Are Performance Appraisals Doomed?

During the last year there has been a tsunami of interest among HR managers to revamp, redesign, or eliminate the performance appraisal process. And for good reason: our research shows that more than 70% of all organizations dislike the process they have and I have yet to talk with an employee or manager who likes it at all (one client calls it a “soul-crushing exercise”).

Is this process doomed? Well it’s definitely due for a major overhaul.

We started studying this area back in 2006 when people were very excited about topics like cascading goals, pay for performance, goal alignment, and automated performance management software. This all seemed very exciting and companies like SuccessFactors became billion dollar businesses (now part of SAP) selling automated tools to help companies put this entire process online.

But as companies snapped up software and automated goal-setting and appraisals, managers and HR have become more and more unhappy with the process itself.

The Deloitte 2013 Human Capital Trends research discovered that 1/3 of all global organizations want to revamp their performance management process in the next year and 2/3 within the next three years.

In fact the research we are gathering now shows that fewer than 30% of all organizations feel their existing process drives any level of performance or engagement at all (rather it simply helps evaluate people for compensation and promotion).

If you haven’t given your appraisal process serious thought, it’s probably time. Today, as the economy recovers, employee engagement and retention are among the most important drivers of success – and most traditional appraisals do little or nothing to make people feel good about their work.

Let me give you a few things to think about.

1. The traditional process of appraisal, giving people ratings, is based on an old-fashioned view of employment.

Appraisal forms were developed in the early 1900s when employees were “workers” and managers were “supervisors.” The supervisor rated and ranked people based on output.

While we certainly want to hold people accountable for goals, in today’s organizations more than 70% of workers are “knowledge workers” or “service providers.” These are people who become more productive and valuable over time .. so the more we coach and develop them, the more productive and happy they become. Hence the drive to move the process away from “competitive evaluation” toward what we call “coaching and development.”

I wont quote all the research on this topic, but it’s clear to most people that what people want from a manager is someone to help us improve – not someone to “evaluate us.” Company after company is starting to do away with “forced rankings” and shifting from “evaluation” to “development.” After all, the process is called “performance management” not “performance evaluation.”

Focusing on development really pays off. We did research a few years ago which showed that companies which provide high levels of development planning and coaching to their employees have a third less voluntary turnover and generate twice the revenue per employee of their peers. These are huge returns.

Why? Because these are companies that look at employees as high valued resources who should continuously be developed – and they give managers the tools and training to coach and develop people.

2. Managers don’t “supervise” people so they can’t assess performance like they used to.

The second big change which has taken place is the flattened, team-oriented, networked nature of companies. We often don’t see or work with our manager for days or weeks at a time, so our real “performance” should be evaluated and reviewed by all the people we work with – that is, our team-mates.

Software vendors often call this “social performance management” and a lot of startups have tried to build tools to make this work online. Most have failed to create a lot of traction, because this not a market of “online tools” but rather a change in the way the process works. While lots of interesting ideas are out there (Read “The Crowdsourced Performance Review” by Eric Mosely for lots of good ideas), they all get back to some basic things:

A) Feedback should come from multiple sources, not just the manager.

B) Teams should evaluate each other during projects, not only once per year.

C) Feedback should to be “developmental” – not just positive (which is very hard to do).

One consultant we hired used the phrase “feedback is a gift.” You give it as a gift and you receive it as a gift. Without a “feedback-rich culture” no amount of online software is going to make your organization start to talk openly about performance. And the more feedback people provide, the more performance goes up.

3. Goals change frequently.

The third reason traditional appraisals aren’t working is the dynamic nature of goals. MOre than 60% of companies set goals annually. These organizations are seeing less than 1/3 the impact of this process than companies which reset goals quarterly. And if you’re a believer in “agile management,” you know that managers should review goals with employees every week.

When we try to capture goals once per year in a complex “cascading” fashion we create a rigid process which gets out of date. A well known company who pioneered this model told me a few months ago that it was causing major problems: this particular company shifted its engineering team goals from “output” to “quality” in the middle of the year and nobody had a single goal focused in that area. It was a major challenge to get people to shift gears and move in a new direction.

So whatever process we use, not only do we need multiple people creating feedback, we also need to adjust and update goals more frequently.

4. Managers need to learn how to coach people well, leveraging recognition and feedback not just evaluation.

Anyone who has had an appraisal knows that it’s not a fun process. Not only do you seem to remember only the “bad things” but you feel nervous the entire time, which makes you somewhat unable to listen to the feedback.

And it’s just as hard for managers. When an individual is promoted to manager they suddenly take on a new job, they now must direct, coach, and evaluate people. That is a big change and most technical experts do not take to it immediately.

Unfortunately most companies don’t spend very much money on first line leadership training (it’s the lowest spending level in leadership development) and the nobility of management is often not rewarded. Being someone’s manager is an awesome and fairly intimidating experience – we have to respect this huge job and help managers learn to do it well.

Our research on employee recognition shows that companies with a “recognition rich culture” far outperform those which are more “punitive” or “evaluative” in nature. This is all about human nature: when we feel recognized and valued we are very willing to take more feedback and focus on improvement. If all we hear is criticism, most people stop listening and often leave.

So when we set up a process that includes a big box with “rating” at the end, we essentially encourage managers to focus on the “appraisal” and not the feedback, recognition, and coaching.

5. Boss-less teams often outperform manager led teams.

As organizations become flatter (companies like GE have reduced the number of levels by a factor of two over the last 20 years) more and more research shows that “boss-less teams” outperform those with “bosses.”

Have you ever been given an assignment to work with a team when there is no clear boss? It’s very empowering and lots of research shows that these teams far outperform those with strong leaders. Companies like GE, WL Gore, Valve, Github and others talked about their examples in the Wall Street Journal last year. In every case they found that “leaderless teams” outperformed those with a “boss.”

This is not to say that we don’t need strategic leaders in organizations – but rather it points out that a traditional “manager-led” appraisal may not be as valuable as we think. One of our clients put it to me this way: by giving our managers an “appraisal form” we tell them that we don’t think they’re smart enough to know how to coach and manage their teams, so we force them to do it a prescribed way.

I’ve had the opportunity to lead several organizations in my career and as I look back on my successes and failures in many cases the biggest problem I had was being “too prescriptive” and not empowering people enough. Performance appraisal is among the most “top-down” tools we have in management.

Where is this going?

We have done a lot of research on this topic over the last few years and nearly 45% of all the organizations we recently surveyed told us they are taking a serious look at their performance management (e.g. appraisal) process.

Our perspective is that this particular HR process needs to be “unlinked” from everything else. Too many HR strategies rely on the appraisal as the core tool to develop compensation, development, leadership potential, and every other activity in a person’s career. This makes it too onerous and difficult and shifts it away from coaching and development.

I’d encourage you to browse through our performance management framework to get a better perspective of where things are going. We are just completing a webinar series featuring companies like Adobe, New York Life, and Juniper talking about their new models which do away with the “rating.”

Are performance appraisals doomed?

The process is not doomed, but it’s time for a change. Today performance management must be more developmental, coaching-based, agile, and frequent. And many companies are doing away with ratings altogether (replacing them with feedback).

via Are Performance Appraisals Doomed? | LinkedIn.

Are Performance Appraisals Doomed?

A Critical Quality You Want in Your Employees? It’s Inquisitiveness

“I want to buy a flip phone; I do not want one of those new phones. I do not text because it gives you carpel tunnel syndrome. I can’t be bothered to use that GPS system [even though he gets lost every day]. I do not do online banking.”

One of the main competencies that any company today should look for in any new employee is inquisitiveness. If you are looking to build a stable of expat-eligible employees, do yourself a favor and move inquisitive to the top of the list.

As I talk to executives across the globe, I have zeroed in on that and, like a pit bull, I will not let it go.

The drive to figure things out

We all have a certain elasticity to change. Some people have the bandwidth to be able to plop down anywhere, while others are like an aged rubber band — there is no elasticity left (if there ever was any).

Those quotes listed above have nothing to do with technology. They have all to do with just being inquisitive enough to try and figure things out.

My daughter told me one Sunday morning, “Let him sit there all day [Christmas Day] because you know he will not leave it until he has figured it out.” I had just been given my first iPod and I was determined to figure out EVERY feature. The elasticity that day was off the chart.

Innovation comes from being inquisitive

Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg and others all had an idea and they would not give it up. Sure, there were some failures along the way, but they would always get back up and get back on it.

As a voracious reader of autobiographies, the constant thread I see in them is having the trait of being inquisitive. I have always been a big believer in the maxim that your reaction to a set of circumstances can greatly determine its outcome. That, to me, is what being inquisitive is all about.

One of the questions that I ask people is to tell me about their travel and vacation experiences. Are you are the type of vacationer that goes to Disney every year? Do you own a passport? Are you the guided tours type, or the one that buys the tickets and hotel and then just figures it out as you go?

My line of questioning and discussion goes down this road. You would be absolutely surprised at the answers that I get from some of these lines of questioning. However, asking these questions allow me to filter out the people who would not be a good candidate, because this competency is at the top of our list.

At my company, we are asking people to move 7000 miles away from home (to Saudi Arabia) and use their technical skills to be productive in a totally new environment. So yes, that is our main competency.

What is your inquisitive quotient?

This enables me to build a profile of someone’s ability to adapt to different situations. This is also important line of questioning based on our business and what we look for. This type of questioning may not be relevant in your line of business and your model, but getting to an inquisitive quotient is so very important in evaluating talent today.

I think this is one of the main competencies that should drive your talent search. If you are in a disruptive industry, that has to be the mainstay of what you do.

The meaning of inquisitive, by my definition, is a person that is inclined to investigate, eager for knowledge, unduly curious and inquiring.

When a person has this trait, they inquire. They ask questions. They become relentless in finding out the answers. They try different things to get the answers they seek. By nature, this person needs to know as much information as possible.

Competencies are the components of the recipe

“All that separates you from your competitors are the skills, knowledge, commitment and the abilities of the people that work for you,” says Prof. Jeffery Pfeffer of Stanford University. That statement speaks to the importance of getting the right people in the door.

The filter that your organizations use will dictate your success. That is why we should all develop competencies based on our industry, our business model, our strategic goals, and the challenges that we are trying to surmount.

As a person that loves to bake, I know that you should always use the best ingredients to get the best results. Competencies are the ingredients that you are looking for.

To find the best talent, your competency model should be constructed not from best practices or based on some list that you came across. It should be dictated by all the variables that your company and industry are facing and how you plan on working through them.

How inquisitiveness can help your organization

Choosing the right competency will allow your organization to

Recruit and select the best employees;

Plan how to organize and develop their workforce;

Manage and train your employees effectively;

Develop your staff.

As they say, yes, it is that important if it is success that you are after. If not, well, it really does not matter, does it?

Remember what Albert Einstein said: “I have no particular talent. I am merely inquisitive.“

via A Critical Quality You Want in Your Employees? It’s Inquisitiveness.

A Critical Quality You Want in Your Employees? It’s Inquisitiveness

The "Fit" Factor: No Experience Necessary

In the past, it seemed as though companies prided themselves on finding the most experienced candidates to fill open positions with the viewpoint that experience automatically must have meant quality. However, it seems that more and more, employers are finding out that this line of thinking is outdated, and often times, misguided.

Jeff Fluhr, CEO of Spreecast, recently discussed the notion of personal and cultural fit over experience with the New York Times. Fluhr, who previously ran StubHub for seven years before selling it to eBay, has developed his own hiring system over the years, which includes looking beyond the traditional resume and focusing more on how the potential hire could succeed as a part of the team. “I’ve found that the softer characteristics of a person — the cultural fit, the chemistry fit, their personality traits, their level of optimism — are far more important than somebody’s experience. What I was often doing at StubHub as the company grew was to say, ‘O.K., we need a V.P. of marketing and we want somebody who’s been a V.P. marketing at another consumer Internet company, and hopefully, they’ve done these certain things because that’s what we need.’ But the reality is that if you get somebody who’s smart, hungry and has a can-do attitude, they can figure out how to do A, B and C, because there’s really no trick to most of these things.”

Identifying candidates with the right attitude and willingness to learn quickly, as Fluhr pointed out, can be indicators of true quality. When employers begin to take personality and fit into consideration in conjunction with or even over the traditional screening practices, they may very well open themselves up to an entirely new market of talent. Furthermore, Fluhr believes that the questions hiring managers are used to asking have also dramatically shifted. He said, “I still sometimes find myself falling into the trap of thinking, when I’m trying to fill a role, ‘Has the person done the work that the role requires?’ That’s the wrong question. It should be, ‘Let’s find a person who has the right chemistry, the right intellect, the right curiosity, the right creativity.’ If we plug that person into any role, they’re going to be successful.”

Ultimately, this approach to hiring based on fit over experience may not work for each individual company, and perhaps traditional practices may never truly fade away. But Fluhr has found a unique way to channel business strategy – that is, building the right team to achieve high results – into his recruitment process.

via The “Fit” Factor: No Experience Necessary – RecruitingBlogs.

The "Fit" Factor: No Experience Necessary

Beyond the Fairy Tale: A Contrarian’s View of Employee Engagement

Every day I get alerts on new articles, blogs and books on employee engagement.

I expected that, at some point, the content would start to slow down vs. grow, but it has not happened. There seem to be endless conversations about this topic, and you’d think that employee engagement is some sort of state of nirvana.

With all this happy talk about engagement, there needs to be a contrarian voice. Here are a few things to think about that do not show up in most employee engagement articles.

A contrarian’s history of employee engagement

Once upon a time there was something called a job for life. Along with the job for life came a relic called a pension. For those of you who can’t remember what a pension is, it’s a guaranteed monthly income, usually accompanied by health insurance, that stays with a former employee during retirement.

Oh, retirement? That’s something people used to be able to do when they worked in the job-for-life company. The deal was a job for life in exchange for loyalty. But, this happy story did not last too long when the economy came crashing down.

Companies were hit by global competition, new entrants to their markets and poor economic conditions. That meant costs had to be cut, and people had to go. Layoffs, downsizing, and RIFs (reduction in force) were the new buzzwords. Things had to change.

The mantra moved from jobs for life to the “new employment contract.” Why would an employee want a job for life when the world out there is so exciting and he/she could hop from company to company, develop skills and be happier?

I worked in HR during this transitional time, and I started teaching HR in the universities then. I was one of the people teaching the young about the new world where they should not worry about their job for life. Not only can they move from firm to firm, but also they can become entrepreneurs and be in charge of their own careers and lives.

Taking away jobs for life meant corporate labor expenses were reduced, and when the economy recovered, sales and profits started to increase while costs were minimized. And the new employment deal, with employees hopping and organizations doing layoffs, did reduce expenses.

When a lack of loyalty takes its toll

However, the other half of the equation — the no loyalty part — was starting to take its toll on organizations. Leaders realized they didn’t want everyone to leave; they wanted the best people to be loyal and stay.

The employees, however, were doing OK with the new deal. We taught them well; these new deal employees had no reason to be loyal to one company. They watched their parents lose their jobs, and some of them are now financially supporting their parents.

But what should leaders do? They don’t want to go back to jobs for life, and they remember the days of the economic decline. Employers want it all: loyalty, love and the ability to lay off (the three L’s).

Now comes the part of the story where the good fairy employee engagement swoops in. It’s a magical tale. Employees should start going “above and beyond” (whatever that means), become emotionally and positively attached to their organizations, and they should do all this for pretty much nothing in exchange. These people, who are under the new employment contract, will be super employees, love their companies and be engaged — just because.

My favorite quote in all the employee engagement articles was published in Fortune. It’s titled No Employee Left Behind, and in it, Randall MacDonald of IBM states: “Soon we’ll be talking about marrying all those employees to whom we’ve engaged.” It’s like the prince rescues the princess at the end of the story. Engagement and marriage — all is happy.

What is engagement anyway?

This may be my favorite part of the story. The dictionary definition of engagement is:

“The act of engaging or the state of being engaged. Betrothal. Something that serves to engage; a pledge, or,

A promise or agreement to be at a particular place at a particular time.”

Is this what’s needed to grow, innovate and be successful? People show up at work? That’s why engagement is starting to backfire.

We also learned that:

Being there is not enough.

Engagement has to mean something tangible vs. everything to everybody.

The questions, “engaged in what” and “for what” have to be answered.

Engagement just may be the wrong word, the wrong concept and it’s probably the wrong time to keep focusing on it. Business is about performance, and high performing people are needed to grow a business. High performing people are smart, and they are not easily fooled.

It’s time to go beyond the fairy tale of employee engagement and move to a more rigorous, business-focused approach to managing people at work.

via Beyond the Fairy Tale: A Contrarian’s View of Employee Engagement.

Beyond the Fairy Tale: A Contrarian’s View of Employee Engagement

How Linkedin Hires Internally

“You probably want to know if we eat at our own restaurant,” says LinkedIn LNKD -0.16% Chief Executive Jeff Weiner, with a smile. Tapping into LinkedIn’s databases has become second nature for big companies battling for talent. Organizations as diverse as Dell DELL +0.22% and National Public Radio use LinkedIn’s most expensive search tools to widen and accelerate their hunts.

So what about LinkedIn itself? Weiner runs a fast-growing operation–revenue was up 59% last quarter–and constantly needs more engineers, salespeople and corporate managers. Sure enough, LinkedIn’s own recruiters have a lot to teach others through their incessant and highly demanding use of house products, constantly testing new features in search of more powerful results.

Start with something as fundamental as where to look. LinkedIn’s databases can generate heat maps of the U.S., showing local variations between job listings and available talent for specific industries. So while LinkedIn still does much of its software engineer hiring in the obvious places such as Silicon Valley, Seattle and New York City, it is alert to “hidden gem” markets such as the Washington, D.C. metro area and Dallas/Fort Worth, where the supply and demand of engineering talent are in better balance.

To catch candidates’ attention, LinkedIn’s first moves are disarmingly low-key. Anyone who happens to glance at a LinkedIn employee’s profile is likely to see a nearby ad or piece of sponsored content from LinkedIn sharing a bit of itself. The goal is to induce these site-surfers to “follow” LinkedIn’s company page. Once that happens it’s easier to aim job ads or more content at them. Such digital serenades are known as “adding warmth.” In a recent hunt for systems-infrastructure engineers, Weiner’s team discovered that more than 35% of leading prospects were people who were already digitally acquainted with LinkedIn. That’s no accident. Three years ago LinkedIn had fewer than 50,000 followers; today it has more than 550,000.

Another lesson learned the hard way: Just because you can create a fussy list of criteria for candidates doesn’t mean you should. When LinkedIn hunted for its first data-center manager, the company’s own site originally found only seven identifiable people on Earth who met all conditions. Brendan Browne, the company’s director of global talent acquisition, warned that it could take 18 months to pry anyone from a current job.

So LinkedIn loosened up. It lopped off four dubious requirements, such as insisting that candidates have spent at least three years in their current jobs. Voilà!–126 candidates. Within a few months the job was filled. “We don’t need eight to ten years of people doing x,” says Weiner. “In fact, we may not want someone who has spent too much time working in a large-company culture.” Instead, LinkedIn needs agility and speed.

Even in data-rich LinkedIn, Weiner emphasizes intangibles that don’t show up on a résumé–qualities such as leadership, resourcefulness and humor. When he interviews candidates face-to-face, he often asks how they want to see their career in 20 to 30 years, to discern who is well-aligned with LinkedIn’s culture. “It’s a lot like M&A. People sometimes get too caught up in getting the deal done, when maybe they shouldn’t be doing the deal at all,” Weiner says. Unlike a lot of Web 2.0 firms, LinkedIn is a haven for disciplined planners. Managers create detailed road maps–and stick to them. For constant improvisers, there’s always Twitter.

via Backstage At LinkedIn’s Talent Cafe: How Do You Guys Hire? – Forbes.

How Linkedin Hires Internally

How to Ace Your Job Hunt and Work with Recruiters: The Ultimate Guide

Over the years I have spoken with hundreds of people who need some general job hunting (and staying at a job!) advice. I started compiling some hints, tricks, tips, thoughts, aphorisms, maxims, adages, proverbs, truisms and the occasional soliloquies. After awhile, I stopped talking and started sending people a document. The document grew and grew. I am sharing it with you below.

I hope it will help with any job hunts you do and I also hope it will save you time with candidates. Take a read of my article and get back to me with any specific questions in the comments below.

(An important note, I have been using this so long I have no idea what is 100% mine, what I “borrowed” from elsewhere, and what I simply cut and pasted. So, if I used your work, MEA CULPA!)

Job searching is a full-time job:

You need to wake up early apply to every job you can find! Call companies and ask to speak to HR and don’t be shy. What is your search strategy? IMNSHO, leveraging connections is the best way. After that, what I do is set myself a goal of 10 resume sends a day. I email 5 to jobs that are posted, and 5 Pro-Active ones to HR Managers (Who I find via LinkedIN) of companies that I’d like to work for. I keep a spread sheet of everything, and do a follow-up call one week to the day later…

Resumes:

Every job you send your resume too is different. Why would you send the same resume to every job? Change your summary to reflect the role you are applying for, and use the language of the job… Move bullets around to match what is important in the description. NEVER EVER LIE— But it is often not what you say, but how you say it. Job hunting is a series of hoops that all lead to an offer. The first hoop is getting an interview request based on your resume.

Interviews:

1. Do your research before an interview – real research, understand the company and what your role is. If you go to an interview without knowing about the company, you’ll fail.


2. Don’t go to an interview more than 15 minutes early – 5 minutes is perfect.


3. If you’re late to an interview or work, call ahead. That will probably make it insignificant.


4. Most managers interviewing are NOT professional interviewers. Memorize the job description and ask questions about the position early – gear your answers to that.


5. Don’t mention kids, marriage, your gender or race. The EEOC scares everyone hiring, you don’t want them worried about making a decision about you because they now know this.


6. Don’t forget it’s an interview. Stay professional, great interviewers will make you laugh and comfortable and don’t use any inappropriate language.

Working with agencies and recruiters:

1. If you’re working and an agency says something is temp to hire, ask if they’ll hire you will they be continuing the job search? Has HR/finance approved the headcount/budget? Ask both the recruiter and the hiring manager this.


2. Make sure if you use a staffing agency they call you before sending your résumé, especially if you use more than one.


3. If a recruiter keeps trying to get you jobs out of your field, ditch them. You need to stay in your field.

 General job hunting advice:

1. Have a legitimate LinkedIn profile and connect with everyone!


2. Stay working in your field. If you lose a job spend every waking moment applying and calling into your profession. Nothing hurts a job search more than time not working.


3. Do not sound desperate, sound inquisitive, be receptive but question the company and if it is good enough for you. Don’t put the job on a pedestal.


4. Don’t be late or miss any days of work in your first 180 days. Just don’t. It leaves a very sour taste in your manager’s mouth. It doesn’t matter how good the excuse is. Get sent home, don’t call out.


5. Don’t ever send a mass thank you email.


6. Set up job posting alerts on job sites. When you get an email that a job you’re interested in has been posted, stop at nothing to apply instantly.


7. Pay your cell phone bill, don’t change your number and answer every call. A lot of recruiters don’t always call people back or play phone tag well (we kind of suck at that!)


8. Leave a voicemail if you call someone and they don’t pick up. Speak slowly, keep it brief and leave your number.


9. Don’t use slang. Don’t say ax instead of ask. Don’t say we was or we were. Ditch your accent and try to sound like Brian Williams or Barbara Walters.


10. No weird piercings (ie: no nose or tongue rings), hair colors tattoos etc – be professional!


11. Suit up. This is Non-Negotiable. If its retail or fast food, if they don’t hire you because you’re wearing a suit (it happens) you don’t want to work there, and you can find a good manager that wants you there.


12. Unless you have a uniform or its explicitly stated to you, on your first day suit up. The next day you dress like the rest of your team.


13. Don’t be one of the “cool kids”. Every company has a group of employees that are too cool to buy in to the company. They don’t want to hang out with their coworkers or follow rules. They like to ignore duties, complain and gossip. Don’t join them.


14. Stroke egos. Don’t suck up, that’s annoying. Ask advice from managers, follow their advice.


15. If you’re in college get an internship. Your degree is worthless without it.

via How to Ace Your Job Hunt and Work with Recruiters: The Ultimate Guide.

How to Ace Your Job Hunt and Work with Recruiters: The Ultimate Guide

How to Ace Your Interview and Land the Job: Interview Tips 101

The interview is your opportunity to make an unforgettable impression on the company you want to work for and get the job you want. Here are some hints and pointers that will help you make that positive impression:

Preparation:

Always be fully prepared – often it is the one thing that an otherwise very competent candidate is lacking. DO YOUR HOMEWORK! Some of you are wondering what does that mean? Some tips for that include:

1. Drive to the location before the interview so that you know how to get there, where there is parking etc.


2. Know the full name and title of the individual you are to meet with.


3. Learn as much as you can about the company.


4. Find out as much as you can about the interviewer and what they look for in a good candidate.


5. Know what your goals and objectives are for the future so that you can measure these against what is being offered.


6. Prepare questions that are specific to that position and that company.


7. Always be professionally dressed. Even in business casual environments a business suit is required for the interview process.


8. Arrive on time.


9. Bring hard copies of your resume. Often the interviewer will have printed it for themselves but it is always good practice to have it on hand just in case.


10. Bring a pen and a note pad in case you want to or need to make any notes.

The Interview:

1. Remember this is your opportunity to shine. When greeting the interviewer make eye contact, extend a firm handshake and address your interviewer by last name.


2. The interview is your chance to bring forth your strengths and to point out areas of your expertise that are applicable to this position. If you think you might forget some of these at the time, because of nerves, then be sure to list them on your note pad and, with your interviewers permission, refer to them. It would be best if you could remember them in case you do not get the opportunity to refer to your notes. Practice your answers; it will help in your memory.


3. If you are interested in the opportunity, indicate that to the prospective employer.

Do’s and Don’ts:

1. Be on time or a few minutes ahead of the scheduled time.


2. If an application is necessary; fill it out in its entirety. Nothing is more annoying to an interviewer than looking at a blank application if it is part of their process. This, ladies and gentlemen, applies equally to interviews with companies and recruitment firms.


3. Remember to smile and present yourself in an energetic and professional manner at all times.


4. Never speak negatively about past employers or peers.


5. Always maintain eye contact.


6. Ask questions that are pertinent to the position and company.


7. Point out areas that are a match between your skills and the requirements of the position.


8. Be prepared to discuss ways in which you have excelled or situations where you have demonstrated your initiative and ability to be proactive.


9. Be enthusiastic and positive.


10. Bring an original copy of your resume.


11. Always answer with a complete sentence. No “yes” or “no” answers.


12. Never smoke or chew gum in an interview.

Questions:

Arrive prepared to answer questions about:

1. Your strengths and weaknesses.


2. Why you are interested in that company.


3. What you know about the company.


4. Why they should hire you.

Arrive prepared to ask questions, such as:

1. What would be my day to day responsibilities?


2. What is the career path from this position?


3. What is the company policy on promoting from within?


4. How do I fit this role?

Do not ask questions like:

1. How much vacation do you offer?


2. Never initiate the salary question. Let your interviewer bring it up at the appropriate time.


3. How many sick days are offered?

Questions such as these only leave the impression that you are only interested in how this role and company will serve your needs rather than a give and take of rights, expectations and responsibilities.

When Interviewing with a Recruiting Firm:

This step in the process is often underestimated and mistreated. In the current market more than 70% of available opportunities are handled by recruitment firms. This includes permanent, contract, temporary and project. Please remember when you have a meeting with a recruiter whatever side of your personality you choose to display is the side your recruiter will tell their client about.

If you mistreat your recruiter by being late, not completing their internal forms, being surly and uncooperative in the interview with them or in the time you spend in their reception area they WILL NOT REFER YOUR RESUME to their client. This is not because they want to be mean to you but because you are their reputation. Give this some thought…recruiters do not manufacture anything, Their product is their customer service and YOU.

If you, the candidate, mistreat the recruiter they can only assume you will also mistreat their client. They have worked long and hard to get that client and they will not risk sending someone in who will potentially damage that relationship.

via How to Ace Your Interview and Land the Job: Interview Tips 101.

How to Ace Your Interview and Land the Job: Interview Tips 101