Job Search Solution Blog by Tony Beshara

Welcome to the crazy new world of hiring! And it’s probably going to get a little crazier as we come out of this mess. It is evident that every one of our candidates as well as employers, are operating under doubt, uncertainty, and fear. We discussed that before. Here are some things that happened this week that help to demonstrate how just a little bit crazy and unpredictable things can be.

We’re hunkered down in this quarantine, like everyone else, but since most of our work is done over the phone we can do that from our home offices. I expected hordes of people to call us saying that they got laid off or fired or are so anxious about their company’s ability to survive, they absolutely have to look for a new job. Now, maybe the total impact of this horrible economic downturn hasn’t hit quite yet. But, we did get quite a number of the kinds of calls we expected, but not the same number as in the beginning of the 2008 recession.

We had a number of candidates call us and tell us that they were “furloughed.” I hadn’t heard that kind of term ever used by private industry. In two or three cases, the people who called said they were still “associated” with their company and the company was paying their benefits but they were basically unemployed without earnings. They were looking for a job because they needed a paycheck. They were told that, “as soon as things turn around, we will bring you back on and start paying you.” In each of these cases no timeline was given. Each one of these candidates has called us to actively start looking for a new job. If they find one as good as or better than what they had between now and the time they are called back, they will probably accept a new position.

Probably 60% of our clients who are actively interviewing and trying to hire someone put their search “on hold” until, “we figure out what we’re going to do.” People just don’t know how this new economy is going to affect their company. So, the doubt, uncertainty and fear has put them in a position to do nothing at all. The majority of our active searches have been put on hold and nobody seems to know when they will come off of the hold.

Some firms are hiring in just the same way they were before this whole pandemic hit. Quite a number of them are postponing start dates. We have heard the start date of June 1 quite often in the last week, whereas it would normally be May 1st. We had one client who hired a salesperson with a tentative start date of May 15, but offered the candidate the opportunity to work for them on a straight commission basis until May 15. The candidate agreed to do it. But my sense is that if another opportunity comes along between now and then, he will go after it. His concern is that, “Well, who is to say that when we get close to the start date, one month from now, they may postpone the start date again. I’m out of work and I need a job, so I’m going to take them up on their offer but I will probably keep looking.” It’s hard to blame him.

More than two or three startups laid off more than half of their staff that they’ve been hiring over the last few months. Their excuse for doing so was quite simple, “We just don’t know how the economy is going to go.”

We had one organization who for the past three weeks has been interviewing regional sales director candidates. They have been interviewing people via videoconferencing and have been moving the process along pretty well. But yesterday they raised the concern that their company “policy” was for the Executive VP, who lives in New York, to interview the finalists face-to-face. Our candidate has absolutely no desire whatsoever to fly to New York City. He offered to meet the EVP, if he has to, at an airport equidistant between here and New York. Why our candidate can’t interview with the EVP in the same manner that he has interviewed with the hiring authority and his boss, via videoconference, is beyond us. Companies are already changing their policies about lots of things based on this coronavirus and this policy should obviously be one of them.

Relating to videoconferencing, we have had a number of client companies actually hire candidates via videoconferencing. Onboarding the candidates has been the biggest problem. Even though they will have them work from home until the lockdown is over, they are having trouble getting computers to them and expecting them to function in a job they can’t learn much about by not being “on site.”

More than 15 million Americans work in the hospitality related services arena. The vast majority of these people are the ones that have been laid off as a result of the coronavirus. Doubt, uncertainty and fear are contagious. We have a client who has been interviewing CFO candidates to replace one that is retiring. They are ready to bring the candidate on, but they told us they didn’t want to give him a start date because they wanted to be sure that their clients are going to pay them even when the scare ends. They have no reason to believe that they are not going to be paid except for the general “fearful” business climate and they know their present CFO is going to retire soon. Their plan to hire our candidate and have him mentored by the present CFO is still a good one. But they just can’t seem to set the start date and they’re blaming the coronavirus. Again, doubt, uncertainty and fear.

All this is to say that nobody knows how the economics of this thing is going to play out. The proponents who say that we really need to get on with business as quickly as possible to dig out of this hole are absolutely right. No one wants to see people get sick and die, but our economy, which is already sick, is going to “die” if we don’t get back to work and do it quickly.

I can already tell that you are ecstatic and excited and emotionally charged to read this article. You can’t believe that someone is writing about something that’s been on your mind incessantly and then all of a sudden this miracle appears. Right?

Most people are absolutely totally bored with this subject. That’s because they think they know what they’re doing when it comes to a telephone interview. No big deal. So, why am I writing about this?  One, because in this coronavirus situation, 90% of at least initial interviews, are over the phone. And two, people screw them up at least 60% of the time. So that’s why I’m writing about the telephone interview.

More people probably screw up this part of the interviewing process more than any other since we’re used to talking, texting and communicating very casually on our cell phones. We take these conversations for granted, as well as the communication surrounding the phone. That’s a problem. It’s really easy to carry over these kinds of habits to interviewing. Now here are some quick rules. First of all, your telephone message on your cell phone needs to be professional. It needs to state your name and your phone number. Lots of people simply use the automated message on their cell phone and they neglect to remember that two or three years from now, somebody is going to pull your resume out of their file. They’re going to look at it, they’re going to be interested in you, and they’re going to call that number and they’re not going to be sure that it’s you.

So you’ve gotta be sure that you leave a professional message on your telephone so they know the number and who they are talking to. Now, let me share with you why companies do telephone interviews (besides these days of the coronavirus). They do it to eliminate you. They are trying to cut down the number of people they have to interview face-to-face, so they’re going to try to do it on the telephone. You think they’re trying to qualify you. They think they’re trying to disqualify you by talking to 25 people so they can boil it down to two or three. Remember in the telephone interview that you are trying to get a face-to-face interview. That’s what you’re selling. You are not trying to sell “hire me over the phone”. You’re trying to sell the idea of “let me come visit you and we can talk about that”. Conduct a telephone interview from a quiet place where you can focus and where you can get good reception.

For goodness sake, do not do it from your car, a restaurant or a loud place while you’re babysitting. When the dog barks at the postman delivering mail and so forth, it’ll totally screw it up. Poor cell phone reception is going to kill any interview. You need to treat a telephone interview with the same respect that you would treat a face-to-face interview. Try to use a landline if at all possible. Now the majority of people out there don’t have landlines anymore. I get it. But if you can find a landline to do the telephone interview, you are going to be a lot better off because the technology, unfortunately with cell phones, is still imperfect and there are lots of places where a cell phone reception is poor. A job candidate has enough problems to worry about without creating this one. If you have a landline available, even if you have to borrow one, do it that way.

Be sure that your cell phone is charged. You don’t want to drop a call in the middle of an interview, set a specific time for the telephone interview and preferably you initiate it. It gives you a little bit of an advantage. Don’t get caught off guard with an out of the blue call in starting an interview. If you answered the phone, do it professionally, enthusiastically with energy. This is Tony Beshara. Don’t give it a ‘hello’ or ‘what’s up’..  you don’t know who’s on the other end of that line. Especially when you’re looking for a job, answer the phone with your name and do it clearly. Find out beforehand who exactly is doing the telephone interview. Find out their role. If it’s a call from the human resources department or a vice president, it will make a very big difference and you need to find out as much as you can exactly what the purpose of the call is. Is it to set up another call? Is it to qualify you for a face-to-face interview? Is it an interview on the second or third level of managers and so on? You don’t want to get caught off guard expecting one kind of interview and get another. You might want to email someone and be clear about who you were going to speak with, what their role is and what the reason for the call is. If you don’t have the opportunity to know exactly who you’re speaking with, don’t make an assumption about the person’s gender based on their voice. Uh, Chris can either be a male or a female and sometimes a female Chris may often sound like a male Chris. So if it’s at all possible to tell a person’s name, what their gender might be, and if you likewise can’t tell by their voice, be mindful of that.

(more next week)

So, our client tells us that they have to hire six customer service reps and have them trained by March 15. They told us this two weeks ago. One small glitch was that the new customer service manager had not been hired just yet, but management wanted to get a jump on having a number of people available for him or her once they found the manager. On paper, not a bad idea.

So, the VP tells us to line up as many good candidates as we can so that he can interview them even before the new customer service manager has been hired. He did tell us that once the customer service manager was hired, he or she would have to talk to the people and get the blessing of the new manager. Fair enough!

So, over a period of two days the VP interviews nine people. He tells six of them, on the spot, that they are exactly what the company is looking for. These candidates walk out of the interview thinking that not only did they do very well, that there was a real high probability that they were going to be hired. Having been down this road a few times before we gracefully explained to each candidate that, “It ain’t over till their butt’s in the chair.” We explained that we still had to get them to speak to the new customer service manager whenever he or she was hired.

The new customer service manager was hired within two or three days of the VP interviewing. Not bad! The VP let us know that the new customer service manager would interview all of these candidates via Skype this last week because she had not started her new job yet and of course, for dealing with the coronavirus scare. Again, fair enough!

The new manager was told by the VP about six of the people he really liked and told the new manager to interview them. The new manager interviewed all of the candidates. The new manager was very nice to all of them, very respectful, made it clear what she was looking for in people and did a good job of, at least acknowledging that she was new to the company also and there would be a learning curve for everybody.

These six people were really good. As far as customer support/service people they were actually excellent. It would be very hard to find candidates that were better. The new customer service manager encouraged all of the candidates, but in the final analysis, only hired two of the six people. Four of these people were pretty devastated.

The client has told us that they still need to hire others. Nobody is going to start on 15 March; obviously that has come and gone. In fact no one is sure of the start dates, even though the vice president was pretty adamant about these people being really good. The new customer service manager obviously wanted to put her “mark” on the fact that she was THE MANAGER and was going to make her own decisions about who was going to get hired.

Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s certainly the prerogative of a manager, even a new manager, to do what they think is best. That’s what they get hired to do. But the point is that we pretty much know the market for the kind of people that these folks are hiring and they really aren’t going to hire people any better than the ones they’ve already seen. We’re certainly going to try to help them, but we know that the candidates we come up with aren’t going to be any better than the ones this new customer service manager turned down.

The moral to the story is that whenever a new manager comes into interview with the “finalists” no candidate should ever make any assumptions based on what the previous interviewing authority said. Even if the VP loved all of these people and told them that he thought they were pretty perfect, that new manager is going to try to make his or her authority known by hiring who they like and being relatively sure that they say “no” to at least a few people because, of course, they are a m-a-n-a-g-e-r.

We’re pretty confident that the new candidates we will come up with will be no better than the ones this new manager turned down. Again, a new manager certainly has their right to do that. So, if you are a job candidate just remember that because everyone might just love you, doesn’t mean the new manager will, even though you’re told by a group of other people that you’re “perfect.”

The new sheriff in town can change a lot of things.

I’m beginning to hate spring break. And, if I’m correct, this last week was only one that some people took and next week there will be another.

Over the past, maybe 20 years “spring break” has been a part of our society. When I was growing up “spring break” was one day, Good Friday, and instead of going to school, you went to work at any job you could find. If you are out of work and looking for a job I can’t imagine how anybody could even dream of taking a week off, even with your wonderful kids, and miss the opportunity to interview. I know I sound cynical, but twice this week two candidates of mine “went on spring break” and lost job opportunities to two candidates who were here to interview second and third rounds. Each one of these positions paid more than a base salary of $120,000. One of them had the attitude that the company should wait for him to come back from his skiing with his family. The problem was, our client didn’t see it that way. His specific attitude was, “What’s he going away to spring break for, when I think I might want to hire him?” So, he hired another candidate.

Hiring authorities aren’t much better. Two of them, in two different companies went on spring break this week. They told our candidates that they will be back next week and hire them. As of today both candidates took other jobs. Both of these employers are going to be really disappointed come Monday.

So, I’m sure nobody’s going to cancel spring break because of what I have to say. But, if you’re looking for a job, either presently employed or not, I think interviewing is more important than taking a spring break. If you’re an employer and want to run the risk of losing candidates you have in the queue, I guess that’s your prerogative. But this market’s a lot different than it used to be. Good jobs are still hard to find and so are good candidates.

 This kid is a blast to watch. It’s not only that he is so good…. Probably about as good as anybody has ever been. Only the future will reveal that.

But what makes this kid such a phenomenal player is that he is just out there having fun. He’s laughing all the time, even when he misses. It doesn’t matter that you can argue that he’s better than LeBron was at his age or Kobe. What matters is he’s having fun. He takes what he does seriously, but he doesn’t take himself too seriously. He’s intense, but relaxed.

Now, I know one could say, “Well if I was that good, I could be that relaxed.” One thing about basketball is that all of those players are so darn good, playing against each other, we have a tendency to take for granted how good they really are. But when you see someone that good having that much fun competing you have to just admire it.

A couple weeks ago I wrote about the work ethic of Kobe. Luka obviously has a phenomenal amount of talent, and you got to know that he works his rear end off. But he is still having fun. He laughs and even pokes fun at himself. Now, I realize it’s a whole lot more fun when you win and a person probably laughs more when they’re winning. But even when this kid is losing or misses a free throw, he laughs about it.

So often we get so wrapped up in what we do and take ourselves so seriously. We forget to have fun. We forgot to laugh.

Well, I’ve been doing this since 1973 and I’ve seen markets for labor go up and down so many times I probably can’t count them. But when this market is like it is today, and you’re a hiring authority, you better be ready for candidates to accept counteroffers to the job offers that you make them.

Twice this week we had two very senior positions offered to candidates who accepted counteroffers from their present employers. Both of the hiring authorities that we worked with took way too long in the interviewing process. One of them took three weeks and another one took almost 2 months. Each one of them insisted on pursuing only one candidate at a time and, both of them, when they got to a candidate they really liked, wouldn’t interview other candidates as backup.

We try to explain that in this market, a hiring authority should be constantly interviewing even though they think they found the “right person.” But they were phenomenally busy…. Just couldn’t take the time to interview other people… were confident that the candidates they had were going to work for them. Both candidates told both employers multiple times that if they had the chance to take the job they would. Both employers put off making offers for all kinds of ridiculous reasons. Their biggest mistake was that they didn’t continue to interview our other candidates, even though we warned them they needed to have backup. One of them even told us, “look, I just don’t have the time to interview other candidates besides we’re going to hire Jerry. Quit suggesting that I talk to other candidates.”

Well, sure enough, both employers are now back to square one having to interview other candidates. Both of the candidates who were offered jobs took counter offers from their present employers. We had warned both candidates about the disaster of doing that before they got their counteroffers but, of course, they did what they thought was best for them.

It didn’t do any good to rub it in for both of our clients. Saying, “I told you so” or “you should’ve listened to me,” just doesn’t do any good we will start all scratch. We will start all over with them and hope they don’t get “interviewing fatigue” and put the whole thing off longer. Starting all over is really hard to do.

The lesson here is to keep interviewing even if you think you found, “the one.” If the candidates you are interviewing are presently employed be sure to ask them what they will do if they get a counteroffer. (We have scripts available for our clients to use in asking about counteroffers with a candidate.)

Most importantly there are two things. First of all, expect that candidates, who are employed, are going to be offered counteroffers by their present employer. Make sure, if you’re hiring authority, that you get a real good feel for what a candidate is likely to do when that happens. The second thing to do is to move your process along quickly. Time kills deals. The longer a hiring authority drags the interviewing and hiring process out, the more likely the candidate is to not only get distracted by other things and other opportunities but questions the decision-making ability of the person doing the hiring.

I’m not suggesting you hire a candidate during the first interview. I am suggesting that you move the process along quickly. And prepare yourself for the candidate being offered a counter offer. It might be even a good idea to explain to them why that’s not a good idea (we have scripts for that to).