Sign of the Temps

I received an e-mail newsletter from a prominent HR organization and one of the articles was entitled “Beyond the Bland: 11 Questions to Identify ‘Must Hires’”. I had a good laugh reading it.   Here are a few interview prompts they mentioned:

“Walk me through your progression with your current employer, leading me up to what you now do daily.”

“On a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being a perfect match for this job), how would you grade yourself from a technical standpoint? What would make you a 10?” (This second question is meant to identify the gap in their current skills.)

First of all, I think these are horrible questions. It’s ridiculous to assert that any particular interview question is a panacea, a silver bullet, for finding the perfect person. For example, if you were looking for an Accountant you wouldn’t ask her the same questions you would asked a Project Manager.  You would be looking for different characteristics and as such need to ask different questions to determine competency.  Sure there are a few table stakes you will want to know about everyone: do you trust them, do they fit with your culture, would you like working with them, etc.  But these questions should be, and need to be, different for every organization.  Someone who was valued at a fast-food restaurant won’t necessarily mesh with the culture at a Wall Street firm.

I am frequently asked for advice regarding position-specific questions. A friend will ask, “I am interviewing a sales person and need some good interview questions, got any?”  For these situations, it’s the same story – the person successful at selling hammers to Home Depot will not necessarily be a winner at selling derivative trade processing software or adventure tour packages. This isn’t surprising, yet interview questions often fail to draw these basic distinctions.   

So what does one ask then? I subscribe to a method called Behavioral Based Interviewing.  It is built around a simple concept – the most accurate predictor of future success is past success.   What allows people to be successful depends on how they behave in critical situations.  If you have a complex, detailed-focused job, then you want someone whose history demonstrates a propensity to be detail oriented when faced with complex situations.  No rocket science here.

There are attributes (as opposed to behaviors) that are deceptive in this context.  Intelligence is a common one.  I have yet to meet a manager who denies the importance of intelligence in the person they hire.  Yet does it make a difference in determining success?  I say that it largely does not.  Now hear me out, how many brilliant people do you know who can’t hold down a job?  Case in point.  Intelligence and skills may be useful in determining someone’s ability to do well in a particular job, but they are ostensibly immaterial in an interview.

When I design an interview, I begin by examining an individual that was successful in the position at hand, and then identify what behaviors they exhibited that allowed for them to be successful.  I then craft questions that aim to elicit examples from their recent past that demonstrate when they behaved in a similar manner.  I will be more specific in my next post.

But before I sign off – I want to pick apart the two interview prompts that I quoted.  Why do I dislike them?  First of all they don’t speak to specific behaviors and are overly general.  Perhaps a more significant flaw is that they appear to be invitations to lie.  Think back to the last time you were interviewing for jobs. You probably quickly developed a sort of ESP for what the interviewer wanted to hear and crafted your answers to get a favorable response.   The two questions listed give ample opportunity for candidates to tell you what you want to hear. And that is all that you will get out of this type of interviewing: a candidate who is qualified to tell you what you want to hear. Whether or not they are qualified or will get their work done will be as mysterious as before the interview occurred.  Sounds like a good deal right?

My advice is to spend the time to examine what you want in a candidate. If you do, you will be more likely to find it. Leave the silver bullets for the werewolf hunters.

Peter Laughter

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I love Ari Gold, the irascible agent in the show Entourage.   He is profane, inappropriate and strangely touching.  I really like the character’s fierce commitment to and determination in advancing the careers of his clients.  But what I love most is that the character just cracks me up.

Lately I have been thinking of Ari Gold as a model of how we need to interact with our temporary employees and consultants.  Now I don’t mean the cursing and yelling part – rather interacting with our employees from the perspective of managing their careers.  Now this is not at all rocket science – yet something we need to keep in front of ourselves at all times.  When you are in the business of providing human capital it is easy to forget that what you are providing your clients is NOT a product. Yet this is easily forgotten in the Staffing Industry – that is why so many people will not work for Staffing Services – they have had the experience of being treated like cattle and not listened to.  This is something I have spoken of before and I think that the concept of how to bring humanity to the staffing industry is something we must always keep in front of us and we need to keep innovating in this area.

Thus Ari Gold – Ari does is not a broker of parts in a movie – he is looking to lead his clients to superstardom and that is exactly what we need to do.  When we take a transactional approach to staffing (as the industry is prone to do) we see a person only when they match our current openings – when they don’t it is difficult to see them at all.  When we interact with people as their Agent things look very different – it is our task to help them map out where they standing to where they want to be.  When you look at people as agent you see several other opportunities to make a difference in their career – yet there are benefits that go well beyond altruistic satisfaction.  When you take this approach your business grows as a direct result of working with someone to advance his career.

Take the case of our long time Staffer Tom.  Tom came to us 12 years ago right out of Business School looking for a job as an analyst in Equity Research.  We were really taken with him – He was a pleasant, bright guy who just wanted to find an opportunity to make a name for himself.  We were able to give him that opportunity working on a project at a very prestigious international investment bank.  I would like to say we gave him brilliant coaching on how to leverage that temporary assignment into a perm role – but after 12 years I really have no recollection of what we told him (if it happened today we would have given specific instruction on this issue.)  Nevertheless, by the time the project was completed Tom was one of the few consultants on the team to secure a permanent offer at the bank.

If we were focused on transactions things would have ended there.  In 2001 when the investment bank Tom worked for downsized he lost his job and came back to us.  The only issue was that the positions we were getting at the time were too junior for Tom’s now impressive experience.  If our focus was exclusively on completing transactions that would have been the end of the line for our relationship with Tom. As his Agent we were called to do more.

We looked at our client base and identified several firms to market Tom too.   We spoke to a Private Equity shop we were providing Administrative professionals to and found they had a project that Tom could make a difference with.  I am sure you are not surprised to hear that he was shortly after hired as a permanent employee.  The Private Equity firm continued to ask us for higher level candidates and many of them were managed by Tom. 

Fast forward several years later Tom has come back to us looking for a new opportunity – I can’t wait to see what happens as a result of working with him to take the next step in his career, and ours.  As a result of our Agent-mentality (i.e., representing and developing ambitious people like Tom) Wall Street Services has grown. We now fill a wide array of consulting positions catering to Trade Operations Professionals, Accountants, Financial and Business Analysts, Project Managers, and other senior professionals. 

Ari, here I come.

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A few weeks ago I had lunch with a former client.  In fact, they are possibly my favorite client.   Laura (as I have renamed her) was fiercely passionate in upholding the quality of the Contingent Staffing program at the investment bank for which she worked.  She demanded a higher quality of staff for lower prices.  We had more hoops to jump through to get placements and Laura was unabashed in making those demands.  In fact, many people were downright afraid of her.  I remember bringing her an argument to raise the markup at her firm.  I had case studies, charts and graphs and what I thought was a well reasoned argument, at least for any other HR professional I knew.  Laura, however, was no ordinary HR professional.  She found and exploited every conceivable weakness in my position and a left me with my tail between my legs.

Now why would we agree to work so much harder for less money?  In part, it was because of the way in which she interacted with her vendors. 

Now, full disclosure – it is a prestigious investment bank so being able to mention that we work with them was itself an attractive prospect.  And more importantly our temporary employees LOVE working there, but to be honest, those things alone are not enough to inspire our best and efforts.  The fact is, almost all recruiters work on some sort of commission that is derived from Gross Profit Margins.  When the client pays lower markups, the recruiter makes less money it is that simple.

So, why did we work so hard for this client?  She respected us and she listened.  Laura was fully aware of that she was both demanding and appreciative of those vendors who could keep up with her.  She was expressive of that appreciation.  More importantly she respected us.  I remember I had an issue with the way this bank provided information about the cultural preferences of departments and wanted more access to hiring managers.  It was a grueling 20 minute phone conversation where Laura grilled me on every aspect of my complaint.  I was exhausted afterward, and a little relieved to have made it through with my tail intact, but she listened to the concern.  Not even 24 hours later she called me to tell me that the solution I had suggested was in place.  I was clear that I was a partner and that no matter what happened I had a client who would listen to me. 

Partnership like that is very rare and is well worth the extra effort.

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When your product is people you need to take a very different approach to doing business.  My mother taught me “it is only a good deal if it is a good deal for everyone.”  If a store owner cheats you and charges too much, while he might initially get the better of you, he will lose your business forever and you will tell all of your friends about your horrible experience. That is, in the long run the cheating shop clerk loses too. 

This “good deal for everyone” philosophy is a helpful for staffing, especially if expanded. When we make a placement we need to ensure that both the client and employee are excited about the opportunity in order for us to really benefit–it all comes crashing down if one of the 3 players is left dissatisfied.  If we were selling toasters it would be much simpler: my toaster has never complained about the state of my kitchen – not once.

This is of course obvious – yet it can be hard to remember when working with clients who view staffing as a commodity and expect us to perform as such. 

Let’s take the example of one of our staffers Enid.  About six months ago I got a call from a client about Enid who was working on a temp to perm spot at a global investment back.  Apparently Enid was speaking very inappropriately to senior people in the group about another employee in the group.

Apparently, the permanent position Enid had been expecting was not extended to her.  Instead it went to someone that was less experienced and, in Enid’s mind, less qualified.  Now Enid was speaking to everyone in her group (including the Managing Director) about what a horrible choice this was and how much injurious it would be for the group.  She was making several people quite upset.  We received clear instructions from our client – Make her stop, or else. 

Now, I don’t know if you have ever received a direct and urgent order from someone who is accountable for a significant portion of your income, but believe me, it is very compelling.  Based on how charged my contact in HR was it would have been very easy to call Enid and tersely lecture her that under no circumstances is she to speak to her managers about her not getting the permanent offer.  Some might even say it was the right thing to do.  Yet would likely leaving Enid feel like the experience had been a “bad deal,” which is not what our philosophy dictates.  Enid was already very upset at this point, and if I had come down on her forcefully, she would have likely magnified her bad behavior, and subsequently get fired or leave the job in a huff.  The client would be left short-handed, we would have a dark spot on our record and, worst of all, Enid would be without an income in the middle of a recession.  

By remembering to treat Enid as a human rather than a commodity, another course of action became clear.  Enid loved that job and had given her all to the group.  She interacted with that job as if it were hers to keep and was simply devastated to find out that someone with less experience had received the offer.  She was also very frightened for her future. Her conversations with her managers seemed a justified course of action to clear up a mistake that was ostensibly unjust.  She didn’t realize that these conversations were pushing her further from her intended result.

I spoke to her with this perspective, acknowledging she was upset and why; I reminded her of hard work and commitment to get a perm position at this particular bank, and eventually she was able to see the negative effect her actions were having.  By the time I suggested she apologize and explain her actions to the Managing Director she was more than willing.  In turn, the MD recommended her for a perm position in a different group.  We coached her on what steps she could take to improve her chances of getting a perm offer.

Needless to say, last week was Enid’s last on Wall Street Services’ payroll.  She received a direct hire offer at the same bank and couldn’t be happier.  She is very expressive of her gratitude for our efforts.  Our client is very pleased with the talent and we are proud of what we accomplished together. The experience had truly been a good deal for all of us.

None of this would have happened without a little humanity.

As always, I would love to hear any comments or questions.

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This article on Quaker Process has been sitting with me for some time now.  Aside from being a Quaker, I sit on the board of Brooklyn Friends School and we use Quaker Process to conduct the school’s business and to make decisions.  For those of you who don’t have time to read the Forbes article (Doing Business the Quaker Way) the concept is that decisions are stronger when made from the whole group as opposed to the majority opinion.  Different from consensus (I have yet to see a group of people larger than 5 agree on what movie to go to let alone a critical course of action) we sit and everyone speaks their piece and the Clerk (like a group moderator) listens for the course of action that becomes apparent out of the group’s discussions.  The clerk does not participate in the decision making process so that he or she is free from being colored by their opinion and can simply listen.  Members of the group speak their piece and let go of their ideas with the knowledge that their input will be a part of the agreed course of action but will not necessarily author the decision. Therefore after a member of the group speaks their mind they focus on listening to what else is said rather than arguing and defending their point. 

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Sorry for the long gap in posts – I have had a lot of travel lately which has left little time for writing…  But I am back now.

Last Post I spoke about my beloved friend Melba, the Subway Token Booth Clerk, and how she gets satisfaction and brings it to others by being excellent and doing just a bit more than what is required of her.  This clearly leads to a more satisfying work experience but the real reason for taking the extra step to be excellent in your job is more compelling.

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