Sometimes You Fit, Sometimes You Don't

I seem to have a slew of vacancies here at the moment and my life feels like I go from one interview to another. I'm always conscious that, as I fill out an interview assessment form, I potentially hold a person's career in my hands, or rather at my fingertips, as I choose the box into which to type an 'X', and decide which words to use to describe the applicant. We sometimes, but not often, apply a psychological testing tool to gain a further insight into what makes them tick. My preference is to talk and watch and listen to them. No checklist of words is going to tell me what they do in times of stress or when the unexpected occurs. I want them to give me examples of experiences and then I watch their eyes*.

Up and left is visually constructed.

Up and right is visually remembered.

Left is auditory constructed.

Right is auditory remembered.

Down and left is feelings/kinesthetic.

Down and right is internal dialogue.

Straight ahead is concentration, visually accessing a memory, or it can be a practised individual hiding any of the above.

*I'm a very much up and to the right person because I'm very visually oriented. I picture things in my mind to recall them. How about you?

While nothing is 100% accurate, I'm always watching for the up and left, or just left, and when I see that I'll pursue the line of questioning in more detail. Mostly, I'm a 'gut feel' interviewer and I've been right probably 95% of the time. The rest of the time I'm convinced they sent along their evil identical twin on day one of the job!

Interviewing is not something you feel like doing every day. It's really hard to push past a bad day at work and appear positive about where you work, as well as interested in someone who possibly is making it like getting blood from a stone. I have, more than once, just closed my notebook and asked him/her what it was about the job that really interests them. Unfortunately, more often than not it's the company they want to work for, rather than the job they want to have. It's a curious thing but it comes with the territory of being one of the world's best at what we do. They crave the association but not necessarily the job on offer.

Sometimes it's sad, how badly people want a job and regrettably the ones who want it the worst are usually the furthest away from our ideal candidate. Do I sometimes see people who I know won't fit the job specs? Yes, if I have time. I do that especially when I notice that it has been a good long while since their last interview. And I do it not because I think I have an opening for them, it's more a goodwill thing. Because if they haven't interviewed for a long time, chances are their skills are rusty. So I help them out, on occasion I've made recommendations on how to better present themselves in their CV. Or taught them a little about personal delivery, or how to more concisely respond to a question. I like to think this will make their next interview a better one, a more positive one. I look at this as 'giving back' in some small way.

I've also met some absolute wankers who tried to take over the interview, thinking I could be beaten down. Ha! That's not going to work with me. I like to give those ones all the rope they want and then patiently watch them hang themselves. The ones who won't stop talking amuse me. A lot of people would cut them off, refocus them, but I see it as an excellent opportunity to see them as they really are. What would be the point in squashing a big round ball into a tiny square box? Especially when we're not looking for a big round ball to fit our tiny square boxes?

I don't like the firing, I've written about it before. On Friday, though, I had to fire someone. I've tried with her, goodness knows I have. I've done the gentle cajoling, the understanding sympathy, the matter-of-fact job description and expectations, the do-it-or-else approach. The only thing that I got out of it was increased frustration. Nothing worked so she's now looking for employment elsewhere, but with a cushion of a month's pay in her pocket. Then of course she wanted a reference letter and while it's not in my nature to do anything to destroy her future prospects, I can't misrepresent my experiences with her. That was a very difficult one to write but I think I got around it by saying of her inflexibility "she works well in a structured environment" and of her inability to be a team player "she enjoys a supervisory role". I hope those that need to, can read between the lines.

HR work is tough, emotional, draining and can go very unappreciated. Often, we're a dumping ground for emotions that can't be expressed elsewhere. You have to take on a lot of those emotions. The hard parts need especially sensitive handling. I've seen them done badly and with a huge impact. One boss I had just started working with, proudly took me into a redundancy meeting with a long-serving member of staff to show me how it's done. He ripped her world apart and then told her that she should look upon this as a positive thing as this presented her with opportunities she didn't have if she stayed working for us. I was aghast. She was in shock. And this was him showing me how to do it! I spent almost two hours with her after that, just letting her come to grips with this huge change to her life and letting her express her feelings which ran the gamut from shock to anger, to fear and back to anger, to disbelief and then anger again. I think he was afraid of her emotions, he couldn't deal with them. But that's what she needed, not some arrogant prick telling her that this was a good thing.

There are definitely some days where I wish I assembled widgets for a living. But mostly, I love what I do, even the hard parts.