Relying on Resumes: Sucker’s Play
photo by skipgo shannon
An amazing article in the Wall Street Journal (subscription req.) today profiled a Frenchman who’d managed to con his way into a tryout for an elite European ‘football’ club.
The brief summary is that he doctored his resume to show the he’d…”been climbing the ranks of European soccer, signing with a top-flight Paris club and training with a team in Argentina. He had an agent and a Web site that showed him scoring a goal for the English club Swindon Town. He’d even been chosen as an ambassador for Lance Armstrong’s charity.”
The problem was that none of it was true.
His reaction? “If I lied a little bit on my CV, I am sorry…I am just like 99% of my friends in France, who say on their résumé they can speak fluent English.”
It’s amazing that we’re surprised when this happens. We put a lot of stock into the resume and the supposed skills and accomplishments one brings.
The stats say that almost half the resumes floating around out there contain false information (actually 42.7% via ResumeDoctor, March 2006).
So why do we keep putting so much faith in resumes?
Because it’s easy.
Resumes are shortcuts to get us what we’re looking for. It’s safe to hire the person with fantastic accomplishments. It’s safe to find the person who talks a great game and has the self-proclaimed history to back it up. Pedigrees, experiences and stated feats are cues to us for an individual’s ability to perform in our work environments.
Granted, the resume is likely still the best thing we have going for us. But it’s outdated.
Like stocks, past performance is no indicator of future performance. Especially if that past performance is falsified.
The reason the past doesn’t work is because new variables are added to the mix. Your business is a new environment. There are new politics at play. The dynamics between teams is different. And the way things get done is vastly different.
So what to do?
Look for themes in the resume instead.
Does the individual create new products or modify existing ones? Are they focused on working with teams or working in a silo? Are the accomplishments they focus on team accomplishments or individual? Answers either way are fine, it’s all a matter of what your own culture is. What’s makes your successful people tick? What does the role require?
Making Great Hires
Yesterday, RoundPegg hosted a 15-minute webinar on improving your hiring process in order to increase your odds of making a great hire.
RoundPegg’s Chief Psychologist, Dr. Natalie Baumgartner runs through the hiring landscape, the pitfalls most fall into, how to improve the process and finally, how RoundPegg can help.
Please check it out. And if you’d like to learn more or have specific problems you’re struggling with please email us at: Natalie.Baumgartner@roundpegg.com.
Discovering Culture + Values
photo by: didbygraham
We recently uncovered an article on The Ladders about questions to ask to discover the culture of your prospective employer. As they say, “company culture is everything. You can’t work where you don’t fit.”
Bravo.
Their questions are great for a prospective job seeker, but we want to offer up a few points on how to view this from the company’s point of view. After all, culture is a two-way street.
Culture ultimately comes down to what is valued. From a company’s point of view what is valued is what gets rewarded (not always, but it should be).
Every new person who walks through your doors will change the culture. If it’s a new CEO, she’ll change it a lot. If it’s a new marketing assistant then the sphere of influence will be much more limited.
So how do you identify what a prospective new hire values?
- Ask about mentors. Have them describe a person they look to for mentorship (even informally). What is it about the person they admire and try to emulate? Get the candidate to list the six or seven attributes that person has that are worth emulating.
- Rate themselves against their mentor. Then ask the candidate to rate themselves against their mentor on those six or seven attributes.
- Utilize the resume. Believe it or not, resumes can be used for things other than skills and accomplishments. Look for patterns in their work. Did they constantly create something new, did they improve existing processes or do they talk about how they got more out of a team?
- Ask them to talk through their obituary. Okay, maybe morbid (try retirement announcement if that’s less so) and maybe a little out of left field. But the idea is to get them to think about the things of which they are most proud. These will announce their values loud and clear.
- Where and when were they most successful? At which job were they most successful? Ask them to describe the environment. What contributed to their success? What were the people like around them? What were their best traits?
At RoundPegg we’re objectively quantifying culture to provide a rigorous data point which you can use in the interview. Please contact us if you’d like to find out more about using it in your interviewing process – info [at] roundpegg [dot] com.
What other techniques have worked well to identify what an individual values in the past?
What is RoundPegg?
At RoundPegg we recognize that ‘A’ players are largely situational. That is, people perform more effectively and efficiently when they fit the work environment. When they share values, work style and have a personality that jives with the team.
RoundPegg’s mission is to help companies find the right person to hire based not upon what people have accomplished, but how they’ve accomplished it. And similarly, to help job seekers understand the environments in which they work best and help them identify the companies where they’ll have the best chance of succeeding.
To learn more download our ‘one page’ PDF.
Your Job Posting Sucks
photo by stevendepolo
Separating yourself from the pack is not always easy. Andrew Hyde, TechStars’ Boulder community director, recently published a great post on how to write a resume for landing a startup role. [We've also written about how much your resume currently sucks. If you're looking for additional tips to the ones Andrew provided it's not a bad read.]
The flip side, as one commenter pointed out, is how a company should write a job posting. Too often job ads are pure vanilla. If you removed the logo, a dozen companies could use the same post.
A burger joint in New Zealand nailed it perfectly. Definitely worth the read. With that, a few additional thoughts on how to improve your company’s job postings.
- Know thyself. Convey what it’s like to work with you and your team. What are the traits of your highly successful people? With whom do you work best? What is your management style? Don’t bullet what you want instead…
- Show your personality. Write a post that attracts the kind of person for whom you’re looking. It’s okay to not be boring. Tell a story rather than bullet out skills you need.
- But be honest – show your warts. You’re not the perfect manager. Nor is the job or company perfect. Know the downsides. Describe them in moderately gory detail. It not only sets expectations but it also allows people to opt out of applying, saving you time and potentially the brain damage of a really bad hire.
- Can the jargon. Every company has their own vernacular. Focus on the output and the rationale for doing the work rather than what the work is called.
- Help them help you. What does success look like? Where is the bar and what needs to happen to clear it? Most people don’t set out looking for an 18-month gig, it just works out that way because expectations weren’t set and they got pissed off. Clearly communicate the success metrics.
- Paint the winning scenario. If they succeed wildly, what will they get? Paint the best-case scenario – truthfully. Everyone expects to win, so start the conversation there. It also helps to align motivations with the real rewards. If I’m motivated by more responsibility then an employee of the month plaque just won’t cut it. I want to know that ahead of time.
- Your product is your environment, not your product. Enough already of the two-paragraph description of how you’re revolutionizing XYZ market. Everyone knows that’s all fluff. Don’t waste the space. Instead focus on what the candidate really cares about – the environment in which they’ll spend 8-12 hours every day.
- Don’t copy a job description from a Google search. You spend a lot of time trying to differentiate your products so why start trying to be the same now?
- Show don’t tell. We’ve covered this previously, but the idea is to convey your company’s culture and the skills you require via the posting rather a simple snoozefest of a list. Need someone detail oriented? Make a few ‘mistakes’ in the posting and somewhere convey that the right candidate will identify them in a cover letter.
- Describe a job to which you’d want to apply. If you had to get rehired for your current job what would make you want to apply? If you read what you just wrote would you be excited to apply?
- Establish hoops. While most of this is focused on the candidate, you’re the one hiring. Don’t be afraid to put candidates through their paces. This is more a marriage than a one-night stand. Have clear hurdles in place that will screen out people who don’t fit your culture or way of doing things. Assessments are gaining traction. Short job simulations are well. If you scare someone off, so be it. The cost of a bad hire is not worth the extra couple of applicants.
- (If you haven’t already done so…) Design the position for the candidate you want. Before even posting a job make sure that you know what you need out of the role. Want an ambitious self-starter? Make sure there is a career track in place beyond the role for which you’re hiring.
In sum, focus more on how well one fits you and your environment than on the skills they bring. Obviously, you need a baseline of skills but you’re not going to hire a dummy. Anyone short-listed should have the know how and what they don’t know you can teach them. But you’ll never be able to change someone’s personality.
So don’t get so blinded by one’s skills that you ignore the red flags. You won’t be ignoring them in six-months.
