A “frustrated” business owner I know recently exclaimed that “business would be fantastic if it wasn’t for the &^*#$@ employees!” We both knew he didn’t really mean that the way it sounded, and he was expressing the frustration of trying to run a business on the one hand while dealing with a wide diversity of demanding people (employees AND customers) on the other hand. Nobody said business would be easy.
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Has this ever happened? You screened hundreds of resumes, conducted extensive interviews, and found what you believed from the resume and interviews, the candidate that is perfect for the job. Exactly what you are looking for, maybe even better. You have high expectations for this new hire.
Then they come on board and fall flat on their face. Within 3 – 6 months you are saying to yourself, “You’re NOT the person I hired” (a great title for a book).
You step back and start asking yourself, “What went wrong? How could this have happened?”
I asked a candidate after an interview, “How did the meeting go with the CEO?”
The candidate sarcastically replied, “Remind me again, why would I want to leave my current position and go to work there?”
Not exactly the sort of answer I was searching for.
He was what we refer to as a, “passive candidate.” Meaning, he wasn’t actively on the job market. He wasn’t in any hurry to make a job change. He was open to exploring opportunities and seriously evaluating them, but would only make a change if all aspects of the position were beneficial to him and his career. He had to have good chemistry with the CEO, understand the company’s vision, and his role in helping achieve the vision. Basically, he wasn’t going to just make a move.
In just about every in-house company workshop we conduct on hiring, ( See our University for workshops), sooner or later the topic of reference checking comes up. Usually someone will ask, “Isn’t reference checking a waste of time? After all, the person is only going to give you someone that will say positive things.” As with many hiring managers today they are checking references the same way they have been for the last 50 years.
This comment is valid if you are going to do the standard reference check. You know, the one that asks the same questions Moses asked when he checked references. Such as:
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