More on the Danger of Hiring for 'Fit'

Late last year I posted 'Work, Play, and Hiring for Cultural Fit', a post that referenced a recent study on hiring published in the American Sociological Review that suggested, essentially, that people tend to hire people that are like them, and they 'get along with', as well as some comments made by some front-line HR professionals at a conference I had attended. While the study, and the thoughts of the HR pros I spoke with last year were both enlightening, I think the ideas expressed in this piece, 'What Your Culture Really Says' on the Pretty Little State Machine blog frames the 'Hiring for Cultural Fit' discussion in the best way that I've seen yet.Pop art American Greyhound - Carol Lynn Nesbitt

It is written specifically to address the challenges and problems common to tech start-ups and other Silicon Valley-type firms, but still resonates more broadly I think. It also is a long-ish piece, and you should take some time to read it all, but I'll pull out the key part about the danger of focusing too heavily on the nebulous idea of 'fit' in the hiring process:

We make sure to hire people who are a cultural fit

What your culture might actually be saying is… We have implemented a loosely coordinated social policy to ensure homogeneity in our workforce. We are able to reject qualified, diverse candidates on the grounds that they “aren’t a culture fit” while not having to examine what that means - and it might mean that we’re all white, mostly male, mostly college-educated, mostly young/unmarried, mostly binge drinkers, mostly from a similar work background. We tend to hire within our employees’ friend and social groups. Because everyone we work with is a great culture fit, which is code for “able to fit in without friction,” we are all friends and have an unhealthy blur between social and work life. Because everyone is a “great culture fit,” we don’t have to acknowledge employee alienation and friction between individuals or groups. The desire to continue being a “culture fit” means it is harder for employees to raise meaningful critique and criticism of the culture itself.

There's lots more in the piece worth reading, and also taking a few minutes to think about your own experiences in your career, and how your organization evaluates cultural fit, relies on employee referrals to staff open jobs, or tends to recruit from the same few universities year after year.

When I first broke into the workplace more years ago that I care to admit, people talked a lot about 'culture' and 'fit' then too. It also had another name - the 'Good 'ol Boys Club'.

Happy Wednesday.

Listen to your CEO. On Twitter

A couple of days before he made bigger news by getting fired, then penning a cheeky letter to the troops letting them know what just happened, then-no-former Groupon CEO Andrew Mason, perhaps knee-deep in a frustrating Email session posted this Tweet: 

Possible to write a gmail script to autoreply & bounce emails longer than fifty words?

— Andrew Mason (@andrewmason) February 25, 2013

Perhaps an extreme approach to dealing with Email and message length overload, but entirely out of the realm of useful utilities. We hate and need Email at the same time. I'd say for 99% of the people reading this post, Email is the single most important means of communication in your professional lives.

Don't think so?

Just try to go a day, week, month without Email. You can't do it.

You can forget Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn (at least until you need to look for a new job), literally for weeks and weeks and it probably won't really matter. Try that trick with email and you will probably get fired, lose business, or get reported to the police as a missing person.

But the point of this post isn't another 'email is horrible' riff, rather it is to call out a response to the former Groupon CEO's tweet, from a Groupon engineer no less, that was sent exactly one hour and one minute after Mason's original Tweet:

@andrewmason got something working: gist.github.com/rboyd/5027691 -- just customize variables to suit and schedule to run on a timer.

— Robert Boyd (@rboyd) February 25, 2013

Pretty amazing and awesome, and perhaps instructive as a clever method of sucking up getting the bosses attention in this new Age of Social Media. I have no idea if before he was ousted at Groupon if Mason had any kind of relationship, or even knowledge of Mr. Boyd - but let's pretend for a moment that they did not, and Mason (at that time), was the CEO and Boyd was just one of the rank-and-file staff working away, and personally invisible to Mason.

What better way to get on the big bosses radar than answering his Twitter question, within an hour, with a solution that works - and in the middle of the night?

Just another item to add to your bag of tricks as you try and climb up, over, or around the corporate ladder. If your CEO is on Twitter you ought to follow him/her. And maybe just maybe you can help your own career in the process.

I want to hate these 'Lessons Learned' but I can't

I pretty much can't stand the phrase 'Lessons Learned'.

It could be due to seeing it once too often at the end of a really dull presentation (where one of the 'Lessons' never seems to be the presenter saying 'Don't hire me again to speak'), or that even if the presentation was solid that seeing a slide called 'Lessons Learned' seems to imply that all you really need to do is remember these things and everything will be peaches and cream.

I think the 'Lessons Learned' slides usually become the framework or outline for what eventually comes to be called 'Best Practices', and we all, (or most of us anyway), know what we think about Best Practices. So for me, just like Best Practices, I generally take anyone's 'Lessons Learned' with a grain of salt (where did that phrase come from?), and normally don't put too much stock in them. Every person's or organization's background, experience, and way of viewing the world is unique - and we can get into at worst real trouble, or at best fall into dull mimicry, by taking too much stock in either 'Lessons Learned' or Best Practices.

But a week or two ago, one of the smartest list of 'Lessons', this one from legendary Wall Street investor and executive Byron Wien from Blackstone was posted on the firm's blog. Titled smply 'Blackstone's Byron Wien Discusses Lessons Learned in His First 80 Years', the list includes some really sharp, relevant, and balanced ideas or recommendations or simple bits of easily forgotten common sense that someone with the benefit of years and years of experience can offer.

You should take a few minutes to read through Mr. Wien's list - but in case you are you know - super, super busy this morning, I will cherry-pick what I think are the most cutting, insightful, and helpful ones below:

Lesson #1 - Networking

'Network intensely.  Luck plays a big role in life and there is no better way to increase your luck than by knowing as many people as possible.  Nurture your network by sending articles, books and emails to people to show you’re thinking about them.  Write op-eds and thought pieces for major publications.  Organize discussion groups to bring your thoughtful friends together.'

Lesson #2 - Be Likeable

'Younger people are naturally insecure and tend to overplay their accomplishments.  Most people don’t become comfortable with who they are until they’re in their 40’s.  By that time they can underplay their achievements and become a nicer more likeable person.  Try to get to that point as soon as you can.'

Lesson #3 - EVOLVE

'Try to think of your life in phases so you can avoid a burn-out.  Do the numbers crunching in the early phase of your career.  Try developing concepts later on.  Stay at risk throughout the process.'

Pretty great, right?

Especially the idea about staying at risk throughout your career, or at least engaging with as much risk, fear, or even unknown as you can manage. Safe is safe, and while it (sometimes) means 'secure' it often turns into 'boring'.

So yes, I still hate 'Lessons Learned'. But I made an exception for Mr. Wien's list. And I will make an exception for you too - once you hit 80 years old. 

Have a Great Week!

If the manager is so important, why does no one make it part of the ad?

I read a really interesting piece from Scott Berkun last week titled - 'Why You Should Pick Your Own Boss' where he lays out a case that the most important aspect in any job is the boss that you will be reporting to. But according to Berkun, most people don't evaluate a new job or a transfer with the 'boss' as the primary consideration, rather we think about compensation, job titles, and assignments first, (in varying orders, but these are the most important considerations), and maybe, if we can get a feel in the interview, think about the personality of the hiring manager/boss.

While I am not totally sure the boss is the most important element of a job, there is no doubt that the boss, your relationship with him or her, their talent, and probably most of all, their willingness and ability to help your development and learning is one of the critical aspects of any job, and as Berkun suggests, one that new employees and candidates often can find out the least.

External candidates can learn quite a bit about a company from reviews on Glassdoor, can examine career profiles and arcs of potential future colleagues and bosses on LinkedIn, and perhaps if they are lucky or persistent enough, talk to someone actually working at a company to learn more about the culture and the feel of a place. But rich information an details about a prospective boss - how are they as a people developer, how many of their past direct reports were promoted, how many internal people try to transfer in/out of their group, etc. - this kind of data is really difficult if not impossible to ascertain.

And, what I think is even more curious, is that if the 'boss' is such an important element for attraction, performance, retention, etc. why don't more companies actually talk about the boss in job advertisements? I mean, if your company did have a rockstar hiring manager, that everyone wanted to work for, wouldn't you want to emphasive that in the job ad? Wouldn't that be an incredible source of competitive adavantage in recruiting?

Because when you think about it, very few jobs are 'unique' in that there are not any other similar jobs at other companies. Every company has accountants, marketers, operations people - you get the idea. The differences between any of these jobs at Company 'A' v. Company 'B' boil down to tangible things like compensation, benefits, schedules; and intangible things like company culture, mission, and the personalities and talent of the actual people you will be working with and for.

But most job advertising is about 80% job duties and requirements, 15% generic pablum about the company, and maybe with 5% of the content that actually tries to distinguish the job or role from the hundreds or thousands of similar jobs at other places.

Just once I'd like to see a job ad that said something like - "Look you can get an accounting job anywhere. Take this accounting job, and you'll learn from the best Division Controller our organization has ever had, who has placed her last 4 lead accountants in bigger and better roles in the company. This gal is a star, and she will get the best out of you.''

I'd apply for a job like that, and I hate accounting.

The Google background check: How long can you hold this against someone?

Check this interesting piece on Deadspin last week from the world of High School sports titled 'Disgruntled Goalie Scores On His Own Net, Flips Off Coaches, Skates Off The Ice Forever. On the surface it seems like a kind of amusing, if a little sad, tale about a senior high school ice hockey goalie, feeling like he had been slighted and had unfairly lost playing time to a sophomore goalie. The senior then used the occasion of the team's last game to vent his frustration with his coaches and the situation in a classic flame-out fashion.  

I won't embed the video here, or mention the goalie's name - both can be found at the Deadspin piece, but in case you don't have time to check the footage (you do, it's literally about 12 seconds), here is the gist of what went down:

With three minutes remaining, and Farmington up by one, (he) corralled the puck behind the goal. The video picks up there as he skates it in front and casually slips it into his own net. He sends a middle finger to his bench, fires off a salute, and skates back to the locker room. The game was tied, and Farmington—with a third-string goalie in net, the sophomore was out with an injury—would concede another goal a minute later to lose.

You can certainly chalk up the senior's demonstration/protest/tantrum to a youthful indiscretion and an immature way to express his anger.  Sure, he was wrong to put the puck in his own net, he was wrong to flip off the coaches, and he was wrong to put himself above the team in that way. Whether or not he was a better goalie than the sophomore really isn't important here, but for anyone that has been in that kind of situation, you can at least feel for the kid's point of view. 

Again, in the end, it's really just a kid acting out inappropriately, like most kids will do at least once in a while, and that most of us probably did ourselves when we were that age. No big deal really, it was only a silly hockey game, and the kid will learn his lesson, (or maybe he won't), and everyone will move on and forget.

But I wanted to call it out on the blog this week, after having a quick scan through the 75-odd comments on the Deadspin piece, and noticing at least a half dozen comments similar to this one from someone named 'Loose Cannon':

/Googles '(the kid's full name)'

//discards resume, moves on

- Hiring Managers

Again, I'm leaving out the kid's real name, as I think as evidenced by the comments from 'Loose Cannon' and several others he is never really going to be able to erase this incident from the interwebs. No matter what he goes on to in his life, a Google search for his name, like many, many Recruiters and hiring managers will execute, will bring up these words and images that show immaturity, selfishness, and lack of respect for authority.

But I kind of feel bad for the kid. Not because of what 'Loose Cannon' thinks, (I have a feeling he isn't hiring anyone anytime soon), but rather for the fact that this episode is going to trail him for a long, long time - maybe forever.

I know I did some stupid things back in the day, things I would not want my potential next boss to read about it in detail.

Our young goalie friend here doesn't have that option now. 

Let's hope the HR person or recruiter that does the first Google search on him in a few years can empathize.

It will help if he or she was also brought up in the YouTube age I think.