As a condition of being released from custody, the brilliant yet troubled title character in the movie Good Will Hunting must meet regularly with a counselor. Determined to sabotage the process he torments and is dismissed by a series of psychologists until he is sent to ‘Sean’ played by Robin Williams. Upon entering Sean’s office, young Will scans the clutter of diplomas, books and bric-a-brac before turning his attention to a small painting of a man in a row boat being tossed about by stormy waters. He ponders the painting and then, based solely on these few fragments of data offers up a scathing assessment of the psychologist’s life.
To many candidates, this is the all-too-typical interview process. A stranger sits across a table in a sterile setting examining your life on paper. He eyeballs you, asks a few simple questions and then draws conclusions about the essence of your work life, its relative value, and the likelihood that you will thrive in a given company and job. Candidates cannot help but feel that their complex, nuanced lives have been reduced to a caricature drawn from a drive-by glance.
As a headhunter I am frequently accused of such crimes. I see it in the faces of candidates who I have tried to evaluate and then squeeze into some sort of categorical box. I hear it in the comments of those want to be viewed as broader, more versatile, more complex than my take on them allows. To those people and to those of you who I will offend in the future let me explain why their frustration is more of a structural than personal problem.
First, it is important to note that in my business there are two types of interviews. The first are those on behalf of clients for searches I am conducting. The others are commonly called courtesy interviews. In the former, I am methodical and thorough and take few shortcuts in evaluating candidates’ fit with my clients needs. In the latter I am decidedly none of those things.
In the unenviable world of finding work, success often correlates with activity. Because of this, job seekers predictably go through a process of responding to ads, networking and reaching out to anyone and everyone who can help them. Headhunters are viewed as a levered channel to pools of jobs and thus they are an almost mandatory touch point for job hunters. In most instances, the strategy in meeting headhunters is try to impress while optimizing the number of roles for which they might receive consideration. This is most easily accomplished by presenting oneself as a versatile generalist able to address a range of roles in a range of companies facing a range of challenges.
But headhunters are in the business of finding specialists to tackle specific challenges in specific companies. In this instance, ‘specialist’ does not refer to function but rather the complement of attributes and experience to predict success in say a turnaround situation, or a small early staged companies, or in working with a difficult founder or family business. Headhunters are wary of ‘one-size-fits-all’ generalists and they probe to find specialist themes embedded in their narratives. They assume that each person has a range within which they excel and they try to map out that range.
In the end, the genteel setting of a greet and meet becomes a tug of war with one party pulling to expand the realm of possibilities while the other pulls in order to narrow it. A certain level of frustration is bound to ensue, and it does.
By design, ‘greet and meet’ interviews are drive-by encounters and cannot be expected to yield more. And while headhunters must always be wary of their biases and resist the urge to draw overly quick conclusions, candidates must be wary that the courtesy interview lends itself to misalignment of interests, errors and frustration.
Robert Hebert is Managing Partner of Toronto-based executive search firm StoneWood Group (www.stonewoodgroup.com). He can be reached @ rhebert@stonewoodgroup.com or at 416.365.9494x777
Looking for a dynamic HR role? Stay away from the entrepreneurial tech sector.
January 1, 2012
In a recent survey of HR graduate students, the technology sector rated among the most coveted destinations to ply their trade. It is viewed as a world of innovative people, technologies and approaches where progressive talent management, OB/OD and related HR work awaits.
The Cry to Replace RIM's CEOs – A Truly Dumb Idea
October 13, 2011
Leaving aside the recent service outages, the shellacking of RIM in the press is a tad surreal to behold.
For the few Luddites not familiar with the firm, Research in Motion is the successful Canadian smart phone pioneer with revenues of $20bb per year, no debt and cash in the bank. They manufacture products that remain popular around the world and continue to boast technological innovations unmatched by any competitor. Their most recently launched smart phone devices have been well reviewed and appear to be selling well. And though the company's first version of its new tablet, the Playbook, has room for improvement, it is a promising piece of technology.
Context: When Companies Confuse Start-up Experience for Start-up Experience
October 7, 2011
I had the occasion this week to chat with an entrepreneur still licking his wounds from a stalled startup venture. His tale is a reminder of how easily companies misunderstand organizational context when hiring. For startups, such a misunderstanding can be fatal.
The CEO Hiring Practices at HP
October 3, 2011
The press tells us that Hewlett Packard is the largest technology company in the world with revenues of $126bb. Impressive as those numbers may appear, they do not seem to impress HP's Board of Directors. You see they do not believe that any of the firm's 324,600 employees are capable of leading it. Not one person. Not this year or last year when CEO changes were made. In fact they were apparently not capable six years ago or even eleven years ago when CEO changes were also made. But before summarily indicting the firm's succession planning/leadership development programs, it is useful to consider the track record of the external candidates who were considered better choices than the firm's internal candidates. This analysis decidedly shifts the spotlight to the competence of Hewlett Packard's Board of Directors.
The Folly of Believing What You Read
September 19, 2011
Some time ago we posted a blog titled ‘So you REALLY want to be a CEO?' which looked at the human costs of climbing the upper rungs of the management ladder. The blog was based on a series of articles immediately following the ‘resignation' of Pfizer CEO Jeff Kindler. All of these articles presented a cautionary tale of life in the fast lane, the long hours, the extensive global travel, and the shareholder pressures that accompany an uncooperative stock price. They also spoke poignantly of the physical and emotional toll that such unrelenting pressure took on the Pfizer CEO who eventually resigned in order to attend to his family and health. As it turns out however, much of this narrative may not have been true
Before sending us your resume (and then getting frustrated with us) ask who we work for
July 25, 2011
A friend of mine is a trustee in bankruptcy. As his title suggests, he and his firm serves those contemplating the ‘cleansing' process of personal bankruptcy. Potential customers compare service providers, select one, and then pay the chosen firm a fee to initiate and manage the ensuing process on their behalf. However, as soon as the relief-seeking customer signs on the dotted line, the trustee's allegiance shifts to the creditors for whom they then seek to maximize debt recovery. This shift in who works for whom must be a tad unsettling for people who already have a heap of problems and stress on their hands.
What Dating Services Can Teach Companies About Hiring
June 1, 2011
Executive-level hiring is a decidedly aspirational endeavor. Organizations idealize their workplace cultures, select for attributes that will fit into those romanticized environments, and then immerse unsuspecting hires into their ice-cold reality of their works-in-progress.
How to Survive a Startup - by Jill Ram
April 20, 2011
If you're an executive and you're thinking of joining a start-up, know what stage of a start-up to join. If the company is in its first year or so, don't expect to make significant changes. If you join after the company is somewhat established and mistakes have been made and learned from, you'll likely be more successful from the outset. If the founder has stepped aside, well, by then, the company is likely not considered a start-up anymore. It won't be functioning like a big company yet, and it won't have all the structure in place that it needs, but it will be run with more practicality and with less emotion. Timing is everything so choose it well.
Good News for the Old, Overqualified and Overlooked
March 18, 2011
It is expected that a significant percentage of the baby boomer generation will drive right past the Freedom 55 highway exit. For many the goal of early retirement will have proven to be unattainable hype, while for others the ups and downs of working will appear more attractive than the prospects of working up and down the local lawn bowling leadership board.
Pressed for time? Blame those Benedictine Monks.
February 24, 2011
It is among the principal reasons candidates tell us they are open to consider a change in employers. They are tethered to it, yet somehow it still flees. It is time, the most precious of resources, and for many harried executives they want some of it back.
Though their relationship with time may be strained, it is worth pointing out that it was not always this way. In his fascinating book Time Wars, Jeremy Rifkin chronicles the evolution of our modern relationship with time. He points out that in traditional agrarian and pastoral cultures, time was a very naturalistic notion maintained in cyclical, repetitive, biological and even sacred terms. The ‘passing of time' was cued via the changing seasons, biological lifecycles and lunar patterns and thus, the cadence and tempo of those societies were finely tuned to the cyclical rhythms of their physical environments. As he states, "Our early ancestors coveted the circle, perceiving time as eternal return, a ceaseless repetition of an endless cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth". Since these cyclical rhythms could neither be accelerated, nor altered, the cadence of these societies' was natural and harmonious.
To The Candidates I Will Offend Next Week
December 3, 2009