Posts Tagged ‘interviewing’
Interviewing: Are you comfortable when people are uncomfortable?
Recently I observed an interview conducted by a relatively new recruiter (let’s call him Dan). He did an adequate job asking the (moderately experienced) candidate (let’s call her Sarah) about her previous work experience. However when it came to Dan probing a gap of three months between Sarah’s jobs, things didn’t go so well. Dan…
Read MoreKey Selection Criteria: When less is more
Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Blink, provided me with some fantastic insights about pattern recognition (or ‘thin-slicing’ as it’s referred to in the book) that I wrote about earlier this month. Another excellent part of the book, highly relevant for recruiters, is when Gladwell explores the ‘less is more’ syndrome. Gladwell asserts that in certain circumstances, receiving more information about…
Read MorePersonalities don’t conflict – people have communication issues
Consider the following interview exchange, which any recruiter with more than a few weeks experience will be familiar with: Recruiter: “Why did you leave your role at XYZ company?” Candidate: (Stony-faced) “I had a personality conflict with my boss” Recruiter: (Awkward Pause) “Okay” What happened next? Did you probe to discover more information or…
Read MoreMemo to the Melbourne Football Club: remember the basics of recruiting
Last weekend Melbourne Football Club, the oldest football club in Australia suffered its eighth straight loss in the 2012 AFL season, after losing to Carlton by 58 points. Melbourne now sits firmly at the bottom of the AFL ladder, below the two most recent expansion clubs, the Gold Coast Suns (second season in the AFL)…
Read MoreMore powerful lessons from The Rare Find: Think through the assignment
After writing last week’s article summarising the lessons from George Anders’s fabulous bookThe Rare Find: Spotting Exceptional Talent Before Everyone Else (Portfolio/Penguin, 2011), I re-read my favourite chapter of the book and I thought the lessons of that chapter were worthy of further analysis in these pages. I am referring to Chapter 2: The Talent Problem. This is such…
Read MoreHow to spot exceptional talent before everyone else
Insight 210 carried a Ross Recommends that featured The Rare Find: Spotting Exceptional Talent Before Everyone Else by George Anders (Portfolio/Penguin, 2011). I gave the book my highest recommendation and since then I’ve been trying to work out how to expand about the book for a lead article. The reality is that…
Read MoreCandidate interviews: the dud KPI
When I am running my ‘Building a Profitable Desk‘ workshop and it comes around to the discussion of High Pay-Off Activities (or KPIs, if you prefer), I will inevitably have a participant nominate ‘interviews’ as a high pay-off activity. When I disagree, there is often a slight pause and then this look of confusion appears on the…
Read MoreHow your recruitment process annoys candidates
Last month, global recruitment company Robert Walters released the results of a survey conducted with 800 job seekers. Three significant, although unsurprising, findings of the survey were the following: 1. A large majority of job seekers (79%) were turned off by a lengthy recruitment process with 77% agreeing that the job…
Read MoreExploding stereotypes: My recent breakfast with Sir Richard Branson
On Friday last week I had the good fortune to be a guest of one of my clients, On The Ball Personnel at the Business Chicks Melbourne Breakfast event featuring Sir Richard Branson. Could there be a more high profile, successful, and respected business person to address a gathering of 1700 of Melbourne’s, mostly…
Read MoreBeat your client to their objection and win more interviews
One of the great frustrations of being a new recruitment consultant, without a solid base of loyal clients, is when a client rejects a well matched referred candidate, based solely on the resume. You know the candidate is a good match for the job but the client takes one look at the resume, or…
Read More