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The Fordyce Letter

Straight Talk for the Recruiting Profession


Articles tagged 'interviewing'

Ask Barb

Ask Barb: Delivering Negative Feedback to Candidates

by on Sep. 21, 2011


Ask Barb

Dear Barb:

I had a candidate go out on an interview for a Director level position. She is a person who has held similar roles in the past. The client had already completed a phone interview with her and was excited to meet her. After the interview with three separate people, the client was unanimous in stating there was no way they’d bring her into the organization.

Some of the things the hiring manager told me…

  • Her demeanor was odd, distant, dreamy, and she sometimes had difficulty focusing on the question.
  • There was a point of conflict between her and the hiring manager when he asked her to answer the same question three times and she always tried to answer a different question.
  • She lacked any kind of interview technique.
  • Bashed her former employers.

I spent about 45 minutes prepping her the same way I prepped two other candidates I sent to the same interview group. Those two are getting offers. If I present this as stated to the candidate I am sure she will just reject the feedback and become defensive. How would you go about delivering this feedback in a way that coaches the candidate and maintains a professional relationship between the candidate, myself, and the client?

Rebecca Y., St. Louis, MO 

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Interviews

The Art of Performing Technical Screening

by on Jul. 19, 2011


woman on phone by George Reyes

Kerri, a senior technical recruiter with eleven years’ experience, has noticed that slowly but surely the requirements for the regular .NET developer and database developer positions are requiring more and different skills than she has been used to. She is finding that she does need to learn about these new tools but knows from experience that it takes a lot of her time to research. “I need information on how to validate these skills, to know if the candidates really have the skills or not,” says Kerri during a training session.

The usual research practice to learn about these skills starts with wiki search, the purchase of one or two software development beginner books (written for the developer audience), and ends with joining a number of developer user groups, only to find out that these practices are not effective and not really helping with screening. For one, the books are full of jargon and require prerequisite knowledge in technology. Second, how do online groups really help one in validating skills?

She loathes the idea of asking her client, and does not want to ask her candidates for fear of appearing ignorant of such well-known technologies. Kerri knows that to continue to be successful in her career, she needs to stay on top of her game. And this game includes learning all she needs to learn (as much as is relevant to her job) in IT to be able to successfully screen candidates and match them to her clients.

I have met many other recruiters like Kerri who want to learn how to screen and validate technical skills in order to ask the questions that make the matching process faster and more effective.

As targeted as technical screening is for recruiters, it also benefits hiring managers and candidates.

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Closing

Emotion vs Logic: Six Tips To Help Guide Your Candidates Through the Emotional Forest of Change

by on Jul. 6, 2011


forest by Craig Cloutier

Ever feel like you are journeying through the search and placement process with your candidate, and then suddenly you find yourself somewhere deep in a forest, no natural light to be seen, trying to find your way out with nothing but a flashlight and a compass? Meanwhile, your partner (the candidate) is dehydrated, tired, and draining you emotionally? You thought you had this deal done after the “Yes” to the offer…

Of course, going into the emotional forest, your candidate was telling you all the reasons they wanted to go on this journey, why they would make an excellent partner for the trip, and how they had all the equipment necessary for the trip. You are discovering they are not as prepared as they lead you to believe.

Here you are — alone and in the dark…Is this the same candidate? Where is their equipment? I thought they knew what they were getting into? How do you navigate them (and yourself) through woods!?!?

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Relationships

Recruiter Chronicles: Story of the Despicable Million-dollar Producer

by on Jun. 28, 2011


evil by L. Marie

“She said what!?” I heard the question fly from the other side of the room punctuated with disgust. Each one of my teammates’ ears were now perked with anticipation to hear what “she” said. We waited patiently for a minute, and up from her cube popped my teammate Chris. She exclaimed, holding her head in her hands and looking like she was in great pain, “I can’t believe it!”

“What?” about three of us asked at the same time.

“She did it again,” Chris said with a tone of resigned disbelief in her voice.

“Who?” we asked.

“You know who,” Chris answered. At that moment we all knew. “You-know-who” is a bit of a nemesis of ours. She is a million-dollar producer that none of us know personally, but deal with on a constant basis. If you just looked at her body of work in terms of numbers you would be infinitely impressed. She is known to be a consistent big biller, with the best contacts, and amazing work effort. Unfortunately, she also known to be somewhat morally and ethically challenged within the confines of recruitment.

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Interviews

How Would You Fill Michael Scott’s Job?

by on Jun. 14, 2011


TheOffice

Let’s say you as a recruiter just heard that Michael Scott’s position is now available. How would you fill this position? Who would you call to make first contact? What are the job requirements? How would you prep your candidates to interview?

The Season Finale of “The Office,” titled “The Search Committee,” features recruiting efforts to replace the vacant Scranton Branch Manager position held by Michael Scott.

This episode struck a chord with me as a recruiter since it provides the opportunity to view the drama of an interview process from the inside. On display is a comedic look at internal candidates jockeying for a higher position, interviewing faux pas, and the corporate bureaucracy we only hear about from phone calls with candidates and clients.

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Fees, Interviews

Learning From Mistakes: Trying to Place Travis

by on May 2, 2011


image source: opensourceway

image source: opensourceway

The great major champion golfer Jack Nicklaus was renown for many things. One of the least notable, but most poignant, was his amazing knack for really only remembering the good experiences in his illustrious career. His memory of seemingly every detail of winning moments is legendary. He can go back 30 years and tell you the club, yardage, wind direction, and how many clouds were in the sky for a single shot during a 72-hole tournament. Meanwhile, he could not recite any bit of the history that occurred during any of his defeats. No reason to hold on too tightly to bad memories anyway. I mean, who wants to carry that garbage around?

This kind of “selective memory” I’m sure has some psychological effect on elite performers. If all you can remember is the good, than your confidence is bound to remain high at all times. So, how do we learn from our failures if they are so easily deleted from our minds? Nicklaus has also said that he is able to learn from past experiences but move on quickly and “stay in the moment.” The real question is: how can we as recruiters adopt this mentality while still learning from our miscues? It’s a balancing act to be certain, but one that must be done.

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Interviews, The Business of Recruiting

Lessons From a First Placement

by on Apr. 13, 2011


Nate Elgert

Like just about every other recruiter, current or former, my first couple of months in this business was a struggle. Everyday I was making 70-80 dials that equaled 25-30 non-sensical ramblings that usually ended in a “not-interested” or a merciful hang up from my target. I was a brand new accounting and finance recruiter who knew nothing at all about accounting, and very little about business in general. The juxtaposition was that I was a hard-headed, sometimes cocky, 30 year-old who thought he knew pretty much everything. As time went on in my first couple of months as a recruiter, that attitude was replaced by a resigned feeling that I was not going to make it out of this alive (figuratively speaking of course). After about 6-8 weeks of this battle, I was ready to throw in the towel and move on. Moving on is what I had done best in my career up to that point. This was my fifth job in seven years, and going in, I was convinced that this must work out or I would be stuck in that revolving door of sales re-treads. It was this feeling, and a fiancé who was not likely to marry an unemployed former golf pro, that kept me coming back every day. Yep, you could say my first couple months as a recruiter was indeed a struggle. Then, one day, I caught a break.

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Interviews, Relationships, The Business of Recruiting

Recruiters Need to Follow Through

by on Mar. 15, 2011


photo: Deputado Bruno Covas

photo: Deputado Bruno Covas

As a recruiter (whether retained, contingent, corporate, executive search, or independent), there is “No Acceptable Excuse” for not following up or following through with a candidate.

By failing to do so, your actions are contributing to the further erosion of the reputation of our profession and are fueling the negative perceptions presently associated with recruiters.

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Fees, Interviews

I “FIRED” My Candidate…and Still Closed $27k

by on Mar. 4, 2011


yourefired

Last month, I “fired” a candidate during the interview/offer process, and I am 100% convinced the only reason I still earned the fee was because… (are you listening?) I emotionally “checked out” of the torment and refocused my efforts on the things in my business I could control, which were sourcing and recruiting candidates for other searches on which my firm was engaged. After nearly fourteen years as a third-party recruiter, I have learned a thing or two about candidate or client control… IT DOES NOT EXIST!

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47 Comments

Interviews, Weigh In!

Fun Friday: Bizarre Interview Questions

by on Jan. 14, 2011


crazyinterviewquestions

Do you have clients who ask crazy questions when interviewing your candidates? Here’s a link to a post highlighting some of the most bizarre questions companies have asked job-seekers, 15 Ridiculously Hard Job Interview Questions From Top Employers Like Google, Goldman Sachs. Below are my personal favorites –

  • “What do wood and alcohol have in common?” (asked at Guardsmark for a Staff Writer position)
  • “How are M&M’s made?” (asked at US Bank for a Leadership Program Development position)
  • “If you were shrunk to the size of a pencil and put in a blender, how would you get out?” (asked at Goldman Sachs for an Analyst position)
  • “Rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 how weird you are.” (asked by Capital One for an Operations Analyst position)
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