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? (more…)

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 (more…)

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 (more…)

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. (more…)

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. (more…)

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 (more…)

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.

(more…)

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 (more…)

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. (more…)

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 (more…)

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. (more…)

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 (more…)

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. (more…)

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: (more…)

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:  (more…)

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. (more…)

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. (more…)

Warning: do not use this slick all-purpose assessments for screening out people. However, it’s useful for becoming a better interviewer and screening in people.

DISC and all its variants (Calipers, Myers-Briggs, Predictive Index, etc.) should never be used to pre-screen people. At best, and if they’re not faked, these “tests” only predict preferences, certainly not competencies. At worst, they prevent diversity by eliminating the chance to see and hire people who can achieve great results but use a style different than the expected. (Note: Use these types of style indicators after you’ve narrowed the selection to 3-4 people who you’ve determined can meet the performance objectives required for success.)

Despite this predictive limitation — although it will be argued by those who use or sell them — the DISC style preferences are quite helpful for understanding how people communicate, make business and hiring decisions, and interact on-the-job.

To determine your dominate DISC style, look at the descriptions of the four styles in the graphic and select the one that best describes you. Then to validate this, answer these two questions: (more…)