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Roundtable
Donald Zinn
“I grew up in a world where we hired for potential, and we looked at people who were an 80-percent fit for the job—that 20-percent gap was your challenge as the employee. Who wants to do a job where you’ve done 98 percent of it in the past?“
on this candidate?’ They’re going to take a $50,000 pay cut, but if I can get nine months, 12 months, 15 months out of that person, maybe it’s worth that chance, even though there is an opportunity cost of losing that person.
Donald: The greatest pushback we have gotten recently with the price points with ‘over-qualified’ candidates is that they’ve been leaving. They came here and sold you up the river that they were going to stay in a job for two years, but maybe you got a year and a half out of them. Now the company might not want to do that again; they might want to get somebody within that salary structure that they have right now.
Gregory: Part of the ROI is how long you think that person is going to stay anyway. Nobody is com- ing to stay for 10 years—nobody believes that is happening. So if you get two or maybe three good years out of somebody, maybe that’s a great ROI. It depends on the situation, but nobody is sticking around for 10 years anymore.
Annette: The average I think is 18 months. Gregory: The talent is not only hard to get, it’s hard
to keep.
Joseph: And if they do stay 10 years it’s almost a red flag now.
Robert: So it all comes down to the interview.
Joseph: Something we have tried to put in our managers’ minds at WESTMED is to probe with an unyielding curiosity that borders on skepticism. When we interview candidates, we want to know their past mistakes. We want them to be transpar- ent with us, because, frankly, we don’t hold our existing staff mistake-free. We expect people to make mistakes, so if you can’t in an interview pro- cess name a mistake, that means you are probably fabricating...
Gregory: You mean they’re lying...
Joseph: They’re lying! Really probe, probe, probe. Because if somebody has been with a company for a long time, that could be great! But that also could be very bad.
Luba: I think it depends on the kind of role that you’re recruiting for. If somebody has been with the same company for let’s say eight or 10 years, but over the course of those years they have shown progressive career growth and development, that may be the ideal person. Long-term tenure with a company can be good as well as skills, responsibili- ties, their commitment, their loyalty, their leadership.
Robert: What are some of the biggest red flags you think employers should look out for, or are there any yellow flags that may surprise that employer during the vetting process that could be potential
deal-breakers for the candidacy?
Gregory: I’m a natural cynic, unfortunately. I go into the interview process on the assumption that they’re all lying. And they are going to lie about something. Even though the obvious thought that it is about salary, it is almost never about salary. It’s really about why you left your last job. That would be the first thing I would focus on. And I like to connect that to salary if I can. If the job is great but the money did not come along with it, then there is some disconnect there.
Luba: Someone not providing a reference of a direct supervisor for me is always a red flag. Again that goes to your point—probably why they left the organization. Perhaps a supervisor would not pro- vide positive feedback on their performance. You should always be able to provide at least one or two people that you reported to directly.
Richard: One of the red flags is that they left all of them for the same reason. If there are four jobs over the last 20 years and it is the exact same reason, it is going to be an issue at your company at some point in the process. That is a big red flag for us if we get that consistent answer over a period of time.
Gregory: The most common reason people give on why they’re leaving is for some version of a better opportunity. That is why you want to pursue, ‘What is that? What does the better opportunity look like?’
Joseph: You just left a company with 30,000 peo- ple—there were no opportunities there?
Annette: And that gets to the motivation, too. I always ask the candidates, ‘What would be your ideal next step?’ and, of course, they always say ‘This job.’ But then you dig deeper and probe more, and get really specific to make sure that it’s going to be the right match and the right time. Because you might have a great person and the culture and the fit might be great, but the timing is off on either side. It is very important for employers to constantly be interviewing and have a talent pool and have a flow of candidates at all times, regardless of what you have open—this market changes from day to day and week to week, and you really need to have a pool.
Gregory: One more thing about red flags, on resu- més especially: I think the number of adjectives and adverbs are a red flag. The more adjectives and adverbs, the worse, because they don’t tell you anything. So people who are ‘exposed’ to things, it won’t tell you anything.
Joseph: Greg makes a phenomenal point. There are three areas that we probe for. One of them is, ‘What has happened in the last five to 10 years?’ People generally work in teams. What we found candi- dates are doing is portraying what they have been
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