The Venn of Interviewing

The Venn of Interviewing

Have you ever met a person and wondered how they managed to get their job?

I recently chatted about this very question with a friend. He was
frustrated because he had been on more than six interviews and had not
received an offer.  My friend started the conversation by remarking
that he knew in two companies where he had interviewed, less competent
candidates had been hired. I understood his frustration. We struggle to
understand why some people, who seem under qualified, get hired and we
begin questioning our capabilities. This seems to happen frequently,
especially with the expanding pool of highly trained professionals
competing for a diminishing number of openings.  Twenty minutes into
our conversation, we concluded that getting hired results from three
factors: Who you know in the company, what your qualifications are and
how well you interview. We saw this as a Venn diagram, where three
unequal circles of skill overlap. This sliver of employment possibility
was seen as asymmetric and often weighted differently for each
applicant, and their three basic circles of skill.

Networking into a company is a relatively easy way to connect with a
hiring manager. However it may not get you hired because connections
don't or can't always compensate for a lack of skill. The proof is the
rising number of unemployed who are networked into numerous companies
through face-to-face meetings, former employee groups and LinkedIn. 
Why are do so many qualified professionals remain unemployed?  It isn't
solely because they don't network or have connections.  This is one
circle of the Venn explanation covered, the variable effect of
connections balancing skills.

Well-trained and experienced professionals instinctively rely on
their skills and experience to open doors. The gatekeeper or hiring
manager may not accept them based on acumen and experience for a number
of reasons. They may not agree with the technology base the applicant
describes, or may consider it dated for a newer technology. They may
not understand the technical vocalizations or the applicant's manner.
In other words, they don't like the candidate. Technical skills and
experience comprise the second Venn circle, and this too has
significant value, it doesn't always dictate the outcome.

Interviews are not inclusion processes; they are exclusionary, meant
to keep out those who apparently don't ‘fit'. The ‘doesn't fit' and
‘don't like' judgments are powerful negatives that will derail every
interview. The interview tipping point is when you get people to like, to accept you.
This is a matter of your first accepting their perspective;
understanding their needs and offering real and applicable solutions to the person.  This mutual acceptance is called, interviewing well. This is the third, and arguably most important of the Venn circles.

So, why do people who seem under qualified get hired? The answer,
they have some marketable skills and possibly a tenuous connection
within the company. Their most impressive skill is that they convince
every manager they talk with that the best candidate choice is standing
in front of them. These individuals have a great third circle.

Immediate interviewing opportunities will remain limited in the near
future, making it imperative to capitalize on every telephone or
in-person opportunity. You can attempt to get hired based upon
astounding knowledge and training, references from Noble Prize winners,
or by dating the chairman's son or daughter. For mere humans, you can
learn to be engaging and generate interpersonal acceptance. When you
engage correctly, the person you're talking with will understand your
transferable skills and experience and unhesitatingly agree that you
are the best candidate.  You will make your three circles intersect and
receive an offer letter.

To hear how great interviews sound, or to take an interviewing quiz...  7 Minute Interview

Posted in Better Skills by: randorigreg

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12 Nov

Elegant Solution or Cinder block

How
often has a co-worker enthusiastically described their elegant solution
to a problem that you considered and their enthusiasm was contagious,
swaying your opinion and judgment to accept their proposition? You
endorsed it and aligned resources and project plans around the single
concept, then defined metrics and details to track the progress. Three
weeks later, the same person stands in front of you, casting sideways
glances and blushing, as they describe how, after initial trials, the
solution requires the mental skills of the entire MIT graduating class.

This situation often arises. The solution developer creates a
personal attachment and subsequent justification with their effort,
however the acceptance is more often based upon emotional rather than
logical analysis. We often believe information under these conditions
because a messenger of elegance is intelligent. We then extend this
supposition, believing that intelligence alone provides them with the
innate ability to be unaffected by emotional entanglement or misguided
attribution of salvation to a concept or in this case solution. This is
often proven when you hear, "He's a smart guy, he knows what he's
doing." In fact, we all remain human, irrespective of intelligence,
education or experience. An excellent example of this is seen in
testimony given by Vannevar Bush.

Dr. Bush was the man who ran the Government side of the Manhattan
Project for three years, and was the first presidential science
adviser. He was intimately involved in nuclear development and the
direction it was taking. During his testimony to the Senate Arms
Committee in 1954, he stated that nobody should be concerned with
nuclear weapons being deployed as missile warheads, citing that the
size and weight of a such weapons precluded their being deployed in
this manner.  He supported his testimony by citing facts, knowledge and
his experience. The result was that the USA shifted its fiscal
allocations for military R&D. We know that this opinion was
historically inaccurate.

What Dr. Bush and many others, both before and after him, failed to
account for was how their opinions precluded their considering concepts
that differed from their accepted theories. Psychologists identify this
as shielded behavior, which leads to an
inflexible or non-adaptive behavior, thinking that the future can only
arrive in a single form. When anybody assembles an opinion and
vocalizes it you should consider their basis; the ‘why' behind the
‘what'.

How does this apply to professional life? Business rectifies
problems through a series of decisions that are made subsequent to the
‘Start the project' decision. Each of these individual decisions needs
to balance and accumulate with others to arrive at the planned
end-point of any project. Each decision, while having its foundation in
emotion, is always supported with logic. The more valid sounding the
logic the more it is perceived to accomplish the task. Schools and
technical training aim to have managers define risk and put systems in
place to mitigate the risk of any decision. Yet, when presented with The Elegant Plan
that makes such logical sense, is easily understood, and makes the
listener feel success is around the corner, managers will pursue it.
Why? Because the managers all desire to accomplish their goals that
will provide varying degrees of personal advancement. Elegance adds
notice and status to the goal attainment, so it is grasped and pursued.
Pursuing failed elegance costs time, money and most importantly
professional credibility. The critical loss is failure to learn from
our prior behavior.

Projects start daily, managed by professionals who have experience
and seek personal and professional success. These same managers will
listen to and apply that elegant or previously successful method to the
new project, expecting results equal to their prior efforts. Some will
discover that it works, and feel the sense of accomplishment while
listening to the accolades of their superiors. Others will discover the
cinder block and have the scramble to recover and return to the
schedule. Industry data suggests that 60% of managers discover the
cinder block and have project failure.  Reviewing the post-completion
metrics of any project allow the cause to be localized to a small
series of incidents combining to stall or derail the project. Few of
these analyses discover that the tipping points were but a few
individual decisions all resting on the lack of situational assessment,
a lack caused by not identifying the exclusionary, shielded behavior of
those who brought the elegant solution wrapped around a cinder block.