Like the obese man who can’t understand how he’s gaining weight as he grabs a diet Coke to go with his triple Big Mac and large fries, one of the easiest ways to fire someone – like dieting incorrectly – is to hire wrong: right person hired into the wrong culture, wrong role, wrong supervisor, wrong time, or wrong skill set.… Read the rest
What Should You Know BEFORE the Headhunter Calls?
It’s tough to play well without knowing the rules. The employment game is no different: jobs may not always go to the best, but rather the best who know how to play the game. For those people who are in roles where positions are usually filled by companies using search firms, knowing how "executive search" works, particularly knowing what to do and what to avoid, can propel you throughout your career.… Read the rest
[Land O’Spin] If You Only Had ONE Job Interview Question to Ask?
While interviews can seem hard on job candidates, they may actually be harder on hiring mangers. Apart from recruiters, most people – unless they’re an ineffective “interview and burn through people manager” – don’t interview enough to make interviewing second nature. As a result, instead of focusing on the candidate, hiring managers can get lost in thinking about their next question to ask, engage in a little white knuckle time while interviewing, and actually sweat and pray they’ll finally interview well.… Read the rest
[Land O’Spin] How to Find Great Talent: Susan Boyle and Other Discoveries
I got a chance to catch up with my friend CB yesterday. Bright, hardworking, smart as a whip, and results driven, she’s one of about five people in my life who I would both hire AND work for. Like a lot of others in the bumpy economy, she was in the wrong place at the wrong time recently – is between roles – and is now looking for her next opportunity.… Read the rest
[Land of Spin] The Job Hunt: TwitterShouldHireMe.com and Other Tricks of the Trade
Fortune Magazine’s April 13, 2009 edition has an article on Jamie Varon, who built a website called TwitterShouldHireMe.com as part of her job hunt campaign to get – guess who – to hire her. She also writes a blog called “intersected ." Her Twitter job campaign site apparently has spawned a host of imitators (googleshouldhireme.com, Facebookshoulehireme.com, etc.). [Update: Varon has also just launched a new blog site called "Shatterbox – The Way of Standing Out and Changing the World."… Read the rest
[New Rules] The Interview: People Aren’t That Curious
“What do I say?” he asked. Do I tell people that I found it impossible to work with her because she swoops in, swoops out, and leaves a trail of poop behind? “I mean.” he added, “she didn’t get the nickname ‘The Seagull” because she had webbed feet.”
It’s not likely to happen, I assured him. Let the interviewer simply know that there are some parts of her that you’d work with in a second, and there were some parts that you found challenging because you had very different styles.… Read the rest