Daily Archives: March 25, 2003

Dataquest had also asked my comments on “Hiring Mistakes” and since you may not be able to read the comments in the magazine (since my email has been acting more like snail mail…here is what I said):

· Do you think the good old face to face interview practice needs to be changed?

Yes it does have to change. It should remain face to face but be a lot more structured. HR departments need to be able to sense an interviewee’s behavioral preferences. They should use a lot of “what if…” :what would you do…?” “why?” questions rather than ask about “what” and “how” questions focused on the past and based on the CV.

· Why/why not and what are the options?

Companies could use a lot more case studies and group hiring techniques. They could also use ‘work one day on the job’ so that the interviewee gets a feel of the place, his boss and subordinates.

· Could you give an anecdote (not necessarily within your current company) in which a better evaluation technique could have helped avoid a hiring mistake?

Most hiring mistakes happen when both sides do not gauge the requirements of the other side. In one case a candidate with the requisite skills was hired into a fresh team of a company. Even though she had the competencies that the job demanded of her, there were two major differences that both the sides ignored putting any attention to , or to clarify. She had come in from a process oriented company where everyone knew of the field. Here she was going to be in a fresh team that was starting off and had to put processes in place. In the previous job her profile had been to interface and build business with external customers while in this job she had to interface with internal customers, which eventually led to her frustration and quitting the job in 4 months.

· Could you outline some best practises that will help avoid hiring mistakes?

Both sides need to clarify the job down to the last detail. The candidate should meet and spend some time with prospective peer group and boss. The prospect should also find out how critical is the job, who did it earlier, scope for growth and learning, how will performance be evaluated etc. Remember, most hirees leave on account of interpersonal problems with the team working already , or because what was promised and what was delivered wasn’t clear. Both sides need to explore and clarify their assumptions before they jump in to the joining. Costs of not doing so could be not just monetary but far worse like ill-feeling and a bad taste in the mouth.

My quote in the article Backseat Driving in Dataquest:

In fact as both Gautam Ghosh, senior executive, Satyam Learning Center and Hema Ravichander of Infosys claim, “HR cannot confine itself to an ivory tower and operate from there.”

My posting in KnowledgeBoard’s article on Weblogs and communities:

Blogs are great for commentary on issues and
musings. However I am not sure how they can actively aid
community building, unless there are directories of blogs, which
can be facilitated by Google.com’s acquisition of Pyra Labs which
is the company that started Blogger.com…As the joke goes, are we
ready to Bloogle ??

And another item on Knowledge Work as Craft Work

I agree with your observation that the mental
paradigms driving knowledge work are industrial in nature and not
‘craft’ oriented…that would explain the overabundance dependence
on ‘tools’ and not ‘apprenticeship’ to share knowledge

My post in ISTT in a reference to a case study of an auto company’s marketing programmes:

Often marketing incentives seek to right a symptom and not a
disease and are quik fix solutions.
More data would needed to be taken before one can propose a solution
to this case (thanks for posting this, by the way)

The company needs to ask itself:

1. How much is it in tune with the customer? Is it relying on
marketing ‘research’ for its data or does it rely on mining first
hand ‘insight’

2. How does the customer percieve the product? When such schemes are
launched they inadverdently give off messages to the customer
saying “we are desperate” “our prices were way too much” and “we
have been ripping you in the past”…how would these messages impact
them vis-a-vis the perceptions of the competition.

3. How intergrated is the rest of the organization to the marketing
and sales group? Is the success seen as only the M&S team’s success
or the organizations success?

4. Is the marketing team looking for own personal incentives which
could be counter-productive to the organization? How are reward
systems linked to overall performance of the initiative?

5. How much strategy alignment occurs when strategy is communicated?
Is it just a ‘telling’ process or is it a ‘co-evolved and co-owned’
process?