A Fear of Machines in the Hiring Process?
photo by racatumba
We recently created a poll on LinkedIn (requires login) asking people whether they’d be willing to take a 25-minute assessment when applying for a company if it helped identify how well they fit to the company’s culture.
After 118 responses only 11% have said they would not complete an assessment because either they felt like it wastes their time or because it could be used against them.
But the comments from some of these 11% are interesting.
“…it all seems to me to be a substitute for quality in the recruitment decision making process.”
“Why wouldn’t the Interveiwer [sic] be capable of determining these things and compiling a valid report of interveiw [sic]?”
Why is it that the use of analytics in the hiring process causes some to react negatively to the HR people behind them? Operational line managers who use numbers to improve their decision-making ability are lauded for their objectivity and quantitative prowess. And yet in a function that is rife with subjectivity a handful of folks find it reprehensible that a good hiring manager can’t figure what makes complex human beings tick strictly by using their gut instinct and some well worded questions.
Hiring without objectivity is ludicrous.
It is subject to too many biases to count. Height, weight, attractiveness, firmness of handshake, attire, gender, race, eye-contact…and that’s just the beginning of the visual biases before the candidate opens her mouth.
The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra (courtesy of Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink) noticed this after holding auditions behind a black curtain for the first time. Historically, the best musicians had always been men. Lo and behold, once they held auditions behind a black curtain and the ‘interviewers’ were judging them solely on the sound of the music, it turned out that the best musicians were actually evenly split between men and women.
Quantifying the hiring process is only one piece of the puzzle. It is not and nor should it ever be the ultimate arbiter. After all it’s people and not the machines that have to work with the new hire. But adding some objective rigor into a process long dominated by subjectivity can only help. Particularly given that collectively hiring managers are barely better than the flip of a coin.
Ultimately, it’s to the benefit of both parties. It provides an inside look at what a company’s culture is actually like (not just what they post in the lobby) and can make expectations and behaviors known at the time of hiring. Two things that people often struggle to put into words even when they are defined. It also helps people avoid landing in jobs where they stand little chance of succeeding.
Are people’s fears justified? Perhaps, if objective measures are used as a short-cut. But the real ire should be raised over how much we tolerate mediocrity and subjectivity in today’s existing hiring practices. Just because we don’t have a machine saying that we weren’t hired because we had a limp handshake doesn’t mean that it’s not the case or that we shouldn’t be furious. Even though we can’t see the bias, it is still there. Don’t blame the machines for making one part of the process transparent…finally.
Culture Matters: Business Is Social
photo by jronaldlee
Company culture matters to your business. That’s not a terribly bold statement. But why?
Culture matters because business is social.
These days most of us work interdependently. Your success is likely predicated upon exchanging ideas with your peers and receiving intellectual inputs from several different departments. True individual contributors are few and far between in a knowledge-based organization.
A crude example is the evolution from waterfall to agile technology development. Ideas and new products are created in highly interconnected and iterative processes rather than via assembly lines. Which gets us back to culture.
We need to know how to exchange information with one another.
Culture sets those norms. It establishes how we interact, how we make decisions and what’s deemed worthy of reward.
When employees’ value systems are aligned then so too is the company culture. It becomes a self-reinforcing cycle because everyone interacts and rewards according to their own value system (no matter what the annual performance evaluation sheet says).
A well-aligned culture allows people to communicate freely because the norms are well understood. The ground rules are implicitly agreed upon by everyone who has elected to work there and they are reinforced with every interaction.
When values systems are out of line, cultures ‘go bad.’ Rewards seem arbitrary, nascent ideas are used against their authors or credit is co-opted.
Culture fosters trust (even in cultures that are aggressive and competitive). In a game of repeated interactions it doesn’t take too many bad experiences to not want to work with a peer again. Or to withhold your best when dealing with them. Self-preservation will almost always win out over doing what is best for the business.
The better we all communicate the greater the likelihood of achieving success. And since we’ve already optimized processes, slashed workforces and off-shored as much as we can there aren’t too many places left to squeeze out more profits. Optimizing communication and aligning culture isn’t easy, but it’s the next frontier in driving business success.
The 6 Crappiest Interview Questions
cartoon and content credit: theoatmeal.com
Sometimes you just have to laugh at how any of us ever manage to hire great people. Other times you just have to laugh at another’s spin on some pretty standard interview questions.
The Oatmeal recently posted a comic strip of the “Six Crappiest Interview Questions” (our favorite is above). Worth a few minutes when you have time.
Not much more to say other than we think it’s time we all stop asking these questions and instead focus on adding more rigor to the hiring process.
Note: if your manager routinely reads your screen over your shoulder some of the items are NSFW.
Bad Boss Stories
photo by macaron*macaron(Est Bleu2007)
A good friend is a teacher in a charter school and her principal has shown a repeated pattern of passive aggressively hiding behind email instead of discussing issues with his staff or with the individual who is creating ‘the problem’ directly. This staff-wide reproach was just too good (read: atrociously awful) not to share.
The moral of this story for us is that if you have something that really bothers you and don’t know who is causing it, gather everyone together and discuss it in person.
At the very least it gives you plausible deniability. Otherwise, you wind up with everyone laughing behind your back and forwarding your email to all their friends. You just look like a complete jackass (hard to argue otherwise).
Subject: Disgusted Beyond Belief…
“I believe this email will be read by one person for whom this message applies. I hope the strength of it encourages you to be thoughtful enough or simply embarrassed enough to change your ways. I know I speak for everyone when I tell you this is unbelievably disturbing behavior for an adult. Please read below. There is actually no humor intended on any level in this message. It is written by someone who is deeply concerned, disgusted, and angry.
Dear adult who continues to pee all over the staff bathroom seat,
I have to believe that if you are a thinking, feeling adult with even a measure of humanity and decency that you must be deeply embarrassed and disappointed in yourself for repeatedly peeing all over the seat in the staff bathroom even after your colleagues have begged you to change that practice.
You are an adult so you must be fully aware that all you need to do to avoid peeing on the seat is lift it up. Really, all you have to do is lift it up and you won’t leave a disgusting mess behind. If that feels too disgusting for you to do, I find that both ironic and sad. All you need to do is grab a piece of toilet paper to put between your fingers and the seat as you lift it up.
I am really troubled that someone I hired comfortably does this nearly every day knowing that the privacy of bathroom use gives them anonymity.
It is the choice of a small child who does not know better. It is a choice that lacks humanity, citizenship, and basic decency. Really? This is so unbelievable to me. Really?
Why do you believe that it is up to us to clean up after you if we want to use the toilet ourselves or send a visiting adult to that bathroom?
If you make it a habit to let students use that bathroom, cease that practice immediately and let me know so I don’t worry about determining which adult is doing this.
I find this so disturbing that it is nearly worth putting a card reader security system in place to determine who is doing this and when.
I truly hope this email effects some change.”
- [name redacted to protect the horrible boss behind this mail]
Hope you find some solace in this and realize your boss could be worse.
Self-Perception vs. Reality
photo by Victoria Peckham
Another hidden gem from Sheena Iyengar’s The Art of Choosing. Dr. Iyengar had several hundred Columbia Business School students get 360-degree feedback from past managers, colleagues and subordinates.
The lesson? You’re not as great as you think you are so get over yourself.
Turns out that 90% saw “…significant discrepancies between how they saw themselves and how others interpreted their actions. Many who thought they were popular and valuable team players learned that they were seen as average and difficult to work with.”
90%.
Unfortunately for that group, others’ perception is reality.
Even worse news is that Dr. Iyengar references a study by Daniel Ames that reported that “…in the workplace, people who attempted to overtly enhance their position and reputation were seen as disruptive to the group and ultimately performed poorly.”
This speaks to the importance of being able to have those immensely difficult conversations about who we fundamentally are (or perceived to be) as people and how we behave in the workplace.
The more you have in common with others in terms of values and personality the easier these conversations are and the better you understand and appropriately interpret the actions of your colleagues. This gets to the heart of what we’re measuring at RoundPegg and why we so vehemently believe that hiring for fit needs some objectivity and rigor.
And while we may not have the exact answer, we believe we’re taking a big step toward the solution with our internal Touchy Feely meetings. It’s damn hard to discuss our perceptions that rub or (possibly harder) to be on the receiving end of that feedback. But it’s what makes a group and company run more efficiently and effectively. When we can get out of one another’s way we’re better able to put the business first.
We can all improve and we will be far more successful if we’re able to listen to others’ perceptions and internalize that.
Everyone and every company is a work in progress, to be sure, but nothing worthwhile is easy.
Kaizen.
