using info from Facebook when hiring

A reader writes:

What do other hiring managers do when prospective employees post on Facebook about their interview? Yesterday, I conducted phone interviews for an entry-level library technician position. One of the people I was set to interview came to the library in person (45 minutes early), somehow missing that it was a phone interview, not an in-person interview. I told him I would have to keep it a phone interview, even though he was in the library, to level the playing field. Then, the interview before his went long and we called him 10 minutes late.

He posted all of this on Facebook a few hours later. The library world is not that big and my co-worker down the hall came to me and told me about it because she is friends with him on Facebook. (They are not friends in "real life.") She happens to know him because they worked together at a different library 12 years ago. She said she would not recommend hiring him because he has anger management issues.

His interview was okay - not excellent. But, how do I reconcile all of this outside information (making me or the library look unprofessional, his anger management issues)? I wouldn't have known these things if it weren't for Facebook.

Also, what happens when an interviewee sends you a friend request? This is for a different interviewee, but I'm inclined to ignore it.

Well, first of all, you don't want to hire this guy, even aside from the Facebook info. He showed up in-person for a phone interview; what kind of attention to detail and general comprehension do you think he's going to have on the job? Plus, his interview was "okay, not excellent," and you don't want to hire people who are, at best, mediocre. So you shouldn't hire this guy anyway.

But for the sake of discussion, it's completely fine to take into account other things you learned as well. Posting on Facebook is not like talking to a priest; there's no expectation of or guarantee of confidentiality.  Things we do have consequences, online or not; in this case, the consequences were that this guy's commentary on his interview got back to his interviewer. That's not off-limits to you.  

Think of it this way: Imagine that it's 1953 and you heard that after his interview, he went to his local bingo hall (I don't know what people did for fun in 1953, just go with it) and was complaining loudly about the interview. Your brother happened to be the bingo caller, overheard him, and told you about it. Would you feel obligated to ignore the information, just because it wasn't part of your official contact with the candidate?

Your obligation is to make the best possible hiring decision that you can for your organization. That means looking at the full picture that you have about a candidate and not covering your ears when information comes to you outside of the normal hiring processes.

But even if you disagree with me about Facebook and want a firewall there for some reason, the information from the coworker who used to work with him and said he had anger management issues -- of course you can and should consider that information! This is a normal part of hiring -- if someone applies who worked with someone you know, you ask your contact about them. It would be irresponsible not to. 

You do want to use some judgment here, of course -- if your coworker is a terrible judge of character or you have other reason to think her unreliable, obviously you factor that in. But if you're just not sure if you're allowed to consider her input -- absolutely you are!  That's part of how hiring works. (Just like job-seekers are allowed to consider what they hear from others about your company; they don't just have to rely on the company brochure you hand them.)

I wonder if you might be misapplying ideas about fairness here, because you also mentioned that you wouldn't interview this candidate face-to-face because of "fairness." I think there were plenty of legitimate reasons not to interview him face-to-face, but fairness isn't one of them. Again, your obligation is to make the best possible hire for your organization, not to treat every candidate identically. (Otherwise you get the terrible hiring practices of the federal government, where they insist on asking every candidate the same list of questions and never deviating from it.)

And last, about Facebook friend requests from job candidates -- you're entitled to have whatever boundaries you want to have there. (I ignore them because I use Facebook for my personal life, not business.) More on this here and here.

Whew. Anyone want to argue any of this differently?

my new favorite interview question

This has become my new favorite question to ask job candidates:

Tell me about something you achieved that you think someone else in your same job would not have gotten done.

It's basically the flip side of what I tell job-seekers to do on their resumes.

It's an awesome question, because you can immediately see if the person operates in a way where they're naturally pushing to do better and better, or if they're content with just doing the basics. It tells you about resourcefulness, drive, initiative, the bar they hold themselves to, and their general approach to work.

I love it so much that there's a danger I may start using it on dates, etc.

don't check references? here's a horror story for you

This post is for anyone who has ever said or secretly thought that reference-checking is a waste of time.

Not long ago, I had a job candidate on the verge of being hired. He had wowed everyone in the interview and clearly had the skills to the do the job well.

Something was strange about his reference list, though: The references he offered were from several jobs back; his list didn't contain anyone from either of his last two jobs, even though he said his current boss knew he was looking. And one was a former professor, although he'd had several jobs since school. Red flag or someone who just didn't know how to put together a good reference list?

We asked him to put us in touch with two recent managers, and he did. Okay, I thought, his lack of push-back or caveats could be a good sign.

And then we called them.

We found out that he'd been fired for theft and fraud at both of his last two jobs, and even served time in jail for one of those cases.

Imagine if we, like some employers, hadn't bothered to check references at all, or hadn't pushed back to get more relevant and recent ones. More to the point, would your reference-checking practices have kept this from happening to you, or would this guy now be working down the hall from you, defrauding you too?

Check references. And to make that check more valuable, use these tips too:

* Don't limit yourself only to the candidate's list of references. If the candidate has offered peers (or professors or "personal" references) rather than managers, or people who haven't worked with her recently, ask to be put in touch with the specific people you want to talk to.

* Call main switchboard numbers. If you know the reference works at XYZ Company, look up the company's main number online, call that, and ask to be transferred to the person, rather than just calling the direct number you were given. It's not unheard of for candidates to give you a friend's phone number so the friend can pose as the former boss. [Or even to pose as the reference themselves; see the incredible comment from MJB on this post (toward the end of the comments list.]

* Ask the right questions. If you just run through a perfunctory list of questions, you may never get to the most useful information. Rather than asking questions like “Is there anything Joe could improve in?” (to which a lot of references might respond “nothing comes to mind”), ask, “If you had to pick two ways Joe could improve, what would they be?” Also, you can provide options where there's no “bad” choice and ask the reference to select the choice that sounds most like the candidate – for instance, “Some people thrive in fast-paced environments but might err on the side of losing precision, whereas others are incredibly precise but do better when there’s more time to focus on their work. Which sounds more like Joe?” (If you want a list of great questions, here's a really good one from The Management Center.)

References are only a waste of time if you treat them like just an item to check off your list, rather than as a genuinely valuable part of your assessment process.

there's a high likelihood that your job postings suck

Someone recently sent me this link to a job posting as an example of a company that finally got a job ad right. What's awesome about this ad is that you can actually read it and understand what the job is all about. There's no incomprehensible jargon, no sentences that sound like they were lifted out of a poorly-written internal processes manual at the most bureaucratic company imaginable. It's just ... someone normal talking about what the job is like, who would be good at it, and why you might like it.

In other words, it's both everything a job ad should be and the exact opposite of what most job ads are like.

To illustrate my point, here are some real quotes from the first page of search results I pulled up on Monster for jobs in my area:

"Develop and leverage key relationships with stakeholders that enable collaboration across the enterprise"

"Coordinate with applicable business areas to define/implement remediation activities"

"Design, develop and manage proprietary Electronic Data Capture (EDC) system's electronic Case Report Forms (CRFs) and implement Case Report Forms that adhere to company standard operating procedures"

Do these excite you?

Job descriptions like these are a sign that someone in that company has lost sight of the whole point of a job posting.

When you're advertising for a new hire, a job posting is a marketing document. You're trying to attract people who will be excited about the work; potential candidates shouldn't have to wade through heavy jargon and overused buzzwords to try to figure out what the job is all about.

The great mystery of all this is that most managers can talk enthusiastically and compellingly about a role they’re hiring for, but for some reason all that life gets drained out of the job posting. Managers need to start refusing to let jobs on their team be represented by deadly dull, dense, and semi-incomprehensible job descriptions.

I'm hereby proclaiming three principles of writing job descriptions that don't suck:

1. Stop losing sight of the fact that your job posting is a marketing document, something that needs to, you know, market the job. You want good people to imagine what it would be like to work in this role, at this organization, with these people -- and to be excited about it.

2. Drop the jargon. And there are no extra points for using extra words. You should write in clear, simple language that someone outside your organization would easily understand. And it's fine -- even desirable -- to be relatively informal. Don't write "the communications manager is responsible for all communications-oriented operations for external audiences" when you can write "the communications manager runs the show when it comes to public outreach."

3. Figure out why someone would be enthusiastic about the job, and talk about that. Maybe the position is an opportunity to change the lives of students, or a chance to be mentored by a successful leader, or an opportunity to work with cutting-edge technology. Say so or candidates won't know.

In other words, talk like a normal person and think like the candidate you're looking for.

what's the goal of multiple 30-minute interviews?

A reader writes:

I recently applied for a support position at an academic institution. The phone interview went well and I was invited to come in for an in-person interview. The interview is scheduled for 2 hours and 15 minutes and consists of two thirty-minute interviews with high level researchers, two thirty- minute interviews with HR staff, and one 15 minute interview with an Executive Assistant. 

A succession of five interviews with five different people crammed into two hours and fifteen minutes does not seem like enough time to have a thorough, two-way conversation with each person. In my experience with job interviewing, the interviews have always been for a longer amount of time and with fewer people. Can you please tell me a little bit about what is expected from rapid, thirty-minute interviews and what the goal of these conversations should be?

Yeah, they're not going to be able to do an in-depth assessment. They're just going to be able to have five people get a general sense of what you're like, whether you seem initially crazy or not (which is always more of a concern than you might think), and whether they have a generally positive response to you. They're not going to learn much about your skills or experience that they haven't already learned from your resume.

This isn't that uncommon though. In fact, I'd say that more employers lack rigorous hiring processes than have them -- which is why so many employers end up hiring the wrong people.

Your goal in all this should be to be pleasant, to be prepared to answer basic interview questions multiple times, and to ask your own questions so you can get enough of a sense of the job and the culture that you can determine whether you'd be a good fit -- since they're probably not going to be equipped to do that for you.

how interviewers can screen out candidates who will have attendance problems

In response to a previous post from someone frustrated that her co-worker is chronically absent, one commenter asked:

If anyone has suggestions on how to screen for this issue of not-showing up for work, please let me know.

I work in a call center, most of the folks we hire know what that type of environment is. And yet we still end up terminating people on a regular basis for not showing up for work. Extremely frustrating!

As a side note, we do everything we can to make it a fun place to work and whenever we do hire we have people recommending their friends to apply so I like to think it's not the environment.

The fabulous Jamie responded:

If there is a way to screen for those who are internally rather than externally driven, I am sure AAM knows it (I certainly do not).

I do think most performance problems, including going AWOL, come down to how people approach their jobs far more than the job itself. I temped for quite a while when I was starting out - and some of those jobs were awful. But I showed up on time and did the best job I could because I wasn't doing it for them - I was doing it for me. I couldn't abide people thinking I was a slacker or incompetent, even though I would never see them again. Hire someone who will do a good job because of their own ego, and not as a favor to the company, and then at least there will be consistency.

For what it's worth, when I was on the market I would never apply to a place that claimed to be a fun place to work. I interpreted that (rightly or wrongly) as being lax and not performance oriented - and I personally have to be in a performance oriented environment to find any job satisfaction. I'm not implying that your workplace is lax - just that the wording might be a red flag to those of us who love the days the metrics are published and loathe the birthday cakes and company picnics.

Here are my thoughts on this:

First, no hiring process is perfect. No matter how thorough your screening processes, you can't screen out attendance problems with 100% accuracy. However, there are a lot of things that you can do to minimize it:

1. Really probe for motivation in the interview. For instance, you can ask things like, "Tell me about the workplace you were most satisfied with. What made you so satisfied? What about the time you were the least satisfied?" You're looking for people who talk about getting satisfaction out of productivity and results and a feeling of accomplishment. Also, if you're really probing deeply into past work experiences (getting them to walk you through a past project in detail, with lots of questions), you're going to start getting a sense of what drives the person and how they think about work.

2. In the interview process, talk explicitly about your company's culture and values. Talk about having high standards, a strong work ethic, a commitment to results -- because some candidates will self-select out if they're not a good fit with that environment.

For instance, I'll sometimes say in phone interviews, "One thing to know about our culture is that we hold ourselves to high standards. We strive for excellence in everything we do and the work ethic here is higher than anywhere else I’ve worked -- you'll never see someone on Facebook during the day, or spending an afternoon goofing off in the kitchen. And we’re direct about addressing it when things aren’t working out. Some people absolutely love that, but it’s not for everyone."

Candidates who will fit in well with that culture become excited and more invested in the job prospect at this point, and candidates who aren’t good matches tend to reveal that through their responses or drop out on their own.

(This gets into Jamie's point about what you choose to emphasize -- candidates who respond to hearing that you have a "fun" culture may be different from candidates who respond to hearing that you have a "fast-paced, results-driven" culture.)

3. Reference checks can be extremely helpful at ferreting out this kind of thing. Aside from asking straightforward questions about attendance and reliability, find ways to make it "safe" for references to give you the truth about the candidate. For instance: "Some people are at a point in their careers where work is a top priority and they're really throwing themselves into it with enthusiasm. Other people are looking more for a 9-5 job that pays the bills, but it's not a passion for them. Both are entirely legitimate approaches. Where would you put Bob on that spectrum?"

* * * * *

Now, all that aside, addressing the call center environment question that the commenter brought up initially, I do think there are some jobs where the nature of the work means that there's just going to be a revolving door element to the staffing. Call centers are a prime example of this. You should still do the sort of screening above, and also be very transparent during the hiring process about what candidates can expect once working there, but to some extent, in call center and similar environments, this may be part of the package.

What do others think? Did you ever have an employer do an excellent job of communicating culture to you during the hiring process? How did they do it? Did you ever work in a traditionally high-turnover environment like a call center that found ways to have more staffing stability than its competitors?

what role should gut instinct play in hiring?

A reader writes:

As a fellow recruiter/manager, how much do you count your gut instinct into the hiring decision? If someone on paper has all the experience you want and answers all the technical questions correctly and the hiring manager loves him, but he just for some reason gives you a creepy vibe or is a little off-putting -- I'm sure you have been through that before -- do you make a call based on that? Do you share that gut instinct with the hiring manager? 

I'm sure this will be a controversial answer, but I put a lot of stock in my gut -- if what it's telling me is negative. Every time I've ignored a negative gut instinct in hiring, I have ended up regretting it. Every single time. 

Now, there are two important qualifiers I'd add to this:

1. I pay attention to my gut when it's saying "don't hire."  But I try to ignore my gut when it's saying "hire." I want my decisions to hire to be based 100% on solid, real-world evidence -- track records of success and so forth.  If I'm going to make a hiring mistake, I would much rather it be that I mistakenly pass up someone good than that I hire someone bad.

(And I've found that positive gut reactions are more likely to be wrong. They're often based on things that really shouldn't matter in hiring -- such as that the candidate feels like your type of person, or that she reminds you of your sister. It's also easier for someone to send off "competence" cues that aren't backed up by the reality, whereas "incompetence" cues or "bad attitude" cues tend to be linked to something real.)

2. You need to be brutally objective about how qualified your gut is. Has it been educated by experience? Does it has a track record of being right in this area? Do other people agree with your assessment of your gut instincts or are you the only one who thinks they're great? Is there any chance your gut is engaging in racial discrimination or other forms of bigotry? These are all things you need to think hard about. 

(And if your gut frequently tells you someone would be a bad cultural fit when that person happens to be a difference race than you or has a disability, your gut is officially suspect and thus is banned from participating.)

......................

As a side note, what are gut reactions all about, anyway? I do not think they're some magical mystery that can't be explained. I think they're reactions to fact-based evidence that you're just not processing consciously. Gavin de Becker makes this point in a totally different context in his fantastic book, The Gift of Fear -- he points out that when crime victims had a bad gut feeling right before the crime, that alarm wasn't coming out of nowhere (although it felt like that to them); rather, he noted specific factual things their brains were picking up on subconsciously that were leading to what seemed like an inexplicable bad feeling but was actually traceable to real signals.

in rejecting job candidates, should I mention we selected an internal candidate?

A reader writes:

In notifying candidates (who were interviewed) that they were not chosen, do you think it's better or worse to let them know that we've selected an internal candidate for the position?

I'd come down on the side of more information being better than less information. Job seekers so infrequently hear anything from companies they've interviewed with, and I think if given the choice, most people would prefer to hear more rather than less about the reason they didn't get the job.

That said, it's worth noting that some job seekers get upset when they hear that the job went to an internal candidate, because they figure that you were planning to hire that person all along and just wasted their time. (Which, I want to note, is not always the case.)

But on the flip side of that, some job seekers will feel like this is a rejection that doesn't really reflect on them, which they will appreciate.

Anyway, I think as a general rule, more feedback is better than less, so I'd include it.

What do other people think -- would you want that info included in a rejection letter you received? Or would you wish they'd gone with something vaguer? 

how do you replace an employee who doesn't know she's being fired?

A reader writes:

I’ve been going through your archives to see if you had any advice on replacing a current employee before they know they are being replaced…when that employee is HR. In a small company with one HR person we certainly can’t place an ad – and they want to have viable candidates before this person is let go. 

This is due to serious performance issues which have been addressed, time and again, yet continue. I am the one picking up the slack for what isn’t being done and am now involved in the replacement process.

The one HR professional I knew who was on the market got a job 15 days before I was asked to see if she was interested. That exhausted all our personal connections – such as they were.

This can’t be uncommon – but it’s really hard to find anything written about this.

Well, the first thing I'd ask is: Are you sure that's the order you have to do things in? I strongly advise firing her first and then launching your search -- largely because it feels like the right thing to do, but also because you want the strongest candidate pool possible, and if you're sneaking around conducting the search covertly, you're almost definitely going to compromise your ability to do that.

Yes, firing her first does mean that the position would be vacant for a short time (likely 4-6 weeks, as long as you move through the hiring process with reasonable speed), but I'd be surprised if it weren't possible to find a way to cover her essential responsibilities for 4-6 weeks until you get someone new in there. After all, if she were suddenly hospitalized for a month, you'd find a way to make it work. 

If there's no one on staff who can cover the essentials, look into getting a temp with an HR background to fill in while the position is open.

If for some reason you're absolutely committed to starting the search before she's gone -- and again, I strongly recommend against it -- you could (a) use a search firm so that applications aren't coming into your office, and make sure the search firm knows they can't identify your company in the ad, or (b) set up an anonymous email address for applications and do the screening yourself ... but I think it's fairly shady, and it doesn't send a great message to other employees who may hear about it.

There's another option too, although it depends on the employee's character: Does she have enough integrity that you could simply be open with her about the fact that it's not working out? In some cases, you can tell an employee that it's not working out and mutually set a date for their last day that's a month or two away, with the understanding that that will give them time to look for a job and you time to look for a replacement. Important caution: This only works with employees who you know won't be so hostile or demoralized that you risk them poisoning the office environment or sabotaging the company in some way. And if you find that either one of those things is happening, you need to be prepared to have them leave immediately. But with the right person, in the right culture, this can work. (You can read about one of the times I did it here.) Listen to your gut on this though; if you have doubts, don't do it.

Anyone else have other thoughts?

5 ways employers could improve the hiring process

Ask any job seeker and they'll tell you—most employers do a terrible job of considering what a candidate experiences going through their hiring process. Job seekers have story after story about employers who communicate poorly or not at all, who advertise jobs that don't match up with the reality of what they need, and who send such negative messages about the company culture that it appears only the desperate would want to work there.

Employers may feel that they don't have to pay much attention to the candidate experience; it's a buyer's market, after all. This is short-sighted because the best candidates have options and will turn elsewhere. And it's also pretty unkind to people who are in a vulnerable and anxiety-producing spot.

Over at U.S. News & World Report today, I talk about five components of a hiring system that takes the candidate experience into consideration. Please check it out.

how long should a job be advertised?

A reader writes:

I work for a public library system and part of my job includes helping library directors and library boards (often at very small public libraries) with personnel management questions.

I read your blog every day and find and use and recommend it all the time. One of the things that happens too often at "my" libraries, I feel, is that they don't advertise a vacancy for a long enough period of time. For example, a library board may advertise that they are hiring a new library director, for 2 weeks, sometimes even less. I try to impress upon them, when I get the opportunity, that 1 or 2 weeks isn't long enough! 

I think the length of time a vacancy should be advertised may vary with the position (for example, I wouldn't necessarily recommend advertising a part-time shelver position for a month), but something as important as a director (even for the smallest library, and even if it isn't full time), I tend to think 4 weeks is not too long. I know there aren't any hard and fast answers, but do you have any "rules of thumb"?

Great question!  I agree that two weeks isn't long enough.

Part of the reason for that is this: I generally find a pattern with the way applications come in. When a job is first posted, there's an initial rush of applications. These are in large part the people who are applying to everything they see for which they're remotely qualified (and sometimes not even that) -- the resume-bombers. That tends to be true for roughly the first week. Conversely, of the applications that come in toward the end of an application period, a much higher percentage of them are candidates who are very strongly matched with the job qualifications. I've concluded that this is because these are people who aren't applying wildly every day -- they're being much more judicious in what they apply to, and they're probably not looking as frequently because of that.

If you're closing jobs after one or two weeks, you're probably missing out on some really strong candidates who aren't checking ads as frequently.

Disclaimer: This is absolutely not to say that there aren't strong candidates in the first week, or that everyone who applies toward the end is a strong match. I don't want anyone to read this and decide that they shouldn't apply to a job if it's only been posted for a day; that's not what you should take from this. I've hired plenty of people who have applied early on. These are just overall trends.

So back to your question: How long is long enough to keep a job advertised? I'd say a minimum of three weeks, and four is better. 

I'll usually start my initial round of phone interviews around the third week, but I'll keep the job open meanwhile.  In fact, I've pretty much gotten rid of application "deadlines" all together -- I'll accept applications until the job is filled. The bar does move higher and higher if we're nearing the end of the interviews; at that point, a candidate would really need to be a rock star to get added into the mix ... but I don't want to close the door to someone absolutely fantastic just because of an arbitrary deadline. 

how can I warn job candidates about how awful this place is?

A reader writes:

I'm finally coming to the end of my contract at an incredibly poisonous company, and I've been tasked to replace myself. We don't have an HR department, and my own boss just split suddenly, leaving behind massive amounts of debt, so the parent company has tasked me to do this.

My question is, how can I explain the reality of the workplace to a new hire? I know you're never supposed to speak negatively about past employers in professional circles, but I'd feel wrong bringing someone into this company with blinders on. The problems range from intense understaffing to interpersonal problems and poor management, which is leading most of the existing team, like myself, to leave in the next few months as our contracts end. I've already tried to stress the benefits by targeting new grads, as the work itself is interesting and a great opportunity for someone fresh out of school, but I worry that in a years time whoever replaces me will be cursing me, the same way I cursed the manager who lied to me about the company when I was hired. 

How can I explain the huge negatives in a professional manner? I've already encountered questions, as trying to explain the full job description and range of tasks makes it clear that this job encompasses the work of 5 people, on a junior person's salary. I'm worried if I can't figure out how to explain the job in a way that doesn't make it seem undoable, I'll never find anyone to take my place, and once I do, how will I sleep at night knowing I brought some fresh-faced new employee into such a toxic situation?

You're right to want to share the negatives with your top candidates. I'm a big believer in "truth in advertising" when hiring, both because it's the right thing to do and because you want people to self-select out before they're hired if those negatives are deal-breakers to them.

I was recently hiring for a position that came with a range of negatives, and I talked to all my finalists about them. (There's no reason to get into that before you have finalists; I'd keep it on more of a need-to-know basis.) Everyone thanked me profusely for being candid, and every single one noted how unusual it was to find honest explanations of a job's downsides in the hiring process, even though every job has downsides.  And here's what happened afterwards: One candidate emailed me the next day, thanked me for being candid, and said she'd realized that it wasn't for her. Everyone else said they were still interested (with a couple saying they were more interested, because they appreciated being leveled with and knowing there wouldn't be surprises).

The key is in how you present negative information. If you just whisper, "This is a terrible workplace, everyone is miserable, the managers are jerks, and we're all trying to leave," then yes, you're not going to find many (good) candidates who will take that job. But as you yourself point out, there are positives too. You should present a full picture, in a professional way: "There are plusses and minuses to this job, and I want to talk to you about the minuses. Frankly, we're very understaffed. There's a lot of work, and you'll be expected to juggle a high workload. And between you and me, a lot of the staff has been frustrated with some of the management, and that's led to turnover recently. That said, the work itself is interesting, and you'll get great experience, especially as a recent grad."

You could also add, "If you're someone who gets extremely frustrated by __ (fill in some of the management's most objectionable qualities here), this job may not be for you. But if you think you can handle that in exchange for great experience, we should keep talking."

Now, smart candidates will ask you to elaborate on these frustrations with management, and you should be prepared to talk about it in a way that's objective and professional. In fact, you need to say all of this professionally -- no venom, no vitriol, no mentions that you yourself wanted to throw yourself out the window. And the reason for that is that that's the line to walk that balances your obligations to your employer and your obligations to the candidate. (You do have an obligation to your employer here -- and it's to find a way remove yourself from the hiring if you can't stay professional about it.)

I think you're going to be surprised by how many candidates will thank you for telling them and say that they're still interested. Yes, part of that is that people just want a job and they have rosy-colored glasses on about how bad it could really be. But some of it is that knowing about problems before you go in can make them more bearable. Being blindsided by them is a lot harder. And some people genuinely don't care about this kind of thing -- they just want to show up and work and they're going to tune out things that would drive others insane.

Your obligation is to present the good and the bad, unemotionally. From there, your candidates will make their own decisions. Good luck!

can I ask about a different position than the one I just accepted?

A reader writes:

I lost my job 5 months ago, and was recently hired to a position at a company I love. While researching the company during the interview process, there was a department I preferred to work in, but there were no openings in that department at the time. I did however interview for a position that I know I will still enjoy. When the offer came, I took it happily even though it meant taking a $10,000 pay cut from what I was making previously.

In my preparations to start my new position, I recently was looking over my company's website and a position in the department I'd ideally like to work in is open. Not only that, it's a managerial position with greater responsibilities and the pay is back where my salary used to be before I lost my job. I wouldn't have to worry about making ends meet, which during salary negotiations was made clear to my hiring manager. In addition, most of my work experience is applicable and relevant to this new position anyway. I have about 2 years experience in the position I was hired for and about 8 years of experience in the areas the managerial position calls for.

Is there any chance I could talk to my new company about being considered for this managerial role? I don't want to seem flighty or that I just took any job to get out of the unemployment ranks. I am genuinely excited about my new position. However, I know that I could make and impact and have longevity in the managerial position in the other department that pays better. I would think a company would want the best fit for all of their employees. And because I just got the offer last week, there is a change the runner up candidate in the position I accepted is still available.

This is delicate, for precisely the reason you pointed out: You don't want to appear flighty or like you're not committed to the job you accepted.

If you do this, you need to be very, very careful about how you do it, both in words and in the vibe you give. You don't want to come across as if you're coveting this other position, but rather that you're raising a possibility that might help the company solve a business problem. I think if I were determined to do this, I would say something like this: "I wanted to raise something with you, and if it's crazy, I won't give it another thought. I saw you're hiring a __, which is something I have a lot experience with. Now don't worry -- I'm excited to get to work and have been thinking a lot about ___ (fill this in with a project you'll be working on in your new role). But I don't know which of these two jobs is harder to hire for. If this new one is a tougher one to fill, would it be worth talking about whether the company could better utilize me there?"

Be prepared for them to shut you down on this immediately. They may not think you're the strongest fit for the second position, and/or they may not want to screw over or the manager who has already been told you're about to start working for her. Or they might just not want the hassle of dealing with something like this, especially if they know they're not going to have a hard time finding a great fit for the second position, even if they do think you could be good for it too.

On the other hand, who knows, maybe they'll be open to it.

But I do think it can be a risky move, so weigh all the factors carefully before proceeding.

why new hires fail

46% of newly-hired employees will fail within 18 months, according to a new study by Leadership IQ. (Failure is being defined as: being terminated, leaving under pressure, receiving disciplinary action, or having significantly negative performance reviews.)

But it's not because they don't have the right skills to do the job. Instead, the study found that 26% of new hires fail because they can’t accept feedback, 23% because they’re unable to understand and manage emotions, 17% because they lack the necessary motivation to excel, 15% because they have the wrong temperament for the job, and only 11% because they lack the necessary technical skills.


More telling? 82% of managers reported that in hindsight, there were red flags during the interview that they ignored.

This isn't surprising at all. By the time a candidate gets to the interview, he or she should have been sufficiently screened that the technical skills are known to be there. At that point interviewers should be looking at other important qualities -- temperament, emotional intelligence, work ethic, attention to detail, judgment, openness to feedback, and other things that are difficult to teach. But instead, many hiring managers overvalue specific skills or content knowledge and don’t put enough weight on underlying skills or qualities that are harder to develop, which in the long run are much more likely to differentiate high performers from others.

"Technical competence remains the most popular subject of interviews because it’s easy to assess," say the researchers. "But while technical competence is easy to assess, it’s a lousy predictor of whether a newly-hired employee will succeed or fail."

So who does hire well? The study found that a small portion of managers had significantly more hiring success than their peers did. These managers (a) put much more emphasis on interpersonal and motivational issues, (b) were highly perceptive and psychologically savvy, and (c) were confident in their assessments and willing to act on them.

This, of course, sometimes gets translated into "gut feeling," which gets a bad rap. But when your gut has been educated by experience, and it has a good track record, and it doesn't engage in racial or other forms of illegal discrimination ... well, it's not crazy to respect that gut.

The three-year study focused on 5,247 hiring managers from 312 public, private, business, and health care organizations; collectively, they hired more than 20,000 employees during the study period. It found no significant difference in failure rates across different interviewing approaches (behavioral, chronological, etc.).

interview questions to ask when hiring a manager

I recently put this together for someone, and I'm recycling it here: interview questions to ask if you're hiring a manager of a department, organization, whatever.

As you'll see, the idea of most of these to give you a good feel for whether this is someone who gets things done, is a strong manager who's focused on results, etc. Please add in your own!

General

Send the candidate your annual report or other materials ahead of time. In the interview, ask him/her to explain the organization's work to you as if you were a prospective funder or investor.

How would the people around you describe you?

What's a common misconception some people have about you?

Tell me about a difficult decision you had to make recently. Walk me through the problem and what your thought process was, and how you ultimately handled it.

What is one thing that you have had difficulty over coming in your career, and how did you do that?

What is some of the most useful criticism you’ve ever received? Why?

Have you ever been given criticism that you disagreed with? What was it? How did you handle that?

Getting things done

What has your biggest achievement been at ___? What results there that you produced are you most proud of? (Then ask the same question for other jobs they've had. You're looking for someone with a pattern of taking things from X to Y -- with Y being greater than X.)

What were the big things you were trying to achieve in the past year at ___? What things were/are worrying you? What were/are you doing about it?

What were your organization or department's major goals last year (depending on whether the person was managing the organization or a department there)? How did you settle on those? To what extent did you meet them? How did you measure whether or not you met them? Were there targets you considered setting, but ultimately rejected?

What’s an example of a goal you didn’t meet? How come? How did you respond to that?

What will success look like for you this year? Why is that important? How hard will it be to get there?

If I were to ask your ___ (someone who reports to the person) what her goals are, what would she say? Does that match what you would say they are?

Tell me about one of the organization's largest or most important projects and how you managed it, from start to finish. I'm interested in something where others were doing the work, but you were overseeing it.
- What was the vision for it?
- What happened?
- How did you ensure that happened? (You’re looking for managers who leave little to chance: either they have good reason to rely on the person in charge of the project, or they keep their hands in things enough to ensure success.)
- How do you know it happened?
- What lessons did you take away?

What are some of the biggest obstacles your organization/department (whichever they are responsible for) hit in the last few years? What did you do to address them?

Tell me about something you got done at ___ that someone else in your role probably wouldn't have.

Managing people

How would you describe yourself as a manager? How do you think others would describe you?

What is your philosophy about management?

What do you think the fundamental purpose of a manger is? (You're looking for someone who knows it's about getting things done, not something touchy-feely.)

How has your management philosophy evolved as you’ve gained more management experience?

What do you do to work on being a better manager?

What do you think are some of the most common ways people fail at management?

Talk about the balance between not micromanaging but still being involved enough to be able to catch problems early on.

Tell me about an employee who became more successful as a result of your management.

How would you describe the bar for performance at ___ (or in the department you manage)?

Who are your best people? What are you doing to retain them?

What do you look for when you hire people?

Tell me about your most recent high-level hire. How did you go about searching for the person?

When was the last time you fired someone or coached someone out? How many people have you fired in the last two years? Why? (You’re looking for a manager who fires people who don’t perform at a high standard.)

Walk me through one of more challenging times you had to let someone go -- what did you try first, how did you make the decision? How much time did it take from when you first started having concerns until when you ultimately let the person go?

Tell me about the most difficult employee situation you ever had to handle. What did you do and what was the result?

Tell me about a time you were managing a poor performer. How did you handle it and what was the outcome?

What was the most difficult management decision you’ve ever had to make?

Tell me about a management mistake that you made in the past. What would you do differently?

Even the best bosses generate complaints from their employees now and then. What complaints do you think the people you've managed would have about you?