The Jay Love Blog : interviewing

Are Face to Face Job Interviews Worth Doing?

Jay Love — Thu, 28 May 2009 20:46:00 GMT

I have often pondered this topic because it does seem to be so subjective. Most of us are so visually oriented I do not think we can help but let appearances change our perspective. I personally believe there is much more hindering our judgment than what our eyes lead us to think.

A few blog posts back, I outlined in detail the hiring process for a local NPO I originally served as the first board chairman, and on whose board I currently serve. Here is that link in case you did not catch it the first time. I mentioned the process detailed closely follows most of the hiring processes at eTapestry. I will explain some of the finer points in a minute below.

Yesterday, I was perusing my latest issue of Fast Company. Within the June issue I found an article which literally fortified my reasoning and beckoned me to add another post to my blog: "Made to Stick: Hold the Interview" by Dan Heath and Chip Heath. Please read the article, because you will soon see how many mistakes can be made in the hiring process and some wonderful remedies.

To offer up some reasoning for my thought process, I must turn to one of my early mentors. His name was Curt Milliman, who retired as a successful businessman, but returned (thankfully) as a business and hiring consultant. I still have pages of notes from the numerous seminars I sat in with Curt back in the 80's. To this day, I still turn to them. In fact, I recently scanned them so I could preserve them longer since the pages were getting harder to read each time I perused them.

Curt told us finding, hiring and retaining the right, top notch people were the biggest factors in the success of any business. In fact, for a small start-up business, they can literally be the difference between keeping the doors open or not!

Often, I would press Curt for more details with my never ending questions. He would teach me that the hiring process is a science just as pure as Astronomy or Physics or Biology. I remember like it was yesterday, Curt stating, as your business grew, the best examples of what to look for in new employees were already in front of you with your current best employees. The qualities, and more importantly the daily behaviors, which made those current employees outstanding were all you had to identify in new hires.

Finding those behaviors is not easy, especially for positions where performance standards and measurements are a daily part of life. In those roles, what might look good on a resume or in a face-to-face interview, may not hold up when the performance standards, measurements and comparisons are made.

Curt insisted we must find those people by more scientific standards. We had to create scenarios much more like a controlled scientific experiment so we could pull out objective results rather than subjective opinions. From these discussions, we created such instruments as the following:

A set of 10-15 email questions for the candidate to answer (they are always the same for each candidate and we already know how our best employees answered them!).
A set of 15-20 questions to be answered in a phone interview (again knowing what we are looking for in each role based upon how previous top notch folks answered).
Behavioral and intelligence testing (perhaps the most objective of all! You can easily create an overlay of what your most successful employees have here). Make sure whatever you use is fully validated on a regular basis so that it is structurally and scientifically sound. Here is the company we use.
A work plan exercise (the candidate must create, present and answer questions about an initial 90 day work plan for their new role. This truly brings the best to the top in an easily identified manner. It also showcases presentation skills and reasoning skills.
A research assignment on a subject related to the new role (once again a chance to see work habits and actual results, not possible fake answers to often heard interview questions!).

I am happy to report these methods have served those of us attending Curt's sessions well over the years. Just as important, we have successful and contented key people in virtually every role at our businesses with very low turnover. Thanks, Curt!

Finding a New Executive Director for an NPO (Part Two)

Jay Love — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 16:11:00 GMT

In this post I will complete the story on the executive director selection process. If you will recall, we have made it up to Step Six with the plot thickening along with each step. The semi-finalists for the executive director position are in place and ready to proceed.

Step Seven

Our first face to face interviews are the basis of this step. The various candidates will each have a chance to answer questions from this attached set. These questions were designed to enable us to verify leadership qualities and readiness for this key position. Among the questions were these:

Talk to us about your vision of the services that ABC provides to marketplace. Share an example from a current or previous position where your personal experience might be helpful.

A Nonprofit's success depends upon articulating a strong mission, having competent staff and a dedicated board. Describe the relationship between the board and staff (especially in fund raising) as you would see it.

This position involves developing strategic partnerships and relationships, which bring resources to ABC. Give us an example of when you needed to form a collaboration to solve a common problem or to ask for work/funds.

Notice how open-ended the questions are. In addition, please see how we are constantly asking for real world examples based upon previous positions. We wanted to let the true stars ready for prime time come shining through!

Step Eight

Another conference call among the search committee was held to determine the 2-3 finalists based upon the results in step seven. In the past, we have had situations where just two finalists emerged, but having three still in the running is certainly OK. Either way is fine, because as I mentioned in the last post, we are about to see the true leader emerge. (At least that has been the case in virtually every past situation.) In fact, as you will see, we are about to truly enter prime time with regard to candidate effort and our ability to pick a top leader. Every candidate I have spoken to after the upcoming step stated they enjoyed the process and quickly realized whether the job was a perfect fit for their talents and abilities. I view such comments in and of themselves a remarkable success.

Step Nine

The finalists are literally placed directly into two different but related real world presentation situations. You can see the full scope of what is given to the candidates a week in advance here.

It is literally lights, camera and action in a large board room with all of the members of the selection committee present. We act as the recipients in the two different scenarios being presented. In summary here are those two scenarios:

Presentation to XYZ Foundation
You have been recently selected as ABC's new CEO, Congratulations! You learn on your second day on the job that XYZ Foundation is holding the Foundation grant for 2009 ($250,000) pending an introduction and presentation by you.
During this meeting, they want to know your management philosophy, your vision for the organization and what you see ABC's future to be. They realize that you do not have all the information about the organization (it's only your 2nd day), but they want to be convinced that the ABC Executive Committee made the right decision.
Your assignment for this interview: From all the material that is at your disposal, give a 10-minute talk. You can use notes. You cannot use PowerPoint nor do any handouts.
Presentation to ABC's Board
For this exercise, your first board meeting as CEO is just a week after you take over. (In reality, your first board meeting isn’t until later.) Take a maximum of 15 minutes, using any materials or format you are comfortable with, and give the board your first presentation. You can use a PowerPoint, or a printed PowerPoint, or whatever means you believe will be most effective with the current ABC board.
• What are the challenges for our organization, as you see them?
• What are your priorities in the early months?
• If your first 3 months are successful, what will success look like in 90 days?

During the presentations the selection committee members are taking notes at a rapid pace. We also enjoyed watching the superstars shine. (That is usually the case!) As you might have guessed, they also hit the ground running at full speed when they begin full time work.

Step Ten

Our final gathering of the selection committee is a face to face one convened immediately following the finalist presentations. In every single case where I have been involved in the nonprofit world a clear top notch leader has emerged. Most of our group discussion has revolved around how easy it was to decide on the person who stood out from the others. In the business world we have had to debate over two closely matched potential winners. We refrained from voting so that thought processes and reasoning could be fully developed and debated. Keep in mind you might want to keep the second place candidate in the fold, if you feel they can truly do the job, in case you are not able to reach agreement on an offer with your first option.

I wish you only the best with this important process for your organization. As I mentioned in my last post, I dearly hope you find several useful nuggets of ideas to use. Perhaps you too will find the strong leader you need to make your mission and organization come to life!

Random Act of Kindness

This particular example is not nearly as random as my previous ones. However, it is a neat story and perhaps will help spark similar actions elsewhere. I mentioned my daughter Katie in a previous post. She is a dedicated elementary school teacher. I think we would all have enjoyed having her as a teacher and dearly hope we would have one like her for our own children. From the age of a preschooler, Katie always knew she wanted to be a teacher. She practiced it almost daily with friends and family. As she found out more about the world, she decided helping the inner city youth was her calling. She is now teaching where a large portion of her children fall into that grouping.

Her school just happens to be fairly close to the eTapestry offices. This is a key point in making this story come to life. Not long into her first year teaching at the school she realized that many of the young men in her second grade class did not have fathers at home. Such a situation could be a potential cause for many problems in the classroom with those young men.

Katie issued a plea for mentors to give up lunch one day a week to sort of adopt one young man each. During this hour, the mentor would have private study time with the student, and then join them for lunch in the school cafeteria (always a treat...). Six eTapestry male employees accepted the challenge and became mentors. The neatest part of this story is that all of the men and boys involved for the semester truly gained from it. Perhaps we will see most of those second grade boys become successful in the future.

Finding a New Executive Director for an NPO

Jay Love — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 13:10:00 GMT

Welcome back, I hope, since this blog post builds upon my previous blog entry regarding the possible movement of people employed in the for-profit world to the not-for-profit world. A tight, uncertain or stagnant economy in any country can cause the employment changes by the population to increase radically. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics certainly bears this out. These blog entries allow me to briefly discuss and reflect on this topic as it relates to our sector.

Ironically, during the course of researching and writing my previous blog entry, one of the nonprofits on whose board I serve found itself in the midst of finding, evaluating and installing a new executive director. This particular NPO was one of three that I had the wonderful experience of assisting in their creation and formation. Bringing an NPO to life is somewhat similar to raising a child and perhaps should be the basis of a future entry.

The reason I mention my involvement in forming this NPO is it explains why I was also lucky enough to be the very first board chairman. Being chairman enabled me to have a direct influence on the process of picking the first executive director. In fact, since the process I outline below worked so well in the growing of staff at eTapestry, we literally emulated most of the aspects of it for the charity. I hope that you find the process enlightening and perhaps useful in some manner for your organization. Even if you only derive a golden nugget or two, I will consider this blog post a success!

Step One

We first began by utilizing every relationship and source possible to entice a large pool of candidates. Board and staff relationships, as well as funders and key donors were explored. We particularly focused on the use of web-related sources for announcing the position such as commercial sites like Monster and a multitude of newsletters. The use of our own web site and email was also critical. Every potential partner and related association was notified.

Step Two

We asked for and received all responses electronically via our web site. This allowed us to automate the process, which is crucial for a busy board or executive committee or for any rapidly growing business. The position announcement or overview is linked here. Notice how we tried to build some excitement, yet fully present this vital role. The networking was successful since the candidates came forward in fairly large numbers.

Step Three

All candidates who applied and met the basic criteria were sent an email asking them to respond within one week to the linked set of questions. We felt it was critical to first see this ever-so-important communication skill at work. It also served to illustrate how the applicants approached such a task and met a deadline. (Yes, nearly 1/4 of the responses came in past the deadline. I cannot even fathom doing that in a job search, but it did occur.) Notice how open most of the questions are. The responses ranged from a few words to 2-3 paragraphs each. The link takes you to a spreadsheet, which in our case allowed us to download all of the responses and route them to our committee. By the way, at eTapestry we use the eTapestry database to store each job candidate’s contact information, resumes and responses. Using our query tool and report writer allows us to review them easily! (Shameless plug for which I am partially sorry...).

Step Four

Our search committee voted via an online forms tool called Formspring. This was loosely our version of American Idol or Dancing with the Stars because it allowed the top 20-30% to easily rise up. This group was then contacted for our next step. (We usually had 100 or more applicants for most positions.)

Step Five

Our first interactive contact with the top applicants began here. This step was a 20 minute phone interview based upon the questions linked here. We knew the ability to communicate effectively over the phone was another key asset we were searching for. This crucial step allowed us to verify that skill plus provide an opportunity for the first question or two to come from the candidates. Each committee member was responsible for 4-5 calls which were scheduled ahead of time by the NPO’s staff.

Step Six

The search committee met via conference call to determine our semifinalists. This was important because only the semifinalists would be interviewed in person. In fact, if they became one of the 2-4 finalists they would have two chances to communicate in a face-to-face manner.

The key content for those face-to-face sessions will be explored in my next post. I truly think you will find the questions insightful. In addition, the final step was quite a surprise for the finalists. I bet it will be for those of you reading this. How’s that for a lead-in to the next episode? Not quite the same as the TV show 24, but this is a lower budget operation...