The first occurred at my son's first baseball tournament of the season. With the bad weather in Iowa we have not had a chance to be on the fields much. So my expectations were pretty low going into the first game. Of course the first opposing pitcher looks to be about four years older than my son, is twice as big, and is throwing heat. I figured my son would step up to the plate terrified and just praying for his at-bat to be over quickly. Instead he took the second pitch he saw over the second baseman's head for a solid hit. When he got into the dugout I was tempted to say, "Man, that pitcher was throwing heat. How did you manage to get a hit??" Instead I asked how he felt after the hit. He nonchalantly replied that it wasn't a big deal. The pitcher was throwing strikes and all he felt he had to do was throw the bat out there and let it do all the work. I let him roll with that thought instead of having him think anything more about it.
The second occurred when I was catching up with a neighbor as he put a "For Sale" sign in his front yard. They have a pool in their backyard, which I figured would be a tough sell considering we live in Iowa and pool season is only about 3-4 months tops. I was tempted to ask him if he thought the pool would prevent buyers from stopping by. Instead I decided to ask him how he felt the market would respond to his listing. He immediately said, "This could be the perfect time to sell considering a pool could be hugely appealing to someone wanting to enjoy summers in the backyard relaxing by the pool with a cold beverage." Touche!
So how does this relate to a job search? In a lot of ways! Here are just a few to consider:
1) Recently a candidate of ours was asked about work/life balance. This individual happens to have a young family. The employer said that life would never be the same in this job. Family will have to take a back seat to career. How well do you think that was received by the candidate? I'm sure the employer didn't intend to break up a family, but you can imagine it did not instill a lot of confidence in the candidate that this is a place to work for long term.
2) More often than not candidates feel like interviews went well when de-briefing afterward. While employers are much more 50/50 and can even say that things went horribly wrong while a candidate felt it was a good conversation. Red flags include all the usual - candidates complaining about current bosses, saying bad things about people in the industry, and one time we even had a candidate admit to wanting to not work very hard any longer. That went over like a ton of bricks.
3) Employers can get a bad rap when people leave. If a candidate hears about something that can be perceived as a bad trait, it must be met head on. Too often we have employers just shrug that off as a bitter former employee talking trash. But if not talked about with some degree of acknowledgement can be even worse than trying to dig into the topic to see if the rumor can be dispelled.
I could go on and on with stories, but many of them are so bad that it is tough to consider repeating them. The bottom line is that we have the luxury of seeing both sides of the story as the third party intermediary. That can also be the hardest job in the world as the employer sees the kitten while the employee sees the lion in the mirror and vice versa.
Can you relate? Have you ever had an interview experience that was perceived vastly different than your impression?
No comments:
Post a Comment