Getting referrals and retaining staff just got easier because of Matt Ward. He’s the author of Amazon bestseller More…Word Of Mouth Referrals, Lifelong Customers & Raving Fans. In our conversation, he shares powerful and simple steps you can take to make referral generation easy and honest. You also won’t want to miss his care package idea (starts at 17:28).
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There are no silver bullets to fill a job, but there is a silver lining when someone tells you “no.” Everyone in the hiring process hires is told “no” at one point or another. Hiring managers hear candidates reject rock-solid job offers. HR and staffing pros deal with managers who turn down well-qualified candidates. The silver lining in these situations is that you can ask people who say “no” a magic question that lets them talk themselves into a different perspective.
The magic question helps hiring managers see past their initial objections about a potentially good hire. This powerful query gives candidates the opportunity to consider shifting their point of view. The 3 words that comprise the magic question can even allow HR, talent acquisition, and staffing leaders to change their mind about adjustments to the hiring process.
Those 3 words are
Under what circumstances…
If there are circumstances under which someone will change her mind, she knows what those circumstances are. By letting her do the talking, you’re giving her the chance to convince herself while also informing you of the details.
The magic within these 3 words is this: the person who just said “no” always believes her own point of view. She may not believe yours. Because of this, she is the most qualified person to overcome the reasons why she said “no” in the first place.
How’s the magic question work? Here are four common situations.
Candidate has unrealistic expectations
Brad fit the job but wanted $10,000 more than Ivan, the manager, could offer. Ivan asked Brad
Under what circumstances would you take this job for $10,000 less?
He then let Brad do the talking. Turns out there was a circumstance. One that Ivan couldn’t have anticipated. Brad had a three-week family trip scheduled. He said it would be worth taking 10k less if he could take that trip as planned.
Ivan went on to use this question over and over again with success. When a candidate said “no” because of a long commute the magic question let the candidate talk herself into a flex schedule. Then there was the highly talented individual who objected to some of the job responsibilities. Ivan’s use of the magic question allowed the candidate to talk himself into the fact that every job comes with a mix of desirable and undesirable tasks.
Hiring manager has unrealistic expectations
A hiring manager having pie in the sky expectations had sunk many candidate submissions by a financial services firm’s HR team. That is, until they used a little magic.
Now, every time a manager makes requests that cannot be fulfilled, they ask “Under what circumstances…” about that request.
Under what circumstances would you consider someone with less experience?
Under what circumstances would someone from a different college be okay?
Under what circumstances would you pay a bit more in salary?
Under what circumstances could someone without a degree do the job?
Time and time again, these managers would talk themselves into changing their own mind.
Staffing team is stuck in counterproductive habits
Just because you’ve always done something the same way doesn’t make it right. Cecilia, the new COO of a global staffing company, discovered that many of the challenges of the firm were rooted in ineffective business practices. Many of these business practices, including feature-benefit selling and most placeable candidate presentations, had been in place for years. Even though these practices weren’t working, her management team was convinced it was a bad idea to abandon these “best practices.”
Rather than managing by mandate (“change this because I said so”), she asked the management team the magic question.
Under what circumstances would it make sense for us to change these business practices?
Over the next 30 minutes, the managers told one another, instead of being told by the boss, all the reasons it would make sense to change long-treasured parts of their process. Within 60 days, the ideas from this meeting had replaced the ineffective business practices.
HR or talent acquisition team is stuck in counterproductive habits
“Behavioral interviewing has made our hiring better,” said Gilbert, the VP of HR for a manufacturing company. When pressed for details, Gilbert couldn’t provide them. His department had never measured the impact of behavioral interviews. He believed in this style of interviewing. This and this alone was enough proof.
What happened next? The magic question (no surprise).
Under what circumstances would it make sense to change how your company interviews?
Gilbert responded, “Proof. I’d want to see proof there was something better.”
Proof is what he got during the next round of machinist interviews. One group of candidates went through behavioral interviews. At the same time, another group went through experiential interviews. The result? Gilbert said it best: “It was so clear and obvious who we should hire from the experiential interviews. We could see proof that the people we picked could do the job. Behavioral interviews never provided that kind of definitive evidence.”
Talk is cheap when we’re the ones doing the talking. When we allow others to convince themselves, their words are priceless. Everything they say, they believe. Next time you want a job candidate, hiring manager, staffing pro, or HR exec to change their mind, let the most credible person do the talking That’s them, not you.
HR and staffing both impact the most important part of a company―it’s people. Yet, HR and staffing professionals continue to run afoul of one another, seeing the other party as the problem. In this podcast, I offer a way to improve this relationship.
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The best way to solve a problem is to keep it from happening. By avoiding common mistakes, we can avert all kinds of problems including those of the hiring variety. Interviews are a frequent part of the hiring process where people make avoidable mistakes.
How most of us were taught to interview is inherently flawed. During a typical interview a job candidate is on his best behavior. He tells you the right things and shares only the best parts of his background. We get a mere glimpse of the real person. This is top reason why so many hires fail. The conversations that take place during an interview fall short of determining, with certainty, if the candidate will succeed or fail at the job.
Here are five common interviewing mistakes and how you can avoid them.
Mistake #1
Picking the wrong people to interview
Some interviews shouldn’t have happened in the first place. When they do, there’s a common cause—the resume. Resumes reduce a person to a piece of paper, giving you but a peek of their true potential. Some candidates make matters worse by creating their own version of fake news when they lie or exaggerate details. Resumes are an incomplete tool for deciding who to invite for an interview.
Don’t rely solely on resumes when determining which candidates to include in your first round of interviews. In addition to having candidates submit their resume, ask them to follow simple directions and answer a few questions.
Here’s one of my favorite ways to do this.
When submitting your resume, answer the following questions. Keep each response to no more than 3 or 4 sentences.
Why does this job interest you?
Why are you looking for a job right now?
The responses can be insightful. You begin to see his knowledge of the company and the industry. You discover some of the motives driving his job search. You may learn he is happy and open to being happier. Or you may determine that he is desperate and throwing out lots of resumes so he can pay his bills. By including simple directions, you will also begin to assess his ability to follow directions.
Your questions and directions allow you to start comparing how his motives match your needs and culture. If he’s dishonest in his response, it’s likely that he’ll contradict himself later in the process. Plus, if he doesn’t follow the directions when answering your questions that’s a red flag. Following directions doesn’t get better after you hire someone.
Mistake #2
Expecting too much from a phone interview
Phone interviews are a conversation. Nothing more. During a conversation candidates do what I call the tell, sell, and swell. They tell you what they think you want to hear. They sell you on the best parts of their background. They try to swell your ego. Does this mean all of them are being dishonest? Of course not. It’s natural for candidates to position themselves in the best light. The problem with this very human behavior is that it interferes with determining if someone is worth bringing in for a face-to-face interview.
Given the limitations of conversations, phone interviews are best used only as a confirmation tool—you’re confirming he has abilities you can’t teach. These typically include effective verbal and aural communication, personality, and rapport. By focusing phone interviews on these important attributes, you’ll have short and powerful conversations that make it clear who’s worth bringing in and who’s not.
Mistake #3
Asking lots of questions during a face-to-face interview
Talking about doing work during a face-to-face interview is a waste of time. The candidate, given the opportunity, will continue his tell, sell, and swell. This creates a conceptual experience instead of providing you with an accurate reflection of whether or not he can perform well in the job.
Do this instead—have the candidate perform sample work. Work that allows you to see, hear, and experience him in action. You’ll see if he has the requisite skills, hear if he will fit in, and experience the quality of his work.
How do you set up sample work? Have candidates for sales jobs show how they sell. Let people interviewing for a supervisor role conduct a mock employee meeting. Have marketing candidates create a sample campaign. Direct accounting candidates to audit sanitized financials. By creating scenarios based upon past situations, you can let candidates try on the role while you try out their skills.
Mistake #4
Conducting face-to-face interviews alone
There’s too much for one person to see, hear, and experience during an interview. Plus, according to researchers Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, there are limits to our perception. A team approach to face-to-face interviews counters these problems.
A hiring team should have four people with complementary hiring styles (you can learn more about hiring styles in this post). All four people are present in the interview, giving you a complete picture from their unique perspectives.
Mistake #5
Overlooking a prime opportunity during a face-to-face interview
Success in most jobs happens because the employee improves over time. Improvement is initiated from feedback and coaching given by the manager. Not all hires are coachable, yet, most interviewers neglect to assess this trait.
You can assess the candidate’s coachability during a face-to-face interview. Have the candidate perform sample work. Then, provide feedback and coaching. Follow that with a second opportunity to do the sample work, watching if he applies your feedback. If he doesn’t, his coachability won’t improve once hired.
Mistake-free interviews are possible when you avoid these common errors. Instead of relying on the candidate’s tell, sell, and swell, you’ll see, hear, and experience your way to making fast and accurate hires.
We live in a world of swiping, scanning, and occasionally scrolling. Reviewing a daily news feed. Looking for new listings on a real estate app. Sifting through posts on social media. Sorting your emails. Finding love on a dating app. Our mobile devices allow us to quickly review lots of topics, messages, posts, and pictures. Every so often one grabs our attention prompting us to scroll through the details.
This common behavior has changed how we process information. And this includes how most hiring managers review candidates. These managers, regardless of age, swipe and scan through emails and resumes with ever-increasing speed. Only occasionally do they scroll through the details about someone who, after an initial glance, appears to potentially meet their needs.
As more of our interactions with information shift to our mobile devices, this behavior will only increase. Which is why people who present talent to hiring managers (including HR professionals, corporate recruiters, and staffing pros), must adapt how they submit talent. Here’s how.
Find the juicy relevant details
When do we go beyond swiping and scanning? When we see something that appears worthwhile. Could be an article offering five compelling solutions for a perplexing business problem. Maybe it’s a picture of the newest model of a popular device. Or it might include a combination of a picture and text, such as a snap of a yummy looking dish and a recipe title that promises low fat and big taste.
Take time to identify the juicy and relevant details about a candidate. Don’t just ask about her skills—have her tell you about the positive business outcomes created by those skills. Don’t just ask him how much experience he has—have him give you the specifics regarding how that experience was praised by bosses and colleagues. Attention grabbing details are there if you take the time to find them.
Create a compelling headline
Actress Renee Zellweger famously said to Tom Cruise’s Jerry McGuire, “You had me at ‘hello.’” That’s what happens just before we decide to scroll through a piece of content—the very first “hello” (what we see or hear) either grabs or repels our attention.
Your headline, be it your first spoken sentence, the voicemail you leave, or the subject line of an email, determines if the hiring manager keeps paying attention or swipes you aside.
When possible, add a picture
Pictures are powerful and are said to be worth a thousand words. We see this today in the success and growth of Instagram, along with the increasing popularity of video.
Presenting talent with pictures is an overlooked opportunity. No, this does not mean you send the candidate’s picture. You can send powerful visual proof of the value the candidate could bring to the job. Examples include a picture of
– a written performance review
– non-proprietary work created by the candidate
– an award plaque
Write an irresistible opening
What keeps us reading content beyond a headline or picture? When what we see next makes it clear that continued interest is worth it.
That’s what you’ll do with the additional juicy relevant details you uncovered in step 1. You’ll write a brief opening paragraph that includes that information. Want to be even more compelling? Tie these details into specific requests made by the hiring manager.
What does this look like in action? Here’s the opening spoken line (headline) and first paragraph from a voicemail message left by a recruiter at one of my clients last week. He also sent this same headline and paragraph as an e-mail after leaving the voicemail message. Included was a pic of the first page of her most recent performance review.
SUBJECT: I have someone for you who’s a combination of Joe Allen and Susan Habib
Hi Roberto. You told me to look for someone who has the skill of Joe and communication abilities of Susan. I have her! Because of her skill, Emily has eliminated $120,000 in expense from the departmental budget. Her manager praises her communication as one of the reasons for this. He also credits her abilities for solving persistent problems, much like those issues you’ve mentioned your department is facing.
Did this work? Like a charm. The hiring manager, who normally took days to reply (if he did at all) responded within three minutes, wanting to set up an interview as soon as possible.
Like it or not, we now live in a world that floods us with information from all directions. To help your candidates stand out, you’ve got to cut through that noise. Hiring managers will swipe and scan your candidate to the side unless you make it clear it’s worth their while to stop and scroll through the details.
Binging has become a popular activity. While binge watching some TV isn’t necessarily harmful, binge hiring is never a good idea. Here are tips to avoid this harmful practice.
There are lots of people who are passionate about the positive impacts of the HR profession. Then there’s Steve Browne. He’s a gifted HR leader combined with being the ultimate cheerleader for the profession. I had the pleasure of chatting with him recently. You’ll want to be sure to print a copy of this conversation and refer to his advice often.
Scott: For those who’ve not yet met you Steve, what should they know about you and your work?
Steve: I’m kind of a unicorn when it comes to Human Resources because it’s the only field I’ve been in throughout my career. I’ve held various roles in distinctly different industries, but always in HR. My current role is the one people in HR dream about because I’m expected to be a strategic businessperson. It’s not that I haven’t done this in the past, but now it’s more intentional. I get to work on culture and moving the business forward through our people.
Scott: I love the title of your new book, “HR on Purpose !!” Why was it important for you to write this book now?
Steve: It’s important because I’ve grown weary of people tearing down Human Resources. We’re one of the few fields where people take shots at it on a fairly regular basis. I want my peers in HR to know that what they do matters organizationally, personally, and professionally. I felt that I had a message that was positive and genuine based on experience and not just theory.
Scott: One of the valuable things you address in the book is changing counterproductive mindsets. You challenge readers to give up their preconceived notions about HR and instead develop HR into what it could be. What’s one of the most common of these counterproductive mindsets? How can people begin to change this right now?
Steve: A significant counterproductive mindset is basing how you practice HR on the exceptions versus the majority. We tend to take some anomaly in behavior and make a massive, stringent policy or procedure to address a fringe situation. We continue to miss the majority of people who are great to work with and are doing their best. We’ve dehumanized the workplace through structure and systems. The first step to take is to understand that if you loosen the reigns a bit that chaos will not break out. It just won’t. People want to have expectations and parameters to work within, and not a set of do’s and don’ts. Trust that people will bring their best, and they will.
Scott: Many HR leaders tell me that they’re ready to embrace new ideas, such as the faster hiring process I developed that eliminates hiring delays. However, some are having trouble getting company executives to buy-in. How can these HR leaders engage executives to support them in making these changes?
Steve: I believe we need to remind ourselves that executives are employees too. Since we have the ability and opportunity to work with all employees, we can feel that executives are approachable if we treat them as people and not titles. HR needs to learn to speak the language of every level of the organization so that they can be heard and valued. When meeting with execs there needs to be a business case and a business impact as part of the conversation. It’s not that ideas aren’t great on their own. However, putting together something from an overall business perspective is more likely to be considered because you’re speaking their language.
Scott: One’s one simple secret most people don’t know about staying passionate as an HR leader?
Steve: I think you have to truly believe in people. Not some poster catchphrase or cutesy slogan. Believe in others. They’re aching for someone to do that on a regular basis throughout companies of all sizes and types. People want to belong and HR can be that link for them. That energy drives passion. I know people will disappoint me, but I will disappoint others at times as well. The humanity and uniqueness of people motivates me because I get to meet and learn about the world through their eyes. It never gets old.
Scott: What’s one closing piece of advice you’d like to share with our readers?
Steve: I’d love for your readers to know that what they do matters and has a lasting impact on the lives of people. This is far more than “work” or “HR.” We’re in the people business and we have the chance to shape and improve lives. Something as simple as a warm “Hello” that is intentional and not just done in passing may be the one thing that breaks through to someone who needed to be acknowledged and noticed. I don’t mean to sound utopian. It’s just time for HR to own who it is and what it does within an organization. It’s time for us to practice on purpose!! (double exclamation points intended)
Scott: It’s hard not to feel good about the valuable work done by HR professionals when you’ve got Steve Browne telling it like it is. Be sure to read his book and follow his work. Here’s how you can do both:
It’s great to be kind. But taking that too far can undermine your effectiveness as a leader. Here’s how to combat this common problem.
| Writing can be tricky. Sometimes an article has a positive impact. Other times, a piece ends up being a dud. Then there are those articles that stand the test of time. Here’s one of them. |  |
I wrote the original version of The Importance of What You Do 17 years ago. Threase Baker, President of ABBTECH Professional Resources, sent me a copy of the original article, asking if I remembered when I wrote it. She went on to say that she’d been resending it to her staff every month for the past 17 years. Wow! I was stunned.
As a result of her comment, thought it was time to share it again. This time, I’ve updated it to include everyone in companies, organizations, and staffing and recruiting firms who are involved in hiring each day.
I hope you find this piece as meaningful as Threase did.
You also make a valuable contribution to the most important resource of a company—their people.
Without you, countless individuals would end up struggling through the job search process. You make it easier by paving the way for them.
Numerous positions would take longer to fill or even go unfilled without the help you provide.
You impact your co-workers each day in ways that you probably do not realize. It may be something as profound as the solution you offer for a problem or as simple as a shared smile that brightens their day.
During the very lonely and frightening experience of being “downsized,” you are there. You are a friendly face at a time when jobseekers need it the most.
Hiring managers benefit not only from your efforts, but also your insights. Your knowledge of hiring and the availability of talented candidates helps them every time you share this information with them.
Can one person make a difference? You already have just by choosing your career.
Thank you for the important impact that you make each day!
Time is valuable. Which is why a brief phone interview, done correctly, is a great use of your time. Here are four tips for making the most of these conversations with jobseekers.