I was doing a little TOA "spring cleaning" a few weeks ago, which mostly involved going through forgotten drafts and determining if any were worth posting this year. For the most part, the drafts proved to be evidence of a certain truism about putting ideas on hold - if the thought is only good enough to be shelved "for later", then it suggests the idea isn't very good. To put it another way, the exercise left my virtual trash bin overflowing with the directionless pomposity of first-draft, first-year TOA.
I'm not sure what shared quality defines the salvaged pieces. Perhaps it could be the simple fact of a remaining connection to my current life, as is the case with today's leftover thoughts from this September 2017 post, which summarized the effect of Hire Like You Just Beat Cancer on the way I thought about my responsibilities as a hiring manager (1). It's still relevant, for example, to make sure my questions rule out hypothetical answers, or to remind myself that it's OK to add another interview round if I remain unsure about a set of candidates. I also liked the thought about the connection between performance assessment and hiring, which implies to me that an organization can improve its hiring results indirectly by improving its performance evaluations (2).
The leftover thought I discovered last week noted that I should write a follow-up about recruiters - it's a good idea to use recruiters if you suspect the in-house effort will not lend you an advantage in the hiring market. I think the thought might be more helpful in reverse - if you want to gain an advantage in the hiring market, invest in the in-house recruiting team. The proliferation of recruiting firms suggests that too many organizations do not feel they can gain a sufficient advantage in the hiring market, though of course I recognize that such a blanket generalization fails to account for the enormous nuance that defines the hiring process.
This thought extends beyond just recruiting. If you are hiring a third-party for contractor work, the rush of seeking out the best option can make us forget that any competitor in the field can hire for the same result. The effect in the medium-term can be a collective cost increase without necessarily resulting in a relative gain. A silly but helpful metaphor is to think about a town's bars all debuting a new draft beer on the same night - more costly for each establishment while doing nothing to influence the relative decision-making of a potential customer.
Footnotes / endnotes
0) Leftovers? Rewinds? I'm confused...
I label a post as a leftover if it follows from the original without necessarily requiring a reread. If I think it's worth going back and reading an old post, I'll call it a rewind.
1) Granted, it's a small sample size...
I read this book so long ago that I actually don't have any notes (though I imagine I weaved some of the thoughts into the manual I use ahead of conducting an interview). I went back to Goodreads to see if anyone else had posted their thoughts and was pleasantly surprised to see a 4.5 rating, which is unusually high for the site (most books seem to land between a 3.5 and 3.7).
1a) Rule #1 - don't break any laws
The sole review of the book cited the potential legal ramifications of following certain strategies described in the book. It raises a great point, and at the very least the above rating seems inflated by the lack of awareness of this concern among the other reviewers.
However, as a hiring manager it's important to remember that transgressions are not excused by clever observations such as "well, this book I read once, with a 4.5 Goodreads rating, it told me to ask this question". The hiring manager is ultimately responsible for knowing the laws and steering the team clear of any violations. My recommendation for books like this is the same as my basic recommendation anytime someone is reading for knowledge - try to learn two or three things from each book, then discard the rest. In the case of Hire Like You Just Beat Cancer, the original post from 2017 highlighted a handful of things I learned and applied to my work, none of which put me in any danger of creating a legal problem for me or my team.
2) The two-way street
This thought raises a question - what are some obvious ways to improve evaluations? The original post suggests an intriguing option - given the finding that some interviewers give harsher evaluations just before lunch, the organization could standardize the time of day managers must use for this task. It could apply a similar line of thinking to interviewing - for a given position, all interviews must take place between certain hours to ensure that these biological factors are not influencing the process.
I'm also reminded here of how I used this information when I was looking for a job (and continue to do, in the context of scheduling any kind of meeting where I may be evaluated in some way) - my request was always for the 1 PM interview. I don't necessarily disagree with the objection that I am gaming the system in some way with this tactic, but in my defense it's a direct result of the way I try to account for every possible factor - if this isn't being captured in the assessment, then at least I'm being indirectly recognized by subtly manipulating the evaluator via my scheduling preferences.
