Can You Identify The Fake Candidate?

Hello everyone. Welcome back. And my name is Boris Fisher from Naked Inside. And today we have Peter Natra.

Nice to be back.

Thank you for coming over. Today's video we're going to be talking about the key takeaway of how you can hire the right candidate. Why is that important?

Well, you need the right people.

So important. Okay, so let's just set the scene because that's important. So given today's climate of the pandemic, people working from home, a lot of people are virtual. The question is about how can we bridge the organization and the candidate together. And we're sort of finding quite a lot of disparity. Anything that you wanted to add in terms of that sort of setting the scene in terms of the difficulty of hiring such a candidate?

It's always a fraud process. It's always a difficult process to hire people. Added complexity nowadays is that we are doing it less face to face and more virtual, which allows that there's an extra barrier between us and the person that we're interviewing.

Correct. And I think there's also been a lot of sort of shortcuts. For example, my wife just recently was employed by an organization and she did a phone interview but didn't see whom the person or the people that she was being interviewed with. So that's quite interesting. And you mentioned about a story about that today. Some organizations are looking for just a one page resume.

Correct. In fact, nowadays the one page resume, because we're all time poor, a lot of the recruitment agencies and the HR people are looking for the quick potted version of who this person is. And a one page resume will actually trickle to the top as opposed to the 16 page resume which may have more detail in you than a lot of the other ones will have. But these are the ones that are given preference to.

Yes, interesting. So the question here there, Peter, is are organizations in today's environment really prepared to do whatever it takes to hire the right candidate?

Well, you ask the organizations, of course the answer is yes. But you know, there are processes that have to come into play. Especially when you mentioned the fact that virtual is now the way to go forward. A lot of things are now turned into a procedural process and I think that a lot of things can be missed or lost or not noticed when you do a process type approach.

Yeah. So let me ask you this question, Dan. So what is the cost, for example, then just doing a phone interview without seeing someone, what is the cost of just that one page resume? What are the organizations missing out?

They're missing out on the person. At the end of the day, what we are doing is we are employing people and people come with personalities. Unfortunately, that's the way it is now. Those personalities may or may not fit into the culture, fit into the ethics, fit into the values of our organization. And the more we try to roboticize, the more we try and pigeonhole the information that we focus on, the less we actually find out about that person as a character.

Yep, yep, yep, yep. So what are the consequences then for the organizations if they go through a process and they hire a person based on just like a phone interview?

So I mean, from an immediate perspective, you might find out straight away this person doesn't fit right away. You still need to give them, what is it, a week's notice or something like that. That's money down the drain. You have to go through the whole cycle again. So your whole ramp up to actually onboard that person and get that person to go for advertisement, go through your recruitment agency or not, that whole process has essentially been wasted. So prior to the person coming on board, you may have done a month's worth of work.

Yes.

So guess what, you've got to do that all over again.

Exactly, exactly. And let's assume the organization hasn't identified that they've hired the right person and the person now is in a role for the long term. Yes. What does it cost?

Well, you know, I've come across people that have been happily and merrily chugging away at what they do incorrectly. Three months down the track, somebody says, okay, let's have a look at your work. Oh my goodness, you've just done three months worth of stuff that we can't use.

Yes.

Or you may find that because the personality is not working, that the team that was humming along really nicely is now in all sorts of disarray and there's a cat among the pigeon, to use a metaphor. And your productivity in the whole team has gone down and you may have serious problems.

Yeah. And then the effect of that on the rest of the organization, it's a flow on effect. Definitely.

Absolutely flow on effect.

Because you've wasted other colleagues or other of their peer groups, you've basically created a potential morale. Or maybe some of their employees are thinking, oh well, our management doesn't don't know what they're doing. It's just a whole game. Now there's also serious risk consequences here as well, because they could have hired someone that. I talked about this before around hiring people that may have intention. So we call it like the fake candidates and that hasn't been fleshed out because they've just hired a person which they seem to is in the right role, but they've hired someone completely wrong. That person is now intentionally causing potential harm to the organisation.

And by having the incorrect person in there, you also have the risk of, I'm using a word advisedly here, infect other people as well too. Where people look at this person going, well, if this is the type of people that we're now employing, why do I have to adhere to my values and ethics? And that's a very real risk with organizations these days.

Great. I mean, we haven't really talked about so much about once they're hired, how well they fit. But in this case the subject is how do we know whether we're hiring the right candidate? So that's the issue. Then you've got a suitability which is potentially another video. So what are the cost benefits? What should an organization be doing around, should they spend more time, more effort?

So, and I understand it from a recruitment point of view, if you have 10 interviews to do at an hour each, that's 10 hours of time that you are using to sift and sort through your candidates. The reality is that that window, that window of an hour per candidate is your only, is your only key to selecting how this person will work within your organization. And there's two ways you can look at it. You can either use that hour wisely or perhaps expanded by that extra 10 minutes per person to go and explore some avenues that aren't normally on your, as I call it, your tick list, your checklist of things that you need to get through before you actually make your decision. That time spent there is probably going to be more productive and more beneficial in the long run.

Alright, so let's talk about what can organizations do today to gain some confidence that they're really hiring the right people?

Well, absolutely. So the competency and the questions that you ask around, how competent are you in these things? Can you demonstrate some types of competency? How would you handle this situation? So if you're hiring somebody in a managerial situation, you throw a what if question at them. And here's the key. You need to find out who that person is as a person.

Correct. So typically what organizations do, they'll just ask those typical questions.

That's right. But they're not asking who, they're not asking who. The way to ask who is really simple way of getting the person to unpack themselves. If you have just like the interview panel has a Persona, the person being Interviewed also has a Persona. What needs to happen in that interview panel is that the person needs to shine through. Now, how do you do that? You ask the person to tell a story about something, and the best way to do is tell me, how did you get into this field? What first excited you about doing ETL work? How did you get into PDF manufacture? And what you're looking for in response is a lighting up of the person. All of a sudden, that personality starts shining through when they start telling the story. First thing that you probably notice, most people will look up when they're actually accessing a history.

Yes.

Because they're going back into memory. This is a known thing. Then, as they start to wind into their story, you'll be able to see who that personality is. Well, you know, and so. And so I was working with a fellow by the name of Jack, and all of a sudden the whole thing becomes lit up with personality. So, yes, the story is interesting, yes, the backstory is interesting. But what you can look for is who is this person that is sitting in front of us? What's their reality?

Yeah. And that's the key because we talked about, for example, listening to someone you've maybe first time spoken to on a phone.

Yeah.

And then trying to figure out, what does the person look like, how old are they, and so forth. And. And then sometimes when you actually see them.

Yes.

That's completely mismatched. It's really interesting. So it's key. So. So it's. It's really understanding who the person is by asking them, like, something that's exciting. So if they become very much a robot and they're saying, that's very exciting, then obviously that could be a red flag.

Yeah, it's a dissonance. There's absolutely a disjoint between the person and the story that's being told. But these are things that are flags for you.

Okay. So we talked about understanding who the person is. Also, we need to identify the role because you alluded early on that the role could change many hands.

So often in larger organizations, you have essentially the function of a line manager that says, we need a software engineer or whatever it is. Line manager goes to hr. HR says yes. Okay. We'll take shorthand notes of what your position is. We'll craft up a position description. Position description gets passed through for a sanity check, which may edit the process. The edited job description will go off to the recruiter. The recruiter will say, I don't have that large amount of advertising space. I'll shrink that Even more so by the time it actually gets to publication, the job may bear no resemblance to what the line manager originally wanted. I mean that's ridiculous. But it has happened.

Yes, correct, correct, correct. That's so true. Talk to me about values. Because often we organisations don't talk enough about values matching and understanding the values of the actual candidate. Now we've actually done a video of this early on, but let's sort of refocus on that and why it's so important.

So the values of the organization are really key to being the gauge with which you now look at your individual candidates. And the way to find out your candidates values is to ask them them about what's important to them. This is a typical value solicitation question. So in this job, what's important to you? That I get paid on time. Okay, well that's a good value. That I feel safe in the workplace. That's a value that has a backstory implication as well too that I get on well with my teammates and that I can respect the managers. These are value statements.

Yes.

Now as an organization you don't necessarily have to offer up where your values are, but what you do need to do is how do those values align with our values?

All right, so let me ask you a question. So what happens if in doing the interview, because this is a two way. So this is not just about the organization interviewing the candidate, this is also the opportunity for the candidate to interview the organization.

That's right.

So let's say I'm just hypothetically, one of the values is we pay candidates or employees on time and that doesn't happen.

What happens, the employee loses the respect for the value of the organization. Now the extent of that respect loss has the larger the loss of respect, the larger the gap between I'm going to be adhering to the company policy or not.

Correct.

You get a values gap. Basically.

Correct. All right, so let's just sum up so important. It's got to be a clear defined role.

Correct.

The organization needs to really understand who this person is, what's the character, what's their motivation and so forth.

Yes.

They need to understand whether there's a value alignment. Anything else. I think that.

There'S a couple of things that you can do in addition to that is obviously the competency check to make sure that the person can do exactly what it is that they say they're doing. But what a lot of organisations are doing now is also going back to some of the previous employers and saying, okay, so who was in direct charge of who is a direct supervisor for this person. Is it possible to have a chat with them as well too?

Yeah, and it's a very good point that you raised because most of the time we tend to refer to the references, which is the positive element of their reference. It'd probably be better to actually get in contact with the organization itself and. And not actually seek that contact or referee.

Yes.

And just for find an impartial person, they could provide a. Some form of a backroom judgment.

Yes, absolutely. So you'll say nice things about me, won't you, Bob?

Yeah, for sure.

Likewise.

Absolutely. We're just too good.

Meet my referee.

Exactly. So the key. Did you want to mention anything else?

So one of the things that values is very important. I also think that by watching this video and also we've got an article on the website the Rise of the Fake Candidate, which I would really recommend for you to have a look at as well. Use that as a resource because you'll find there's quite a lot of gems that are within that not even hidden. They're out there in the open.

Exactly. Well, thanks, Peter.

Thank you. Bye.

Much appreciated. This has been a great topic. And look, all that information will be posted below the video and otherwise reach us to us. So as simple as that. Absolutely. Good. And look forward to the next one.

Fantastic. Thanks.

Thanks, Peter. Cheers.

Cheers.