Candidate Advice You Should Not Share With Your Candidates

Back in the 1970s and early 1980s after a spate of run-ins with the law and arrests and general bad behavior amongst members of his Oklahoma University football team, then-coach Barry Switzer was asked by a reporter what he planned to do about better controlling player's off-field conduct. Switzer, probably out of frustration, and the fact that that morning another player had been arrested for assault, is said to have replied "Frankly I am not sure what else I can do, short of putting up a sign in the locker room that says "Committing a felony is against team policy"."

Switzer's point was that he should not have to remind the players of really obvious things - things every decent person just knows to be true, regardless of who they are or how experienced they might be. I thought of that old story when I saw another version of the endlessly repeated 'Advice to job candidates' tips pieces, that includes, among other nuggets, a recommendation to 'Be nice to the receptionist' when showing up for a job interview.

That advice is terrible. Not because candidates shouldn't be nice to the receptionist, rather because no decent person, yet alone candidate, should have to be reminded to be nice to the receptionist, or anyone else. In fact, as an employer you would not want to artificially inject fake 'niceness' into a candidate who otherwise would not be nice. It would be better to catch them being an ass and reject them up front, rather than get duped by some fake interview day charm and learn only later how much of a jerk they really are.

So with that said, here are my Top 3 pieces of candidate advice you should not share with candidates:

1. Be nice to the receptionist/security guard/limo driver - sort of covered above, but worth repeating. No one, once they are older than about 9, should have to be reminded to be 'nice.' In fact, 'nice', needs to be the default setting. You should expect more than 'nice' from people that you really want to be around for more than 3 minutes at a time. Translated - I can accept 'nice' from the Starbucks barista, people I am going to work closely with for 40 hours a week had better be damn nice, if you get my meaning.

2. Show up on time, be dressed appropriately, take a shower before the interview - Everything that falls into the category of 'Basic rules of conduct in a civilized society' should not be repeated under the mantle of candidate advice. The only exception possibly being when advising students preparing for their first experience in an interview setting, where some coaching on dress/conduct might be warranted. For everyone else though, if a candidate needs to be reminded to skip the flip-flops for the interview, then you should just let that candidate flip-flop on out of your office.

3. Research the company/industry prior to the interview - 'Normal' people will read 27 reviews on Yelp before choosing a lunch restaurant and scour page after page of Amazon ratings while considering which pair of earbuds to buy. So we have to remind candidates to know something about the company they are about to interview with? If a candidate turned up for an interview less informed about your company than they were about the last season of The Walking Dead, then again, you want to catch that lack of intellectual curiosity and conscientiousness up front.

I am sure if we really wanted to we could dredge up several more pieces of 'Candidate Advice' that are really just 'How to behave like a decent human being' tips, but you get the idea. Not taking a cell phone call in the middle of the interview probably deserves a mention too, but I think you get the idea.

You don't want to coach your candidates to be decent human beings, you want your process to allow those 'not decent' folks to reveal themselves before you make the mistake of hiring them.

Otherwise, you could find yourself tacking a 'Committing a felony is against company policy' sign on the break room wall.

If you're not sure

Spotted, in this piece from Esquire, The 16 Wisest Things Men Have Ever Said About Style:

"If you're not sure whether it looks good on you, it doesn't."

 
– Scott Omelianuk, Author of Things A Man Should Know About Style

Great advice, I think, not just for fashion but for all manner of situations and endeavours. 

Not that being sure, matters all of the time of course. We can't always, maybe hardly ever, be sure about things.

But for the times when we need to be sure, whether it is the choice of clothes, careers, or maybe even sorting out whom you can trust and whom perhaps you should not, well, I think that the advice from Mr. Omelianuk is pretty solid.

Now the trickier part I reckon is knowing when you need to be sure and when you only need to feel reasonably confident you're doing the right thing. 

But for now at least that hat/shirt/coat/monocle/walking stick/handlebar moustache/eyepatch/neck tattoo/sketchy person you are thinking about sharing an important business item with that you are considering?

Stop considering them.

Happy Thursday.

Can you help a reader out?

For a Friday, here is a simple question lifted directly from the blog mailbag:

Hi Mr.Steve, 

I have been into HR for the last 4 years.

What should I do grow in my career.

Regards,

Avis Federick (name changed to protect the reader)

Well?

Have any ideas for the 4-year HR pro that wants to grow or get ahead, or maybe just wants to learn something new?

And is desperate enough to ask me for advice?

Hit me up, take yourself back to when you were four years into your career, what advice would you want to give the 25 year old you?

I have some ideas but I'd love to hear yours.

Have a great weekend!

Sincerely,

Mr. Steve

Past performance is not indicative of...

Quick shot for a Wednesday that feels like a Tuesday in the middle of what I promise you will feel like a really long week instead of a short one come Friday.

Recently Business Insider ran a piece on the retirement and parting thoughts of Gerard Minack, formerly at Morgan Stanley. In Minack's last investment note, the long time investment pro offered his take on why professional investors and advisers usually do better at 'beating the market' than do amateur, or retail investors - also kind of unusual when careful investing in broad market index funds offer the amateurs among us a pretty decent alternative that will generally at least match market returns.Triangles

Here's Minack on why the pros possess an advantage over the amateurs:

The good news for the professionals is that many amateurs persist in trying to beat the market and, in aggregate, they seem to do a significantly worse job than the professionals.

The biggest problem appears to be that – despite all the disclaimers – retail flows assume that past performance is a good guide to future outcomes. Consequently money tends to flow to investments that have done well, rather than investments that will do well. The net result is that the actual returns to investors fall well short not just of benchmark returns, but the returns generated by professional investors.

In the investing context that's was of interest to Minack, amateurs tend to overweight funds and stocks that have been doing well, and underweight, (or even miss entirely), those funds and stocks that are poised to do well in the future. And to him, the mantra of past performance being a good indicator of future performance, (or even the best indicator), was the main reason.

It makes sense in this context. Just because Apple stock kept going up and up and up seemed to indicate it couldn't go down. Until it did. And took a lot of investors with it on the way down, (admittedly many of the same ones who rode it up as well).

But outside of finance and investments, I wonder too, if lots of us fall victim to the 'past performance --> future outcomes' bias too often as well. It's easy to feel that way I suppose. It feels safe. It's hard to argue against usually. When you don't know what will happen next, or know what a person will do next the easiest thing, (and sometimes the only information you have), is too examine what just happened and assume it will continue.

I once wrote something about being a true visionary or innovator means imagining the future as something wildly and incredibly different and not just an incremental shift of the past. But that is really hard to do, as Minack's observations about investing remind us.

If you need something ask for it. For that very thing.

The author and academic Dan Ariely (of 'Predictably Irrational' fame) posts an occasional Q&A or 'advice' type column on his blog. Last week's column titled 'Ask Ariely: On Begging, Bad Waiters, and the Facebook Blues' included a reader question about a situation most of us have probably encountered, but with a slightly different twist that made it interesting.

Here is the original reader question:

I was recently approached by a panhandler who asked me for 75 cents, and I gave him the money. I was late for my train, so I didn’t have time to stop and try to understand why he chose 75 cents. But I wonder: Do you think the 75-cent request could be a “market tested” amount, one that yields a higher overall level of “donations” than asking outright for a buck or more?

Ariely's reply was more or less in agreement with the reader - that perhaps the panhandler had 'found' a donation amount that would yield the most success, but then Ariely also added this observation that I found really apt and probably instructive:

"asking for general help is unlikely to be as effective as asking for exactly what we need"

The notion being that the ask for 75 cents rather than the more general 'Hey pal, can you help me out with a little donation?', connects more directly, can be evaluated more rapidly, and when you think about it, is probably more effective over the long term.

Why the direct ask for 75 cents would be more effective seems to me to narrow down quickly to the fact that it asks less of the giver, not in terms of actual money, but in terms of time spent in the process and the mental and emotional cycles required to reach a conclusion. It is a really simple request - 'Can you give me 75 cents?' vs. a much more complex and nuanced question of 'Can you help me out?'

This difference in directness and its impact on effectiveness those of us with children probably understand - it generally seems much easier to narrow a kid's options, spell them out as plainly as possible, and be very, very, clear about expectations and consequences. But as we head to work and deal with 'adults' - they could be peers, partners, staff members, bosses, etc. - we sometimes have to lose clarity and expand focus out of respect, deference, or just wanting to treat people like grown-ups.

I had a friend who managed about 20 or so hourly production workers in a sort of light industrial setting. The work was connected through a kind of loose workflow, meaning if one worker was late arriving by a few minutes it would not stop production, but could become a minor irritant or impediment to productivity if the lateness persisted.

Naturally, there were always issues with staff arriving late - weather, personal things, car trouble - you name it.  But whenever the lateness issue needed to be addressed, my friend the manager often started with a kind of friendly 'Hey, we really need you to make the effort to get in a little earlier' and explained the impact on the rest of the team (workflow, morale, etc.). It was only when an individual's lateness persisted that he had to call in HR, have a sit down meeting with the employee and spell out the expectations and consequences in detail - 'We need you here and ready to work at 8:00AM or you will be fired'.

Usually, not always, the person kind of straightened up after that, and the lateness issues went away. You could argue it was the threat of getting canned that did the trick and not the explict 'ask' that drove the behavior change, I suppose.

But after hearing my friend relate the more or less same story a few times over the years I wonder if he had cut right to 'You need to be here at 8:00AM' rather than making a more vague - 'We need you here earlier' would have been more effective.

Note: If you liked the post, please send me 75 cents.