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Showing up late for an interview? There’s just no excuses.

I never understand it when a candidate shows up late for an interview. It’s a job interview, and presumably since you scheduled it, employers assume you want the job. I mean, I JUST don’t understand when a candidate shows up 30 minutes late and expects that the employer will still want to conduct the interview. Would you show up to your wedding 30 minutes late? (If the answer is yes, its likely best to stick with the singles scene for while)

While life indeed “happens” – traffic occurs (especially if you live here in DC!), kids get sick, and clocks lose power occasionally, there are things you have in your power to ensure that you can reduce the potential for you to be late for a job interview.

  • Leave with plenty of time. If you know that a commute to a certain area can be hectic, give yourself plenty of time to get there. Get there too early? I’m sure one of these places would be happy to take your $5.25 for a latte while you prepare further for the interview. Additonally, try to schedule your interview at non-peak times of the day if you are going to a place that is notoriously traffic-laden in the AM or PM rush hours.

  • Map it out and take a test drive prior to the interview. Saying that you got lost on the way to an interview tells an employer that you A. Don’t know how to use technology (specifically a GPS) OR B. Didn’t bother to map out the locale. With as much technology as we have on smart phones these days, everything can be found with a few slides of the thumb.

  • Have backup alarms to get you up well ahead of time. “I overslept” just doesn’t work for employers. You have an alarm clock, your cell phone, the old school telephone (yes, ask someone for a wake up call if that is a challenge for you)

Always have a plan and stick to that plan. You get one shot your potential employer to make your 1st impression. This is one of the easiest slip-ups to control, so take ownership of it. Employers remember who was late, and who stood them up. The memory of a good recruiter is a vast expanse that holds more long term tidbits than should be allowed by law. They will remember you. Make sure its for the right reasons.


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 Posted on August 17, 2010 by

 candidate relations, Job Hunting, Life, The Hiring Process

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What Do Applicant Assessments Tell Us, Anyway?

You’ve seen it. Maybe you’ve lived it. Maybe you had to implement it, and you may even have taken it. The dreaded pre-employment assessment. They come in all shapes and sizes. Some of the more common types in the market are Wonderlic, Myers-Briggs, and Gallup. Sure, they are all legal, and legally defensible in court, and are praised by a vast amount of executives far and wide. But what do they really tell you?

Choices, Choices.

The types of information sought on these assessments can vary widely – from personality types, to sales acumen, to analytical skills. But in the end, how much does it really tell you about the employee you are about to hire. There are several areas to consider when looking at potentially using a pre-employment assessment.

1. What are you looking for?
If you are seeking people who have strong analytical skills, then an employment assessment that measures this might be a way to go. But without having to over-customize a solution, can you effectively get what you need? In most cases, a cookie-cutter assessment may seem like a one-size fits all, but it’s leaving out critical components about who is actually taking the assessment. A Director of Product Management may score vastly different from a Statistical Data Analyst, depending on how much of their day-to-day is spent in a purely analytical world. And, are you having your sales reps take the same assessment as these purely analytical candidates?

2. What kind of metrics are you assessing to validate the impact of these assessments on your hiring process?
Assessment without analysis is just testing. You have to look at your core metrics on this. If the point of testing is the reduce turnover in key critical roles, and to make sure that people in these roles are highly promotable, then you need to look at the data. Having detailed components about turnover, promotion rates, and performance reviews is critical in seeing how valuable this assessment toll has proven. If you can’t put a finger on seeing where the value was added (i.e. a 15% reduction in turnover in the inside sales group), then you just have a bunch of test scores. Considering the pricing on many of these products, that’s an awful lot of money spent on anecdotal data. Considering that HR is already a department that most companies consider overhead, we have to spend wisely.

3. Do executives put more weight in the assessment more than the people interviewing and selecting the candidate?
If you have C-Level people weighting the outcome of the assessment ahead of the other critical stages of the interview process (Resume, experience, interview & interview feedback, references, and background checks), then something is wrong. You’ll almost inevitably lose proven and potential “A” players because they refuse to be judged from an assessment, and/or you let them get away because some test score said they weren’t up to snuff. “A” players don’t have to tolerate the cynicism that comes with being judged on test scores alone.

I’ve worked in companies where if the test score was not a certain number, there was no hire – end of story. I think about all the people in the world who are great at writing the 30 page paper, but who are not good testers. Conversely, how many people can ace tests, but not come up with core analytical takeaways from a project? It’s a balance, and as I said above, needs to be looked at as PART of the process, not as the litmus for the WHOLE process.

4. Is the assessment linked to your organizations key indicators of success and performance?
If it is, then you can truly use this as a potential indicator for future success. Dr. Charles Handler really does some nice work in presenting views in this arena. If you’re seriously considering implementing something, his research and articles might be a good spot to start. He has a great deck on Slideshare, that might be worth reviewing.

Assessment for the sake of saying “well, we tested them, and they did well/poor” is a waste of valuable interviewer and recruiter time. I’m not 100% in favor on pre-employment assessments, nor am I 100% against. As with most people, I’m somewhere in the middle.

Please feel free to share your thoughts on this.


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 Posted on May 7, 2010 by

 Assessments, candidate relations, legal, Recruiting, The Hiring Process, Twitter, Uncategorized, Vendors

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Networking, Why its important

Depending what side of the fence you are on – recruiter, corporate honcho or job seeker – you have different perspectives about what everyone should bring to the table in the hiring process. Recruiters want candidates quick, and for them to glide with ease through the hiring process. They also want managers to respond quickly. Managers (AKA honchos) want everything 3 days faster than it is today, and job seekers want to either find their next landing spot or obtain employment ASAP.

Yet, each of them follows a different path of getting there. What if we combined wonder-twin forces, and all realized the power of our NETWORKING capabilities? Are recruiters asking everyone they know for referrals (after they’ve built the relationship of course, otherwise they just look like candidate hoarders), are managers asking new hires if they think former co-workers might be a good fit in the organization, then passing any leads they get to the recruiting team? And are job seekers following the “pay-it-forward” mentality of passing along good opportunities to friends and colleagues about an opportunity that sounds good but isn’t for them? What if all of those cylinders were firing in unison? Would we see drastic reductions in cycle time? Maybe. Referrals are always about quality, not quantity.

But herein lies the dichotomy – if we are all working off of the same mindset of networking with those who are in front of us, and who we know from past lives, we’ll build quantity, which by law of averages should bring some quality with it. Yes, I know there will be those who want to fillet me for asking for quantity and expecting quality, but if you don’t cast a wide net, you’ll catch less – simple math. And recruiters need to drive activity. Job Seekers need to promote themselves, and managers needs quality employees to fill critical roles.

We should all be using whatever tools are available to us in order to network for our openings, our team or our next gig. Do that, and life becomes exponentially more simple. The technology is there, and it’s user-friendly. We can never get away from the personal touch, but combine all your resources and you’ll see the results.

The world of work and how people get work and employees is increasingly becoming less about what sites you know, and more about who you know in the places you want to go.


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 Posted on March 26, 2010 by

 candidate relations, Job Hunting, Life, networking, Recruiting, The Hiring Process

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Being a Candidate of Choice

Recruiters are in a unique position, in that what we do is neither purely art or purely science. It isn’t always about the ‘best’ resume, the pedigree school, or the numerous accolades. Occasionally different attributes cloud the clear cut decision based on skills, especially if that is critical in the position. Sometimes it’s really all about the intangibles that keep you in the running for that position. (Wait, you mean it’s not about that I was the #1 recruiter/sales-guy/excel spreadsheet ninja in my office?) Nope. It’s sometimes about the small stuff, and contrary to the book, you need to sweat this small stuff:  Read More

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 Posted on February 4, 2010 by

 Bizarre But True, candidate relations, Job Hunting, networking, Recruiting, The Hiring Process

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Cover letters? Are We Thin-Slicing Recruiting?

What is it with the love affair people have with cover letters? Is it professional? Sure. Is it a nice way to give a complete presentation of your professionalism? Check. Does it show you completed a basic course in business writing in college? Probably. But is it absolutely necessary to have in order to be considered a top candidate for a role? In my opinion, no. But that would differ from a great deal of opinions from people in the Twittersphere and Blogosphere right now.

There are a number of people out there who feel the cover letter is an essential piece of the puzzle, and key in determining the validity of a candidate. Just this week, there was banter out there on Twitter about how one Twitster would toss out the resume of a candidate who did not have a cover letter! Really? Are you that flush with candidates that you can just arbitrarily throw out potential stars because they didn’t have the obligatory “pick me” letter? I’d be hard pressed to believe that is the case with many companies in many areas, where the pool for talent is being thinned by everyone, and in a market where a large percentage of seekers are top performers, hit hard by the economy.

What I don’t get, is what are you getting from the cover letter that ensures that this candidate is better than everyone else who doesn’t have one? Writing skills? Ok, sure, but won’t the resume give you some inclination of the writing skills? Or the e-mails you have traded back and forth with them (assuming you DID e-mail with them). Most importantly, won’t their previous experience, and the phone call that you have with them tell you a bit more accurately if they are the right choice? Thing is, I think we’re becoming to focused on the quick hit, the “thin-slicing” of the recruiting process, to steal a phrase from Malcom Gladwell’s book, Blink. Don’t mistake me, recruiting is a quick moving, minute-by-minute profession, but we also need to step back at times, and make sure we’re taking in the full picture. Too often, we see no cover letter, and think “oh well they are not professional”, or “they couldn’t take the time to write me a personal cover letter?”

Lest we forget, that in this day and age, it’s becoming profitable to be a cover letter or resume writer. Do a quick search on Twitter for “cover letter” and you’ll get a minimum of 5 services in the 1st 25 tweets, for people peddling their services. (I’m not knocking it as a profession, it’s actually quite a needed service for some folks.) But, let’s remember that there’s a better than average chance, the cover letter you covet (too much ‘cov-” there? Ah, I digress) so much has a good probability of being written by someone else anyway, so it’s still not giving you the indicator of the candidate you want.

We need not kill off the cover letter. I think it’s a nice touch, and I’ll read it if there is one. But that said, let’s not let it become the determining standard. As with social media, it’s not the end game, its not the sole strategy, but more of a tool in the arsenal.

What a lovely segue to my follow-up post.


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 Posted on January 8, 2010 by

 candidate relations, Job Hunting, Recruiting, Resumes, The Hiring Process, Twitter, Uncategorized

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