Manager gets a glimpse at job from the hiring side
By David Maloof, Globe Correspondent, 7/4/04
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Illustration/Anthony Schultz |
I'd been on the other side of the job hunt many times, sending the carefully crafted cover letter and résumé to a hiring manager I would probably never meet. Now, for the first time, I was that manager, reviewing the résumés and conducting the interviews in search of that ideal employee.
In doing so, I came to understand that some job search maxims are pretty solid, others rather shaky. And I got glimpses into the search process, the outside world, and myself.
One job search adage is that a well-designed résumé -- that magical mix of words, white space, and subliminally influential typefaces -- is the glistening key that opens the door to a job. ''Come on,'' I'd thought for years. ''This artless form just a notch above the shopping list? How influential can it be?''
Then I started reviewing résumés for a job being offered by my employer, a local college. I quickly came to appreciate a clean and well-organized document. ''What's with all the boldface?'' I wondered about one candidate's résumé. ''And that font. Is this a résumé or a ransom note?''
Some résumés that crossed my desk had no dates for past jobs. Others were clear on when and where the person worked, but not on what the person did there. And based on the numerous résumés from information technology folks who applied for the position (which had nothing to do with IT), I became convinced that times must still be tough in that world.
Then there were the just-out-of-college résumés, stretching to (almost) fill one page by including part-time jobs, such as waiting tables -- great if I was hiring for a café. Through these I revisited the world of the recent college graduate: an excess of space to fill, a dearth of experience to fill it.
At the other extreme was the fulsome five-pager swelling with accomplishments, honors, and degrees, almost none of them relevant to the available job.
As for cover letters, could we craft a law against those beginning ''Attached herewith''
It didn't take me long to prove another job hunt truism: that those doing the hiring spend about as much time with your résumé as it takes to surf TV channels. With piles of résumés to wade through, I soon became a harsh critic who didn't fully read even the best-looking ones.
I had assumed I'd behave otherwise. But my job is very part time, and I needed to find someone right away to keep an in-progress course running.
So the promising résumé entries -- relevant work experience and the ability to start right away -- stood out like brilliant stars in a murky midnight sky.
I'd also figured I would feel some guilt when rejecting a résumé and, by extension, the person behind it. But reading fast preceded deciding fast, and deciding fast meant dismissing fast, which meant that the guilt lasted about 1.4 seconds.
What lingered was the feeling of power, however modest it really was -- a far cry from the feeling I had when applying for a job. My chest swelled. Maybe my head, too. I began to understand why some of the people who had interviewed me for jobs had seemed cocky, as if they were movie moguls, not middle managers.
That feeling of control, of knowing that ''I've got something you want, so I don't need to work hard,'' explains other people's use of the worst interview question ever: ''So, tell me about yourself.'' This classic -- a tribute to nonpreparation disguised as a sly open-ended prompt -- is one I could never utter to an applicant without bursting into embarrassed laughter.
I also couldn't do one of those contemporary bizarro questions that have no direct connection to the job. One such query, reportedly used at Microsoft Corp., asks: ''How many golf balls does it take to fill a 747?'' How about ''How many goofballs does it take to write a question like that?''
Instead, I came up with what I thought were some darn good interview questions, including hypothetical situations that actually related to the job I was filling.
One was the litmus test in which I described a problematic job situation the previous employee hadn't handled well. I learned that hiring someone can be like buying a car, finding a romantic partner or, yes, looking for a job: You can highly value, if not overvalue, a trait that had been sorely lacking the last time. You know -- now I want a car with good gas mileage, a mate I can trust, a job that doesn't demand life-sucking, unpaid overtime.
The first person I interviewed answered the litmus question better than I would have. The second applicant wasn't quite as strong. By then, I knew that I enjoyed interviewing. As a freelance journalist, asking questions to get information was familiar to me. But this was better: Now I had something that people wanted, not the other way around.
I'd never liked being interviewed for a job -- you think you can know me after 20 minutes? -- but somehow I had confidence in my own ability to assess someone else in 20 minutes.
Another piece of hiring wisdom holds that using a newspaper ad to find a qualified employee is only slightly more efficient than looking for a Nobel Peace Prize winner in a motorcycle gang. This belief held true initially.
When I compared the applicants from an ad placed at an online education site with the applicants who responded to my newspaper ad, I found that the online people were all qualified. None of the initial newspaper applicants were. One newspaper respondent claimed he ''always wanted to do'' the job I was hiring for. I've always wanted to pitch for the Red Sox, but you don't see me e-mailing general manager Theo Epstein after the team loses.
Then I received a response to the newspaper ad from someone whose interview was very strong. But she couldn't start right away, so I offered the job to someone else.
That candidate -- my first choice -- accepted the job. And with a mix of relief and regret, the search was over. Relief because I was now behind in my work, and I could get back to it. And regret because I didn't know when I'd get to wield such magnificent power in my job again.
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North of Boston Career Fair
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