Land of Confusion

There's too many people
Making too many problems

Cant you see 

This is a land of confusion.

- Genesis

Sure, I know.  If you grew up in the 80s, you know Phil, Tony, and Mike were more interested using in the Spitting Image puppets to lampoon the Reagan Administration rather than the job market, but in many ways, their outlook seems equally reflective of the kind of sanity-challenging experience that awaits every new job seeker today. 

What often surprises me - although it's admittedly happened with such frequency that I've begun to think I shouldn't be surprised - is how many firms continue to treat candidates in the very way that, were the roles reversed, would get the candidates dropped from consideration almost instantly.  

In my most recent posting, I mentioned a firm that took me through a rapid series of interviews - both over the phone and in person - and e-mailed me the day after the last interview to ask for references before moving forward with an offer.  I eagerly provided the information and contacted my associates so they could be alerted to expect a call.  

Nothing happened.  

So, after a week, I queried the employer - you can probably guess where this is going - and the employer suddenly seemed to have a bad case of cold feet about hiring.  "When we know more, we'll let you know," was the response that I received.  

Jump forward another month.  Here's what I suddenly see in my inbox: 

From: HR DIRECTOR
To: John F
Sent: Thursday, March 14, 2013 2:31 PM
Subject: Checking In

Hi John -

I hope this note finds you well!

I wanted to check in on your status with regard to your job search.  Have you found a position yet?  If not, we'd love to have you come back in and meet with [NAME] and possibly a few other folks. 

Let me know.

Thanks,
[Name withheld]
Human Resources Director
COMPANY NAME

So, let's review.  A month ago I had two face-to-face interviews after a phone screening with the founder of the company and was asked to provide references so the company could move forward with perhaps some sort of preliminary offer.  Then a week went by with no follow up or contacting of my references.  When I inquired about the status, I got a brush off ("We still haven't decided...").  I thanked her for her honesty and placed two follow-up phone calls to the senior-most folks I talked with, saying it had been a pleasure to meet with them, if things changed to please contact me, etc. 

Then, a month later, I receive another e-mail that makes it sound as though we're taking a rather large step backward in the recruiting process.  In other words, a month ago we were in the process of moving forward with preparing a possible offer, now a month later - with no communication in between whatsoever - I'm being asked if I want to come back down to talk with more people. 

Sounds great, doesn't it?  Yet I've seen this happen time and again with employers reaching out to people before they really know what kind of job they need to fill or what sort of qualifications the person they want to fill it needs to have.  The result is a disorganized process that serves neither the employer nor the candidate very effectively.  The employer gets people with all kinds of skills sets that it can't evaluate; and candidates get at best a chaotic or mixed picture in terms of the level of focus and organization at the company.  

To sum up my experience as a candidate:

1.  The company had already received a referral from a respected mutual acquaintance who had written me a phenomenal recommendation. 

2.  The owner had telephoned me for a 1-hour phone screening interview. 

3.  I had scheduled time off from another job to come down and park - at my own expense - to meet with one of the company's team managers and her staff. 

4.  I had followed that meeting with another the following week with one of the co-founders of the firm, the founder herself, and a senior partner.  

5.  Following that final meeting, the HR manager asked me for references so they could "move forward with next steps."  

Then, after this...nothing.  Then backtracking. Then repeating an offer to come back and talk some more.  

Now, how does this appear to the candidate?  Well, for starters - 

1.  If you have a strong referral from a trusted source, it's understandable that you still need to do an interview.  Following a standard screening and discussion process is perfectly reasonable.  But leaving someone  hanging for several weeks and conveying an impression of indecision ill serves you as a firm and does little to inspire confidence in your candidates that yours is a company worth joining. 

2.  The process is extremely inconsiderate of the candidate's time.  Assuming s/he has to secure time away from a part-time job or other appointment(s) to meet with you, s/he is doing a lot to show sincere interest in you and your firm.  Treating him or her shabbily does not show respect for his time, and that makes him wonder - understandably - how you will treat him as an employee if you don't respect his time as a candidate.  Think of it this way, is it unreasonable for the candidate to ask himself, "If this is how they're treating me now, how will they treat me once I'm staff?"

3.  You are not only being highly inconsiderate of the candidate's time but also of his wallet.  Asking someone to come down and meet with you in the city not only means taking time away from other prospective interviews and/or jobs, it also means the candidate has to pay money out of his own pocket to meet with you.  This includes not only gas, parking, subway fare, etc., but it can also include photocopying fees if the candidate takes the time to prepare visuals for you to highlight what work he's done in the past and would be willing to bring in terms of skills to your company.  Even just a couple of interviews can easily run $40-50 in terms of out-of-pocket expenses.  Which begs the question, if you interview someone multiple times without indicating whether you're moving toward an offer - but that you'd rather continue discussions on an ongoing (and undetermined) basis - at what point does it really cease to be cost-effective for the candidate to be talking with you if he knows it's going to cost him money with no real indication of any return on that investment?  

But let's put this another way.  Suppose we switched the tables around and our candidate was contacted by the employer for multiple interviews...but then...suddenly...stopped talking with the employer.  ("I haven't decided which way I'm leaning toward in terms of which way I want to go with my next position.  When I do, I'll be in touch.")  Even better, suppose that candidate then reaches out to the employer a month later to ask if they're still looking to hire or would like to get together to "talk" again.  Mind you, the candidate has not indicated he's interested in working for you, only that he would like to continue the discussion, follow up, maybe meet more people at the firm, etc. 

What would the company's likely reaction be?  

My guess is that it would probably something pretty close to, "This guy doesn't know what he's looking for and is wasting my time.  I have more pressing issues requiring my attention, and I'd certainly prefer to spend it talking with candidates who are serious about our firm rather than someone who can't make up his mind." 

And yet, for some inexplicable reason, this two-way nature of exchange that makes up 50% of all job interviews - remember, the candidate is evaluating you as much as you are the candidate - still seems lost on so many employers.  

And while such behavior may work in a recessionary economy where many are desperate for work, such practices run the risk of long-term harm to a company that practices them simply because they show themselves as being unworthy of candidates' time, inconsiderate of their costs, and - bluntly put - they show complete ignorance of what can happen in the era of social media when one disgruntled candidate can post his thoughts and experiences online for the world to see.  

And that will make recruiting future candidates all the more challenging. 

When Companies Burn Money They Don't Have...

Much has been said and written of late about how companies have no one but themselves to blame for their hiring challenges.  PBS blogger Nick Corcodilos has made a career out of it, as have authors as notable as Wharton professor and WSJ contributor Peter Cappelli who has written extensively about the topic as well.  Their basic consensus is that the so-called "talent shortage" is nothing of the sort.  Companies simply don't know how to recruit, and the resulting frustrations are - more often than not - their own fault.

But somehow, reading about this issue never quite compares to encountering it in person.

Over the past month, I've been in talks with a boutique consulting firm regarding a possible opportunity they recently posted on Linked In.  A mutual acquaintance not only connected us but also wrote one of the most flattering recommendations I've had the privilege to receive.  A phone interview was arranged shortly after, followed by not one but two face-to-face interviews with the owner and her team.  The day after the final interview, I was sent a form and told I had to complete it and list some references that could be checked before an offer could be extended.  I did so and eagerly awaited a reply. 

A week later, nothing had happened and none of my references had been contacted.  I wrote the HR manager to see if there had been any developments, and this was the reply I received (identity redacted):

 ----- Forwarded Message -----
From: XXXXX XXXXXXXXX <xxxxxxxxx@companyname.com>
To: John XXXXXXXXXX <jxxxxxxxxxx@xxxx.com>
Sent: Friday, February 15, 2013 7:10 PM
Subject: Re: Information Request

Hi John – We aren't quite sure what direction we're going with the position we had in mind for you.  Once we all can touch base and figure out a plan, I will get back in touch with you.
Have a great weekend!

[Name Withheld]
Human Resources Director
[Company]

So, apparently, after three interviews and some discussion, the company is now undecided as to whether it does in fact have a position to fill.   I've written about this experience before a number of times when companies interview a candidate - sometimes inviting them to travel great distances - only to cancel the position or hesitate to extend an actual offer even after the candidate has cleared the final hurdles. 

As frustrating as this can be for the candidate, it's also extremely unhealthy for the company's bottom line (all the more so if the company in question is in fact a boutique consulting firm or similarly sized small business).  To illustrate using just some back-of-the-envelope figuring, let's assume it costs a company $100 an hour to compensate an employee in terms of salary and benefits.  (Yes, the actual number may be higher or lower in some instances, but let's work with a whole number for illustration purposes here.)  Here's what Company X has already spent to interview a candidate that they're now getting cold feet about hiring: 

$300 - Cost of developing content for a job position listing (assume 3 hours of one staffer's time - bear in mind the actual cost is likely to be far higher if the ad has to be approved or reviewed multiple times by higher management before posting)

$200 - Cost to post an ad.  (Again, mileage may vary here depending on the Web site used, the number of clicks, how long the ad runs, etc., but let's just go with this for the time being here.)

$300 - Cost to review responses to the ad by just one staffer (assuming s/he spends at least 3 hours doing so)

$100 - First phone interview by one person

$300 - First face-to-face interview with three employees (assuming the interview lasts exactly one hour only vs. 90 minutes or more)

$300 - Second face-to-face interview with three senior managers (similar time assumption)

$300 - Cost for three senior managers to spend one hour discussing whether to move forward with extending an offer

Total Cost:  $1800 minimum

Bear in mind the actual cost to the firm in terms of time wasted is very likely to be far higher since this calculation does not include additional costs for reviews and revisions to the posted advertisement, scheduling requirements for internal staff, or the other candidates the firm may be interviewing as well, etc.  Taken together, the likely costs are probably several thousand dollars in lost time and productivity, to say nothing of the frustration that results on the part of candidates who may take time away from other promising opportunities and interview at great personal expense in terms of travel, parking, subway fare, etc. only to be essentially told at the end of the process, "We're not sure whether we want to make a decision at this time."  These candidates will likely dissuade others from applying to the company, and if this word-of-mouth goes digital, the company will find itself at a disadvantage in terms of being able to recruit the talent it needs to remain competitive. 

That will do more to create a talent shortage than anything else. 


 

Some Good Food for Thought -

Keeping a blog and keeping it current are not always one and the same, but once in a while you find reason to remember why you started one.  Last fall I had the opportunity to be interviewed on PBS as part of a story they were doing on the job search, and one of my co-interviewers shared some insight from his many years as a recruiter.  He was good enough to respond to one of my follow-up queries regarding what readers here know as "zombie descriptions."  Read all about his response - and others like it - here:

http://corcodilos.com/blog/6036/systemic-recruitment-fraud-how-employers-fund-americas-jobs-crisis/comment-page-1#comment-666553

Forgetting Your 15 Minutes... 

One of the joys of keeping a blog such as this one is that you get to share other people's stories about their job search experiences.  This applies when they're good, or - more often - when they're not.  (But then, who'd want to read a blog about happy job search experiences?  Are there such animals?)

Anyway, to the larger point, it's easy to get a bit carried away covering the stories of others and forgetting that - just once in a while - your own story deserves a bit of coverage as well.  To that end, I thought I'd post this clip from a recent PBS News Hour story that featured none other than yours truly in the lead-in.  While it hasn't translated into the hundreds of offers from agents and press managers ("Mr. John will be signing autographs in the lobby from noon until six..."), it's nevertheless worth sharing and enjoying.  (Hey, those 15 minutes don't last long!)

Cheers!


John

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/july-dec12/makingsense_09-25.html

When a Job Interview is Neither

Okay, I admit it.  I was once as naive about the job search as everyone else.  I foolishly thought that when you saw a job ad online that it meant there was an actual position behind it and that, if you were qualified and presented yourself properly to the hiring manager, you might have a good chance at landing the job.

Boy, was I wrong.  That's like thinking you can drive NASCAR because you played a lot of "Pole Position" at the arcade during your teen years.  (If I can date myself any more with that video game reference - either for the game in question or the use of the word "arcade" - don't tell me; I don't want to know...)  The reality is so far removed from what you thought you knew, it's difficult to know where to begin. 

 

So, let's start with what appear to be some of the actual and more common reasons for job interviews.  These are based solely on personal experiences friends and I have had and is in no way intended to be an actual statistical representation of the job market.  (Yeah, go ahead and insert your own legal jargon here - I was a business major in grad school, not an aspiring lawyer.)  In reverse order -

 

3.  The market research interview.  This is where the interview isn't being done to fill a position but is instead part of a company's desire to gather intelligence before crafting a new position that they intend to fill internally all along.  For instance, earlier this year I interviewed with a well-known wine distributor for a training and learning position.  Like any job seeker, I spent a few days researching the firm, learning about its business model and competitors, rehearsing my answers for the most likely interview questions ("Tell us about yourself and why you want to leave your current job and why we should hire you and how you handled a setback and dealt with a difficult coworker while managing a team and produced something successful and profitable in 60 seconds, please."), and signed out for a half day's leave to make the interview 25 miles away.  About halfway through our talk, the manager told me, "One of the reasons I ran the ad for this was to get a sense of the compensation levels people were expecting.  What is your salary range?"

 

Again, in my naivete, I didn't translate this fully until several weeks later:  "I'm just talking with  you to get a sense of what I'm going to have to pay the person I already plan to hire for this job."

 

I'll spare the extra details here, but suffice it to say I sent the interviewers three handwritten thank you cards a few days and never heard a word back - no offer was extended, no courtesy reply thanking me for my time and interest, no acknowledgment of any kind.  However, the same ad did run again several weeks later - with the same range I and others requested. 

 

2.  The free consulting interview.  This is more common but no less frustrating.  Here, the company isn't trying to hire someone so much as it is trying to use the job interview process to gather free consulting advice it can use to help it improve different aspects of its business (online image, market practices, etc.).  One nonprofit I worked for made it a practice of having applicants edit article submissions from the slush pile as part of their evaluations - it was a good way to get free labor out of candidates while testing their skills.  The managing editor even laughed about it as a source of pride.

 

But back to the present.  Last week, a good friend of mine received an invitation to interview for a position with an Internet management firm for a marketing position.  The interview would consist of an actual discussion about her background and qualifications, discussions with various employees at different levels from the firm, and a presentation where she would need to address the following:  "What 3-5 things would you help us do to improve our Web site's search ability?"

 

My friend hit the ceiling and called them back right away.  "Look," she said.  "I'm very interested in this opportunity, and I'm happy to talk to everyone and do a presentation if that's part of the evaluation process; but there is no way I'm giving free advice to an employer who hasn't even hired me yet.  That tells me you just want to take my input and everyone else's to make improvements to your Web site without even hiring somebody." 

 

She went ahead with the interview, but the requirement put her in the perfect Catch-22:  If she gave them full input on what they were doing, there was no need to hire her; but if she kept it high-level without going into sufficient detail, the firm would conclude she wasn't knowledgeable or forthcoming ("she's not a team player") and not hire her.

 

So what did she do?  She decided to focus on the company's strengths and gave a few high-level suggestions on some possibilities it could explore but left the finer details out of the discussion.  "If they want to hire me, great," she told me.  "But there's no way I'm giving away the store to somebody for free."  (The jury is still out as of this time.)

 

And the most common practice -

 

1. Talent pool updating.  I've written about this practice before, but the sad fact is that it's not a rarity; it's standard in today's job market.  Once upon a time - see the "arcade" reference earlier - companies could never afford to keep and track hundreds (if not thousands) of paper resumes in a giant vault somewhere that they would pay low-level HR staffers (or interns) to venture, torch in hand, down a winding stone staircase to explore the catacombs where the resumes of qualified applicants were kept.  With the PC revolution and explosion of the Internet in the '90s, however, this quickly became easier and cost-effective.  Now, instead of running ads any time a company needs to fill a position, they can simply run advertisements year-round to be ensured of a current supply of qualified candidates' resumes, salary expectations, experience levels, and so forth.  And the best part?  They can do this even if they have no plans to do any hiring of any kind. 

 

Let's say, for example, that Company X wants to make sure it keeps a current resume pool so it can always have access to available talent.  They run an advertisement on Linked In, Career Builder, or any number of job sites every 2-3 months to ensure a steady influx of resumes from eager job applicants.  Those on file more than 90 days are tossed so only the most current resumes are kept.  This ensures that the company always has a current database from which to pull a resume if it ever wants to fill an actual position, obtain some market research on age, experience levels, and salary expectations, etc.  And the best part?  They don't need to fill a position or conduct an interview to get any of it.

 

Does this sound good?  Well, from an employer's perspective, it certainly makes things a great deal easier, but it doesn't come without a cost, and that cost unfortunately has to be born by the job seeker.  Mainly, s/he now has to spend more time chasing down advertisements in hopes of finding one that has an actual opening behind it vs. one that is simply being run as part of the latest talent bank update.  That, in turn, makes the job search process all the more difficult and requires significantly more time before a matching position is to be found.  When politicians and researchers talk about why unemployment is so persistent and hard to bring down, practices such as these might be worth taking into account.

 

But to put this in immediate perspective, I recently attended a local job networking event where there were probably over a hundred people in the audience.  (Again, this is all based on personal experience, not scientific research.)  An interviewer asked how many people found positions via advertisements they answered online.

 

Exactly three people raised their hands. 

It's the Economy, Stupid - More Specifically...

I confess I'm admittedly among those who believe more federal spending is only likely to exacerbate the deficit and contribute further to the economic problems facing so many out-of-work taxpayers, but this is still an excellent take on how much of the media - like our elected officials - is/are missing the ball on the primary issue of importance to so many voters...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/28/opinion/sunday/kristof-did-we-drop-the-ball-on-unemployment.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

Friday Funnies

With all the recent haranguing in Washington over the debt ceiling - and with the expected release of new job figures later today - perhaps it's best to remember the funnier side of politics...

***

"He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything.  That points clearly to a political career."

- George Bernard Shaw

"[The difference between American politicians and English politicians is] American politicians will do anything for money; English politicians will take the money and won't do anything."

- Stephen Leacock

John F. Kennedy reportedly toured a Virginia coal mine and was asked by a miner, "Is it true, sir, you've never worked an honest day of hard labor in your life?"  Kennedy admitted he had not.  "Believe me, sir," the miner replied, shaking his hand.  "You haven't missed a thing."



And just to show nothing beats bureaucracy when it comes to crazy humor...



"Your food stamps will be stopped effective March 1992 because we received notice that you passed away.  May God bless you.  You may reapply if there is a change in your circumstances."

- Department of Social Services, Greenville, South Carolina