The Recruiting Animal

Don't Hire People Who Have Young Children

Interviewer: Do you have little kids at home?

Candidate: Yes, we do.

Interviewer: Nice meeting you.

People with young kids are always tired.
This is typical:

"I often feel worn out before the day even starts.
The other day I was nodding off at my desk."

When people lived in the forest, they could lay down for a snooze whenever they wanted.

Now, with both parents obliged to take baby duty during the night and go to work the next morning, no one who has little kids ever gets enough sleep.

And we all know how important sleep is, don't we. Every health article is harping on it all of the time.

So, why would you want to hire someone when he's bound to be inefficient? Isn't it enough that you're stuck with the parents you brought in when they were single.

Although it was tongue in cheek, this posting got a lot of comments first time around. Papa said it helped us reach "new lows".

This week, we'll take a look at the biggest surprises and disappointments in the Recruiting blogs. Pretty slim pickings.

Recruiting.com, who we are still trying to love, reaches new lows with "Don't Hire People Who Have Young Kids" and....
-- interbiznet, August 04, 2005

Does a recruiter have to specialize?

Mediocre Singer impressed Simon Cowell.

Paul Potts (the Englishman not the Cambodian) has become a success because of his appeal to people who don't normally listen to classical music. His singing, apparently, isn't anything special; anyone with the same level of training could do the same.

But his acclaim comes from people like Simon Cowell who aren't familiar with opera and don't know what they are judging.

If people haven't listened to much classical music, anything sounds good because they don't have any point of comparison. But someone who does listen regularly will be able to tell the performers apart and grade them.

Isn't the same true in recruiting? If you don't know anything about mechanical design how can you tell a good mechanical designer from a rotten one? You can't analyze a drawing and you don't know what questions to ask to give you some point of measurement by which you can compare them.

Animal Show NOON EST

Guest: Lee Salz of Salesdodo.com
Topic: How to target and screen sales reps
Call to talk: 646-652-2754
Listen only: Hit Click to Listen button once show begins

Your Face Tells Strangers How Good You Are

by The Recruiting Animal. Source: The Economist

From Psychologists, Tufts U:
When people saw 2-second clips of profs lecturing, they rated them the same way their actual students did.

Next Test: When undergrads saw photos of CEO's faces from of the top and bottom 25 Fortune 1000 firms and graded them as leaders their ratings matched the standings of their companies in terms of profits.

Are you listening? These young ignoramuses who couldn't even recognize Warren Buffett made accurate assessments about companies based on the face of the CEO. The conclusion is obvious: instant judgements are accurate.

Here's another wrinkle in the story. Another group of students was shown the same CEO's faces and asked to rate them on competence, dominance, likeability, facial maturity and trustworthiness. The high ratings matched the success of the firms.

Now get this. Researchers from Yale and Pittsburgh U asked sr mgrs to rate their CEO's for the ability to communicate an exciting vision and model good behaviour. They could not, however, on the basis of these assessments find a link between a firm's performance and the boss's personality.

What does that mean? Well we know from the success of the students' assessments that there is a relationship between the leader's personality and the performance of the group that he leads. Therefore, the ignorant students made more accurate assessments than well-informed managers. The conclusion: knowing someone interferes with the ability to judge him well.

What Does Smart Mean?

Smart does not mean “knows the answer to trivia questions.” - Joel Spolsky

Trivia are facts of little importance. You can look them up on the net. Software companies want to hire people with aptitude not a particular skill set. A skill set will be technologically obsolete in a couple of years, so it’s better to hire people that are going to be able to learn any new technology

via Alex Balashov

Sales-people Have A Conflict Orientation

Super-Salesman Silverman Speaks.

Animal: Now, Craig, yesterday when we were having our chummy conversation, you said, that when you teach adults you try to get them to remember what it was like to be a kid because kids refuse to take no for an answer.

What you're saying is that a real salesperson has a conflict-oriented view of the world. And I want you to know that I agree. After all, isn't one of the most profound maxims in selling: "The sale begins when the customer says no."?

That speaks volumes about what the sales person is thinking. She goes to work in the morning looking for a fight. Not a mean fight. But, all the same she's ready to rumble. Isn't that true, Craig?

Craig Silverman: Yeah, we could hire the Girl Scouts if we were just going to make calls and everybody is goes, "Yeah, send me three" and there's no sales talk involved. Good salespeople have to meet "No's" and objections and see them as potential buying signals and get excited by the thrill of the hunt.

Animal: The hunt. They go out to fight with people. They are different than the average guy. Isn't that true?

Craig: It really is. Top sales people are often the number one earning people in the company and it's because that job is really hard.

So what happens is, Animal, people want to be in a high earning sales role but the truth is that getting into the heat of the battle for most people is a nauseating experience. I have seen people get physically ill from getting into a sales chair and trying to either cold call or convince somebody to do something. So, it does take a special breed and part of that is baked into you. It's in the genes.

Hire Desire

Desire trumps other hiring criteria.

Most people spend their lives just going through the motions. They don't want to push themselves, they don't want to learn or improve. They say they want more out of their lives but they never take any actions.

Then there are those who know what they want and are willing to do what it takes to achieve their goals. How do you identify them? You look for desire.

Not the frenzied "I need a job, any job, badly" kind of desire, but the desire to do exactly what it is I need somebody to do.

When I see desire in a candidate, it trumps everything else. I'm a big fan of people who feel like they have something to prove. They work harder than everyone else. They are more interested in learning and improving They outperform their peers.

BusinessPundit (edited)

Common Thinking Errors

Influence Candidate Assessment

Warning someone about these biases has little impact. You have to build structures into decision-making processes that help you circument them.

Confirmation Bias
Seek info to prove our theories, ignoring contrary info.

Hindsight Bias
See past results as more probable than they did initially.

Clustering Illusion
See patterns where none exist.

Hire By Political Bent?

There are real, stable differences in personality between conservatives and liberals—not just different views or values, but underlying differences in temperament....

Conservatives
- neater, their rooms are cleaner, better organized, more brightly lit, more conventional

Liberals
- messier, their rooms have more clutter and more color
- have more books and a greater variety of topics
- have more travel documents, maps of other countries, and flags from around the world.

Liberals
- more optimistic
- like classical music, jazz, abstract art

Conservatives
- like country music

Conservative men
- prefer conventional entertainment like TV and talk radio.

Liberal men
- more inclined to like romantic comedies

Liberal women
- more likely to enjoy books, poetry, writing in a diary, acting, and playing musical instruments.

Conservatives
- greater desire to reach a decision quickly and stick to it
- more conscientious: neater, more orderly, more dutiful, follow rules
- less tolerance for ambiguity

Liberals
- more open: more curious, excitement-seeking, more love for noveltyand creativity for its own sake
- craving for stimulation like travel, color, art, music, and literature.

Psychology Today

Ban Di-Hydrogen Minoxide

I know this has some relevance to recruiting and selection. I just haven't figured it out yet. Maybe the relevant message is that when someone "reaches out" to you with some form of management-speak wisdom you'd better think before you swallow.