Sometimes you get lucky. I play Words With Friends™ with just one person. One opponent is all I have time for and it keeps the mind clicking at my advanced age. When Julie beats me (routinely) she says – “Oh, I just got lucky”.
Thinking about it, if you ask others after they succeed at anything – a tennis championship, landing a big account, selling a business – they often include the word “luck or lucky” in their answer.
It was Gary Player, the famous South African golfer who coined the expression; “The harder I practice, the luckier I get”. But, when was the last time a hiring manager practiced interviewing?
Hiring isn’t about lucky and often selection of a new hire is left to chance due to poor selection process and interview practices. Managers get rusty and tend to depend a little too much on luck and gut feel when more interviewing. This lack of preparation usually means the candidate has practiced interviewing more often than the interviewer has.
I spend my time in the sales recruiting world and there you typically find a motivated buyer (the sales manager) who has an open territory with no prospects for making their quota and/or this years bonus with a vacancy. He or she is talking to a motivated seller (the sales pro) who needs a job to pay for the BMW and knows how to persuade. Likely they have role-played their answers to the unprepared interviewers canned list of questions. Sell me this pencil. Or, what are your greatest weaknesses? Pull-ease!
Imagine if all hiring managers would pretend every one of their direct reports was leaving tomorrow? What’s wrong with bench strength in your applicant data-base? I love it when recruiters say – “We are not advertising now we filled that position.” Really? Are you paid to fill positions or are you paid to build a talent pipeline? If you practice behavioral interviewing at least once a week you get razor-sharp skills and a keen awareness of best practices. Pun intended! Try it you’ll like it and you’ll get luckier.
Practice makes perfect, but like common sense, it’s not all that common!
ABOVE Quota 