Subject: August Hire Score Newsletter

Welcome to the August edition of my Hire Score Newsletter. I want to welcome all the new subscribers. It has been quite a while since I have outline the purpose of this newsletter and with all the new subscribers, I thought this would be a good time to do a quick review.

My name is Barry Shamis and for the last 28 years I have been helping companies do a better job of recruiting and hiring top employees. This newsletter is my monthly forum to share ideas and opinions with you. I also use the newsletter, as an opportunity to share resources I believe will help you and your organization. Finally, on occasion, I will launch into a rant about some misinformation that is polluting the marketplace on the subject of hiring.

Your questions and feedback are always welcome!

OK, onward and upward. I am going to begin this month with a rant because I just can't help myself. Two different subscribers forwarded an article to me about the "One-Question Interview". Someone has determined that if you ask this one question you will learn everything necessary to make a good hiring decision. (Any question in your mind on why I am about to go on a rant?)

Well, here is the question: "Could you please think about your most significant accomplishment and tell me about it?" Here is my smartass answer, "I could if I wanted to but I choose not to!" But seriously, let me go through all the problems with this question.

1. It is a yes-no question, which gets you a single word answer. An interview is about questions. They are the foundation and the structure of the meeting. You need to think about the question. Wording is important. How about, "What was the single biggest contribution you made to sales at ABC?"

2. You lose control of the interview when you say, "tell me about". It is not specific and gives the candidate the opportunity to go wherever they want with the answer. I have always said you can eliminate the words, "Tell me about" and be left with a very good question.

3. You put the candidate under pressure to produce an answer. They spend as much time worrying about what you want to hear as they do giving you hard information. This type of pressure adds no value to the interview process. Why not pick an accomplishment from the person's resume and focus on something specific.

4. If they discuss an accomplishment that is not related to what they need to do on your job, you have wasted your time. How do you interpret that? You don't have time in an interview to play games and hope you get the information you need. If you need information on budgeting, get a budgeting example.

5. It puts you, the interviewer, into a position where you have to interpret the person's answer. Unless you are a trained behavioral psychologist, this is not a position you want to be in. You will be in a much place if you simply get the person to explain what they did, when they did it, how they did it. (Notice there is no "Why" which I discussed last month)

I could go on but I will stop here. I beg you to stop listening to people who don't understand this process. Instead of making a difficult process easier, they are making it harder. I understand the appeal of a "one question interview". It certainly would be grand if we could simply ask one question and be done. But it doesn't work that way.

Rant part two: I had a discussion with an executive coach recently who was telling me how he was counseling his clients to take their time in hiring. Once again, this is a lousy piece of advice. Hiring must be done a fast as possible. Let me explain.

The only reason you hire a person is to satisfy a business need. The person will solve your problem. The longer you take to address the problem (hire a person) the more it is going to cost your company. So, why would you take a long time to hire someone?

This does not mean that you cut corners or do not do proper due diligence. It simply means that once you have decided to address a business problem with a person you need to move as fast as possible to hire that person.

This leads me to an interesting announcement. Last month I spent some time in Green Bay Wisconsin presenting my Strategic Staffing presentation to quite a few CEOs. My host for the trip was Phil Hauck who over dinner berated me endlessly about writing a book on strategic staffing. He said that understanding the importance between business strategy and the employee lifecycle is critical. So, you are the first to know that the book is currently in the first draft stage and should be available before the end of the year. I will keep you informed on how to reserve a copy.

As I mentioned, I spend most of the last month on the road talking to CEOs and business owners about staffing. The message I heard the most is that people are using this time to upgrade their staffs. Hipp-Hipp-Hooray! Those of you that are faithful readers know that I have preaching this for the last 12 months. There are more talented people who are reasonably priced and available than in recent memory. If you are like most of us and have to do more with less, you need the best possible people working with you.

Every position you fill is an opportunity to upgrade your organization. Seize the opportunity.

Announcements

I ran into some people who are doing some very interesting things in the way of online recruitment. If you need to recruit software salespeople, checkout this site: www.softwaresalespeople.com/sp/selectingwinners.html This is an example of an online recruiting service that makes sense.

In the past I have mentioned Tim Larkin (the ex-navy seal trainer) and his Target Focused Training. I have told you how impressed I am with Tim and his training. We have conducted two very successful sessions with Tim in the past 6 months. We are going to do it again in Seattle in September (it doesn't get any better except Kauai anytime). September 26-27 Tim is going to hold a session for my clients, subscribers and friends here in Seattle. For more information, you can call me at 206-230-9400, send email to staff@selectingwinners.com or visit www.selectingwinners.com/larkin.htm for more information.

One of my expert Selecting Winners instructors and friend , Ron Hamilton has just finished creating a fabulous new workshop on ethics. Here is a description and some contact information:

Ethics 101: Do the Right Thing

Why let the good reputation of your company become tarnished to the point where it costs you millions of dollars in lawsuits and potential business when it can be prevented? All of the recent news shows that companies can be destroyed due to breaches in ethics, yet every one could have been prevented. If the managers and employees of your company recognize these ethical dilemmas and deal with them properly, your chances for ethical breaches diminish dramatically. Ron Hamilton developed a program to help companies prevent the costly breaches in ethics. This program is different because it focuses on real business issues, not philosophical ones. Ethics 101: Do the Right Thing is a program that helps managers and employees understand the ethical implications of their business, how to deal with dilemmas and ways to minimize the company's exposure in this area. If you want to find out more about the program that can positively impact ethics in your company and reduce the possible costly implications, visit Ron's web site at

www.practicalhrsolutions.com

Finally, I just republished my www.perfect-salesperson.com website. This is where you can learn all about my system for hiring great sales talent. And, my marketing guy talked me into putting my picture on the site so if you haven't met me here is your opportunity.

Have a great month recruiting!

Barry Shamis PS. Be sure to forward any questions or comments to staff@selectingwinners.com. PPS. Now is the time to get your management team trained so you can upgrade your staff. My Selecting Winners Workshop is a great solution to help you meet that goal. Call me at 206-230-9400 so we can discuss how you can sta