Years ago, I had a big office in the Wall Street area with a personal secretary who handled my phone calls, opened my mail, took dictation, and managed my calendar. Since then, the business world has evolved. Next, executives started sharing a group of secretaries who used floppy disks with word processors. This was later followed by an administrative assistant who sometimes supported an entire team.
In the past, the hiring process and decisions were solely in the hands of executives. Today, with teamwork being a big part of the workplace, hiring decisions are often made by multiple team members. This approach suggests that group decisions are better than individual ones. However, I believe this has made the process more complicated, longer, and not necessarily improved.
Today’s job market is flooded with lots of very qualified candidates chasing very few openings. The way hiring happens has also changed. Technology has infiltrated the process, and today’s submission of one’s candidacy is purely mechanical. Nobody sees the candidate’s skills and qualifications unless the hiring manager’s keywords match those on the résumé, and only then is the original résumé reproduced for reading. Once that happens, several candidates get reviewed via a selection process.
To save time and money, a phone interview, or screen, is the next hurdle candidates face. It’s usually accomplished by someone junior in the human resources department who does not fully understand the hiring department’s particular needs. If an external recruiter is the intermediary between the candidate and the hiring company, then the recruiter’s financial motivation is playing a key role. That’s because recruiters work for the company paying their commissions.
Decision Making
Decision making is a complex process because several parties have a say and a stake in it. For example, sometimes the human resources department representative’s opinion carries significant weight, and other times the rep is merely a paper trail processor. Sometimes a candidate is interviewed by several people in addition to the final decision maker. Those others, too, have a say—because hiring managers want to show their support of their teams by demonstrating their collegiality—but to what extent those other opinions matter is probably variable. And what happens when a hiring manager favors a particular candidate but several others who’d be future peers of the candidate show resistance? In addition, in most cases hiring managers know the thinking and mentality of the person they report into, so what happens if their own opinion is opposed regarding the type of person who should be hired?
A recent large survey was conducted among human resources professionals and hiring managers. The survey clearly found that by far, the number one factor in the hiring decision is the fit factor—meaning, the determination about whether a candidate will fit into the culture of the company. Fully 100 percent of the respondents said so! But what is this culture that’s referred to? Who defines it? Who interprets it?
Some companies use exclusively behavior-based or situation-based interview questions. The tenet here is that past performance is a good indicator or predictor of similar such performance. I wonder if those companies can decisively demonstrate that by practicing this theory, they become able to hire and retain a higher-caliber labor force.
Ultimately, of course, it is people who make the final decision about which candidate to offer the job to. The interview process is certainly not a science but an art. Can that art be learned in order to improve one’s chances of being hired? Well, I’m sure you know the answer to the old riddle that asks, Do you know how to get to Carnegie Hall?