“Milking” – a new way of getting information from applicants?

Have you ever been through a hiring interview process?

If yes, what were your experiences: positive or negative?

Hiring processThere is not a lot of talk about it but abusive hiring processes is reality and cost organizations millions of dollars by turning possible customers into lifelong ‘haters’. Not long ago I've read that: the impact of a poor ‘candidate experience’ is uncalculated, unreported, and not discussed, making it quite possibly one of the largest ‘hidden costs’ facing modern organizations (by Dr. John Sullivan) but companies are never the less doing it.

Why?

There are millions of people searching for their jobs. Employers use different tactics to select between applicants. What I found lately is a tactic where prosperous new employee should prepare presentation (e.g. to board members) with one of employee from hiring organization. It is presented on an interview discussion that new hire could get the position only if presentation would be a fit for the board. The only connection between a position in a new company and a candidate is this employee fellow. So the employee is all sweet and kind and asking tons of questions and diligence in writing what a candidate says. Company employee squeezes applicant from different angles and asks to prepare special scenarios and data. It is an additional knowledge, experiences and possible different thinking that is asked from candidate.

Coach-ability?

Being a teacher and author of the book on leadership my interest was picked up by the article 'Why Leaders Are Easier to Coach than Followers?' published in HBR.  I believe that learning or coaching is something that anybody would like to do. Acquiring new knowledge, learn or improve oneself is something that stipulates survival in the Nature.
Coaching
The article says “Recent research from PsychTests, however, reveals that followers may not be as compliant as we assume. In a study that measured individuals’ openness to coaching, PsychTests discovered that people who identify as followers are actually less open to coaching than people who identify as either leaders or adapters”. There is a graph within the supporting the claim that in all measured aspects followers performed the worst.

AdapterIn the research three groups were studied: adapters, leaders and followers. I recognized last two groups but had a problem with the first one – adapters. In the article I’ve learnt that adapters are employees who are versatile, can both lead and follow, and are open to feedback and learning. This is a surprise: what are adapters if they cover both other groups. I cannot see leaders that cannot adapt to environment and change due to required situation (I wrote about this in Sun Tzu wisdom and Leadership). What about followers? Do they not adapt to work, rules and leaders? Both, leaders and followers, are usually most of the time outside their comfort zone when performing their ‘day-to-day’ work, so adaptation is crucial to them.

Why, then, there is another (the third) group?

Sun Tzu wisdom and Leadership

The Seven Military ClassicsIn my previous posts I have deliberately omitted any connection to well-known book The Art of War by Sun Tzu. This book is one of the seven fundamental Chinese military books: from general Wei Liao Tzu, then Wu Tzu, The Methods of the Sima, Six Secret Teachings, the Three Strategies of Huang Shi Gong San Lue, and finally Questions and Replies (Wen Dui) between Tang Taizong and Li Wei Gong. These seven important military texts of ancient China are called Wu Jing Qi Shu or The Seven Military Classics. The texts were canonized under this name during the eleventh century, and past the Song Dynasty were included in most military encyclopedias.

The Art of War was created in sixth century before our era and contains the rules of warfare, which are grouped into different aspects and collected in 13 chapters. Each chapter is devoted to one aspect of warfare. Outside of China this book has long been regarded as the book of ‘the ultimate’ military wisdom and as the oldest and the most famous product of military strategy and tactics.

Leadership and perfectionism

Perfection
Perfection!

A word that bursts our imagination in all life areas - business, private, leisure, recreational etc.
What is ‘perfection’? Why do we strive for it?

At the beginning of our Universe, the timeline back 13.7 billion years, the expansion begun from ‘Big Bang’. Some 380.000 years later huge clouds of hydrogen and helium atoms were formed but they had no structure. This sort of cosmic mush, as recent studies show, had some imperfection built in. Because of them we are able to measure just tiny differences in cosmic background temperature today. And tiny differences were enough for the Universe to move on to the next stage of building complexity. First, the stars were born …

Big Bang
It seems that it is the imperfection that generates complexity and change as David Christian describes in his TED talk: “And where you have slightly more complex things, you can get slightly more complex things. And in this way, complexity builds stage by stage”.