Standout Jobs

It’s not that any country, industry or business is doing such a great job of recruiting top talent (except for our customers *smile*) but it seems Canadian businesses are really struggling. From the Ottawa Business Journal I recently read an article stating that only 25% of Canadian firms have a strong recruitment program.

The article was based on a recent survey completed by Bedford Consulting Group. Here are some of the additional findings:

70% of top executives and human resource leaders surveyed in a report by Bedford Consulting Group said they are experiencing a shortage of talent, while 54 per cent said it is affecting their companies’ financial success.

Canadian companies are ill-equipped to attract and retain top talent, with only 24 per cent of respondents saying they had some kind of program to round up the best applicants, despite 85 per cent reporting that it was important for their business.

95 per cent of those polled said having an inspiring recruitment proposition is now vital in securing the best talent, but only 40 per cent of companies said they had such a proposition.

These are pretty harsh numbers. My take is that many companies are unsure of what to do and to a degree, are overwhelmed by the options. They hear about “social media recruiting”, social networks, etc. and they recognize that the world is passing them by, but they’re not sure how to catch up and how all of these things are relevant to HR. And another huge challenge for Human Resources is focusing on the transition from being about “process management” to “sales and marketing”. The fact is that HR is about sales and marketing; it’s about building relationships and understanding how to continuously communicate & interact with prospective candidates. It’s about putting your best foot forward and getting people excited about working for you.

HR will always have a “process management” component to it, but everyone gets that. We know that works. The companies that will succeed in hiring the best people will go way beyond that basic understanding of Human Resources and turn HR into an employment branding, sales, marketing and PR machine.

Every so often I like to highlight different companies using Standout Jobs to power their career sites and online recruiting efforts. As we add more customers, we see a wider range of industries and company sizes represented. Here are a handful of our latest customers, each of which has a number of interesting positions available:

• Ericsson LMI: Anyone want to work in Ireland? I’d certainly like to visit someday, but in the meantime, Ericsson is hiring for a number of interesting telecommunications jobs including Mobile TV Solution Architect, Graduate Systems Engineer and IPTV Solution Architect.
• Fetchback: These guys are making waves in the advertising business, and it seems like a great time to get on board. Fetchback is hiring an Online Ad Sales Representative, and they’re based in Tempe, Arizona. Apparently the most important thing is that you like dogs! (They’re words, not mine…)
• Ultra Electronics: I think it’s best to quote directly from their career site: Ultra Electronics designs, develops, delivers, and supports real-time tactical command and control systems. We have delivered systems to all branches of the U.S. Armed Forces and many of our Allied and Coalition partners. Our systems and personnel have supported every major conflict since our founding in 1987. They have a number of jobs available in San Diego and Austin, Texas including Software Engineer (Intelligence). They’re not trying to highlight that you need to be intelligent (one assumes that goes without saying!), but in fact they need someone with “specialized intelligence experience”.
• Roundarch: Roundarch is a web service company with a heavy emphasis on UI/UX-related work. They currently have a number of jobs available in their Chicago office, including Flex Developer, Technical Architect and Senior Javascript Developer. They’ve got some great looking perks too like a Wii, foosball, in-office massages and more.
• JupiterResearch: They put together a great career site, including information about the company, its culture and more. And they did it in less than a day! Currently, JupiterResearch is hiring a Marketing Analyst, Online Financial Services in their New York office.

Yesterday, Standout Jobs was featured in the Financial Post:

Playing in the major leagues - Online tool helps smaller firms compete for talent. It’s a good overview of our product, why we built it and how it helps.

I was particularly pleased to see one of our clients - Apption - quoted in the story:

Sam Zaid, Apption Software chief operating officer said the response he has received from his company’s career portal has helped attract high-profile candidates that may have gone to a rival firm such as Google Inc. or Microsoft Corp.

“It would have taken 10 times more time to get a whole slew of features for our career site than if we would have done it ourselves,” he said. “I’d definitely recommend it to any small business that’s looking to brand itself on a major scale.”

Thanks to David George-Cosh for writing the story. I hope you’ll check it out here.

(And if you pick up a copy of the newspaper itself, you’ll be graced with not one … but two pictures of yours truly! I’m smiling in one, and I’m a bit more serious looking in the other.)

When a startup first starts hiring people, it’s exciting. It’s usually a good sign that things are heading in the right direction. But more often than not, startup founders have no idea how to interview candidates properly. It’s not something they teach in school, and rarely something that startup founders rush to get advice on. After all, they’re too busy building their business and product. But hiring is the single most important issue for fast-moving startups, and unless you have a lot of experience doing it (and doing it well), it’s not easy.

Here are 5 of the biggest interview mistakes that startups make:

1. Not Asking the Same Questions to Each Candidate. You need a structured list of interview questions that you ask each interviewee. The list will vary depending on the position, although some questions will stay the same. If you don’t ask candidates applying for the same position the same questions, it’s very difficult to rank them. This is one of the most common mistakes I’ve seen. Very often it’s because the interviewers are basing a great deal of their judgment on their own gut. They’re basing decisions on whether they like the person or not, or if they get a good vibe from them. This is absolutely critical - since the person will have to fit in well with the team & culture - but you need to go on more than just your “feelings” about someone.

   Mark MacLeod just published his new hire checklist. It’s worth reading. You’ll notice he’s listed a few personality traits, including animal-like tendencies and energy. These are the kinds of things you can find out about someone without structured questions, but you can also be fooled by people. It’s important that you do “get a feel” for the candidates you’re interviewing, but it’s as important (if not more important) that you’re able to rank all interviewees on the same scale.

2. Not Having Candidates Do Tests. At a recent event, Joel Spolsky said (and I’m paraphrasing), “Every interview is like an audition.” And he’s 100% right. You need to test interviewees by having them do something. Talk is good, but actions often speak louder than words. For technical people this is fairly straightforward — setup a technical test (or multiple tests) and have the candidates go through them. Developers and programmers should code something. And it should be hard. Really, really hard. You might start it off easy, but if it’s too easy everyone will succeed. At Standout Jobs we call it “The Gauntlet” - a technical test with multiple phases (starts with a pencil and paper and eventually moves to the computer), where it’s almost impossible for people to finish the test. Finishing isn’t the point. The process the person goes through, the questions they ask, the approach they take, and their attitude, are some of the things we’re measuring - not whether they finish or not.

   For sales and marketing people, tests are a bit harder to devise, but not impossible. You can setup mock sales exercises. Get a sales person to pitch you on some random product. Get a marketing person to build out an email marketing campaign. There are definitely ways of testing business people - and in some cases this is more important than testing tech people because business people are often much slicker and smoother during interviews. If you’ve never hired business people before, I guarantee you that most of them will seem like excellent candidates after an interview. You gotta test them.

3. Rambling About Yourself. It’s not unusual to be nervous when giving an interview. It’s also not unusual to go overboard when talking about yourself, your company and wandering off-topic into a no-man’s land of conversation. You want to talk about yourself, your co-founders, the startup and the team — and you want to sell people on working for you — but don’t go overboard. Make a list prior to the interview about the points you want to make, and stick to them. Meandering conversations are nice over a beer or two, but if you’re talking more than the candidate, there’s a problem.
4. Delegating the Hiring Process. I’ve commented in the past that everyone on your team should be involved in the hiring process. And I think that’s 100% true. But, if you’re the CEO, then hiring great people falls squarely on your shoulders. Don’t delegate the hiring process to others. You’re responsible for the make up of the team. You’re responsible for instigating and incubating the company culture. You pay the bills. And your startup will succeed based on your ability to hire great people. Aside from all these things, it’s also important to realize that your other employees (or even department managers, if you have departments … and managers) may not be great at hiring people. They might not have a lot of experience, or they might not be familiar with your structured interview process. So don’t throw them to the wolves. Get everyone involved in the hiring process, but don’t delegate the process entirely. And certainly do not delegate the decision.
5. Lying by Omission or Exaggerating the Truth. Be honest. Be open. Be truthful. Don’t “forget to tell the candidate that funding is running out” and don’t tell the candidate that a “huge deal is 100% going to happen and make everyone rich” unless you’ve got a signed contract and a lot of money in the bank. You may want a star candidate really, really badly, but you don’t get anywhere by pulling the wool over people’s eyes. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t sell them the dream — by all means, sell it to them and sell it hard — but don’t claim it’s reality. I’ve always felt it’s better to be straightforward about things. I tried to “scare” one of the last people we interviewed by making sure they understood what startup culture was all about — it’s messy, hectic, stressful and intense. I wasn’t going to pretend that we had all the answers. I wasn’t going to tell them that everything was nice and cushy and chill. It’s not. I’d rather we get the proverbial skeletons out of the closet before they start…

There’s no one absolute style for performing interviews. But the more mistakes you make during the process, the more likely you’ll make mistakes in hiring the wrong people - and that’s bad news for your startup (or any company). Doing great interviews takes practice and preparation. You can’t go in and assume it’s like having any old conversation at the pub. You’re trying to really learn about the candidates, and be able to put them head-to-head and make the best possible decisions for your company.