In our workshops for hiring managers that we teach to improve hiring accuracy and effectiveness, the vast majority of hiring managers and executives will tell us that they believe 100% of all candidates exaggerate and embellish their accomplishments and achievements.
This feeling comes true when greater than 50% of all managerial and executive hires fail in their first 12 months (usually it’s in the first 3-4 months) due to the inability to achieve the desired results. This inability stems from exaggeration and embellishment in the interview. We documented this failure rate and the causes for the hiring failure in a major research project.
This is one of the top 8 hiring frustrations that hiring managers and executives face when attempting to interview candidates from outside their organization. Most hiring managers and executives would rather put up with average or mediocre employees that take the risk on hiring someone from the outside due to the fear factor of not being able to get through the interview exaggeration, embellishment, and lies.
Does this sound dysfunctional?
It falls into the category of “better the devil I know than the one I don’t” No wonder there are so many average, mediocre and poor performing employees in most companies. Every manager I’ve ever spoken to has at least one or two employees that are not living up to expectations.
How do you overcome this frustration of interview exaggeration and embellishment?
If you follow the steps of the Success Factor Methodology you’ll easily be able to conduct an effective interview and get to the truth every single time. We describe each of these steps on our website. We back up overcoming this frustration through a wealth of hiring improvement products and services. Some of the tools are simple, inexpensive and easy to implement. One tool in particular will dramatically raise the hiring accuracy of your hiring managers and executives – we’ve provided this tool for the last 20 plus years and many of our hiring managers consider it to be gem in our product catalog – we call it our Desktop Hiring Guide.
We also have a FREE Assessment for Hiring Managers and Executives if you would like to discover if your interviewing process can get to the truth and accurately assess candidates in the interview.
If you want to eliminate embellishment and exaggeration, you’ve got to do something different than you’ve been doing for the past decade. Start raising hiring accuracy now through the simple and effective methods of a proven system like the Success Factor Methodology.
Barry
One of my favorite authors, speakers, and bloggers, Mitch Gooze (and an award-winning International Vistage Speaker) recently posted a recommendation on his blog VALUE ACCELERATION (you should be subscribing to Mitch’s Blog in addition to our Hire and Retain Top Talent Blog) about taking advantage of the down economy to upgrade your talent.
Vistage International is the premier International CEO and Senior Executive Organization for learning and personal growth. Barry Deutsch, his partner Brad Remillard, and Mitch Gooze are a few of top Executive Speakers.
The title of the Blog posting was “11 Secrets to Marketing in a Down Economy”.
Mitch indicated that this was number 6 in his 11 point list of strategic marketing in a down economy. He made a statement which I am now going to add to my list of favorite quotes: “Great processes with outstanding people make an unbeatable combination.”
If you would like to learn how to put a process in place guaranteed to raise hiring accuracy from random results to an 80-90% level of hiring people who can deliver your desired outcomes, explore the key steps of our Success Factor Methodology.
We’ve assembled a variety of tools, products, audio, video, and templates to turn what is in most companies a series of random and arbitrary events around hiring into a systematic and rigorous process for hiring top talent.
Barry
Back by popular demand, we will be hosting our “You’re NOT the Person I Hired” Webinar on June 19th, Friday 9 AM PST.
This is a one-hour overview of our Success Factor Methodology that we facilitate in a 3 hour in-house management workshop. The webinar is extremely popular. We’ve had over 10,000 people view this webinar program in the last 3 years.
After viewing this program, participants around the world tell us how just a few of the ideas and suggestions have resulted in dramatic improvements in hiring top talent at every level in their organization.
The one hour webinar covers the frustrations and mistakes all companies make in hiring, the 5 core steps of our proprietary and trademarked hiring methodology, and the key simple implementation points you can use to dramatically improve your hiring accuracy.
Learn how to raise hiring accuracy (which is for most execs and managers is below 50%) well into the 80%-9% range just by following a few simple steps.
This program is based on our research work of hiring best practices over 25 years, over 1000 search assignments, and well over 100,000 candidate interviews. It is also the title of our successful book by the same title. Over the last decade, over 40,000 hiring executives and managers around the world have seen and implemented our unique process for hiring top talent.
Due to the popularity of this program, it fills up quickly. The program is open to the first 50 Hiring Executives and Managers to register.
To register now and learn how to improve hiring accuracy and success CLICK HERE.
Barry
If you’re looking to hire a top caliber employee at a professional level, LinkedIn is without question one of the most powerful tools at your disposal.
Here are my Top Baker’s Dozen techniques to quickly and easily find outstanding talent. Keep in mind, finding the person is the easy part – convincing them to talk with you is the hard part (hence the rationale behind using an executive search firm like IMPACT Hiring Solutions).
- Complete your profile from a marketing perspective – otherwise know in certain farming circles as “putting some lipstick on the pig”
- Build up your network with people at competitors, vendors, suppliers, customers within your industry, function, geography, and markets.
- Conduct very precise searches, broadening the search criteria in expanding rings.
- When you identify a specific candidate, search for their email address using Jigsaw or ZoomInfo. LinkedIn doesn’t give you enough Inmails to be effective. Having the email address is a good approach for direct contact.
- Join the groups your target candidate is most likely to have joined.
- Review the SlideShare Presentations of anyone who might know the person you want to hire
- Review the potential blogs by those in your network – linked to their LinkedIn Profiles
- Review the Twitter Stream of Candidates for whom you are searching. You’ll see their connections by whom they are twittering with on a regular basis.
- Examine the recommendations people have made – many times these recommenders might be good candidates and they have strong networks
- Who is your potential candidates recommending – these might be good candidates and once again, they also have strong networks.
- Look at the network connections of the individuals with whom you have a first degree connection. They might know of the ideal candidate.
- Search the Questions and Answers area on LinkedIn. Sometimes, the best candidates are freely sharing their advice and recommendations – and posting questions of their own
- Click on the company name and look at other people from the same company as your target candidates. Are you connected to any of these people?
These Baker’s Dozen Techniques should keep you busy on your search for top talent. The upside is that outstanding future employees can be identified through these techniques. The Downside – it’s time-consuming. Going after passive candidates through social networking by using sites like LinkedIn or Facebook can take 80-120 hours of work for a mid-level management position – the searching, networking, asking for referrals, contacting candidates, follow-up, and phone interviewing.
In future posts, we’ll tackle each technique in more depth.
Are you using any of these techniques? What’s worked and what has not worked? Are you using any other tools of LinkedIn that I’ve not mentioned?
Barry
photo credit by Rachel From Cupcakes Take the Cake
If you want to attract top talent you have to understand what motivates top talent. There are three things that all top talent is looking for:
- Top talent always want to be learning. They thrive on expanding their knowledge. Growth is not just moving up in a company. Growth has to be personal. They have to be challenged, given opportunities to learn, take on new projects outside their normal function, be stretched and be learning something new.
- Top talent needs to make an impact. Maintenance roles are not for top talent. Companies have to ensure that top talent have the opportunity to really impact the company. They want to improve earnings, open new offices, introduce new products, grow a business to new heights or take on a project that will change the company.
- Top talent want to become something bigger than what they are. Maslow came up with this in the 50’s. He called it self-actualization. Top talent strive to be something more. They want to be all they can be. Personal growth is critical and if their personal growth flattens out they immediately start seeking a position that will continue their growth.
What this means is if you want to attract top talent you have to motivate them. Posting a boring job description doesn’t address any of these issues. Instead, consider posting a Compelling Marketing Statement. You need to think like a Madison Ave. advertising company that knows to display the benefits to the reader. Here are three things you can do to motivate top talent in your ad:
- Include the vision of your company. The goals, objectives, and where the company is going. Top talent want to be apart of a growing, energetic company that has a vision.
- Don’t list duties and responsibilities. Instead discuss how they will contribute to the vision, how this role will help reach those goals. This is what excites top talent and differentiates you from the 1000 jobs listed on the board.
- Challenge them with specific objectives they will accomplish. This is the learning and growing that all top talent want to achieve.
Top talent will then read your ad and think to themselves “That’s what I’ve been looking for. That is what is missing in my current position and company.”
Remember top talent could care less about what you want. They are interested in “what’s in it for me.” Post an ad that demonstrates that and top talent will start responding to your ads.
Our website offers a library of FREE resources, including an audio library on hiring topics, examples of Compelling Marketing Statements, a chapter from our best selling book on Advanced Sourcing Techniques, and many others.
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Most of the methods companies use to attract candidates bring those who are floating near the surface aggressively looking for a new job.
Traditional methods of sourcing bring average and mediocre candiates to your doorstep. The traditional methods also repel top talent.
If you desire to start attracting top talent you’ve got to fish deeply in the proper ponds.
Step 1 is changing the approach of advertising from the job description advertisement approach to a Compelling Marketing Statement. Once this document is ready, you can then leverage it by making sure the 2 primary groups of top talent become aware of your opportunity through our Success Sourcing Strategies. Download the FREE Samples of Compelling Marketing Statements from our web site.
We’re also offering a FREE Sourcing Review for your company to determine if your current process and system is capable of hiring top talent at every level on a consistent basis. Read more about this unique FREE Sourcing Review.
Barry
Eliminating candidate embellishment is one problem most hiring managers struggle with. By asking just these 5 questions and the probing deeply most embellishment can be detected. However, that isn’t the major reason for failed interviews.
Most interviews actually fail before the interview even starts. Failure begins in the lobby! The most powerful and impactful part of the interview starts before even one question is asked. If you want to dramatically increase your company’s interviewing accuracy this one hour LIVE Internet Radio Talk Show will let you know how.
In case you missed the LIVE Broadcast, you can still listen to the audio recording. We post within 24-48 hours all our LIVE Internet Radio Shows on Hiring and Retention on our website in our FREE Audio Library for Hiring Managers.
Interviewing | Barry Deutsch June 30, 2009 | 
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