For Employers

Recruiting, interviewing, selection on-boarding and retention.

Jeff Rothman

Recruiters Ditch the Resume for Data and Social

Employers: Time to start thinking about recruiting as a technology-driven process, not technology-aided: Recruiters Ditch the Resume for Data and Social.

Candidates: It’s no longer enough to just have a resume. Start thinking of yourself as the “curator” of your personal brand and proactively manage what people see about you online.

Jeff Rothman

How A Slow Hiring Process Hurts your Recruiting Efforts

As the labor market continues to tighten, employers that have an unnecessarily slow hiring process will increasing lose out on top talent to companies that move more quickly.

Adapted from: The Top 12 Reasons Why Slow Hiring Severely Damages Recruiting and Business Results by Dr. John Sullivan; posted on ere.net on April 21, 2014. You can find the full article here.

A candidate from a well-known benchmark firm dropped out of our search for a General Manager position because the hiring manager took a week to respond to his interest. He said: “It’s not like I need their job. If it takes them a week to respond to a resume like mine for a job of this importance, they’re not the kind of company I want to work for. I move fast, and I can already see that my style wouldn’t fit their culture.”

You may have noticed that we’ve returned to a highly competitive talent market where the negative impact of a slow hiring process will become more apparent (and costly) for companies that don’t adapt. How will that affect your business? Here’s a list of the 10 most damaging consequences associated with taking too long to hire:

  1. The best talent will be lost during the latter stages of your recruiting process: When a top performer decides to enter the job market, it’s likely that they’ll be approached by multiple companies and get hired very quickly. Research indicates that the top 10% of candidates are hired within 10 days.
    Lesson learned: Speed of hire is absolutely critical when you are competing against other firms for high-impact talent. If you don’t move quickly, your competitors will take this top talent off the market before you can react.
  2. You will experience a decline in the quality of the people you hire: It’s a mistake to think that a methodical interviewing process will result in better hires—it actually has the opposite effect. The longer you take, the lower the quality (i.e. the “on-the-job performance” of new hires) will be. As mentioned in item #1, an extended hiring process causes the top candidates to withdraw and thus diminishes the quality of your overall talent pool.
    Lesson learned: Instead of improving quality of hire, a slow process may actually increase the likelihood that you will hire mediocre talent.
  3. Vacancies that remain open for longer than necessary will cost you money:While some hiring managers mistakenly believe that vacancies will save on salaries, the economic damage caused by having a revenue-generating position vacant longer than necessary results in lost revenue and productivity that will be difficult to recover.
    Lesson learned: Unnecessary vacancies have a significant dollar impact on productivity, innovation, and revenue generation.
  4. Your salary costs will increase because you’ll wind up in bidding wars for top talent: When a high-impact candidate  enters the job market they are less likely to know their true value right way. If you offer them a position before other companies have had a chance to bid on them, you are more likely to hire them with little or no haggling. A candidate’s salary demands will invariably increase once they realize their true market value.
    Lesson learned:Fast decisions save money. Slow decisions will cause you to pay as much as 25% more for the same talent.
  5. You’ll acquire an image of being a slow decision-maker which will hurt your “employer brand” and cause you to lose many top prospects: Candidates will gauge their interactions with your company during the recruiting process as an indicator of what it’ll be like to work there. A slow interviewing process will be lead candidates to believe your company is indecisive. Top performers tend to be fast and accurate decision-makers, so they’ll be much more likely to gravitate toward companies that do the same.
    Lesson learned: Slow hiring hurts your brand image, which in turn will reduce the number and quality of candidates who want to work at your company.
  6. Slow decisions will cause you to lose a high percentage of “head-to-head” talent battles for top candidates: Winning a disproportionately high number of head-to-head talent battles with your top competitors builds a competitive edge. The inability to make fast hiring decisions on highly sought-after candidates leaves the door open for them to go elsewhere. Companies that react quickly will likely find that their productivity and innovation rates rise at a faster rate than those who don’t.
    Lesson learned:By acting quickly, not only will you capture a higher percentage of top performers, but you’ll simultaneously keep them away from your competitors.
  7. Candidates will lose interest:Slow hiring dramatically reduces candidate excitement and increases your exposure to hiring freezes, layoffs, or budget cuts: When you’re trying to recruit a top performer away from another company, keeping them engaged and excited about your opportunity to vital to your recruiting success. The longer you take to get through your interviewing process, the more likely they are to lose interest or be courted by your competitors.
    Lesson learned: With “passive” job seekers–those who are open to a change but aren’t actively looking to do so–a slow and bureaucratic hiring process exposes your risk that something out of your control will impact the candidate’s interest–they might be offered a promotion or raise, increased fear of change, more opportunity for them to hear negative comments about your company from others in your industry.
  8. Unfilled positions will be viewed negatively by your customers and employees: Positions that are vacant for long periods of time are often viewed negatively by customers and increase your risk of degraded and slower service. Likewise, a drop in the morale of employees who have to do double duty leads to lower retention. People who came from other faster-hiring firms will get frustrated because they know that these extended vacancies aren’t necessary.
    Lesson learned:Long-term vacancies impact multiple stakeholders and are bad for business.
  9. Less success recruiting “passive” job seekers: Based on the premise that most desirable top performers are well-treated and currently employed, successfully recruiting them requires a different approach from hiring “active” job seekers. Once a “passive” candidate expresses an interest in making a change, they usually aren’t on in the job market for very long—often less than 3 weeks–because other companies find out and jump into the fray. Thus, you’ll face a much greater risk of losing them to a competitor, and increase the possibility that the candidate will receive and accept a counteroffer.
    Lesson learned:To successfully recruit high-potential, “passive” candidates, you need a faster hiring process than you use with active job seekers.
  10. Increased hiring costs:A lengthy hiring process (more than four interviews over more than 3 weeks) eats up more time of everyone involved. The “hidden cost” of this extra time significantly increases your recruiting costs (cost-per-hire) and takes people away from other revenue generating activities.
    Lesson learned: You’ll save money and increase quality of hire by reducing unnecessary steps and enable your employees to spend more time on high-value activities.

Final Thoughts You certainly won’t impress anyone with a slow and cumbersome hiring process that routinely misses top talent. On the surface, the need for hiring fast might seem like an easy concept to understand, but can be very challenging to implement. If you don’t yet understand the impact of slow hiring, perhaps an analogy will help. Remember your high school prom? It’s common for most students to ask the most desirable prospects to be their prom date within a week or two of the prom announcement. But what happens to those who wait for 47 days (the average time it takes a corporation to make a hiring decision) to ask for a date? What would the probability be that your top three choices would still be available?

Jeff Rothman

Are Your Best People Ready to Leave for Greener Pastures?

Here’s a great post written by Lou Adler, a leading and forward thinking recruiting industry consultant. You’ll find a link to the article at http://bit.ly/1UmCqv1

Over the past few months, I’ve been collaborating with LinkedIn’s research group on a survey designed to understand how job satisfaction impacts a person’s job-seeking behavior.  Here are some of the big findings:

  • While 79% of the workforce (North America) is very satisfied or somewhat satisfied in their current jobs, more than two-thirds of this group are willing to change if the new job represented a better career move.
  • None of the 77% of the workforce who consider themselves passive candidates are interested in job descriptions that emphasize skills, duties, competencies and experience requirements.
  • Middle managers and executives are more satisfied with their current positions than individual contributors. Despite this, most are still willing to explore opportunities that represent significant career moves.
  • The person who makes first contact with a passive candidate has the biggest impact on whether the person is recruited and ultimately hired. Few talent leaders or recruiters recognize the importance of this step.

One conclusion is the importance of recognizing that time is an employee’s most valuable asset. The best people use it more wisely than others for maximizing their personal growth and development. This same concept can be used to better understand why some people are passive job seekers and others more active.

The Career Zone model shown in the graphic tracks changes in employee satisfaction over time from high growth on the left, flattening in the middle, and declining on the right. Knowing where a person falls on the Career Zone curve provides a recruiter insight on what it would take to offer a more attractive opportunity. Much of this involves demonstrating how the prospect can better maximize his or her use of time by changing jobs for the right reasons.

Here’s a quick summary of each Career Zone:

  • Zone 1 consists of Super Passive candidates. These people are highly satisfied, currently making a significant impact, and not looking to make a job change. 21% of the people responding to the survey categorized themselves as Super Passive. You need an extraordinary career move and extraordinary recruiter to attract people in Zone 1.
  • Zone 2 is the domain of Explorers. These people are not looking, but due to a variety of circumstances are willing to consider other opportunities that represent significant career moves. They need to be contacted directly by a recruiter, but 43% of the survey respondents indicated they were Explorers. To get their attention though, the recruiter must convince the prospect to focus on the long-term aspects of the job, not the title, company, compensation or location. Bridging this gap is difficult, and it’s why first contact is so important.
  • Zone 3 represents the Tiptoers. While not actively looking, Tiptoers have decided to test the market by quietly reaching out to their close personal network to discuss potential next moves. 13% of the respondents indicated they were in this category. One of the best ways to find them is to make sure they contact one of your employees first.
  • Zone 4 represents the Very Active job-seekers. They are using all sources to find another job similar to the one they now hold. While 23% of the workforce is active, the best are still choosy, so you need to make sure your job postings are compelling, career focused and easy to find.

Recruiting the best people starts by understanding what motivates them to excel. This is often different than what drives job satisfaction. Knowing why can be the difference between retaining your best and brightest, or losing them to someone who does.

_____________________

Lou Adler (@LouA) is the CEO of The Adler Group, a consulting and search firm helping companies implement Performance-based Hiring. He’s also a regular columnist for Inc. Magazine and BusinessInsider. His latest book, The Essential Guide for Hiring & Getting Hired (Workbench, 2013), provides hands-on advice for job-seekers, hiring managers and recruiters on how to find the best job and hire the best people.

Jeff Rothman

The Top 10 Dumbest Hiring Mistakes Smart People Make

(from an article by Lou Adler, CEO of The Adler Group, a consulting and search firm helping companies implement Performance-based Hiring, and a regular columnist for Inc. Magazine and BusinessInsider). 

“,,,, if you don’t know what you’re looking for, you’ll use some lame excuse to justify how you found it.”

Over the past 40 years, I’ve interviewed over 10,000 people for hundreds of different jobs, from entry-level to CEO. As part of this, I’ve debriefed over one thousand managers and tracked the subsequent performance of the people they hired and didn’t hire. Based on this, I can safely conclude these are the top 10 classic hiring mistakes:

  1. Using Presentation Skills to Predict Performance. Too many interviewers overvalue the candidate’s appearance, affability, assertiveness and how articulate the person is. These “Four A’s” don’t predict performance, all they predict is the likelihood the wrong person will be hired.
  2. Instantaneous “Judgmentitous” (aka “Cherry-picking” Syndrome). Once a yes/no hiring decision is made (often in a few minutes) the balance of the interview is used to seek out information to confirm the initial flawed decision. For those candidates in the “yes” group, the tough questions are avoided, and for those receiving a quick “no” the toughest ones are asked. The problem can be minimized by waiting at least 30 minutes before making any hint of a yes or no decision.
  3. Using Hard Skills to Predict Performance. It’s what people do with what they have that makes them successful, yet most interviewers focus more on the depth of the having rather than the quality of the doing. It’s better to first determine how these skills are used on the job, and then use the one-question interview to figure out if the person has done what needs to be done.
  4. Thinking Soft Skills are Too Soft to Matter. Collaborating with other people in other functions, meeting challenging deadlines, changing priorities, making business tradeoffs, obtaining resources, and the like, are too important to be called soft. Yet most interviewers spend too little time on how these non-technical skills drive performance.
  5. Missing the Forest for the Trees. If you’ve ever hired someone who’s partially competent, you’ve experienced this problem. Technical people focus too much on technical brilliance and not enough on how these skills are used on the job. Intuitive people rely on a narrow range of abilities, like assertiveness and intellectual horsepower, and assume global competency. The problem can be minimized by preparing a performance-based job description defining the top 4-5 things a person needs to do to be successful. Then put them in priority order and get everyone on the interviewing team to agree. Combine this with the one-question Performance-based Interview and you’re unlikely to make this mistake again.
  6. Gladiator Voting. Putting a bunch of interviewers in the same room and deciding to hire or not hire someone by adding up the yes/no votes is a recipe for hiring the wrong person. Sharing evidence around the factors that drive success is the key to an accurate assessment. Here’s a scorecard we recommend using to collect the objective evidence needed to make an accurate assessment. When there is a wide variance of opinion around each factor, you can safely assume your company’s interview process is based on something other than the candidates’s ability to do the work that needs to be done.
  7. The Safety of No. A no vote is easier to make since those that invoke it can never be proved wrong. A “no” also rewards the weakest and the most conservative interviewers, since neither has enough information to vote yes. Worse, one no vote can override 2-3 yes votes, especially if the person voting no has more authority. This is why the talent scorecard approach mentioned above is more effective.
  8. Misreading Motivation. Motivation to do the job is essential to job success. However, doing the job is not the same as motivation to get the job. Being prepared, being on time, doing company research, or responding “correctly” to the question, “why do you want this job?” are terrible predictors of real motivation. Unfortunately, too many interviewers are seduced by these superficial displays of interest. The one-question Performance-based Interview will reveal what really motivates candidates to excel.
  9. Ignoring Situational Fit. Even if you overcome all of the these relatively easily preventable hiring mistakes and measure true ability, there is one issue that is often overlooked. If the candidate isn’t highly motivated to do the actual work that needs to get done, doesn’t mesh with the hiring manager’s style, or can’t thrive in the company culture (i.e., pace, decision-making process, approach to collaboration, level of sophistication, level of support and resources available) success is problematic.
  10. Asserting the Wrong Consequent. Most people falsely assume that the best sales reps make good first impressions. With this viewpoint, many compound the error by concluding that everyone who makes a good first impression will be a good sales rep. What I’ve discovered is that the only common characteristic among the best sales people is a track record of great sales performance. When I find a great sales rep who makes less than a stellar first impression, I’ve discovered the person works harder than everyone else. You can apply this same principle to any job where there’s a belief that first impressions matter. What matters is a track record of past performance doing what you need to get done.

Don’t take shortcuts when it comes to hiring. This starts by defining what you need done. If you skip this step you’re likely to fall prey to one or more of the common hiring traps described here. As someone once told me, “if you don’t know what you’re looking for, you’ll use some lame excuse to justify how you found it.”

_____________________

Lou Adler (@LouA) is the CEO of The Adler Group, a consulting and search firm helping companies implement Performance-based Hiring. He’s also a regular columnist for Inc. Magazine and BusinessInsider. His latest book, The Essential Guide for Hiring & Getting Hired (Workbench, 2013), provides hands-on advice for job-seekers, hiring managers and recruiters on how to find the best job and hire the best people.

Jeff Rothman

Is LinkedIn Killing Off Independent Recruiters?

Don’t Count Us Out!

If you talk about independent recruiters at a cocktail party, the standard question is often, “Didn’t LinkedIn kill them off?”

Reports of our death are greatly exaggerated. First, we were going to be killed by job boards, then by LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Each of those tools is fantastic at helping us source candidates, but we’re still thriving.

Sure, corporate recruiters are better than ever and play a valuable role, but employers will always need independent recruiters to be part of their recruiting strategy. Why?

  • Recruiters who specialize become experts in their niche, building a huge database of specialized sources to start the hunt, scouring hundreds of leads, and suffering dozens of dead-ends before finding the right candidate.
  • We focus on 1 or 2 searches at a time and can dig more deeply into the talent pool to make sure you get to interview the best candidates available, not just those who happen to see your posting.
  • Most high-potential candidates aren’t scouring the internet looking for their next job. You must approach them directly with a compelling message that gets their attention and makes them want to know more. Independent recruiters have the strong sales skills it takes to do this effectively.
  • Many candidates are reluctant to talk openly with a corporate recruiter who works for a competitor. They value the confidentiality provided by an independent recruiter.
Jeff Rothman

Frustrated with Contingency Recruiters?

Great article with solid insights on why contingency recruiting can be so frustrating and ineffective for employers. Contingent Conundrum: Building Relationships or Slinging Spaghetti?.

Like the author of this article, when I follow a retained search model even when working on contingency. I agree that it can be a good model, but many companies doesn’t understand or appreciate the enhanced value they are getting.

Frankly, I don’t understand why anyone would want to work with the kind of contingency recruiter described in this article. Consider this:

“Contingent firms and staffing agencies are hiring more and more people with little to no experience to pound the phones. I wouldn’t want to speak to any of these “recruiters” either if I were in these candidate’s shoes. Plus, most contingent firms have a turnover rate in excess of 50%. Is this the model our industry wants to hold up to our clients as success? If firms can’t keep employees how do they expect the firm to do an effective job finding them the right candidates?”

When you need to engage an outside recruiter, why not retain a highly trained search consultant who’s an expert in your industry…..a true recruiting professional who will bring value beyond slinging resumes your way?

Jeff Rothman

10 Reasons to Hug your Recruiter

10 Reasons Hiring Managers Should Hug Their Recruiters

by Lou Adler

CEO, best-selling author, created Performance-based Hiring. Recent book: The Essential Guide for Hiring & Getting Hired

January 13, 2014

Managers don’t just hire people in their own image; the best people accept jobs from managers who are in their own image.

A personal note to hiring managers around the world:

First, don’t read this if you just want to fill your jobs with some reasonably competent people. However, if you want to hire top talent on a consistent basis, this message is for you. It starts by understanding how to tap into the capabilities of strong recruiters.

What Great Recruiters Can Do When Working in Partnership with Hiring Managers

  1. They’ll make the most important thing you need to do easier.
  2. They’ll save you time during the hiring process.
  3. They’ll help you define the job.
  4. They’ll help you raise the talent level of your department.
  5. They’ll help make you more productive.
  6. They’ll minimize the need to waste your time trying to motivate the unmotivated.
  7. They’ll prevent the hiring of 90-day wonders.
  8. They’ll help you achieve all of your department goals.
  9. They’ll help you become a better manager.
  10. They’ll help you get promoted faster.

However, to get to this state of managerial nirvana, here’s what you must do first.

Recruiting and Hiring Rules for Managers

  1. Prepare a performance-based job description clarifying the major performance objectives of the job. Every job has 5-6 things a person needs to do to be successful. For example, it’s better to say, “Upgrade the international reporting systems,” rather than, “Must have 3-5 years of international accounting and a CPA.” When contacting strong people recruiters must know the job in order to effectively make the case that your opening could be a good career move. (I’m hosting a webcast on January 22, 2014 on how to do this.)
  2. Benchmark the performance of your best people now doing the job you’re trying to fill. This is a great way to figure out what it takes to be successful. For example, if your best engineers collaborate closely with product marketing before designing anything, add this to the performance-based job description.
  3. Convert every competency, skill, behavior, and experience requirement into a performance objective by asking, “How is this requirement used on the job?” Since these factors are very subjective, it helps to convert each one into a task. For example, when the common trait “must have strong communication skills” converts into “lead the presentation of monthly sales department performance results to the executive team,” it’s easier to assess. In this case, just have the candidate describe where she or he has led major presentations.
  4. Value potential over experience. Don’t insist on an exact skills and experience match. Instead, tell your recruiters you want to see people who have accomplished more than expected given their current level of skills and experiences. This will open the talent pool to some amazing people.
  5. Agree to see everyone the recruiter recommends. As a condition for this, have the recruiter prove that the person has accomplished something comparable to the most important tasks described on the performance-based job description.
  6. Conduct a 30-minute exploratory phone screen before meeting any candidate in person. Not only will this minimize the need to see as many candidates, it will also minimize the impact of first impressions for those you do see.
  7. During the interview compare the candidate’s major accomplishments to those listed on the performance-based job description. Use the Most Important Interview Question of All Time for this. (Here’s the full process.)
  8. Be fully engaged, flexible and available. Changing jobs for the best people is a critical decision. Hiring managers need to invest extra time in the process to ensure the candidate has a full understanding of the job and its upside potential.
  9. Describe your vision of the job and the impact on the company. Hiring managers don’t just hire people in their own image; the best people accept jobs from managers who are in their own image.
  10. Take personal responsibility for recruiting the candidate. The best people want to work for managers who are mentors and can help them get to where they want to go. Recruiters can orchestrate the process, but it’s up to the hiring manager to seal the deal.

While great recruiters are needed to find, qualify, and present top people to their hiring manager clients, this is only one critical step in hiring the best. Managers must be fully committed and fully engaged every step of the way. Few are. So if you want to start seeing and hiring more top people, start by changing how you think about hiring. Then think about how a recruiter can help.

_____________________

Lou Adler (@LouA) is the CEO of The Adler Group, a consulting firm helping companies implement Performance-based Hiring. He’s also a regular columnist for Inc. Magazine and BusinessInsider. His latest book, The Essential Guide for Hiring & Getting Hired (Workbench, 2013), provides hands-on advice for job-seekers, hiring managers and recruiters on how to find the best job and hire the best people. For more hiring advice join Lou’s LinkedIn group or follow his Wisdom at Work series on Facebook.

Jeff Rothman

For Employers: Possibly the Best Interviewing Advice You’ll Ever Read

A Rational Way to Make a Gut Decision

(by Lou Adler, CEO of The Adler Group, a full-service talent acquisition consulting firm)

I was a full-time recruiter from 1978-2000. During that time I interviewed thousands of people for jobs ranging from billing clerks to CEOs. While I asked a lot of questions, the most important involved having candidates describe their most significant career accomplishments in great detail. (This approach is covered in an earlier post, The Most Important Interview Question of All Time.)

For each accomplishment, I’d spend about 15-20 minutes peeling the onion in an attempt to understand exactly what the person accomplished, his or her role, the scope and scale of the accomplishment, the challenges involved, and the underlying culture and environment. After obtaining this type of information for 3-4 different accomplishments, it was pretty easy to see the person’s trend of performance over time. These accomplishments were then compared to the performance requirements of the open job to see if the candidate was a fit.

Since my search firm offered a one-year guarantee, it was essential that our assessments were accurate. Replacing a candidate 6-9 months after a person starts is painful. This is why we required every recruiter in the firm to use this same performance-based interviewing approach. It worked: after 1,500 placements, fewer than 5% had to be replaced. This is remarkable performance. Being cynical was part of it. Getting facts, details, and evidence was the only way to replace hiring errors based on feelings, emotions, intuition or misguided thinking. The process itself became the title of my first book, Hire With Your Head – A Rational Way to Make a Gut Decision. Quite frankly, all we were doing was conducting a pre-hire performance review.

Aside from improving the accuracy of the assessment, there were some major side benefits. For one, candidates knew they were assessed fairly. When you’re recruiting a top person this is essential, or the interviewer has no credibility. Two, it was easy to out-evidence a hiring manager who conducted a superficial or overly technical interview. This happened frequently. Three, it was easy to separate fact from fiction. Lack of details was a big red flag.

With the objective of increasing assessment accuracy, here are some tips both candidates and interviewers can use.

How to Separate Fact from Fiction and Ensure an Accurate Interview Assessment

  1. Just the facts. Too many candidates speak in generalities. These have no value. Facts do. So if you’re a candidate you need to be prepared to give specific details about each of your major accomplishments. These include dates, measurable results, the actual deliverables, and any supporting information needed to validate the accomplishments. If you’re the interviewer, you need to dig for this information. Don’t leave it up to the candidate to provide it.
  2. Give and get SMARTe examples to prove a strength. Candidates need to prove every strength with specific examples. Interviewers need to ask for these examples. I suggest using the SMARTe acronym to form the answers and the follow-up fact-finding questions: Specific task, Metrics, Action taken, Results and deliverable defined, the Time frame, and a description of the environment.
  3. Go narrow and deep vs. broad and shallow. The idea behind Performance-based Interviewing is to gets lots of detailed information about a few of the candidate’s major accomplishments. This is more representative of past performance and potential fit than asking a bunch of scattered questions about generic competencies and behaviors. The competencies and behaviors will reveal themselves as part of the candidate’s performance.
  4. Focus on what’s important using targeted listening. A good interviewer listens 4X more than talking by asking probing questions. If you’re the candidate, and the interviewer seems to be going off on a tangent, ask the person to describe some of the main challenges in the job. This will bring focus back to what’s important. Then describe a SMARTe accomplishment that represents the best work you’ve done in that area.
  5. Skip or ignore the hyperbole. Interviewers, do not use the terms “awesome” or “unique” when describing a job. Instead, provide enough details about the job so the candidate concludes it’s awesome or unique. Candidates, skip the boilerplate and generalities on your resume, LinkedIn profile or in your answers. Don’t say you’re motivated, strong, dedicated, a great problem-solver or a great team player, or whatever, unless you can back it up with proof. Let the interviewer determine if you’re strong, dedicated or a team player, based on the examples you present.
  6. Separate performance from presentation to increase objectivity. The purpose of an interview is to assess the person’s past performance in comparison to what needs to be accomplished on the job. This article on how to overcome the seductive power of first impressions provides some tips for interviewers on how to increase objectivity. This is critical, since the majority of hiring errors can be attributed to bias of some sort.
  7. Rehearsed or natural. I prefer candidates who struggle to come up with their answers. I always feel I’m being conned when the answers are glib, or the candidate is over-confident or over-prepped. In this case, I go out of my way to throw the candidate off-balance to see if he or she can handle the situation. I remember one candidate who told me he rebuilt his entire team of roughly 20 people in the first year. After probing and asking for specific titles, it turned out the team consisted of six people and he replaced only three of them. Of course, the candidate wasn’t considered.

A Rational Way to Make a Gut Decision

You’ll never have enough information to make a 100% foolproof decision when hiring someone you don’t know. Conducting a pre-hire performance review is one way to minimize the gap between what you know and what you don’t. While you’ll never know everything about the candidate, at least you’ll have enough information to make a rational decision. __________________________________________

Lou Adler (@LouA) is the CEO of The Adler Group, a full-service talent acquisition consulting firm. His latest book, The Essential Guide for Hiring & Getting Hired (Workbench, 2013), covers the Performance-based Hiring process described in this article in more depth. For instant hiring advice join Lou’s LinkedIn group and follow his Wisdom About Work series on Facebook.

Jeff Rothman

Contingency vs. Retained Search: A Client’s Perspective

More focus on retained searches for mid-level positions? I agree wholeheartedly with the  writer of this post, but certainly know how complicated it can be to get companies to change their thinking on this. The attractiveness of “pay for performance” provides businesses with a false sense of financial comfort and ultimately hurts everyone because the commitment level is lower from both parties. The contingency model also tends to foster a less professional recruiting environment and companies are reluctant to invest in building relationships with recruiters who may not be around for the long-term. I find that once companies understand the true downside of contingency, they’re almost always more satisfied with a retained relationship. Let me know what you think:

Contingency vs. Retained Search: A Client’s Perspective.