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exposed to in a team environment to their own intellec- tual property. So part of the goal is to expose what the person’s individual skill set and background is verses that of a team environment. And two other areas I like to probe for: Explain what the worst possible day would look like for the candidate. Here is the worst possible day that you could have at WESTMED. If their response is, ‘Awesome, sign me up,’ that is generally not a very good thing. We're looking for things like, ‘How will I measure it? How will I be given the tools to be suc- cessful?’ And the last thing we ask is, ‘What are the last specific development areas from your last performance review?’ If we get back, ‘I just care too much,’ generally that’s not what we’re looking for, and that’s a big red flag because everybody has performance reviews and generally everybody has development errors.
Donald: Interviewees have gotten very sophisticated in knowing the questions we all ask and have their pre-command answers. This is part of the burden on the interviewer now—you really need to ask them questions that get them outside their comfort zone. You have to ask different kinds of questions and get them to a point where they weren’t prepared for it. In the course of employment, they are dealing with things on the spur of the moment because that is the way the world works—the email that comes in that changes your world, the phone rings and it changes what your day was going to be like. We want to be able to evalu- ate what they’re like under fire.
Joseph: Exactly. The interview is so valuable. You have to listen because when you interview someone, they are going to give you information, even if they might not know they are shooting themselves in the foot. But if you spend too much time coming up with questions while someone is sitting across from you, you are not really listening that well.
Robert: What about social media? Do any of you inves- tigate candidates via social media?
Richard: We do, because we’ve had situations where we got burned when we didn’t do it and the employer found a blog or a Twitter account or some inappropri- ate situation from two years ago. There is definitely times now where we get down to the nitty gritty to make sure that they are clean.
Gregory: I look at everybody online. If it’s in the public domain, it’s okay to look at it. What you don’t want to do is ask people for password or tech information— there is a reason for the password. But if you want 160 million strangers to see it, it’s okay for me to look at it.
Annette: Google the candidates. I tell candidates to Google themselves to see what’s out there because if you’re on the market, you have to clean it up. Perception is reality for people.
Luba: Agreed. If it gets to the point of extending an offer, we have several employers who do very thorough background checks—criminal history, all of those types of things.
Robert: Earlier, you had mentioned people being unem- ployed for a while, and that has been a phenomenon with the Great Recession. There has been talk in the media that some employers are electing to not hire those who have been out of work, say a year or more, because they feel that their work habits and skill sets might not be up to snuff. Do you think that is a valid concern?
Annette: The employer really needs to ask the candi- date, ‘What have you been doing with your time?’ If they have been volunteering, going to school, getting additional education, trying to keep their skill set cur- rent, then you want to dig further. It’s a concern; you need to probe.
Richard: The employer wants the right candidate for the job—whether out of work for six months, a year, or currently employed. As long as they have been keeping their skills sharp, I think that an employer will definitely take a good look at that person who might have been unemployed for a while.
Gregory: You cannot look for a job for 40 hours a week. You have to be doing other things. If you’re not doing other things, then that is a problem.
Donald: The candidate cannot be defensive about it, either. You are who you are; your background is what it is. You need to explain it, but you should not become defensive.
Luba: Some of the candidates I’ve worked with have been unemployed for quite a while. What I have always encouraged them to do is explore temporary, contract
Gregory Chartier
“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 some- thing. Even though the obvious thought that it is about salary, it is almost never about salary.“
positions. It helps them keep their skills current, it gets their foot in the door in various organizations—that can lead to full-time employment.
Robert: A few of you touched on the younger genera- tion—recent college grads. Do you have any observa- tions or generalizations you care to make or share about the current, recent graduates coming into the workplace?
Richard: They have short attention spans in terms of commitment to companies. The average expectancy for someone at a job is 18 months, because of access to jobs and new companies coming into the market. It’s a totally different world. They always think they’re going to be the next Bill Gates or Steve Jobs or Zuckerberg.
Joseph: With the millennial generation, whatever role they’re in, they have to be engaged in doing project work that is based in thinking out of the box and less about turning the widget the same way everyday. It becomes the responsibility of the organization—know who you are playing with and put them in roles that tap into that, because, if you do that successfully, then you can get everything that they have to offer.
Luba: The younger generation doesn’t really seem to have that much concern about career growth and pro- gression in the long term. They’re really looking more towards relationships and having a social interaction in their work environments and making sure that the people whom they work with are all great people to work with.
Joseph: They are less apt to climb that corporate ladder. Luba: Yes, exactly!
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