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The vast majority of job interview advice is directed at interviewees. We all know, however, that it takes two to tango. Both parties are important. Despite that self-evident principle, interviewers are relatively neglected, and that neglect can by no means be attributed to the great skills they universally employ.

It’s equally obvious that every organization has an interest in making every interview as productive as possible. There are obstacles, however. One difficulty is that there are few reliable guidelines, especially if reliability entails the correlation of interview variables with job performance. Sometimes, that difficulty becomes an excuse: Since the interview is more art than science, we may as well accept its imperfections and settle for a “good-enough” result.

Instead of giving in to that state of mind, it’s at least worth remembering some of the basic principles that help the interviewer do a better job. keep reading…

During a trip to a suburban mall near Cleveland, I saw a man wearing a jacket with a logo for Hyland Software, a business-to-business software developer whose global headquarters are located nearby. In the B2B world, Hyland has a reputation of being a stellar employer with a fun streak. As evidence, it has a giant tube slide in the middle of its headquarters and has earned several top workplace awards in recent years.

Hyland also has a quirk in its interview process. Candidates applying online are required to write and submit a poem. Not an essay, not a biography — a poem. How does that strike you? keep reading…

“Death by interview” is the harsh but unfortunately all-too accurate name that I give to the majority of corporate interview processes because of the way that they literally abuse candidates.

Death by interview is worth closer examination because harsh treatment during interviews impacts almost every working American, simply because each one of us is subjected to many interviews during our lifetime.

The hiring interview shares a love/hate status, where even though applicants initially hope to be granted an interview, once they are finally notified, they almost universally undergo a wave of stress and painful memories that causes them to stop looking forward to them.

“Death by interview” is the term used to describe the drawn out pain that job applicants suffer as a result of requiring an excessive number of interviews, repeating the same questions across multiple interviews. and the unnecessary uncertainty that is part of most interview processes.

Death by Interview Component No. 1 — An Excessive Number of Interviews keep reading…

You have read all about what to ask in an interview as well as magic questions that will solve all your hiring problems. What about what not to do?

Make no mistake. An interview is not an opportunity to GetToKnowYa, but rather a verbal test. It has subject matter, questions, and answers that are scored. But you need to ask yourself: just exactly what are you testing for? The ability to answer silly questions? Whether you want to be friends? Whether you can trip up or intimidate a candidate? Haven’t you seen the thousands of books candidates read to fake their way through an interview?

How about learning whether the candidate has the right set of job skill s? You know, so you don’t have to waste everyone’s time?

If You Don’t Know What You’re Looking for, Any Question Will Do keep reading…

Every few months here on ERE, some author writes an article discussing the “candidate experience,” or as I prefer to call it: the “c words”: candidate care. As a contract recruiter, I’m very frequently a candidate, so while I’m just one person, I’m very familiar with this side of the process, so let me discuss the candidate’s perspective. keep reading…

This an “eyes-only” post. Under no circumstances let a hiring manager or your CFO see this. Now, close the door; darken the blinds, and be ready to blank your screen if anyone walks up to you.

Ready? There’s a robot getting ready to take your job. 

I’m not talking some automated software process like an ATS ranking algorithm. I’m talking a Robot & Frank, R2D2 cute kind of robot the Aussies have built that conducts interviews and assesses what the candidates say and their emotional response to the questions.

Sophie the robot, and her pals, Charles, Matilda, Betty, and Jack, are a joint project between La Trobe University Business School in Melbourne and Japan’s NEC Corporation, involves students and faculty from management, health sciences, sociology, psychology, and education. keep reading…

One reason I get a kick out of reading business books is because their themes frequently come to life and smack you right in the nose at work the next day. Recently I read “The Energy Bus” and underlined this passage: Negative people often tend to create negative cultures whereas positive corporate cultures are created by positive people.

It’s almost a ridiculously obvious statement, but how many companies act like this isn’t true? When the corporate higher-ups get word employees are complaining, they’ll email an all-employee survey, post motivational quotes on bulletin boards, roll out a new contest, and maybe even treat the team to lunch.

That would be like your plan to slim down for the summer centers on wearing vertical stripes while you keep eating your stash of Twinkies and Ding Dongs. You’re masking the problem instead of actually solving it.

One company with an amazing culture is regional supermarket chain Wegmans, who regularly appears near the top of Fortune Magazine’s annual 100 Best Companies To Work For list. Wegmans has the friendliest staff I’ve ever encountered while pushing a cart, and their attitude has little to do with formal training. First and foremost, Wegmans seeks to hire friendly people who are inclined to help others. Its people smile a lot because they can’t help it, not because of some corporate edict.

Experiencing a positive atmosphere when shopping for bananas is great, but more gratifying is interacting with upbeat people Monday through Friday at your workplace. Before I describe one method to hire positive people, let me share with you some specifics about Connor, a sales rep we hired less than a year ago. keep reading…

If you’re not getting exceptional hires, it may be because your traditional interview process is simply not designed to excite them. Instead of dwelling on the past, a superior alternative is to ask them to solve real problems, and to demonstrate that they are forward-looking and that they have solutions for the future. Top candidates routinely dislike standard interviews because they find them tedious and predictable. Most interviews are simply not designed to allow a top candidate to show off their capabilities, ideas, and innovativeness. As a result, if you are recruiting for a mission-critical job that requires an exceptional hire, you simply cannot afford to bore top candidates with standard interview questions.

Everyone who has done any reading about interview accuracy already knows that they are typically one of the weakest assessment devices for hiring. In fact my own research has uncovered no less than 50 different problems with standard interviews and more than 50 different alternatives to standard interviews. One of the weaknesses is that the interview questions that are typically used focus on historical situations that occurred at another firm. But what you need to know is how this individual will perform now at your firm. That requires getting them to demonstrate how they will solve the problems that they will face in your job. Most typical questions have already been anticipated and practiced for by the interviewee to the point that their answers are not authentic. So if you’re going to interview top professionals, here are 12 questions to select from that I have found will quickly reveal which one of your exceptional applicants is the very best.

12 High-impact Questions for Top Candidates keep reading…

If you aren’t already using video for interviewing, what are you waiting for?

More and more employers all the time are finding that conducting at least an initial, live interview can save them both money and time, and can give them a better sense of their candidates than even an in-depth phone screen.

The heaviest users of live video interviews are the biggest employers; 80% of those with more than 10,000 workers have used or use video interviews. But even employers as small as 100 workers are giving it a try.

A GreenJobInterview survey of corporate leaders, most of them in HR, found that nearly half of all employers with fewer than 100 workers have conducted a video interview. And almost six out of 10 employers with 1,000 to 5,000 employees use remote video interviews.

This isn’t one of those shiny new object trends. Unlike the video resume, the use of video interviews is steadily growing as the technology has become both more affordable and easier to use.

keep reading…

Typical interview questions center on candidates’ successes. What have they done that makes them right for a position? What is their greatest strength? When have they succeeded?

These questions may aim to flesh out a skillset, work ethic, or propensity for learning. But, in reality, asking one magic question can actually provide you with much more information than any run-of-the-mill interview question ever could. The “failure” question not only gives you insight into a candidate’s work personality, but it also demonstrates her ability to keep your company relevant in the emerging information economy.

The Magic “Failure” Question keep reading…

When the same peer group surrounds an individual for an extended period, movements, actions, and language of that group become second nature. Often times, this is seen in members of the United States Armed Forces.

With this in mind, human resources professionals should understand that it is common to witness specific lingo or actions that have become second nature during their tenure in the military. And, as many members of the Armed Forces return home to a progressively competitive civilian job market, you will see more terms, MOS numbers (Military Occupational Specialty codes), and job descriptions that may catch you by surprise.

To ready yourself, read further and learn how to prepare a superior interview experience for both the veteran and yourself.

Push the Breaks

I have seen thousands of resumes in the past few years and had the pleasure of interviewing some great applicants in person, over the phone and recently by hosting Virtual Career Fairs via Google+ Hangouts. One that particularly sticks out was a Navy EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) specialist who caught me by surprise with technical jargon that made no sense to me. I knew his position in the military was important, but had little idea as to what he was talking about. keep reading…

Regardless of the interview style or methodology used, there is one question that everyone should ask of a registered nurse in an interview. This includes all positions, from staff RN to Chief Nursing Officer. keep reading…

Many recruiters have experienced the knock-down drag-out fighting of going through many rounds of in-person interviews. The main problem with having rounds upon rounds of these interviews is that new information about the candidate is rarely uncovered. Plus, the individuals involved in the interview process are taken away from their jobs to conduct these time-consuming interviews.

To get a better picture of the time taken away from a resource use perspective, think about having four people on the interview team. Each in-person interview lasts two hours and there are five candidates.

4 Interviewers X 2 Hours X 5 Candidates = 40 Hours for Each Round keep reading…

The top 30 boldest actions for recruiting individual innovators

I just returned from the always-powerful CoDev conference, where a prime focus was on the difficulty of hiring and retaining innovators. Almost everyone agrees on the value of innovators, but unfortunately, because of their design and their lack of boldness, most corporate recruiting processes simply cannot successfully hire a highly desirable innovator.

In case you have been unable to get innovators to complete your interview process or to accept your offers, I’ve put together a list of bold but effective approaches that can make it possible to sell and land even the most fought-over innovators. keep reading…

As a recruiter, the way you communicate can make or break you. It can keep you employed and keep your candidates loyal to you.

I’m sure you have all heard the saying, “It’s not what you say. It’s how you say it.” It’s wise to follow this advice, but the most successful recruiters need to know what to say and how to say it. Consequently, to be a truly effective oral communicator, it’s imperative to be a great listener. For the purpose of this article, I’m going to focus on oral communication.

Knowing what to say and how to say it means you’re listening, asking questions, and prepared for questions, concerns, and/or objections.

The Importance of Effective Communication keep reading…

Alas, it’s true. For the first time in 15 years (could be more, could be less, but it’s around about that) there will be no recruitment Super Bowl commercials this Sunday.

The commercials Monster, and later, CareerBuilder produced are among the best ever shown in the 46 years the game’s been played. Sports Illustrated ranked Monster’s 1999 “When I Grow Up” ad in its top eight. (The photo to the right is from that ad.) CareerBuilder’s monkey ads often made it into the top 10. The company built a hugely successful email program called Monk-E-Mail around their simians.

So popular have the commercials become (in more than a few years more popular than the game itself), that TV specials like the one Wednesday night,are just about the ads. It had ads from both the two big job boards. keep reading…

One time, at cheerleading camp in Texas, one of the camp counselors asked us, “What do you do if your football team is the worst in the district?” The answer was to cheer anyway, because that is your responsibility. In fact, you have to cheer louder and bigger to motivate the team, the spectators, the alumni, and the students.

A recruiter is a cheerleader for the company. You are looking for the best team, and encouraging them to join because you know that this position at this company is a possibility of a lifetime. So how do you recruit for a company that has the reputation of being as “The 11 Worst Companies to Work for in America!”

My suggestions and thoughts: keep reading…

You have staffed your team with all the right people: they graduated from top universities, worked at leading companies, stayed at each company the requisite length of time, and exuded intelligence in the interview process. Yet you see other companies with far less surface talent achieving incredible results and outstripping you. Why is this?

The most likely reason your company is failing to progress is that you still hire based on standard interview processes that have been followed for decades. You focus on qualifications only, and ignore focusing on the individual attributes that will help you find superstars, or game changers.

A game changer is a person who thinks outside the box and approaches problems differently from the rest of us. They approach problems with passion, a unique perspective, and their thinking inspires others to build on their ideas.

With game changers on your team you can move from average to an industry leadership position. Good examples are Apple and IBM, which transformed themselves from fading brands into dominant positions by adopting the ideas of leaders who were game changers. Three football teams have had great success this year bringing in game changers. The Seattle Seahawks (Russell Wilson), Washington Redskins (Robert Griffin III), and Indianapolis Colts (Andrew Luck) have seen vast improvements after they drafted rookie quarterbacks who have the unique attributes of game changers.

An example of a game changer in the music industry is Steven Tyler. In his entertaining autobiography he discusses how he approaches the four elements of writing a song: melody, words, chords, and rhythm.

He explains, “You know right away if a song has that magic. It has to have those extremes — the one thing it can’t be is okay. Okay is death.”

He adds: “Never mind the melody, never mind the chords — no, no, no. You start with infatuation, obsession, passion, anger, zeal, craze, then take a handful of notes, sew them into a chord structure, create a melody over that, and then come up with words that fit it perfectly.”

His diverse way of thinking is completely different from standard music writers, but as a game changer, his unique perspectives have resulted in incredible successes.

If we analyze the way the majority of companies hire, we see a system that is designed to hire okay performers. We focus solely on the tangibles: the candidate’s job history, education, and interview performance. We ignore the intangibles like diversity of thought, work ethic, intelligence, and common sense.

As an example, diversity of thought means approaching challenges using varied thought processes based on personal creativity and different life experiences. If you can combine diverse thinking with a strong work ethic, intelligence, and common sense, you have a game changer. The results of game changers can often transform the way we do business.

To hire game changers, you will need to make modifications in the following areas:  keep reading…

“A penguin walks through that door right now wearing a sombrero,” your interviewer says, then asks, “What does he say and why is he here?”

If you answered, “Where’s the sunscreen?” congratulations and welcome to the Clark Construction Group family. The candidate who came up with that got the job.

And congratulations to Clark Construction, a 3,900-employee, $4 billion company with just a quirky enough interview process to make Glassdoor’s annual list of the Top 25 Oddball Interview Questions. It’s a list distinguished by questions that range from the almost ordinary — “How would you rate your memory?” asked of a candidate for a front desk job with Marriott — to the absolutely impenetrably bizarre — “What kitchen utensil would you be?” asked at Bandwidth.com, a connectivity and network company that has absolutely nothing to do with kitchenware. keep reading…

After closing 2007, at Veterans United Home Loans, the leading dedicated provider of VA Loans, we employed a 109-person workforce, all within our centralized Columbia, Missouri location. We will will advance into 2013 with more than 1,200 employees and a 22-office nationwide presence.

As the human resources director for one of the country’s fastest-growing private companies, I’ve had the pleasure of witnessing the highs and lows, the meltdowns and meaningful moments, and seen the best and worst in people, along with the downright bizarre.

While the previous list would make a great piece in itself, that’s not what I am most passionate about. What drives me is the opportunity I’ve been given, which has been hiring more than 1,000 extraordinary employees in the past five years, leading to recognition from Inc. Magazine as the nation’s No. 29 job creator — No. 1 in the financial and banking industry — and being listed on Fortune Magazine’s Great Place to Work list as the No. 21 best medium workplace.

Results like this are not the production of a boilerplate hiring method or template that fits every company, but the collective achievement of a unit that believes in working as a team to produce a superior end result for the user.

To understand what it takes to assemble a successful entity like Veterans United, read on before you hire your next applicant. keep reading…