Spring Break Rewind #3 - How many ways can an object be moved?

Note: It is Spring Break week here in Western New York, (for the school-age kids anyway), and while I will still be working and traveling to New York City to present at a conference, this week will be busier than most. So this week on the blog I'll be re-running some pieces from the last 12 months or so. Yes, I am being lazy. Cut me some slack. Anyway, if you are on Spring Break this week, I hope you have a great little vacation!

This piece - 'Fun with job requirements: How many ways can an object be moved?', originally ran in June 2012.

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I have a friend in a job search and last week he forwarded to me an online posting for a position he was considering applying to, and wanted some feedback from me about the job, the organization, and whether I felt it was a potential fit for him. I took a quick look and it mostly seemed pretty standard, a technical system admin-type job working on company systems, some different programming languages they were looking for, working on-site in the company offices, etc. Again, nothing really noteworthy or quite frankly interesting about the listing until I got to the end.But can you do this?

This 'requirement' is taken word for word from the job description in the 'Physical requirements' section of the posting:

"Primarily sedentary work with the need to exert up to 10 pounds of force occasionally to lift, carry, push, pull or otherwise move objects."

For some reason, this requirement just about made me spit coffee all over the keyboard, if nothing else for its surface absurdity, but also the thought of someone sitting down, perhaps even having a conversation with a colleague or the hiring manager, when it came time to draft the language for this requirement.

Perhaps it went something like this:

HR/Recruiter -Ok, we have the skills, education, job duties down. How about any special physical requirements for the job?

Hiring Manager -  Well, it is a computer admin job. Just normal work on a computer, you know, typing, working a mouse, that kind of thing.

HR/Recruiter -Would the person have to lift or carry anything?

Hiring Manager - Not really, I mean the occasional report or print out. Maybe a technical manual now and

then.

HR/Recruiter -Ok, so lifting and carrying are needed.

                         How about pushing or pulling? Any pushing or pulling involved?

Hiring Manager - Uh, I don't know. Maybe. Sometimes we move the chairs and tables in the conference room around for meetings. 

HR/Recruiter -Ok, I better add pushing and pulling too.

                          Anything else?

Hiring Manager - I can't think of anything. I mean, how many different ways can an object be moved?

Classic. Maybe I am being too hard on the HR person here, maybe the conversation went the other way around and the Hiring Manager insisted the nonsensical requirement made the copy. Either way, the idea at some point, a conversation like the above might have actually happened was enough for me to take notice. Good times.

I'll sign off with this question - Lift, carry, push, pull - what other ways can an object be moved? 

Have a great Tuesday!

Vocabulary, Intimidation, and Recruiting

WARNING: Another sports-related post follows...

There was a terrific piece by Dan Wetzel from Yahoo! earlier in the week on the recent rise to prominence of the Stanford Football program and that featured an in-depth interview with the team's head coach David Shaw. If you don't follow college football and are not familiar with Stanford's team, the essential bit of information is this - after many years as a middling to unsuccessful program the team, under former coach Jim Harbaugh (now the head coach of the NFL's San Francisco 49ers), and current coach Shaw has had a recent and remarkable run to national prominence, posting a 35-5 record over the last three seasons, and sending a steady stream of players on to the NFL.

All this success has transpired while the program contends with what have been traditionally seen as disadvantages in big-time college sports - Stanford is a really tough school to qualify for academically, and once enrolled, the academic demands the school places on its students, (football players too), often rule the school out as a choice for the kind of elite football prospect that a major college program needs in order to compete with the likes of Alabama, Texas, or South Carolina. So getting enough talented players that are good enough for Division 1 play AND that can qualify academically AND actually want to attend Stanford - well, you see what kind of a recruiting challenge that faces Shaw and his staff.

So beyond validating a potential recruits' interest in Stanford, reviews of their high school game tapes, verification of the academic transcripts, and ensuring their SAT scores are suitably impressive - what else does Shaw do when determining if a player would be a good match for the Stanford program?

He evaluates a player's vocabulary. Yep, their vocabulary.  Check this from the Yahoo piece:

Superior academics are mandatory for admission and success at the elite university. Great athletic ability, strength and speed are a necessity to play for the reigning Pac-12 champions. Character, leadership and motivation are highly valued intangibles.

And then there is something unique Stanford coaches evaluate when meeting with a prospect, something that few would think predicts football success.

"Vocabulary," Shaw said.

Vocabulary?

"Yes, you look for vocabulary," he said. "Can this kid express himself in a way that befits a Stanford man?

"You walk around and talk to our kids, they look you in the eye," Shaw continued. "And we play that way. We are going to play right at you, in your face, 'Here is who we are, here is how we play.' There is a one-to-one correlation. There is no doubt about it to me. The inability to be intimidated by a person or a situation is something that is significant.

Really interesting spin on the recruiting evaluation process - particularly in a job where 'success' is complex and multi-dimensional (probably similar to the roles in your organization).

Sure, 'success' as a college football player entails excellence at some significant physical levels - speed, strength, etc. But at a place like Stanford, 'success' also means excelling in a demanding academic environment, one where a player almost certainly will not be the smartest person in the room, and where there status as an athlete probably doesn't afford them any special treatment greater than someone who is a great scientist or developer or entrepreneur.

Look again at the last line in the David Shaw quote above - "The inability to be intimidated by a person or a situation is something that is significant." It is pretty easy to tell who is or isn't going to be intimidated on a football field, but in business and in life - well, it is not so easily discerned.

Can a person's vocabulary be a good proxy for that rare quality - the ability to not get pushed around a conference room or in a meeting, or to use a recently trendy term, to 'lean-in' even when it would be easier to withdraw?

No matter what we think, it seems to be working for Shaw and Stanford.

WEBINAR: Seven strategies to save your employee referral program

Batman is without a doubt the greatest of all superheroes. A tragic origin story. A relentless and lifelong pursuit of elusive justice. And just the right amount of darkness, doubt, pain, and mystery to sustain the narrative for decades. You, me, all of us - we need a Batman. 

And you know what else you need - Mr. or Ms. Talent Pro? You need to fill that Sr. Software Developer role like yesterday - or the next version of Super-fantastic-amazing product might night make it out the door as promised. You could use someone like Batman helping you out, that is for sure.

The really cool thing about superheroes is that they are superheroes for a reason – they have someone who is their equal to compete against them. These competitors are the super-villains, and in the movies they’re doing bad things – but in real life these “villains” are only the bad guys and girls because they work for the competition.

So, how do you get your competitors talent to come over to your side and put on your company’s cape? A great employee referral program is the key.

Your pals over at Fistful of Talent are back at it with the March installment of their monthly webinar series. This month, with the help from the heroes at Zao, HR SuperFriends Kris Dunn and Tim Sackett will be laying down seven strategies that are guaranteed to put your employee referral program on another planet.  

Join us Wednesday March 27 at 1pm ET and we’ll hit you with the following:

• Seven surefire ways to engage your best employees and increase referrals (while ensuring your employees don’t refer SuperDuds!)
• How to develop an internal communication strategy for your employee referral program
• The keys to sustaining your program long-term
•  How and why trends like gamification can lead to better employee referral results
• he top three reasons 99% of employee referral programs fail and how you can make sure your employee referral program is delivering the goods all year long

Don’t let your employee referral program fall to the Legion of Doom. Register now for The SuperFriends: 7 Strategies to Get Your Superhero Employees to refer Their Arch Nemesis! 

As always, the FOT webinar comes with a guarantee - 60% of the time it works all of the time!

Off Topic: When you run out of interview questions

Time for my semi-regular 'I have not done a sports post in a while, and I need to make sure the 2013 of The 8 Man Rotation E-book will have lots of SFB content.  Did you catch that, Matt 'akaBruno' Stollak? 

Any by the way, please congratulate The Professor and his family on the recent birth of twins - Mia and Micah!

Back to the point - or what will pass for a point on a Friday.

Book, can, drum, mirror, door. (I will come back to this later, but try and remember this list).

Recently, the National Football League, (where they play....... for pay), conducted its annual Scouting Combine - a several day long series of events, interviews, feats of speed and strength, etc. designed to give its member clubs a chance to assess and evaluate lots and lots of potential draftees, (job candidates), in one place, and under consistent and controlled conditions.Gary Hume, Girl Boy, Boy Girl

The hopeful candidates run 40 yard dashes, do the broad jump, perform bench presses, and in addition to these physical tests, (again, which provide a really solid way to compare the performance of players), also undergo some mental and cognitive assessments, (most notably the Wonderlic test).

But having the same information as all your competitors, (40 times, bench presses, etc.) doesn't really help a team gain a recruiting advantage - none of the information is powerful since it is completely open and free. For a team trying to decide which players to draft - they need to get past the size and speed and test scores, and really get some unique insight into the player. What motivates him, does he have passion for the sport, is he likely to be a 'good' teammate, and not be a 'me-first' prima donna.

And if you are the Cincinnati Bengals, you also want to know if the player can remember five random words in order. 

Check this excerpt from a recent piece on Deadspin, on the Combine experience of draft hopeful Lane Johnson - 

"One thing caught me off guard. I was meeting with Cincinnati, and I went in there and they told me to remember five things. They just listed five things like a bear, a flower, a tree, a man and like a dog. And they told me to remember those terms, at the end of the meeting to see if I could remember them. And from that point on, they listed numbers. They said, like, 9167, and then told me to repeat them in reverse order. So that was probably the weirdest meeting I've ever been a part of."

Nice. And classic Bengals in a way as well.

Now there could be some real validity in asking a question like this - a check on a player's concentration, their short-term memory, ability to pay attention to instructions, etc. that might have some validity and value in the assessment process. Maybe the performance on a question like this is highly predictive of future success as an NFL player. 

Or maybe it's just a random question, full of weirdness and confusion, signifying nothing. But if you do find yourself at a loss for any more clever interview questions the next time you have a candidate in for a chat maybe you can try it out and see what happens.

Remember the five things?

#HRHappyHour LIVE Tonight - 'Social, Brand, and Recruiting'

The HR Happy Hour Show is back and this week we are really excited to welcome back to the show the great Jessica Lee - a recruiting and employer branding thought leader, the original editor and still a contributor at Fistful of Talent, and who is one of the sharpest minds around when it comes to the use of social networks and social media for candidate attraction and engagement. 

Jessica's influence in the world of corporate recruiting is immense - her company Marriott, has done and continues to do some of the most innovative work in corporate talent acquisition, and Jessica is at the forefront of what the rest of us think is the 'future' of recruiting - she and her team are doing it today.

This week we will talk with Jessica about some of the big-picture trends in corporate recruiting, how social approaches to recruiting strategies are actually done in the corporate world, the best ways to conceive and build an employer brand and even hit upon what technologies are having the most impact, and what we can expect to see in the world of recruiting in the future.

You can catch the show in a few different ways - listen to the live stream starting at 8:00PM ET on the show page here, or using the widget player embedded below:

Listen to internet radio with Steve Boese on Blog Talk Radio

 

You can also listen via the call-in listener line - 646-378-1086, (if you are brave you can even join the fun).

After the show, you can access the replay anytime from the show page, or from the Apple iTunes store - just search for 'HR Happy Hour' in the podcasts area and download the show for free to your iDevice.

And recently, the HR Happy Hour has made it on to Stitcher Radio - the leading iPhone and Android app for podcasts. Just download the free Stitcher Radio app and search for 'HR Happy Hour'. Not only can you get access to all the HR Happy Hour archives on Stitcher, but also to a massive library of podcasts on every subject out there.

I know it will be a great show tonight - for folks that are into talent and social media, (which I think pretty much covers all our listeners), this will be a great opportunity to hear from one of the industry's most accomplished players. 

So this week we think you wil enjoy the conversations on all things recruiting with the great Jessica Lee, of course also joined by the HR Happy Hour hosts - Steve Boese and Trish McFarlane.

It should be a fun show and I hope you can join us!