According to a survey of hiring managers, 44% reported that they were surprised that workers were different on the job than in an interview. Duh!
This intrepid blogger decided to dig deeper; to explore this disparity from both the point of the view of the hiring manager and from the job seeker to find out why they seem to exist on separate planets. Maybe Rodney King was wrong—that we all CAN just get along.
HIRING MANAGERS. Reading the latest literature (if you can call business books and magazines the “L” word) about how to conduct an interview, the interviewing game seems to be following the path of playing more sophisticated games with the interviewee…often at the price of relevance. Take the ever popular brain teaser questions (please!): For example, “How many quarter coins do Yankee fans have in their pockets during a sold out baseball game?” (My response, I thought New Yorkers in general wouldn’t be caught dead with anything smaller than a ten dollar bill.) Who cares about this stuff, and how does it predict job performance?
If this is really the criteria that more and more organizations are using to hire talent, we’re getting to a point where the brainteaser expert Jeopardy millionaire is going to get every job. But every person I’ve ever met who is a whiz at quiz shows isn’t necessarily at his or her best when it comes to dealing with human beings. And the last time I checked, most organizations are still full of ‘em.
Maybe the reason that 44 percent of hiring managers said they were surprised at how the person changed when they were in the job is because the art of interviewing has become too technical — all fluff and no substance. More and more effort in an interview is focused on less and less of who the person actually is and what they’ve accomplished.
JOB SEEKERS. According to my e-mail, given all of the layoffs and turbulence in the job market today, job seekers are increasingly defensive about the gaps in their resumes — the layoff that they don’t know how to explain, or bosses who they are sure are giving them terrible references. Rather than accepting that the odds are pretty good that the person interviewing them has either experienced one of these things or knows someone who has. And with all the interviewing self-help books out there, they’ve become experts at covering up their own perceived shortcomings.
Sure it’s always been true that job seekers aren’t always as focused on telling the employer who they really are, but rather who they think the employer wants to see. But workers today are becoming as adept at spin as the average political candidate.
So with interviewers focusing more and more on the clever questions and job seekers spinning and spinning, is it any wonder that there are more and more surprises at work? Get out your soapbox and tell me what you think about this topic below.
About the Author: Bob Rosner is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. For free job and work advice, check out the award-winning workplace911.com. If you have a question for Bob, contact him via bob@workplace911.com.
