The HR Cafe

Recruiting: It's not repetitious to have candidates recap their resumes

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Dear HR Executive,

Obviously, a well prepared hiring manager always thoroughly reviews a candidate’s resume before the interview.

So why would you, or one of your line managers, ask the person to talk you through the resume? Aren't you wasting valuable time on repetition?

Nope. The fact is, this exercise can yield a bonanza of information about the candidate’s communication skills.

What to look for

As the candidate talks, consider: 

• Is the person a good speaker? Does he speak assertively or hesitantly? Does he make eye contact? Also observe body language. Is she sitting with crossed arms or in a relaxed posture? The former may indicate something’s being hidden.
• Is the candidate a good presenter? If asked to speak for five minutes does she drone on for 20? Or zip through in two? Does this person organize his thoughts well?
• Does the candidate gloss over ambiguous areas of the resume or take the opportunity to explain them? Addressing resume gaps directly shows confidence while avoiding them may signal trouble spots.
• Does the candidate speak positively or negatively about former employers and colleagues? Does he or she take sole credit for successes?

Tuning in to the signals

If you listen carefully during the resume recap, you'll often turn up strong "buy" or "avoid" signals that weren't evident from the paper or electronic file you first looked at.

Have you ever found out something important -- positive or negative -- by asking an applicant to speak his or her resume during the interview? If so, we'd love for you to share it. Send us a comment.

Dave Clemens

Editor-in-Chief

HR Rapid Learning Center

Recruiting: Outsourcing won’t immunize you from bias charges

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Dear HR Executive,

Do you outsource any of your recruiting and hiring? Some employers see advantages in having outside contractors undertake these processes -- among them, economy of scale, uniformity and cost.

But one thing outsourcing your job searches won't do: protect you from discrimination charges. A recent legal case makes the point. Here's what happened:

A New York City-based employer used an independent contractor to interview potential salespeople. The contractor allegedly told a candidate he was “too old” for the job. The rejected candidate sued for age discrimination. 

A lower court threw the candidate’s case out, on grounds that the interviewer wasn’t an employee of the company. But the appeals court said this decision was incorrect.

Employer is responsible

If an employer gives a third-party contractor authority to interview applicants and make hiring decisions on its behalf, the employer can be held responsible if the contractor discriminates on the basis of age, sex, race or other protected characteristics. That’s the law, the appeals court said.

If you do decide to outsource a search or searches, it’s a good idea to:

• have the outsourcer commit in writing to follow all your policies, including those against discrimination in hiring, and
• spot check to make sure minority/over-40/disabled candidates aren’t being routinely weeded out. 

Dave Clemens

Editor-in-Chief

Human Resources Rapid Learning Center

Don't trust HR: They’re softies with no business savvy

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Dear HR Executive:

Professor Richard Beatty of Rutgers University has a message for hard-headed business types: Don’t trust HR people. 

“They don’t think like business people,” the prof told attendees at the CFO Rising conference last spring. “Many of them entered human resources because they wanted to help people, which I’m all for, but I’m also for building winning organizations.”

Which, apparently, HR people are against.

He also said:

• “The language of organizations is numbers, [but] HR isn’t very good at data analytics.”

• “HR wants to treat most employees the same way, and they spend considerable time trying to defend or fix poor performers, taking on the St. Bernard role.”

Beatty thinks the “employer of choice” concept is another example of soft-headed HR think. “If you are the employer of choice, who’s going to be applying for your jobs? Everybody and their dog’s brother.” Employers of choice attract “those who simply want to find a good place to hide out,” he warns.

He's down on training, too, if it's to improve subpar performers. He suggests firing them and moving on. “Low turnover isn’t necessarily a good thing,” he says. “Think about where you want to disinvest."

And he doesn’t believe HR is ready to handle the really grown-up tasks, such as finding and retaining strategic talent. Companies are better off bypassing HR and putting someone else in charge of that task, he suggests.

So guess what Professor Beatty teaches at Rutgers? Finance? Accounting? Nope. He’s the director of the Master in Human Resource Leadership Program.

Thoughts? Comments? Post them below. We’ll forward them to the prof and invite a response.

Here's a link to an article from CFO Magazine, which covered his speech to a crowd of CFOs in March 2009.

Michael Boyette
Editor
HR Café Training Center

Work-life balance: The guys are hurting too

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Dear HR Executive,

Who struggles more with work-life balance: men or women?

Conventional wisdom says women face more stress juggling their roles at work and at home.

But the Families & Work Institute found that poor Pops is suffering way more from clashes between his work and life balance. Three decades ago, just about one third of men reported significant conflict between home and the office. Today, though, 45% of men surveyed by the Institute say they experience such conflict.

By contrast, 39% of women now report serious problems with work and life balance, also up from one third 30 years ago. In other words, as women have increasingly moved into the workplace and gender roles at home have shifted, men are feeling more stress than women over work-life balance.

That may be because working fathers are spending more time with their families – an average of 3 hours a day now, compared with 2 hours in 1977. Working women’s time with the family stayed static at 3.8 hours.

Equal treatment
What does all this mean for HR?

There’s a legal angle, and there’s a management angle, to work-life balance.

Legally, the FMLA mandates equal treatment for both parents when it comes to your responsibility to provide leave for the birth of a child, or for someone whose family member needs care for a serious health condition. You can’t grant such leave for one gender and not the other.

Also, remember that plaintiffs’ lawyers have started to use the concept of family responsibilities discrimination in lawsuits against employers. So, you’d likely be in trouble if you, say, refused a promotion to a man because he plays a big role in taking care of his kids and you think he won’t concentrate on his new duties.

What they expect
From a management standpoint, it’s important to remember that the sharp younger employees who are key to your company’s future increasingly expect their employers to understand their need for work-and-life balance. They won’t come to work for you, or stay, if they think you don’t get it.

Proof of the point: The Families & Work Institute noted that among Millennials – employees who came of age after the year 2000 – working fathers devote an especially large amount of time to their families. These younger guys spend 4.3 hours per workday with the wife and/or kids, compared to just 2.4 hours for men their age in 1977.

That’s a big shift in attitudes about work and life balance, and implies a big shift in employee expectations, too.

For more on the Institute’s study, go here: http://familiesandwork.org/site/newsroom/releases/timeschanging-release.html

What you can do help Dads’ work and life balance
Your organization may already be quite Dad-friendly. But if you think you might need to do more to help working fathers, here are a couple of ideas:

• Check your culture. For example, are new fathers afraid to ask for paternity leave because they think it would hurt their careers? You may have some work to do with more traditionally minded managers who still consider that a man’s place is in the office.
• Consider flex-time or telecommuting options for new/young fathers, or those whose wives have extremely time-consuming jobs. But remember, getting away from the family may also provide these guys with a break from home stress, so make sure any flexible schedule does include significant office time.
• Weigh the pros and cons of offering a few days of paid paternity leave. Not every employer will want to afford this. But if you do offer paid maternity leave, you might want to even up the scales by doing something for the guys.

Father’s Day is coming up pretty soon – it’s June 21 this year. Maybe the fathers in your workplace would appreciate something other than a loud tie or a coffee mug inscribed “World’s Best Dad.”

Dave Clemens
Editor-in-Chief
The HR Café Newsletter (http://www.hrcafe.net)

The business case for onboarding

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Turnover kills.

It kills productivity, relationships with customers, morale, and organizational memory.
Those losses eventually show up in the balance sheet.

Now there’s evidence that onboarding really can have a dramatic impact on these costs. According to a new survey, best-in-class companies are reporting big gains from onboarding, including:

• a 31% increase in employee retention
• a 24% decrease in time to productivity for new hires
• a 31% increase in employee engagement (as measured by employee satisfaction and achievement of specified goals)

The numbers come from a new benchmark report on onboarding from Aberdeen: "Fully On-Board: Making the Most from Your Talent in the First Year.” You can get a free copy at http://www.aberdeen.com/link/sponsor.asp?spid=30410182&cid=5729.

Best practices in onboarding

What does a best-in-class onboarding program include? The report offers plenty of details. Here are four ideas you can put into practice immediately:

• Schedule new hires for a meeting with senior leadership
• Recruit brand ambassadors from your workforce, who can answer prospective employees’ questions before they’re hired
• Use social networks like LinkedIn to hook up new recruits with future colleagues before their first day of work
• Make sure their computer and phone is set up and working before they arrive.

What onboarding techniques are working in your organization? Leave a comment to share your best onboarding ideas.

Michael Boyette
Editor, HR Café Training Center

Retention: Despite layoffs, it's still the #1 concern

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What’s the biggest HR concern for companies right now? If you listen to all the news reports, you’d think their top priority is cutting staff.

Not so, according to a study by The Hay Group. Companies’ biggest concern – all the layoffs notwithstanding -- is retaining top talent.

There’s no conflict here, of course. As staffs get leaner, quality becomes more and more important. But there is a danger of sending mixed signals to your employees: Yes, we love you. Yes, we want you to stay. Sorry, we had to lay off your colleagues.

For HR managers, these are challenging times indeed. On the one hand, it’s tough to take care of your top performers while everyone else is asked to share the economic pain. On the other hand, if you treat everyone the same, top performers will likely be the first ones to jump ship. You can try to thread the needle with non-economic rewards, but they only go so far.

What are you hearing from your management? Are they more focused on laying people off or keeping them aboard? Are they trying to do both at the same time? How successful are they? Leave a comment and let us know.

Michael Boyette
Editor, HR Cafe Training Center

Recruiting: Do great job candidates make lousy managers?

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Dear HR Executive:

I recently ran across a study that got me thinking differently about recruitment.

Sure, recruiting may seem like a back-burner issue these days. But with staffs so lean, it’s more important than ever to get the right people in place. A hiring mistake could have a devastating impact on a department or the entire organization.

The study, conducted at Rutgers University, found that ego-driven candidates for management positions – those who talked about themselves and how much they liked being in charge – were seen as more hirable than low-key candidates who stressed team-building skills like consensus and cooperation. The big talkers were rated higher on competence, social skills and overall hirability.

In short, nice guys finished last.

That’s disturbing, because team-building skills are often in short supply in organizations. You have to wonder how many big-ego blowhards get the job, only to crash and burn – while many talented people never get a chance to prove themselves.

These findings reminded me that job performance and job interview performance are two very different things. And – this is really scary – maybe the people who are best at interviewing got that way because they've had to do a lot of it.

As the recession deepens, really good people are suddenly finding themselves in the job market for the first time in years. They may be terrific for the job – but rusty on their job interview skills. With so many strong resumes crossing your desk, it’s easy to overlook these diamonds in the rough. Remind your line managers that the candidate everyone loves – strong, forceful, and confident – may turn out to be the boss everyone hates.

Michael Boyette

Managing Editor, HR Cafe Training Center

Hiring criteria: Should you lower your standards?

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Dear HR Professional:

Is it ever a good thing to lower your criteria when you're hiring for important positions?

Could be. Sometimes the only way to find people who are good at a job is to set the bar low and let lots of people take a shot.

That’s the “quarterback problem” – the subject of an intriguing piece recently by Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker.

For certain jobs, he writes, there’s simply no way to identify hiring criteria that will predict who’s going to do well once they're actually on the job.

One example: NFL quarterbacks. Try as they might, recruiters simply can’t tell which top college quarterbacks will make it in the pros. The game is just too different at the NFL level. Many top college QBs crash and burn when they get to the professional level, while some second-string bench sitters rise to the top.

Other measures don’t help either. Throwing accuracy, running speed, even IQ – none of them tell you who’s going to make a good pro quarterback and who won’t.

Do you have a "quarterback problem"?

So you’re not hiring for an NFL team? Well, it turns out the same problem comes up in lots of fields. Teaching credentials, for example, don’t predict how well someone will do in front of a classroom of 12-year-olds. Successful financial advisers come from all kinds of backgrounds, and there’s no way to know who's going to be good at it. One financial services firm interviewed a thousand candidates last year and picked 49 trainees. Of that 49, only 23 graduated from a four-month training camp. And only about a third of these will turn out to be successful.

A lot of work? You bet. Worth it? Well, the same company employs nearly half of the top-performing financial advisers in the industry – a statistic they attribute to their hiring and training approach.

Are there “quarterback” jobs in your organization – positions that are so unique, and require such specialized skills, that you can’t predict who will be good at them? If so, one strategy may be to be less choosy in your hiring criteria, coupled with some sort of boot camp or probationary program. In other words, open the doors wide, and then let the stars rise on their own.

It’s not an approach for every job or every industry. And, of course, you’ll have lots of turnover. That’s usually seen as a bad thing. But in some cases, it may be the price you pay to get the very best talent into your organization.   

Michael Boyette
Managing Editor, The HR Cafe Training Center

Is job experience a liability?

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Dear HR Executive,

You want to hire people who have vast experience in your business, right? People who pack deep knowledge and skill in their briefcases or lunch buckets and can hit the ground running.

Well, a new study published by the prestigious Wharton School points out that job experience carries a downside -- the "we did it differently at my old job" syndrome that can cancel out much of the value of a new hire's knowledge.

It's not a new idea that experienced people bring mental "baggage" along from previous employers. But the idea that sometimes this baggage may weigh them down so much that they're less effective than rookies, is new -- and sobering.

A success killer
Here's how one senior HR person, quoted in the study, put the problem: "We tried to hire from our competitors and paid a premium for the experience -- but those hires were the least successful."

Why?

The researchers found that experienced people tended to draw mental maps of the typical problems they would face on the job, along with typical solutions. Whenever they met up with a particular problem, they unconsciously went straight to their solutions map. But in their new environment, their habitual solution might well be counterproductive, or even against their new employer's policy. They were trapped by their experience.

An example
Here's how that trap worked in a specific case:

An insurance company hired a talented, veteran claims adjuster away from another insurer. The new employer thought he'd be a slam-dunk success. But he wasn't.

The trouble was that the new employer sold high-end insurance and wanted adjusters to focus on providing superior customer service to its customers, while the old one sold lower-end policies and wanted adjusters to take a hard line on controlling claim costs. When the adjuster went to work for the new company, he just couldn't break himself of habits that made customers feel they were being "nickle-and-dimed." Ultimately, the hire failed.

Old dogs, new tricks
The study isn't saying you can't teach an old dog new tricks. But it does raise a caution flag about the value of experience, all by itself.

Here's what I think the study is telling HR: Don't be romanced just by a great resume full of relevant experience. You'll also want to check how flexible candidates are -- through testing and/or job simulations -- in being able to DISCARD their experience when it gets in the way of doing the job you want them to do.

Dave Clemens
Editor-in-Chief
Human Resources 21

Scenario: An undisclosable reference

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Dear HR Executive:

When you're hiring a key person, it would be irresponsible to ignore relevant information about the candidate, right?

Well, maybe. Please read this scenario and share your thoughts on how you'd handle this tricky situation:

From the start, HR Director Jenny Haig had doubts about Linda Stevens, a candidate to head up customer service. Linda had job-hopped one time too many for Jenny's taste, and something just wasn't right about her. But the president had already made her an offer, pending a background check.

Jenny was a scout mother. She'd organized dozens of events over the years with Carol, another parent who was the CEO of a company Linda Stevens had worked for. Jenny hesitated to mention Linda, but one day she casually said to Carol, "We got a resume from Linda Stevens. Do you remember her?"

Carol frowned. "Yes."

"Can you tell me anything about her?" asked Jenny.

Carol was obviously uncomfortable. "Look, normally I wouldn't say anything, but let's put it this way: Hiring her was a mistake."

Carol's body language and facial expressions were sending much stronger signals, telling her to avoid Linda at all cost.

The next morning at work Jenny reviewed her options. She could say nothing and allow the disastrous hire to go through. She could tell her boss exactly what she'd learned and mention Carol. Or she could say a "source" told her Linda was bad news. In either instance, if they didn't hire Linda and she sued, it could come out in depositions that Carol's comments had influenced the decision. With that knowledge, couldn't Linda sue Carol for defamation?

Jenny had no idea what to do. What would you tell her?

Click on "comments" below and share your thoughts.

Stephen Meyer
B21 Publisher