Subject: April Hire Score Newsletter

Welcome to the April edition of my Hire Score Newsletter. I am a little late this month due to my schedule. So let's jump right in.

I received a copy of a tool used by one of the huge online job posting companies that is supposed to help you assess a candidate. I just hope that people did not pay money for this piece of drivel because if they did they should demand a refund.

There are eight questions on the tool designed to give you better insight into the hidden signals a candidate can give you in the interview. First, what are you doing looking for signals when you should be gathering specific behavioral data.

For those of you that are new to this newsletter, let me repeat something I have said many times. DON'T TRY TO FIGURE A PERSON OUT IN AN INTERVIEW! You are not a trained behavioral psychologist so don't ever put yourself in a position where you need to be one. During an interview you should gather information and try not to evaluate. Save the evaluation for after the interview when you have as much information as possible.

Forget the signals and stick to business.

Next, the 8 questions are all yes-no questions. Another sure-fire recipe to be mislead and get as little information as possible. Yes-no questions don't provide you with very much information. Instead of asking, "Do you pay attention to how you plan your schedule?" (I know this is absurd but I just read a suggestion that you should ask this question in an interview from a so-called reputable source) You should ask, "How did you put your schedule together this week?" You can follow up with, "What changes did you make? How did evaluate whether or not to make the change?"

The bottom line here is to be very careful what advice you follow when it comes to interviewing. Along this line, I want to tell you a quick story. I was teaching a class this past week and a participant took exception to my rather forceful stance on the merits of the Selecting Winners model. I used the opportunity to share with the person (and I will share with you) my take on the situation.

We live in a world of ideas. There is certainly more than one way to do anything. My suggestion is that you try the Selecting Winners way and see if works. If it doesn't you have my permission to throw it away (and call me any name you choose). You should also try some of the other stuff you hear about to see if it works. I have always been willing to put Selecting Winners up against anything you want to bring to the table. There is a reason I stand behind a full one year guarantee on all my products.

If you disagree, I would love to hear from you. Send your comments to mailto:staff@selectingwinners.com.

Next topic.

Another request came in this week from a sales executive who wanted to know what he can give his field sales managers to help them do a better job of hiring. He was looking for the magic bullet "Do this and all your problems go away!" i wish it existed.

The best solution is to adopt a model (Selecting Winners), and have it proliferate throughout your organization. It is hard to state strongly enough how important a consistent methodology and language is when hiring. If everyone in your organization is "doing there own thing" your probability of making hiring mistakes goes up astronomically.

Here's an example. Two people interview the same person and agree the person has good presentation skills. Do they really agree? The answer lies in how each person defines presentation skills and how they apply that evaluation to the person. One person thinks if the person can just get the point across, that is good presentation skills (the easy grader). The other person wants someone who can create and deliver persuasive presentations to customers (the hard grader).

You can see from this example how allowing ambiguity into the process leads to mistakes. Once again, common methodology and language are necessary to keep hiring mistakes to a minimum.

Finally, I mentioned a couple of months ago that I was going to be updating the Selecting Winners website. It turned out to be quite a job but it is now up and running. Please check it out at www.selectingwinners.com. Any comments would be greatly appreciated. Send your comments to staff@selectingwinners.com.

Also, you will notice a placeholder for Partner Services. This is new. I am going to share with you my loyal readers the companies, services and organizations that I have worked with over the years that can add value to your operation. I will only list companies that I have worked with personally and had positive feedback from my clients. You can view this page as the "Barry Shamis Recommends" page. So please come back and check it out frequently as i will be adding new groups over the next month.

(Hey partners out there who are reading this, make sure you rattle my cage so I don't forget to add you to the site)

Also, please be certain to check out the "Recruiting and Hiring Resources" page to get see all the solutions we have to help you recruit and hire better employees faster and for less money.

Send me your requests for topics for the newsletter to staff@selectingwinners.com.

Have a great month recruiting!

Barry Shamis