feature article:

YOU HIRED THIS PUTZ????
Face it.  People lie.

The interviewee told me she was part of a team that raised $1 million.  After hiring her, I surmised that her role must have been to bring coffee to that team.  Another interviewee told me her responsibilities included overseeing the budget, but she must have been looking over the shoulders of the person who prepared the budget since she clearly didn’t have the skills. Semantics, schmantics, people lie! 

They tell you they love to “multi-task”; you learn after they’re hired that they can drink coffee and file their nails at the same time, but they can’t focus on more than one project at a time.  They tell you their goal is to grow with the organization, but they quit in five weeks, after you’ve spent all that money on your search and all that time to train them.  They tell you they’re experienced in Excel, but when they’re hired, they can’t even spell excel.  They lie about their references and then their references lie!  In fact, their references may include their favorite Aunt Lucy and their best friend who owes them (under the guise of being past employees).

AAARRGH!    Short of giving the employee a polygraph test (don’t even go there), you have to make your gut your own lie detector.  Here’s some advice to make that happen.

Don’t hire a person after a twenty-minute to one-hour interview.   Would you marry someone after knowing them for only an hour?  Although getting to know a candidate doesn’t require a “courting” period, it is important to see them two or three times before you invite them to “move in” and become part of your family for 20 to 40 hours per week.  If the candidate meets your qualifications and passes your tests, call them back for a second interview.

Plan the second interview with members of the board, or other staff members with whom the candidate will be working.  If after the second interview, you’re clear that the candidate will leap tall buildings in a single bound and be faster than a speeding bullet, make the offer.  If it’s not crystal clear, bring them back for a third interview.  At this point, you can introduce them to staff, ask questions that have been gnawing at you, and ask the candidate to talk more about themselves.  The more the candidate talks, the more you will learn about them.  The best interviews are when you get the candidates to speak for more than 50 percent of the interview.

Know that for the first interview, the potential employee should be at their very best.  If they are dressed in a t-shirt that says “THE WORLD’S GREATEST SOURCE OF GAS,” what does that tell you?  If they arrive late, what does that tell you?   If they don’t give you eye contact, what does that tell you?  However they are dressed, however they behave, is the best they’re ever going to be. If you hire this person and they show up late to work and don’t socialize well, DUH!  These are alarms that you must be aware of during the interview.

Although you can use this list of questions to work from, here’s some additional advice:

1. If you are hiring someone whose job description includes using the computer, and you’re interested in the candidate, take them over to a computer in your office and give them an assignment.  Make sure you make a note of the time they start and end so that after the assignment you not only know if, indeed, they can do the job, but also if they (1) lie; (2) are proficient; (3) had to ask for help; (4) follow instructions; (5) work in a comfortable or stressed manner.  Sample assignment.
2. If you are hiring someone upon whose writing skills you have to depend, give that person a grammar test (click here for answers) and/or ask them for a writing sample.

Trust me, you will have a much better idea of who you’re hiring by giving these tests.  You can do this at the end of the first interview, if you think the person has potential.  Don’t even bother if you see that this candidate will not work out.   I know an organization that hired an Executive Director only to discover that his writing skills were pitiful and an embarrassment to the agency.  My E.D. buddies would share horror stories with me about the assistants they hired who said they were bilingual, who said they were computer “savvy,” who said they had excellent written communication skills...  Lies!  Lies!  Lies!  But all of these things could have been discovered in the interview.

Don’t hire a person simply because they were “better than the rest.”  Keep looking until you find gold.  If you want yours to be an outstanding organization, you need to have outstanding people working there.