Relying on Resumes: Sucker’s Play

photo by skipgo shannon

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  But it’s outdated.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?

Posted by brentdaily on April 13, 2010 | Add a comment | Culture, Fit, Hiring, Interviewing, Sports Metaphors

Hiring is Hard. Here’s Proof.

photo by dbking

photo by dbking

Hiring is a headache.

Dr. John Sullivan’s latest post at ERE pulls together a ton of shocking numbers that should convince you we need to find a better way.

50% new executive turnover — nearly half of new executive hires quit or are fired within the first 18 months at a new employer (Source: Corporate Leadership Council).

50% of the processes users (both managers and new hires) later regret their “buying” decision (Source: The Recruiting Roundtable). In addition, 25% of new hires later regret taking their new job within one year (Source: Challenger, Gray)

66% regret hiring decisions — Nearly two-thirds of hiring managers come to regret their interview-based hiring decisions (Source: DDI)

Hiring and retaining below or even average performers have real opportunity costs because top performers can increase productivity, revenue, and profit by between 40% and 67% over average performers (Source: McKinsey & Co.)

Only a 19% success rate — only one out of five of the process output can be classified as unequivocal successes (Source: Leadership IQ).

Basically, we’re not good at hiring, we regret most of the decisions we make, there’s a big difference in contribution between average and good people and the people we hire are often unhappy we choose them.  That’s pretty damning.

A good hire requires finding someone with the skills to do the job AND the right person who can thrive in your company’s work environment.  Our guts don’t adequately assess the latter because inevitably we revert to deciding whether the candidate is one we can imagine having a beer with after work.

Again, why we created RoundPegg.  RoundPegg will objectively and rigorously identify which candidates will function best with your company’s culture, with the work team and the hiring manager.  We just released the first version of the application.  If you’d like to learn more please drop us a line at employers [at] roundpegg [dot] com.

Posted by brentdaily on November 1, 2009 | 2 comments so far | Culture, Fit, Hiring, Interviewing

Re-Interviewing

photo by phineas h

photo by phineas h

Interviewing is hard enough.

But, last week I had a great meeting with a forward-thinking, culturally aware Corporate Development officer.  He was touting the benefits of re-interviewing.

Put simply, it’s the company taking an active interest in the employee’s career development.

It’s something he does every 4-6 months.  And its purpose is to probe into whether people are getting what they need out of their job.  Whether they are heading in the right direction.  Whether there is anything that is preventing them from fully engaging in their job.

The cynic will say that it’s the company trying to extract more blood from the turnip.  And there is some of that.  But ultimately, the employment relationship is just that…a relationship.  You have to give in order to get.

By inserting himself into the individual’s career management process, he learns what they want out of the job and can help deliver upon that. How else does the company know what buttons to push in order to properly motivate?  (Hint: money isn’t usually it.)

To illustrate he told me the story of someone in the Corporate Development realm (aka HR) who really wanted to be an accountant.  She had been taking classes at night and had recently completed her certification.  While there wasn’t a position open, he was able to get her involved in projects with the AP/AR groups.

She was still expected to fulfill her duties in the HR space, but she eagerly took on the additional work because it was what she really wanted to do and because the company (and one individual in particular) was willing to take the time to understand what she needed to get.

A role may not open up and she may have to leave in six-months in order to find full-time accounting work.  But the alternative was losing her outright now and getting less out of her while she ’secretly’ sought a new job.

It was an important arrow in his quiver to be able to better understand his team.  And a practice that motivates and engages his team.  If people are a good fit with your company’s values then moving them to a different seat on the bus is a no-brainer.  It builds goodwill and the sense of reciprocity fiercely kicks in.  These people become far more likely to go the extra mile that will make a difference to your business.

He made a few additional points that are worth sharing:

  1. Don’t expect miracles the first time out.  You need to build trust with the employees that enables them to be candid.  Because without candor it’s a wasted exercise
  2. Set the expectation that both sides come fully prepared.  Give the questions/topics you want to cover and expect them to have thought deeply about them
  3. Honor these as you would executive meetings.  Don’t move them, don’t miss them and don’t show up expecting not to be an active participant
  4. Be honest about what the company’s needs too.  If you foresee needing to do things differently bring them up now.  Better to understand if doing things differently is going to motivate the person who has to do the things differently

Do you do something similar?  What works/doesn’t?

Posted by brentdaily on October 6, 2009 | 2 comments so far | Engagement, Interviewing, Motivation, career development, communication

Identifying Where You Fit

Marshall Goldsmith recently posted on how to identify whether you’ll fit within a company.  The numbers he throws out are staggering.  Turnover rates for top execs are up 3x from the 1990’s and now sit over 50%.

Those are some very expensive mistakes for both the company and the individual.  Because Marshall’s post focuses on the individual, I will too.

The downside of being in a bad situation for individuals is that:

  • you can lose your confidence which spills over into the other areas of your life (family, exercise etc.), into the interview process for the next company and potentially into your motivation once you escape
  • it can derail an otherwise fast-tracked career
  • you may have few supporters from the company that will recommend you for another gig
  • the opportunity cost is a year that you could have advanced your learnings and position elsewhere
photo by Salinas | Photography

photo by Salinas | Photography

Marshall’s key points are a great top line overview but we’d like to provide some specifics to help people through this process.  We’ve naturally thought a lot about this at RoundPegg and hope to provide some help to both sides through this process.  Continue to stay tuned, we’re getting close.

It’s one thing to identify the ‘culture’ you prefer but we need to put more meat on that bone.  With that, some specifics around what we believe and have learned:

  • What motivates you? Recognition, additional responsibility, money, titles, being the go-to person?
  • Who was your best boss? What made her tick and what was the relationship like between the two of you?  Were you treated as a peer?  Did you have input into the decision-making process?  Was your boss a subject matter expert who leaned on you to support her ideas?
  • Who would you never work for again? Identify why.  What was it about the individual, how they treated you and what the power dynamic was like between the two of you?
  • What values do you unflinchingly hold? Print out a list of values (link opens a PDF) and narrow it down to your top eight.  It’s harder than you’d think.  It took me six rounds of cuts to figure out what really matters most to me.  But it forces you to be honest.  There will be a lot that are close, but just don’t make the cut.
  • Pay attention to differences between teams and the company as a whole. Teams will have their own set of norms, values and communication styles.  Listen for differences in the way team members talk about the company.
  • Ask others. Old co-workers, bosses and friends can be a good source of insight.  What are your strengths?  When do you thrive?  When is your excitement contagious?  Under what conditions are you at your best?  Worst?  Keep these around.  They’re also a good confidence booster when your morale is flagging.
  • Ignore the values on the wall. Talk to people on the team.  Find former employees.  Talk to anyone willing to give you time and try to do so face to face.  Keep asking what gets rewarded within the team and organization.  Values are easy to talk about but they don’t mean anything unless backed by action.
  • Be ruthless. Easier said than done when all you want is a job to put food on the table.  But you don’t want to be in the same position a year from now.  Do your homework and if anything is out of place, walk away from the opportunity.  Remember, you’re good at what you do and you owe it to yourself to find a position where you’re most likely to succeed.

With all of these don’t accept the first answer that comes to mind.  Keep asking what/why.  This isn’t an exercise that you should wrap up over a cup of coffee.

This ran a little long, but I hope it was helpful.  If you have additional thoughts for us to consider as we build out our tools please comment below.

Posted by brentdaily on July 14, 2009 | 1 comment so far | Culture, Fit, Interviewing, Motivation

How to Hire Great People

photo by jason lippa

photo by jason lippa

RoundPegg held a roundtable on hiring this morning with some of Boulder’s most forward-thinking CEOs.  Needless to say, it’s a topic where everyone has learned a lot from their failures and the conversation was a lively one.

While it was universally acknowledged that how one fits with the company’s culture is directly linked to success, how everyone got to the point of whether a candidate ‘fit’ or not was interesting.

Here are a few of the more intriguing approaches:

  1. Know what you’re looking for. Focus on those who are successful within the organization and find the commonalities between them all.  What are the shared values, communication styles, personality traits etc.  Once you know what makes one successful it’s much easier to identify that in others
  2. Lean on your high performers. Ask those same high performers to interview the candidates.  We all naturally gravitate toward those who are ‘like us.’  If the high performers think highly of the candidate then the odds are better that the candidate will work out
  3. Listen between the lines. You’re asking questions about the person.  But you learn more when they talk about others.  Do their greatest successes involve anyone other than themselves?  How do they reference others who contributed to that success?
  4. Watch them live. Get the candidate out of the conference room and observe how they handle various non-work situations.  Travel with them (a stretch) or go out to a meal.  See how they treat the waitresses, gate agents etc.  People often let their guard down when doing the mundane.  If you’re particularly sneaky you can set up a situation - e.g. ask the waitress to overcharge the table or give too little change.  True colors will often come out.
  5. Role play. Put them through a scenario that your company is facing.  Ask a product manager to spec out a new feature and lead a couple folks (e.g. engineers and marketers) to hone the concept and scope the work.  With so little time to work on it, look beyond the thought that went into the specifications and pay attention to how they work with others to improve the concept and get buy-in.
  6. Interesting questions. A couple interesting questions arose.  One was to define leadership.  How they answer that illustrates the type of individual behind whom they would most likely throw their energy.  Another was to identify their favorite literary character and to describe the values that character held.  Again, you get a lot of insight into the types of values the candidate admires.  Finally, asking about their greatest successes and failures has proved helpful when you listened to the amplitude of their feat/failure, how they described their role, the role of others and what they took away from it.

It was a fantastic hour of discussion that wandered down other paths on culture, managing people and the like.  So I’m sure we missed a ton of great ideas.  What specifically works for you?

Posted by brentdaily on July 10, 2009 | 4 comments so far | Culture, Fit, Hiring, Interviewing, Values