The Hiring Process Through the Employer’s Eyes

So how do employers think? First, they don’t think of themselves as “employers.” If you ask a thousand people what they do for a living, no one is going to say, “I’m an employer.” That’s not even a job title! It’s a function, and not always a welcome one. “Employers” see themselves as business owners, department managers, accountants, plumbers, retailers, and so on, who must employ people to increase their success. Most view dealing with employee-related issues—including hiring—as a distraction from their real jobs. They want to spend as little time as possible doing it. Yet most companies don’t have a Human Resources (HR) Department or dedicated hiring manager. Instead, an assistant is given the added task of screening out applicants. So in your job search, you’ll probably be dealing with very busy people who have lots of other things to do, who are already short-staffed, and who may not know a lot about hiring. The easier you make it for them to see your value, the easier it is for them to recommend you to the person with the power to hire. Even in companies that have HR, the person who makes the final hiring decision isn’t in HR (unless you are going for a job in that department). The person with the power to hire you is almost always the company manager or your department head. In the Open Market, the assistant or the HR staff are your doorway to the decision maker, so treat them with respect.

➵ DID YOU KNOW?

It’s not uncommon for an interviewer to have not reviewed your résumé before stepping into the interview. Don’t assume they have. Repeat your key messages a couple of times as well as highlighting the other selling points that can get you hired.

Second, although the company has stated goals, each department manager also has a personal agenda. Like you and me, these managers are concerned about their own success. If they own the company, it’s tied to the company’s success and reputation. If they manage within the company, it’s tied to their own job security or advancement potential. One surefire way to get hired is to prove you can help your manager achieve her goals. Managers are evaluated on both their personal effectiveness and the effectiveness of their team. They want team members who will help them get the job done, and make them look good. The more you know about your prospective manager, the better prepared you can be to prove you will help him achieve his goals.

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Being good at the job is often not enough to get you hired if a manager perceives that you could cause problems or won’t follow her lead.

Third, employers don’t hire because they have a vacancy; they hire because they believe someone will make them more profitable. In today’s market employers endeavor to keep their staffing levels as lean as possible. If they can’t clearly see how adding your skills, contacts, and personal qualities will make them more successful, you won’t make the cut. It’s that simple. You will also be screened out if you cost more than your skills, contacts, and qualities are worth. It doesn’t matter if you are a salesperson or an executive, a cleaner, a receptionist, or a warehouse worker.

UNDERSTANDING YOUR IMPACT ON PROFIT

Thinking like an employer means understanding that an employee’s impact on profit includes all six areas of PADMAN: Presentation, Ability, Dependability, Motivation, Attitude, and Network. If you have never been involved with the finances of a business, let us give you a quick crash course. Profit is not just money earned. It’s the money that’s left over after the employers pay all their bills, including your paycheck and taxes. If the company makes a million dollars a year and spends $900,000 on bills, they have $100,000 in net profit—this 10 percent is considered good in most industries. But what if they have to pay extra for overtime because employees call in sick, or they have to replace merchandise damaged or stolen by staff, or they become embroiled in expensive lawsuits due to employee actions? Their profit quickly diminishes. And if employees give poor customer service, hurt the company’s reputation, or in other ways reduce business, by even just 5 percent, the employers’ net profit is reduced by another $50,000! Can you imagine striving all year to build a million-dollar business that earns little or no profit?! This is why hiring wisely is so important to employers. Business owners are in business to make money for themselves or their shareholders—even business owners who care about their employees, love what they do, want to make a difference, and give back to their community. Profit is what keeps them in business, gives you a job, and allows them to do the extra!

➵ DID YOU KNOW?

A full-time employee who takes a fifteen-minute smoking break every two hours costs the company 250 hours each year. That’s more than six weeks of time the employer is paying that employee to smoke, not work.

Perhaps you want to go into social work, education, government, or charitable work, and think profitability is not important there. Employers in those work cultures don’t use the term “profit,” but they still have to keep a close eye on the bottom line. Not-for-profit and government agencies do not have shareholders for whom they must make a profit, but they must still ensure they produce results while staying within budget. If they don’t offer a service that donors and taxpayers are willing to support, they won’t have the funds to run their program, or the extra “profit” to fund new services, hire new staff, or give raises. Not-for-profits that hire managers who don’t produce results within a budget, or employees who can’t meet targets and provide a good service without wasting money, are often forced to cut services or go out of business.

Government agencies are a little different because they don’t go out of business if they overspend. However, because they rely on public money, overspending can result in higher taxes or a cut in services, both of which create unhappy voters. This is why department heads who don’t manage their money wisely are often disciplined or demoted. Whether you want to work in government, not-for-profit, or business, the more clearly you can prove your ability to help employers be profitable, the more valuable you will be.

Seeing the hiring process through the employer’s eyes will help you catch and remove the issues that could get you screened out and focus on proving that you will increase profitability. Most people think that job searching is about getting hired. Actually, it’s about being the last one standing. Take a look at it from the other side of the desk, and you’ll see what we mean.

UNDERSTANDING THE SCREEN-OUT PROCESS

Imagine that a company advertises a single job opening and gets one hundred résumés. The first question the employer asks is, Who can I get rid of? He doesn’t have time to interview all the candidates, so a computer or junior assistant will quickly skim the résumés for key words and skills, and obvious reasons to put them in the “no” pile, like gaps in work history, little or no experience in the field, and typos or messy appearance. It’s a lot like when you skim your email and quickly delete the junk mail so you can focus on the mail that seems worth reading. It’s a screen-out process. With thirty to forty résumés remaining in the “maybe” pile, the second question the company asks is, Who else can I get rid of? The résumés are reviewed for less obvious screen outs and twenty to thirty more are removed, leaving only eight to twelve in the “maybe” pile. At this point, they have spent less than a minute per résumé (many recruiters brag they’ll spend less than ten seconds) and screened out 90 percent of the applicants. Notice that they still don’t have a “yes” pile, and the person with the power to hire hasn’t yet seen the résumés.

➵ DID YOU KNOW ? . . .

You must use the exact terms the employer is looking for. If the computer doesn’t see the employer’s keywords for the job, you’re screened out.

Next, phone calls are made to the remaining eight to twelve candidates to see who’s still available, confirm their skills, and begin determining if they’ll fit in. If HR or the assistant finds no reason to screen a person out, or if the candidate offers a compelling reason to meet, an initial interview is scheduled. Often, the first interview continues to focus on the question, Who else can I get rid of? Only when HR or the assistant has identified the top three to six candidates does the person with the power to hire enter the process and change the question to, Why should I hire you? The screen-out process ends, and the hiring process begins, when the decision maker gets involved.

We don’t tell you this to depress you, but to point out that if you focus only on your selling points without addressing an employer’s concerns, you may be screened out before you get a chance to share those points with the decision maker. We’ll show you how to remove your screen outs, as well as prove you’d be great at the job. It all starts with PADMAN. You’ll also learn how to skip the screen-out process and go straight to the person with the power to hire, by using side doors. But to do any of this effectively you must understand the employer’s perspective.

UNDERSTANDING THE EMPLOYER’S PROBLEM

Employers have limited time and information with which to make an important, expensive hiring decision—that’s their problem. They read the résumés, hear the stories, watch the body language, and talk to references, but usually never see the candidate do the job. Often, they will pay out months of salary before knowing whether the person will help create a profit or be an expense that’s difficult to unload. This is why they are so picky. They see spelling errors on a résumé and wonder if the person will do sloppy work, isn’t very smart, or can’t spell. They may decide that a person who shows up four minutes late to the interview is unorganized, has personal problems that will interfere with work, or doesn’t value the job. Because employers have this problem, lots of small issues can become the reason you get screened out.

➵ DID YOU KNOW?

Many of the side doors we recommend allow employers to see you “do the job,” reducing their sense of risk . . . and increases your chance of being hired.

Richard Bolles says in his international bestseller What Color Is Your Parachute? “Decisions are based NOT on what is true, but on what is PERCEIVED to be true.” ¹ We seldom really know what is true. We base our belief on what we experience, see, hear, and take on faith, but when we gain new insights, we adjust what we believe. So an employer’s concerns don’t even have to be true to get you screened out. What matters is the perception. Take the case of Ralph, a client of ours who was a real flirt. He loved seeing the smile on women’s faces when they felt someone thought they were special. He would flirt with store clerks, receptionists, friend’s wives, coworkers, even interviewers. No one was safe from his winks and compliments. Ralph was also very happily married and would never take it further than what he called “the feel-good factor.” His wife and friends all knew his flirting was harmless and even part of his charm. But to prospective employers, an overtly flirtatious married man could be perceived as a potential messy scandal or lawsuit. Few employers will ask the man how far he plans to take his flirting. They will just assume, and screen accordingly.

You have to think like employers to discover why they are screening you out and find the best way to prove you can help make them profitable. It’s not as hard as it sounds if you use PADMAN as your guide. Once you understand the company’s needs and concerns in each area of PADMAN, you can highlight the selling points that will impress them and remove the issues that get you screened out. Plus it will help you find the side doors that will get you in front of decision makers. So let’s take a look at PADMAN from the employer’s perspective.