Growing up, I spent my summers living and working in a hotel — a rundown, 36-room establishment in Wildwood, New Jersey (think Beverly Hillbillies, not Paris Hilton). My father bought it with no money down from a guy in a bar after the intended buyer suddenly died and the owner became desperate.
I was six at the time. And for the next 20 years, my family ran that hotel.
My mother typed up the breakfast and dinner menus every morning (using carbon paper!) before getting on with the rest of her work. Meanwhile, my four siblings and I did everything from sweeping floors when we were really little, to making beds and cleaning bathrooms when we got a bit older, to serving meals, cooking, checking people in and out, and more. The older we got, the more our jobs expanded. (Don’t ask me about the pay!)
Thousands of guests came through our doors during those years, resulting in days that were both chaotic and unpredictable. “Someone threw up in the third-floor hall bathroom.” “We ran out of rolls for the baskets at dinner.” “Mrs. Carey in Room 11 needs to go to the hospital.” And on and on and on. We dealt with everything you can imagine (and lots of things you probably can’t).
I credit my unusual upbringing with my success in executive search — my brain was programmed from a young age to notice signals coming from all angles.
Hiring and assessing executives well is not straightforward, whether internally or externally. People are fundamentally unknowable, and when you factor in the nuances of context around a role, the complexity is enormous. It is no surprise most data shows that 40% of executive hires leave within 18 months. (This is not what we experience at our firm!)
You Need to Dig Deep
We filter our experiences through our individual expectations, biases, and priorities. What’s important to one person may be completely invisible to another.
At the hotel, someone might rave about the food, while another complains bitterly. One person might love the vibe at the hotel, and the next person hate it. People could be perfectly nice and warm one minute and completely turn on you the next. My antennae were always up, trying to figure out who people “really were.”
It’s the same in an interview. You’ll never get to the heart of who someone is by relying on a bunch of prepackaged questions — nothing is linear. There are no “killer questions,” foolproof assessments, or any way to guarantee success in the role. And having MORE people see the candidate only adds to the confusion.
Instead, you need to pay attention to subtle cues and patterns and take in a lot of information when you meet: What are people saying or not saying? How does their energy feel? What questions are they asking? What does their body language reveal? Are they honest with themselves? Are they in control of their emotions? Who do they become when unexpected things occur? What is their story? Do they know who they are?
There is a lot of intuition involved, and you need to be deeply sensing who someone is along the entire interview process, not just within a given conversation. How do they handle the ebbs and flows of the process? How quickly do they respond? How do they describe what they learned in each interview? What stands out to them? What do they worry about? How are they connected to the mission? Will they be a problem solver or a problem identifier?
Be extremely discerning with what you are seeing. It is all meaningful.
People Are Not The Best Judge of Where They Fit
The rooms at our hotel cost $26 a night, including breakfast and dinner. The bathroom was down the hall and the building was more than 100 years old. And yet, some people expected it to be “nice” — and were disappointed (or angry) when it wasn’t. I never knew what these people were thinking, but clearly they had not done a thorough assessment of the available clues in forming their expectations.
I’ve seen this same lack of insight crop up over and over in my recruiting work. A candidate thinks they’ll thrive in an environment that ends up frustrating them. They may discount (or never even consider) how much the day-to-day culture of a place will affect their success, let alone their happiness. They focus on the wrong signals or just assume they can “make it work.”
Effective interviewing requires helping people see beyond their often-limited self-awareness.
Hiring in a Candidate-Heavy Market
In today’s job market — lots of candidates given the waves of layoffs — it may seem that companies doing the hiring hold all the cards. And absolutely, there are benefits to having plenty of people to choose from.
One problem, though, is that with few opportunities available, candidates aren’t self-selecting out of roles that are not right for them — roles they might avoid in better times. They are less discerning about where they are willing to land and more likely to adapt their stories to what they think a potential employer wants to hear. As Chris Rock likes to joke in the context of dating, they are sending a “representative” of themselves, rather than their real selves.
All of this can make it harder to find the match you are looking for. Not only that, when the economy improves, the people who never really fit will be the first to leave in search of places where the values, motivations, and working style are more aligned.
Find the Right Match
Back at the hotel, I learned a warm hello and a quick smile didn’t mean a guest was going to love their stay. The real test was whether what we offered matched what they actually cared about.
Hiring works the same way. You can be impressed in the interview, but if the job and the culture don’t line up with who that person really is, it’s only a matter of time before they check out.
