How Not to Get a Job

Some time ago, I blogged about connecting with your passion to find the best job opportunity for you, and also about innovation in recruiting techniques that enable companies to find these passionate people.

In an interesting, and unintentionally humorous, example of what *NOT* to do, a colleague actually received this cover letter from a job applicant today:

To Whom It May Concern:

This is an opportunity I've been searching for. I carefully have been selecting what Company’s to send my Resume. I’m honored to send my resume to your Company and possibly be considered as a team member. My skills along with personality make a perfect match for what you’re seeking. I look forward to meeting with you to discuss my future with your company. I'm confident, coach able, persistent, and consistent in achieving success independently or with a company that has a positive direction. Please call me so we can discuss a time to meet.

While I have no idea what this person's situation is, or how qualified he is for the position, this is a letter that is guaranteed to lead to failure. What was astounding was that it came through a recruiter! How could this have made it past even the most cursory due diligence? While this is obviously an extreme example, I've seen more polished cover letters that say essentially the same thing. Where's the passion?

Cultural Context in a Global Era (Part 1)

A few weeks ago, there was an interesting article in CIO magazine, advising American tech leads how to manage relationships with their Indian vendors. While there is no question that the values and work ethos of an increasingly globalized elite are converging, these cultural differences are real, and should not be underestimated. The article starts out with a very broad generalization:

...it helps to look at the cultures of India and the United States in broad strokes. India is a deeply traditional group-oriented society; tightly knit extended families place a premium on harmony. Survival depends on interdependency, on keeping each other happy. “Your first goal is to make sure nobody is upset by what you say,” says Storti. “If the group is not strong, if it is upset by confrontation, you are in trouble.”

Compare that with America’s fractured families scattered throughout the country, an ethos of individualism and lore filled with Wild West cowboys and a promise that anything is possible if you work hard enough. The United States is a land of grab-for-it. Subtlety is the exception, in both speech and manner. And when an American talks, it’s usually to get his point across, not to create harmony.

While obviously very broad and sweeping, this strikes me as a pretty accurate representation about how business in conducted in either place. Anyone looking to work with an Indian service provider would do well to read this article. In my last post, I talked about the importance of social networks (the physical kind) in conducting business. I pointed out one reason for this: as a way to bypass non-functioning institutions in the redress of problems. The more general reason is brought out in this article: the difference between group-centered and individual -centered cultures.

Articles of this sort tend to go in one of two extreme directions: either dismiss any differences at all as an outdated concept for knowledge workers in the information age, or emphasize the differences to such an extent as to "exoticize" the other. This article has struck the right balance in accepting the global nature of work, while acknowledging the tribal nature of human relationships.

This article obviously begs the question: what cultural advice could you give Indian vendors working with US companies? More to come on this topic.

Hire talent, not skills

Following up on all the HR/recruiting related posts last week, I want to point you to a great article on the subject by Nick Corcodilos. It's a two-parter (Part 1, Part 2) but well worth the read. He makes the point that there is no talent shortage; there is a shortage of the management depth required to nurture and grow it. Weak managers hire skills, but strong managers hire talented people and teach specific skills.

I agree with the general point, and it has helped me crystallize some of the issues I see with the recruiting industry today. Weak management may be an issue, but a broader issue is that the recruiting pipeline has been set up to screen for skills, not talent. Matching algorithms are keyword-based - an indication of skill. Even if a manager is strong and understands the need to hire for talent, the process is stacked against her finding the right person. The need for talent over skills is only growing stronger as work becomes global and mobile, and rapid technology shifts require adaptability above all else. This is such a central issue in most people's lives: finding the right position in which to grow and thrive vs. a non-challenging job in order to collect a paycheck. Why is there no urgency around finding better solutions?

HR Innovation: The Story So Far

I've written about some of the issues with HR/recruitment this week. How can we do a better job connecting people with their passion? I've seen a couple of innovative approaches to the solution, which I'll mention here. These approaches are not standardized or wide-spread, but at least it's an acknowledgment of the issue.

• Align incentives (Amazon.com). The folks at Amazon.com took the referral model and extended it. The idea behind referrals is good - your current employees are a good gauge of what it takes to be successful. If they refer people like themselves (and we almost always do this) then odds are those people will also be successful. However, some people better embody the ideal characteristics of success than others, so Amazon recognized and rewarded those people who not only referred people, but referred people who went on to perform well at the company. In other words, if I referred person X, and person X went on to be successful at the company, I was recognized as having brought on a star performer. This created the right incentives, and in fact often led to mentoring relationships.

• Statistical analysis (Google): If there is an algorithmic solution to this problem, we would expect Google to solve it! And in fact, that's exactly what they are trying to do. According to an article in the New York Times a few weeks ago, Google has recognized the shortcomings of the current approach to recruiting and is trying to change their recruiting practices to set up a deeper match between job and job seeker. They found that a factor they considered essential to success at the company - GPA - was actually not a good predictor of performance.
  

• Psychological profiling (McKinsey). Anyone who has worked at a large consulting firm or dealt in group dynamics is familiar with psychological testing tools. The best-known example of this is the Myers-Briggs test. The test essentially tries to figure out how you express yourself (extrovert vs introvert), how you reason (analytical vs intuition) and how you organize yourself (planned vs improvised). There's no "good" or "bad" result on the test - just a better sense of you as a person. At McKinsey, employees generally take this test for the purpose of group dynamics - to ensure that a project team is well balanced. I've not come across any company using this in the recruiting process. Have you?

There have been so many innovations in technology and sociology that can be applied to the art and science of recruiting. It's time they were!

Connect with your passion

In a previous post, I went through a scenario to show why many job seekers and hiring managers end up with poor outcomes. In fact there is data to suggest that this is widely true. Online recruiting typically results in an 11% yield - a classic outcome of the scattershot approach to finding the right opportunity and the right candidate. And even if placements rates were higher, there is very little information about placement success - i.e. the longevity and performance of the candidate in the position post-hire. Did they like their job? Were they successful?

Here's what I think the missing link is: job requirements have become harder to state explicitly while job matching techniques have remained stuck in the "keyword matching" phase. Job requirements have become more subjective for a number of reasons, among them increased globalization, an emphasis on collaboration, individual empowerment and hands-off management styles. Job matching still largely consists of keywords searches on online databases, or quickly reading through a resume (which also amounts to a keyword search).

What's needed is for matching techniques to catch up to the increased complexity of job requirements. Can you really communicate in a resume or a set of keywords what you really want to be, what excites you, what your hopes and dreams are? We need a way to connect people with their passion. I recently met a talented entrepreneur - Siamak Salimpour - who is trying to do exactly that at CareerSpice. In some ways, CareerSpice is attempting to do for the job placement market what eHarmony claimed to do for the personals market - i.e. a better job of matching people based on a much deeper analysis of the relevant attributes. He's still in the early stages of his product launch, but I wish him every success - we need more ways of connecting people to what they really want to do.

Jumping through hoops

Imagine this scenario.....

Hiring Manager
You are looking to hire a candidate, and you know exactly the sort of person you want: skills, experience, "fit" etc. You post the job online, contact recruiters, get the word out, and the resumes start rolling in. In short order, you start the interview process - you're off to a flying start,

A month has now gone by since you started your search. You've interviewed 15 people for the position so far, and you haven't been happy with any of them. For some reason, the background information you got - resume, call with recruiter - looked great on paper but didn't translate into the right candidate. For a technical role, these ineffable qualities might include problem solving ability and the desire to take on challenging tasks. For a marketing role it might include comfort with public speaking and an engaging style of interaction.


What happens next? Invariably, consciously or not, you start lowering your expectations. Your point of reference becomes the last five interview candidates, not your original idea of what you were looking for. The next person that comes along to exceed this lower bar gets the job. They may not be the superstar you had in mind, but they'll probably do an OK job, and you don't have to deal with the hiring process anymore.


Job Seeker
You're stagnating at your job, not being challenged, and you decide its time for a change. You submit your resume to a couple job boards, contact a few recruiters, and sit back and wait for interview calls. You're pretty clear about what you want - the money should be better than your current position, but most of all, you're looking for an intellectual challenge; an interesting problem to solve.

A couple of weeks go by - you've had a bunch of interviews (it is a hot market after all), and you're getting a bit tired of the process. A couple of them didn't go so well - they were looking for someone to work with an offshore team in India, and you didn't relish the idea of a lot of late night phone calls, or you came across an arrogant interviewer who gave you his favorite brain teaser and you weren't able to solve it on the spot, ensuring you wouldn't be called back (you would ordinarily have solved it - it just wasn't your day). You do end up getting a couple of offers, but you're not that excited about them - the pay is only marginally better than your current salary, and the work just doesn't seem that interesting. In fact, your current position doesn't look so bad after all.

Finally, you get tired of the whole process. It wears you out. Consciously or not, you lower your expectations. Your point of reference becomes your current job, not the ideal you had in mind when you started out. You pick the first job that exceeds your lowered expectations.


Does this resonate? Share your stories. This is "HR week" at Developing Innovation. I will look into why the scenarios described in this post happen so often (and there's evidence to suggest that it does) even in a bull market, and what can be done to change it. Please share your thoughts.

The war for talent

If you've followed the labor market in India, you probably know that it's a red-hot market for job seekers. This is not a new phenomenon - this BusinessWeek article from 2005 talks about the issue - but it has taken on an added urgency as the shortage becomes increasingly acute. There's a huge scarcity of people with the required technical or managerial skills to fill the positions that the fast-growing knowledge industries require.. Attrition rates are high, wage inflation is sky-rocketing and poaching by rival firms is a full contact sport.

At the macro level, the only solution is to increase the supply of qualified workers. Everyone understands this, and the education sector is booming as a result of this. At the micro level, companies (at least large ones) will increasingly shoulder the burden themselves. Some already do: Infosys runs what is probably the world's largest and most sophisticated training operation. Other companies are looking to follow suit. However, attrition rates are still high at Infosys (many hires leave after their training period).

I've been involved in the dynamic first-hand. Based on what I've seen, here are three recommendations I would make to alleviate the problem, at least at the micro level.

• Select for fit. This is as much a mis-allocation problem as a supply and demand problem. What I mean is that prospective employees often don't look at "soft" but important factors such as the work environment, the dynamics of their future team etc, when making their decision. The decision is usually based on compensation and, in some engineering positions, on the programming tools used and the complexity of the problem to be solved. This is a myopic view, and can often result in dissatisfied employees that are a poor fit in the new organization. Company recruiters do not focus on the "fit" either, and hire based on skills and experience, with the same result.
• Use better recruiting metrics. Today recruiters are often able to measure "yield" - the number of hires made from a specific source, so that they can focus their efforts on the highest yielding sources. However, in an environment where attrition rates are so high, yield is not enough. Recruiters should track the progress of personnel, and add a "longevity" metric to their "yield" metrics. Better yet, try and isolate those characteristics that describe the employees that end up staying longer. Select for those characteristics, and focus on those sources that provide the most people with them. Reinforce success.
  
• Build recruiting feedback loop. In addition to isolating those characteristics that tend to be associated with success at the company, find those that don't. When people leave the company, follow a standardized exit interview process and collect the data in a form that can be analyzed (the advantage of high attrition: you'll have a lot of data!). Isolate patterns to try and determine retrospectively what could have been done differently. If there is a consistent "fit" problem, start screening for those characteristics during the interview process. If there is a consistent "dissatisfaction" problem, try and remedy it by either adjusting expectations during the recruiting process, or by changing the company's practices.
  

India is not the only country facing this problem. Its a global war for talent, and fast-growing emerging economies are the vanguard. How India and other developing economies tackle this problem will provide valuable insight to the rest of the world in how to manage and nurture talent.