords and split up the usage of each “seat” into what was the equivalent of 50% of a traditional license. This satisfied their Legal team and it allowed us to avoid a $10,000 loss. My Account Representative at the time was a gentlemen named Chris Shaw. He stuck up for us, was the internal champion for our cause and put his reputation on the line with that same Compliance Department to vouch for us and insist that there wasn’t any fraudulent intent or activity.

Fast forward to this week: my new Account Representative called me 4 times over the course of a week – only bothering to leave a voicemail once (a hint: while we’re virtual we do have “real” phones that have caller ID). When Cortney, my Assistant, finally reached him to book our phone meeting, we were less than a week from our renewal. Here’s the breakdown of the conversation:

9:15 AM Central Time comes and goes (our agreed upon call time)

9:21 My phone finally rings. It’s my new representative. It’s clear he doesn’t understand how OCD I can be about the timing on phone calls. He starts the call with, “So how’s your business doing these days?” with an artificially chipper tonality. I politely asked if he had turned on the news in the last 9 months and then reminded him that we had 15 minutes booked for the call and we were down to 7.5 minutes left because of his tardiness.

9:32 I’ve had to explain, at length, what the entire situation was that had happened during the previous September. Apparently, the CRM system at Monster.com isn’t equipped to keep track of week-long legal boondoggles with clients that have paid them nearly $75,000 over 5 years. If you’ll remember, I mentioned earlier that Chris Shaw, our representative at the time, was a great advocate for us. Our new representative made it a point to remind me, at least 3 times during these 11 minutes, “Well, based on all of these exceptions that you benefitted from in the past year, you’ll clearly understand why Chris isn’t with our company any more.”

9:34 I’m now 4 minutes late for a commitment I made to call a prospective candidate for one of our biggest clients. As politely as I can muster, I shared with our representative, “Look, I appreciate that you’re not a fan of Chris. I also respect that you have a precious “rate card” that you’re allowed to discount from by 75% (side note, if a sales rep can discount by 75% off of a rate card, what’s the point of even having a rate card?), but unless you can wrap your brain around the fact that I’m VERY familiar with your legal contract and that I’m not willing to buy ONE seat (as he suggested) and pass around the username to everyone (which is in violation of their agreement) or 9 full, individual seats for our employees who spend about 1 hour per week each on your website, we don’t have much more to talk about. And I’m late for my next call. I need to go.”

9:36 It’s starting to get ridiculous. Every effort that I’ve made to be polite so that I can move on to my next commitment has been ignored. It’s as if I’m speaking an entirely different language. My representative has shared with me things like, “You know, 2 years ago we were only permitted to discount by 15%” and “What you received last September was clearly a one time thing and there’s no way I could get that approved again.” His arguments were as pertinent to our conversation as the amount of snow they received in the Napa Valley last year. ”I know we’ve gone a bit over our alloted time this morning Jonathan. Why don’t you let me go back to my managers and that Compliance Team from last September and see if I can work something out for you.”

3:10 Central Time – My representative called me back to share the news with me. ”Jonathan, what I’ve gotten approval for is to sell you 9 individual seats at 75% off of our rate card. This is a great deal. Can I send over the agreement?”

If you’ve hung with me and read all the way down to this part of this blog post I hope you’ll let me clarify something: My intent of this post was NOT to air the dirty laundry of my discussions with Monster.com. However, sharing that level of detail was critically important because this is what I want every company who acts as a service provider for us to understand:

Our Core Values are NOT something that we just hung on a wall for everyone to ignore. Earning Trust, Having Balance, Adding Value and Respect play a significant part in every decision that we make every day.
I (and We) will never apologize for or alter our decision to have hired the team that we have in place that just happen to work from their homes all around the country. Because we have Balance in our lives, the quality of the work that we do for our clients is TOP NOTCH. When we work, we work hard. And then we stop and spend time with our families. We don’t waste time commuting, attending pointless meetings or waiting in line for lunch in the same 15 minute period that everyone else has to run to the local fast food joint.
We may need a concession or two from you, as a service provider, because we ARE different. Here are some of the companies who have acknowledged that and will be Partners of ours for a long time:

Pioneer Bank in Dripping Springs, TX
8×8: the providers of Packet 8 Phones
Apple
Otherinbox
37Signals
Jintech
Clutch Creative
Spross & Associates

And one final note to Monster.com: it’s 2009. It might be time for you to take a good hard look at services like LinkedIn, ZoomInfo, Recruiter’s Earth, Door64, Google, Craig’s List and a host of other websites that passed you by a long time ago. For me, I’ll take the $13,000 I just saved by not renewing with your service and I’ll spend it on training our employees on AIRS. After all, our commitment to our clients is that they’ll HIRE BETTER. Your website simply doesn’t help us do that any more.

Tags: 8x8, A-Players, AIRS, bad hires, career history, clutch creative, hire better, hiring, LinkedIn, Monster, monster.com, OtherInbox, pioneer bank, proactive recruiting, purchasing decisions, recruit don't absorb, Recruiting, research, talent acquisition, talent vault, Topgrading, tweets, Twitter, unemployment, unemployment rate, virtual bench, zoominfo

29 May 09 | Employment, Recruiting | Read on | Comments (0)

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