Spotting Issues During the Interview

During a phone screen the other day I asked the candidate (we'll call him Andy) why he was interested in leaving his current employer.  Andy told me it was because Senior Managers were stealing his thunder.  He labored as a Jr. Project Manager in the engineering arena, worked hard to keep his clients happy, was a responsive communicator, and had developed solid relationships.  After consistent hard work and efforts bore the fruit of new contracts worth millions of dollars of additional work, his supervisor would come along, pat him on the back and basically say: stand aside son, we'll take it from here.

I think we could all agree the professional may have felt crushed, angry, frustrated, irritated, or patronized.  I would.  And, I might even be looking for another job.  He was.  But, being over shadowed by a more senior manager or boss isn't an uncommon problem.  I think we can all agree this has happened to lots of us, on one occassion or more. 
So the bigger question is what's really going on here.

• The professional may think his thunder is being stolen, that others are taking credit for his work, that he's stuck beneath a glass ceiling and he's unable to progress. 
• The manager may think the professional isn't ready to handle things at the next level, and that its his own responsibility to handle higher level operations and processes.

 So what isn't happening here?

• The professional and manager are not talking about the issue. 
• The professional is avoiding confrontation.
• The manager may be oblivous to the employees frustration or is also avoiding confrontation.

Since neither party knows what's going on in the mind of the other person, its hard for either to have a perspective outside of their own.  Obviously someone needs to step up and get the conversation rolling.  And I think everyone would agree that the ball is in Andy's court to address his manager and discuss his issue.  His manager isn't a mind reader, and likely may have no idea of Andy's issue.

So what do we take away from this as a company thinking of hiring Andy?

• First, if he didn't talk to his managers at his former company, how do we ensure he's talking to us?
• What management techniques do we use to enhance communication channels?
• And, how do we continue to understand, set, and manage expectations?

Knowledge of how to answer these questions belongs to a person who understands what it means to be a good people manager. 

Spiderman Suffered From Poor Work-Life Balance

Spiderman, Spiderman,

Does whatever a spider can

Spins a web, any size,

Catches thieves just like flies

Look Out!

Here comes the Spiderman.

Over the holiday break I had the luxury of rewatching some movies I hadn't seen in a long time, including the Amazing Spiderman!  (I don't consider myself the typical comic-book geek, like some of you may already be thinking, but I let you be judge).  While watching Toby Maguire portray the brainy photographer by day and superhero by night, I couldn't help but examine Spider-Man 2 with my HR-lenses on! (Maybe that says something about my HR-geekiness?) 

Lets review the facts:

• Peter Parker struggled with balancing his double life as the potential-boyfriend to Mary Jane Watson, the friend to Harry Osborn, and the nephew to Aunt May. 
• Peter misses Mary Jane's play, loses his job at the Sam's Pizza, misses class and is in fear of flunking out, and is so late on his rent it makes your cringe each time Mr. Ditkovich hollers "rent!"  You just can't help feeling bad for Peter Parker and all of his woes, because he's the good guy (but also because you might be able to relate). 
• Peter's crime fighting ways were catching up with him and he was struggling to balance out his priorities.  Eventually, Peter loses his super-spidy powers!  It doesn't get much worse than this.

While I'm a punctual guy, I can't help but think about a time when I was late to work every day for a week.  No matter what I did, I couldn't seem to make it on time.  I uncharacteristically turned in my homework a day late, I forgot to pay my phone bill, I didn't complete my marathon training schedule, and I cancelled a meet-up with friends.  For that week I became the struggling Peter Parker. 

So what's going on here?  I obviously wasn't swinging from webs and chasing bad guys all night, but I was struggling to balance work with life.  I was working way too many hours, I was taking work home with me after core business time and on the weekend, and I just got run down!  I was out of gas.

So how did Peter Parker get the girl, get his powers back, and defeat Doc Ock?  How did he get his work-life balance back? 

I took away three lessons:

1) He reviewed his problem with fresh perspective.
Peter probably went too far when he gave up on being Spider-Man, but that break helped him see what was important.  I compare this to taking a vacation, and basically taking a breather from work.  Sometimes its difficult to see what the problem is, unless you can step away from the day-to-day fray and really examine how things are playing out with an objective perspective.  We need to decompress as well.

2) He realized he was not invincible.
When he was seen without his mask by citizens after his fight on the subway with Doc Ock, when Harry Osborn ripped off his mask as he laid unconscious on the couch, and when Mary Jane saw that Peter Parker and Spiderman were the same during Peter's final fight in the abandoned warehouse, Peter came to understand that though he had great responsibility as a superhero he was also still just a man.  We have to realize the same thing with our careers.  Though we want to do great things, we must recognize our limitations.  Peter came to the realization that he could still be an Amazing crime fighter, photographer, boyfriend, and family member, but to be successful he had to set priorities and keep up with what was important.  We cannot be all things to all people:  We must organize our priorities.

3) He had help.
Peter still chased villains, and did all the things he liked to do, but he could not have been successful without help.  The citizens stood up for Peter during his fight on the subway, Aunt May helped Peter while being held hostage by Doc Ock on the clock tower by clubbing the eight-legged anarchist in the head with her umbrella cane, and in the final scene when Doc Ock took control over the tentacles that were tapped into his nervous system he aided Peter in conquering himself.  He had help!  The same is true for the professional.  We have to recognize we cannot do everything by ourselves.  Understanding we have limitations puts us in a place to give our best quality work on the things we choose to do -rather than try to do everything, but do each thing poorly.  Being human allows us to schedule properly, to solicit aid and input from others, to delegate work, and to balance our workload.

So maybe Director Sam Raimi wasn't trying to demonstrate work-life balance in the HR sense, but I think with a little imagination you can see how the average professional is just like a superhero! 

The Mercenary, the Dreamer, and the Hero: When the Hiring Process Matters Most:

Cutting corners in the hiring process is probably the easiest way to slowly bleed your company to death with all of the extra expenses incurred, as well as the costs of lost productivity.  Probably a good example of this is when I was hiring engineers to work in Kabul, Afghanistan.  We were hiring people to work in a war-torn, third-world country where just across the border in Iraq, the decapitation of American contractors was being video taped.  With all of the violence the media portrayed with the road side bombs, kidnappings, and threats from Al Qaeda affecting the willingness of candidates one would think that finding candidates would be hard.  Perhaps we were fortunate the bottom dropped out of the U.S. labor market, as there were plenty of candidates ready to go.  However,  finding a candidate that would stay with us on the project once we hired and mobilized them was the real challenge.

There are different types of people with different mindsets willing to work in a war zone. The most common type of candidate is the Mercenary.  Some might say a candidate has a mercenary mentality where they will work for the highest bidder, regardless of the danger, location, or duration of the assignment.  The problem with hiring someone with a mercenary mentality for a global contractor is the moment someone offers more money in a safer part of the world, that employee drags up and leaves without thinking twice.  While its hard to blame them for their decision, the costs associated with cutting corners and not thoroughly screening professionals to go work in Afghanistan can be devastating to the company.  The on boarding and administrative costs of bringing someone from Vietnam to the U.S., including the costs of travel, food, rental cars, visas, passports, and other miscellaneous expenses, then shipping the person to Dubai and onward to Afghanistan is a very expensive.  Based on turnover estimate tools, it can cost the company up to $500,000.

Another type of candidate was the Dreamer.  Hiring a dreamer really highlighted the problem with not screening thoroughly.  Perhaps they wanted the job because of the foreign expatriate salary uplifts, or they woke up one day and thought they needed some adventure in their lives.  Regardless of how they romanticized the Afghanistan adventure, the filth and poverty, let alone the violence, was enough to have people packing their bags as soon as they could find another job.

Figuring out what to screen for and how to tell if someone was going to stay on the project was another challenge.  Making sure we were informing the individual of the risks and dangers up front was a big component to selecting the right person.  We also looked for those who had prior experience working in war zones, third-world countries, or had military experience.  If the new hire had exposure to a similar environment, they generally would not panic when someone bombed the embassy 3 blocks down the street.  Thus, we would not have to replace individuals as fast.

At the end of the day, what we really wanted to find in someone willing to take one of these assignments was that they cared about the cause!  We wanted the Hero.  The Hero was someone who thrived on bringing power, clean water, and jobs to Afghanistan - fulfilling the noble side of the contract.  Sure the money helped, but what was more important was doing something good for the world.  Maybe that sounds flubby, but those who lasted were the ones who wanted to make a difference.  They wanted to make the world a better place.   They cared about the Afghan people.  They felt sad for the hungry children, jobless fathers, and hard working mothers.

Cutting corners in the interview process may cost the company more in some situations than others, but the HR principals are effective counter measures regardless of whether we are hiring someone for a cushy job in the 'burbs or a war zone in the Middle East.  The screening and hiring process really make the difference.

This Crazy Little Place We Call Earth

This is my very first blog!  And I'm excited to be taking this step in my social media focused exploration of Global HR.  I have not seen many internationally focused HR blogs out there, so I thought I would start my own, and see what kind of dialogue surfaces.  So hold on to your laptops, we're about to blast off!

While I do not have an aggregate list of topics on all of the wacky things an HR Pro deals with in covering planetary human capital management, I intend to focus on both the strategic and transactional aspects of the day-to-day grind, as well as chat on the global business dynamics that shape HR's future as a business partner and mastermind-coconspirator with business executives. 

This posting is an introduction to my blog's purpose, I intend to post one to two times per week, as the situation calls for blogging action.  So please read on, comment, contact me with questions, and share your ideas!