| Encouraging Outbursts Good Job Candidates on Paper Don't Always Translate to Good Employees By Kathy Lehan |
| Getting a great job has never been more difficult. For both the job seeker and the hiring company, the job search is often an exercise in wasted time and money. With the advent of the computer, many people have become faceless in the business world. Technological advances like the cell phone, PDA, Blackberry, VOIP, instant messaging and blogging have removed the personality of the user behind the technology. Anyone who is single can tell you how difficult it is to "date" on-line because what you see is not what you get. On-line dating is populated with married people and with people pretending to be younger, smarter, richer, taller and more interesting. The same is true in the job hunt. How can you stand out as an individual when you literally can be anyone you want to be? Technology has removed the layer of intuition that has served human beings so well for millenniums. Intuition allowed human beings to assess true intentions and threat levels as individuals. This anonymity has translated into an unforeseen problem for businesses. As businesses turn to more and more high-tech methods for weeding out risky employees, they are actually compounding their risk. No data-based determination (resume scanning, background check, psychological test, credit report, etc.) can determine a suitable fit or talent match like a good old face to face sit down with someone. The problem is we don't do that much anymore. Like anything you only do occasionally, you get rusty at it. We've allowed technology to make our decisions on people we plan to work with every day. The old expression "he looks good on paper" is appropriate here. It has become very easy and convenient to manufacture yourself on paper. There simply is no substitute for personal assessment of potential employees early on in the game. The human brain can "see" and process things a computer cannot. Many extremely good job candidates are eliminated early on by computers simply because they did not use the right keywords in their resume. A human can see a potentially good fit where a computer cannot. Ultimately, we hire people because we like their personality traits, not what their resume tells us. Beyond a basic level of qualification, all candidates are the same until you spend a few minutes with them. Multitudes of companies are lamenting about the lack of good candidates. Jobs go vacant and companies turn to outsourcing in an attempt to find "suitable" people to do their work. Meanwhile, thousands and thousands of dynamite people are under or unemployed wondering why no one wants them. It's time to shift our thinking to consider the "hidden" talent market out there. The ideal candidate doesn't always come packaged quite the way hiring managers envision him or her. For lower level positions, consider training bright and eager candidates to take on the job regardless of employment history. Consider their potential rather than past jobs. A great candidate for sales may have worked at a theme park herding and controlling people getting on rides. The most important skill they learned was to be patient with many different types of people while standing in the heat! A patient salesman is a blessing to any company because they won't get easily frustrated. For upper level positions, consider taking candidates from other industries and those with unusual backgrounds. These people really have learned something just by working in a different area and many can bring a fresh perspective to your business. Some businesses have already discovered that hiring mid-managers from other industries allows them to tap into the best practices of those industries in addition to their own industries, essentially doubling their know-how and increasing their ability to adjust to changing conditions. While it may seem counterintuitive, an ideal candidate is someone who was laid-off in another industry that is now struggling. That manager can bring insight into what didn't work and what went wrong that your company can leverage into an advantage over competitors in your own industry. But what's a company to do when it posts a job and gets 12,000 resumes for a single job? [continued - page 2] |
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| Encouraging Outbursts Copyright 2006 |
| Think of ways to encourage one another to outbursts of love and good deeds. -- Hebrews 10:24 |
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