Sham WOW! Overselling an Employment Opportunity – Part 2

Wednesday, September 02, 2009

Last week, one of our clients sent me some solicitation information his company had received from an employment assessment company. The information was a sample report that candidates receive from the assessment vendor upon applying to a given company.

The report is intended to give the candidate some feedback concerning their personality, and some insight regarding their potential for success at the said company. The report is well done from a graphical perspective. The assessment results are presented in a box on the upper right hand side in each of four pages, thus the candidate can easily access the information.

The problem is that the assessment results boxes are surrounded by a series of testimonials from existing employees. Most of the testimonial boxes contain pictures of attractive women, and the general theme of each testimonial is that the person found fulfillment in life by working for this company.

I think testimonials are helpful, and one or two might complement this report nicely. But, this report contains seven testimonials in just four pages! The testimonials take up as much space on each page as the assessment results, and surround the box that contains the information the candidate is trying to read.

It’s like we’re ba ck at the fair and the “gadget sales guy” is desperately trying to get my attention for a few minutes to make a sale. The neon lights are flashing as the candidate approaches this employment opportunity. Naturally, defenses rise under such circumstances, and people become protective. What is effective in separating a person from the $10 that is in their wallet at the state fair, typically has the opposite effect in an employment dialog.

I know the majority of you are probably not involved in candidate advertising and marketing, but many of you are involved in various other aspects of the hiring process, including prospecting for candidates and conducting interviews. The same principles apply to these pieces of the hiring process.

Overselling your company and your team will have a very negative effect on your recruiting results. While most of us can look at an advertisement and tell if something looks gimmicky, it is difficult for many people to realize how their conversations may contain many of the same traits.

Here are some quick questions that you can ask yourself:

What percentage of your conversations involve you talking versus the candidate talking?
What percentage of your conversation is spent talking about the candidate’s existing organization (or past experiences) versus your organization?
What percentage of your conversation do you spend talking about the challenges on your team? Do you ever talk about how a candidate’s contribution could enhance your team?

I’m sure you can figure out the correct answers to these questions by reflecting back on past interviews, but can you determine if you’re doing these things during a live conversation? The first step is to make an effort to become more aware of what you’re saying during a recruiting conversation, and then make adjustments if you find you are overselling. To follow up, you may want to invite a trusted friend or collegue to attend one of your interviews and then provide you some honest feedback on this topic.

Believe me, if your recruiting conversations sound like they belong in the gadget barn, better to find out so that you can make some changes. First impressions can become last impressions if you don’t “fix” your approach.

Sham WOW! Overselling an Employment Opportunity

Tuesday, September 01, 2009

Last week, I had the opportunity to take my family to the Washington State Fair. The fairgrounds are about 30 minutes from my house, which makes it easy to spend one afternoon per year, enjoying all the activities a state fair has to offer.

The food is the main attraction. Where else can you get a roasted turkey leg smothered in BBQ sauce with a gigantic “elephant ear” for dessert? My fingers are still sticky! We also enjoy the animal barns. This year, we got to see an Egyptian Sphinx—a hairless cat that has the temperament of a dog in the affection it shows toward humans. The Egyptian Pharoses liked these animals so much that they requested one be placed in their tomb so that they could enjoy the cat’s companionship in the afterlife.

At some point during the afternoon, I usually part ways with my wife and daughters and head over to my favorite exhibit–the “gadget barn.” This is the large building where all the fair vendors congregate in an attempt to sell the public the latest revolutionary product. There is everything from rubber roof tiles for your house (made from recycled tires) to car wax that supposedly lasts five years. This year I learned that the Sham WOW was actually a fake! The chamois booth sales guy showed me the benefits of purchasing the REAL 100% rayon chamois (patent number included). Needless to say, I got the “first-day-of-the-fair special.”

This type of sales technique has always intrigued me. It feels odd to relate to someone who is force-feeding you information for their own benefit. Granted, some people are quite talented at this type of dialog, and it can be quite entertaining. If a vendor is going to be successful in the gadget barn, they must be a performer and be executing at the top of their game.

What would happen if we tried to apply these same tactics to recruiting? If you are thinking that the results would be terrible…I agree! However, this is exactly what many hiring managers do–especially when they’re attempting to recruit from their competitors. Without listening first, they quickly start listing the benefits of working on their team, without really understanding the needs of the candidate.

This kind of recruiting arrogance turns people off in a big way. As we discussed last month in WorkPuzzle, people need acknowledgment and attunement to become attached to a company. Attunement means “to adjust or accustom your response to become receptive or responsive to someone else.” This is what causes someone to engage in a recruiting dialog–not a detailed understanding of what they’re missing by not being on your team.

Tomorrow, I’ll illustrate how this mistake makes its way into both the candidate advertising process and the interview process. Until then, did you know you can now buy the California Car Duster online? …and I thought the only place you could get it was at the fair!

The Talent Sale – Part 2

Friday, August 28, 2009

Yesterday, I described the unusual situation that we are currently in, where top talent is available, marked down, and easy to dislodge. If you are responsible for hiring, you owe it to yourself, and the company you work for, to spend some time imagining how this works. (Definitely begin be reviewing yesterday’s blog.)

Let’s say you’re single, and you are looking to date someone. Where’s the best environment for this? Is it among a group of happily married couples, or among a group of singles? The answer is, of course, obvious. This may sound like a ridiculous analogy, but it applies to recruiting more than you may think!

To take the analogy further… As far as talented people and their loyalty to their employers goes, we are now in a situation where there have been millions of “divorces” and many considering “divorce.” If you ever want “to date,” NOW is the time. Now is the time when the largest number of people are willing to “play the field.” Don’t wait until everyone has already “dated” other industries and “found their match,” because the majority of the workforce will likely stick with their new match through several economic cycles before they switch industries again. This is the time to attract, date, and marry this extremely wide pool of very good prospects.

Continuing the analogy… Most hiring managers restrict their “dating” to only those who actively “flirt” with them. And we all know, this limits your dating prospects to the most desperate individuals. And if you limit yourself to those who actively flirt, you’ll probably wind up with someone who will flirt with other companies once they’re with you!

To win over the best date and best prospects, you must set a goal and not give up. The most successful daters know that finding a great partner takes tenacity, patience, and a willingness to be rejected. They know that finding the right person is a numbers game, and by increasing the number of rejections, they’ll increase their chances of winning the heart of someone great.

The numbers have never been so much in your favor…

Top Talent – On Sale NOW!

Thursday, August 27, 2009

I’m sure you’ve all heard the saying “Buy Low/Sell High” when it comes to the stock market. Isn’t it easy to pull the trigger on a hot stock when it’s up and everyone is buying it? And how hard it is to force yourself to buy when a particular stock is low, and nobody wants anything to do with it? Sadly, this is how most people operate, despite their knowledge that it is a losing strategy.

This same tendency applies to scouting talent: Hiring Managers are more than willing to recruit and buy top talent at high prices when things are on a roll, but nobody is interested in this venture when the economy is down. As you might know, we (Tidemark) have become convinced that looking for talent within other industries is always the best way to broaden your net for catching the next wave of talent. The companies we work for are witnessing this first hand.

There has never been a more opportune time to take advantage of this strategy. In fact, Dr. John Sullivan recently wrote an article on this very phenomenon titled, Countercyclical Hiring: The Greatest Recruiting Opportunity in the Last 25 Years. Sullivan believes that timing plays a huge role in a company’s potential for recruiting exceptional new talent. He explains in detail why now is the time to cast that net:

“The Perfect Time for Recruiting

•Competitors are out of the market — almost no one is in the talent market right now. Most firms have instituted a hiring and/or a budget freeze, which means the competition for talent is ridiculously low.

•High-quality talent is available — in some downturns, only low-quality talent is laid off by corporations. However, during the current downturn, because of a large number of recent mergers, facility closings, and the complete elimination of some major firms, the amount of extremely high-quality unemployed or underemployed talent available around the world is at an all-time high. 60% of current fully employed top talent are open to new opportunities.

•Costs are low — the lack of competition and the down economy have forced the price of available talent in almost all positions back down to reasonable levels. New referral approaches and internet and social networking recruiting tools have also reduced the cost of recruiting talent.

•Talent is amenable — the lack of available job opportunities has ‘shifted the power’ away from talent and toward corporations to the point where top talent will consider job opportunities and options today that they would have rejected as little as two years ago.

•The coming retirement wave — the dramatic reduction in stock prices and 401(k) values has temporarily postponed the upcoming wave of retirements. Despite this delay, these retirements will come eventually and if the economy turns around suddenly, firms may very soon be faced with a tidal wave of retirements. Because large-scale retirements may begin in as little as a year or two, now’s the perfect time to ‘stockpile’ and develop possible replacements for your most experienced managers and technical talent.

•The coming retention problem — if your organization is among the many that have undergone layoffs, frozen hiring, reduced budgets, and maybe even cut salaries through the use of furloughs, the odds are that your current employees are overworked and stressed. This less-than-perfect treatment coupled with the fact that many of the ‘new generation’ of employees have little to no loyalty to a single firm will result in a dramatic increase in turnover as soon as more external opportunities begin appearing. Obviously, you should begin retention efforts immediately but it may not be possible to remove the ‘bad taste’ that your current employees experienced. Expand your recruiting efforts to find replacements and realize that new hires are likely to be more loyal than most employees because they are now seeking security and they would certainly remember the fact that you ‘saved them’ during a period when no one else would even look at their resume.”

Those who wait for the economy to improve will, once again, wind up competing with everyone else for the best candidates. At that point, as I have said before, most people will have already decided where they want to work and will be deeply entrenched, not even willing to consider other options. At least the best of them will be…

Positive Emotions, and Getting Out Alive!

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Okay, the title is a little dramatic… I guess I need to stay out of the wilderness for a few weeks. As I mentioned yesterday, last week my wife and I endured the wet climate in Banff. Then, over the weekend, I managed to get lost on a hike with my 21 year-old daughter, Katelyn.

Perhaps I’ve seen too many episodes of Survivorman, but I actually began to ponder if I had wandered into a disastrous situation. We were hiking a portion of the Pacific Crest Trail, which starts in Mexico and ends at the Canadian border. On a side note: We actually ran into a man and his horse who had started on the trek in Mexico, and were two weeks away from the Canadian border.

The mistake I made was going off-trail to find an alpine lake. We ended up on a trail that dead-ended. From there, we must have traveled in circles. One’s natural tendency is to panic.

We were really never in any trouble, but still, I remembered what research psychologist, Barbara Fredrickson, revealed about staying positive:

“Frederickson has found that while negative emotions narrow people’s perspective and keep them focused on the specific problem in hand (e.g. flight or fight), positive emotions ‘broaden’ people’s likely thoughts and actions as well as their behavior. In other words, when we are experiencing positive emotions we have more ‘behavioral flexibility’ and this allows us to build ‘intellectual and psychological resources.’ So if we are feeling positive we are more likely to be curious, to learn, to explore and be creative than if we are negative.” (Center for Confidence and Well-Being, 2006)

If we had become panicked, we probably still could have found our way out, but it was more fun, and certainly burned less energy, to stay positive. We eventually, (two miles or so further) got turned around, found the correct trail, and headed out.

Let this story serve as a reminder to keep your team broadening their internal resources of confidence and decisions, by staying positive and developing an atmosphere free from panic and pessimism. The impact on the brain and it’s capacity for creativity is well documented.

As for me… I’ll stay in the neighborhood for the next few weeks…

A Lesson In Patience…

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

I just returned from a five day vacation, visiting both Banff and Calgary, Canada with my wife. Our trip just happened to coincide with the wettest and coldest few days that this region has had since early May.

If you’ve ever seen pictures of Banff, you’ve caught a glimpse of some of the most spectacular scenery in North America. We knew it was there, somewhere…but saw none of it during our first two days. We humorously kept repeating, “I bet this sure is gorgeous”… or… “Wow, can you imagine how beautiful this is?”

Not all was lost those first two days. I became an expert in converting Celsius to Farenheit, a skill most baristas and mountain guides have down pat (Double the Celsius and add 25…so 12 degrees Celsius is 12×2 = 24, plus 25 = 49 degrees Farenheit). Yes, our summer vacation, where thongs (foot thongs not the other) were packed and sunscreen in hand, quickly changed to, “What can we see inside?”

On the morning of day three we were actually considering getting in our rental car and driving four hours to what appeared to be sun on the weather channel. We casually mentioned this to a clerk at the local grocery store who urged us not to lose hope. She said, “They never know what’s going to happen in the mountains. Just stick it out, you may be surprised!”

So, feeling bold, we scheduled a climb into the Alpine Lakes area of “Sunshine (that’s right Sunshine) Ski Resort,” ready for any kind of weather the mountains threw at us.

Eventually, the weather mercifully cleared, and the temperature climbed to 23 degrees Celsius (you do the math). When it did clear, we were standing at the continental divide, near Alpine Lakes, with miles of spectacular views.

So, what did I learn? I’m constantly learning to be patient… For me this was just another lesson in the importance of the payoff of patience. Had we driven that day to find “better weather,” we would not only have wasted valuable time chasing an unclear goal, but would also have missed out on one of highlights of the journey.

In managing people, you must have convictions about persistence, tenacity, and patience. Without valuing these traits, you won’t be able to bring out the best in the talent that’s been entrusted to you. As a company, do you spend too much time chasing things that don’t pay off, or do you stick to executing a plan?

The clouds will clear eventually…