interviewing Archives - Page 2 of 9

…the ‘other side of the crazy coin’

Last week I wrote about some of the crazy instances of what people do from both the candidate as well as the hiring authority situations. There are lots of folks that also do it right:

The candidate who presented a 30 – 60 – 90 day plan of what he would do in the first three months of the job if he got it.
The candidate that had called the competitors, dealers and customers of the company he was interviewing with. He also called previous employees as well as some present employees. He had taken excellent notes and offered a “report” to the hiring authority. (The hiring authority said it was so well done that he sent it two levels up in his company.)
The candidate who sold his features, advantages and benefits so clearly that the hiring authority said it was the best presentation that he had ever seen.
The candidate who ended the interview by asking the employer, “Have I made it clear about my experience and abilities… Do you have any questions that I might need to clarify? How do I stack up with the other candidates you’ve interviewed?…and ..What do I need to do to get the job?” (he got hired!)
The candidate who was persistent enough with the hiring authority that, even though he was told that he came in third in the initial interviewing process, kept calling the hiring authority, sending him emails as to why he was the best candidate they could hire. The hiring authority got tired of the first two candidates putting him off and not being enthusiastic about the job, picked up the phone and simply hired the candidate who wanted it most.

And a few hiring authorities who also do it right:

The hiring authority who interviewed for candidates on Monday, had two candidates back on Wednesday to go through a number of interviews in the company and hired one on Friday.
The hiring company whose managers who did the interviewing (all four of them) asked the same questions of all of the candidates (all four of them) making it very easy for all of them to compare the quality of the candidates and have a clear system of hiring and everyone knew.
The vice president who called every candidate back, exactly as she said she would. She gave them excellent feedback on how they interviewed and, for the ones she was not going to pursue, let them down gracefully. She kept the door open for two of the candidates on down the line.
The hiring authority who admitted that he wasn’t exactly sure what he was looking for and admitted it. He simply asked us to send him the five best candidates we had and he will interview them, relying on our judgment, since we see so many candidates and have a better comparison than most any hiring authority.

People might be crazy, but sometimes they overcome their own craziness and manage their business competently.

By Tony Beshara|2018-10-11T13:45:51-05:00October 6, 2018|employers, interviewing, recruitment|

…”God is great…beer is good…and people are crazy!” …Billy Currinngton

I love this song and I find myself humming it or singing it quite often. It expresses to a T the kind of things that we see on a weekly basis in our company. Candidates want to know why they don’t get hired… Just this week we had in our organization:

a female candidate use the F bomb in an interview
the candidate showed up 20 minutes late for an interview, and never apologized or even acknowledged it
a candidate who overwhelmed the client we sent him to with his cologne
a candidate immediately sat down at the interview with a notebook, and before the employer could say anything started asking a series of questions like: “How much does this job pay… What are the hours… Can you describe the benefits…and can I work from home?” And when we asked him after the interview where he came up with these questions, he said that he read it in an interviewing book.
a candidate who, after seven minutes of waiting, announced to the admin that she was tired of waiting and left the interview
a candidate who stood up in the middle of an interview with the hiring authority and stated that he was “overqualified” for the job and walked out
the candidate who claims that he just didn’t have time to look on the internet to look up the company and he really knew nothing about them

Now, please remember that not all of our candidates are really this challenged. Our company gets close to 100 people a week an interview. So, when you consider the low ratio of stupid things that people do, these things may not have that much of an impact. But it’s just that these kinds of ridiculous things happen daily and it keeps candidates from getting hired.

Now, before you jump to any conclusions that it’s always the candidate who screws up the interview, let me share with you some of the things that employers did this week in interviewing some of our candidates:

One of our illustrious clients asked the candidate, “Just exactly what are you interviewing for?”
Another one spent 10 minutes telling the candidate why you would want to work at the company
Another hiring authority told one of our candidates that he was the 15th candidate that he and interviewed and that his company really didn’t know what they were looking for
One hiring authority asked the candidate how old she was
Another hiring authority told the candidate he was just too old to be working in a place like that…that he wouldn’t fit in culturally.
Another hiring authority was 45 minutes late for the interview and told the candidate that he (the employer) had “a hard stop in 10 minutes.”

People are crazy!

By Tony Beshara|2018-10-03T09:44:04-05:00September 30, 2018|interviewing, Job Search Blog, psychology|

…. being “overqualified”

John is been out of work for nine months. He just plain can’t understand why the whole world has not beaten down his door to hire him. For 12 years his company was telling him how wonderful he was, they were promoting him and giving him all kinds of plaques, raises and honors because he was such a great employee. His company was sold. His job was redundant and so they laid him off. Nice severance, they still laid him off.

As with many people who have even reasonable, if not, stellar careers, John thought all he would have to do is let the world know that he was available to be hired and it would stop spinning until he found a new job. Well, it doesn’t work that way.

John has found that there are very few jobs for an executive vice president. Companies rarely hire those kind of people “off the street.” 99% of the time a job like this is obtained just the way John attained it, by performing and getting promoted.

John went through all of his contacts and competitors only to hear that he was “overqualified”for the opportunities that they had available. They just didn’t need an executive vice president. He did have three interviews in that nine months…even for positions close to the level that he was. He was competing with nine other candidates in one instance, seven others in another instance and didn’t even ask how many others in the third opportunity. Unfortunately, he never got beyond the first interview with any of the companies. In two instances the people who interviewed him were kind enough to explain to him that the reason he didn’t get hired had nothing to do with anything he did or didn’t do, it was simply that there were other candidates they felt were better suited for the job.

John was at wits end and didn’t know what to do. One answer is pretty simple. Dumb down your resume and seek opportunities that are one or two steps below where you’ve been. Set your ego aside and forget the idea that “I’m so good, there has got to be at least one opportunity out there that I can get,” and go after just about any job you can find within reason.

We recommended that to John as well as explaining to him that when he interviews he has to sell himself differently than normal candidates. He has to be able to say to individuals he is interviewing with something along the line of:

“I realize that I have attained positions that are higher than this one I am interviewing for. But I have found that if I like the job I’m doing and I like the people that I’m doing it with and I’m being fairly compensated the future will take care of itself because I am a performer. (Whatever position he is applying for he needs to explain). I’ve been in the shoes of this position before and I have performed very well. I know if I perform well, I don’t have to worry about where it’s going to take me. Level of job that I’ve had before is one that people mostly grow into. If the opportunity is there, I may very well be able to do that, but now, I do need a job and even though I might appear to be overqualified I can do an excellent job for you and you are the kind of company that I would like to go to work for.”

John can elaborate on this type of conversation. That is the essence of what he needs to say as well as saying it with believable humility. If John, however, says this with any kind of false pride or insincerity he won’t get hired. Anything along the line of, “well, I guess I’d take this job if I was offered it since I can’t find anything else, but geewhiz I worked so hard to become an executive VP it is hard to imagine that there’s not a job out there like that for me…” he will shoot himself in the foot and he might as well not have even showed up for the interview.

Now, the biggest issue that’s running through an employer’s head is this, “if I hire this guy and he gets a call two months from now from someone who is looking for an executive VP, he’s going to leave.”

Before the prospective employer voices this concern…and he or she will, John has to say something along this line:

“I’m sure you might be wondering about the possibility of someone that I have apply to in the past calling me sometime in the future and offering the chance to speak with them about an executive VP level job. The truth is that people…and especially myself… If they are happy at what they’re doing, like the people and the company they work for And are being compensated fairly, don’t just go off and interview for another position. Interviewing and looking for a job is a very painful and emotionally difficult thing to do. Look at my track record, I’ve stayed at every company I have worked with for XXXXX number of years. I just don’t interview or leave companies on a whim. If I am fortunate enough to go to work here, I will be a great employee for a long period of time.”

John needs to say this convincingly, with emotion and without hesitation. He can elaborate on this idea. The truth is that if people do like what they’re doing and like that people are doing it with and like the company they’re doing it with and are fairly compensated they don’t just truck off and interview at the drop of a hat. How do I know? I’m a recruiter! I call people all the time to see if they’d be interested in changing jobs. If they are within 70% happy with what they’re doing and who they are doing it with, they basically tell me to, go pound salt. One of the last things that people like doing is looking for a job. If they’re happy doing what they’re doing they just don’t go off an interview because a guy like me calls them.

Now it may take a little more convincing than these few sentences, but you get the idea. Every good leader knows how to be a good follower.

This presentation doesn’t work all the time, but it does work more often than not. Overqualified people can find a job!

By Tony Beshara|2018-07-28T13:59:58-05:00July 28, 2018|career development, communication, interviewing|

…no expectations

Dan Ariely, the behavior economist who teaches at Duke and has written a number of books, was asked in his write-in article in the Wall Street Journal White a few week ago about what the most important quality that would help a marriage survive. His answer was to have “no expectations.” Those of us who had been married for a long period of time really understand this sage advice.

The same could be said for a job search. However, based on my experience I would amend this concept just a bit…even maybe marriage. The The biggest problem most job seekers is that they have an expectations Just about everything regarding their job search. They expect that when they see a job posting they know they can do, they will get interviewed and likely get hired. When they apply to hundreds of job opportunities they expect to get interviews. They expect to get interviews when they call their friends. They expect to find a job easily, in a short period of time. They expect to do amazingly well on interviews. They expect to get hired when they interview and often get better money and title. They have way too many expectations.

Rarely do any of these expectations ever pan out. This is one of the greatest shocks of most job searches. And the whole problem is that people have expectations.

There is a place for expectations. And it has to do with what a candidate should expect of themselves in the job search process. A job seeker has to expect the search is going to be hard. They have to expect that they had better take massive, massive action to get interviews …with great intensity. They have to expect to make more contacts about their job search than they ever imagined. They had best expect to perform well on interviews…and get lost of them. They have to expect that they have absolutely nothing until they have a job offer….that they like.

Notice that all these expectations are about themselves and no one else. Where job seekers always run into problems is when they have expectations about other people. Interesting, isn’t it…that is probably true about marriage also.

By Tony Beshara|2016-09-25T20:14:03-05:00September 25, 2016|interviewing, job search|

…”lying?!! But everybody’s doing it… look at Hillary”

This is what I heard from a candidate this week. And this wasn’t some entry-level kid. This was a 20 year veteran who been an EVP at a well-known company. He was complaining because one of our clients was considering him for a regional VP job and just plain stopped when they found out that he lied. He worked at a company for about six months a number of years ago and didn’t have it on his resume. It was 10 years ago and he figured that it didn’t have anything to do with his most recent career so he left off his resume. It so happens that one of the people working at our client company recognized his resume, said that he knew him because they had worked together a number of years ago at the company… that wasn’t on his resume. Our client interpreted this as lying, which in the strictest sense, it was. So, unfortunately, they passed on him.

It was devastating to all of us, including our client firm’s CEO. Most everyone had their heart set on hiring this guy and he had his heart set on taking the job. I have started my 43rd year in this profession and I have to admit that I’m still torn about this kind of thing. Being educated from childhood by Benedictine nuns, Augustinian and Jesuit priests, I’ve always been taught to never lie. (Of course, the Jesuits would probably also consider the philosophical relativity of lying.) Even Sister Mary Peter, In third grade told us that, “if somebody comes to the door and asks if your mother is home and she’s not, you can tell them that she is, but she just can’t come to the door right now.” Or, when we were in seventh or eighth grade and read The Diary of Anne Frank and discussed in religion class a hypothetical question, “What would you say to the Nazi trooper who came to the door and asked if there were any Jewish people in your house.” Of course we would lie.

Regarding getting a job, I have known thousands of candidates over the years who eliminated short stints on their resumes, took sole credit for accomplishments their team actually accomplished, fudged on their title, embellished on their performance, elongated the time they were at a particular company, lied about the amount of money they made, who they knew, their name change (I still will never understand the why of this), their marital status, whether or not they had a drivers license, an undergraduate degree, a graduate degree, where they were born, how long they have been married, how long it took them to graduate from college, languages they were fluent in, their golf handicap, why they left their last job and the jobs before that, where they lived, the number of DWIs they’ve received, the ages of their children… Well, I’m sure you get the idea. Some people lie about important stuff as well as the most inconsequential, ridiculous stuff you ever heard of.

In spite of modern technology that can verify just about any fact, candidates still lie about things like having a degree when they don’t, length of time spent at a job, titles and some of their last positions etc. This is crazy! One phone call can reveal, for instance, if a person has a degree from any school. Why would someone lie about this? It can be “fact checked” so easily. The resume a candidate sent over the Internet three years ago is likely to be somewhere out there in cyberspace. If that same person’s resume is a lot different today than it was three years ago, the candidate will be eliminated if it is discovered. It’s that simple

I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no right answer for this dilemma. The most moralist among us would justify lying under certain circumstances. Regarding a job search though, the job seeker needs to realize that they are going to be held to a higher standard than Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and all of the rest of the politicians who lie/embellish/stretch the truth/deny what they said/forget/reframe.

I have to tell people “don’t lie.” It probably isn’t going to do much good, people will lie anyhow. Just remember that employers are looking for just as many reasons not to hire you as they are to hire you. If anyone lies about anything in their job search, a prospective employer has no choice but to eliminate that candidate. It has nothing to do with the candidate’s ability to do the job or not. It has to do with the fact that if the candidate is hired in spite of the known lies, a hiring authority will be held responsible for an inept, downright stupid decision to hire a liar.

I can understand people feeling like the risk is worth running. The job someone had for three months 10 years ago probably won’t make one bit of difference in person’s performance on the job they are seeking today. The same might go for a DWI a person got 15 years ago. Does it make a difference on how people perform if they have a degree? I know a number of very high level managers in the city who lied about having a degree, even the schools they attend. They do a hell of a job. But there’s still liars.

It’s pretty sad that we will accept outright lying from our politicians and be appalled by those who may “embellish” about their grade point in college. That’s reality! Cursing it doesn’t matter one iota.

Don’t lie.

By Tony Beshara|2016-09-05T12:50:31-05:00September 5, 2016|interviewing, Job Search Blog, psychology|

…some of the myths of hiring

Our company has experienced ten recessions and expansions in employment since 1952. In many ways, they’re alike in the sense that the economy is more difficult and hiring slows only to be followed by an expansion. We all know objectively that these expansions and contractions are always going to happen. None of us know when. The mistake most of us make is to “read our own press clippings” and think that we’re smart enough and wise enough to outsmart and outrun a downturn in the economy. If we survived two or three recessions we realize that, as one of our ex-presidents successfully campaigned, “It’s the economy, stupid.” A good economy masks many sins.

Here are some myths about hiring that many hiring authorities use as criteria for hiring. The most successful hiring authorities realize that these are myths:

“We’re really good at hiring.” Numerous studies show that the typical employment interviewing process is only 57% effective in predicting subsequent employees’ success. That’s only 7% better than flipping a coin.

“We’re so busy; we just don’t have time to screen candidates. Someone else needs to screen the best candidates.” And of course, everyone doing the screening knows exactly what “best” is, even if the HR person doing the screening has only been on the job three weeks or it’s somebody’s admin trying to “take a load off the boss.”

“We never make a mistake hiring.” You’re either a liar or you’ve never hired anyone.

“Don’t send us anybody resembling the last person who didn’t work out. We want to avoid anyone who is too short, too fat, too old, a woman, a man, had a degree, didn’t have a degree, had too much experience, didn’t have enough experience, (or whatever the reason why we think that person didn’t make it.) It couldn’t be that we just made a mistake and so did they.

“We have a proven system for hiring. I’m just not sure what it is this week.” These “systems” seem to change with every management change.

“The more money we pay, the better candidate we can hire.” We do get what we pay for. However, it takes more than just money to attract a good candidate.

“Hiring good people is one of our highest priorities. That’s why it’s taken six or seven weeks to get through the process.” Do the paychecks show up this way too? What quality candidate is going to wait for this? Your actions are speaking so loudly that the candidate can’t hear your words.

“We need young people because they’re highly energetic.” People who have energy have energy. It has nothing to do with their age.

“We need someone with ten to fifteen years of experience.” The question should be about the quality of the experience. Some people have one year of experience ten times and it doesn’t mean their ten years of experience is better.

“MBAs are better.” American society has deemed that more education makes a person better. It simply isn’t so.

“Why would someone with an MBA, a Ph.D., and a graduate degree want this job? A person with that much education is overqualified.” Unless it’s a scientific or academic position, (and even then, the degree level has nothing to do with capabilities), it’s hard to prove any degree causes someone to be underqualified or overqualified for any position. Let the candidate decide.

“We have to have a degree.” Ditto to the above. There are some professions, such as accounting, engineering, and scientific research, where a degree indicates an inclination toward and proficiency in a particular profession. Companies often require a degree to avoid having to interview more candidates than they wish and to let someone else, i.e. the school, “certify” the candidate. There are an amazing number of apprenticeships that companies can develop that can do the same thing.

“No online degrees. Only degrees from top-tier schools, and no foreign universities.” Within a few years, every university in America will offer online degrees. Some studies show that online students are more diligent and hard-working than classroom students. The question should be: “What did you learn?” A degree from a foreign university like Oxford might also be ok!

“People with high GPAs are smart.” Maybe book smart, but that doesn’t always translate into common sense and diligence.

Next Week: the other fifteen…

By Tony Beshara|2018-07-25T13:14:05-05:00July 15, 2016|interviewing, psychology, recruitment|

“Take this job and shove it… I ain’t working here no more…”

(Johnny paycheck, circa 1977)Candidate comes to my office this week says, “it felt so good. It felt so very good when I told these guys that they could take their job and stuff it where the sun don’t shine. I explained to them that I’d had enough. I just couldn’t take it any longer. There browbeating and taking advantage of me and all the other employees in the company just had to stop.

“Hell, nobody else in the company had the guts to do it… those weaklings. And while I was telling them to stuff it, I enlighten them as to what they could do to change things so they wouldn’t lose people like me. That they ran a disgraceful company and they should be ashamed of themselves. They just sat there and looked so surprised. Those fat som-bitches acted like they didn’t have any idea what I was talking about. What a joke! It felt so good to tell them I was leaving.”

Well that was eight months ago and our candidate is still looking for a job. He didn’t think he would have any trouble finding a job. He didn’t think about what was that happen when he left like that…the kind of reference he might get. In fact, our candidate didn’t really think at all.

He thought he had a job lined up with a friend at church that had given him a “we’re always hiring at our place just give me a call” comment. In eight months he’s only had three interviews and he didn’t even come close to getting the job. On top of having a difficult time in finding a job, he’s really embarrassed about the way he quit. He says that he knows that the people he told what they could do with their job know that he’s out of work and are really laughing.

Here’s the lesson, the matter how mad or frustrated you get don’t tell people what they can do with their job until you found a new one. Bite your tongue. Calm down and endure. Find a job before you leave this one. You never know how long it’s going to take to find a job. The people that this guy told off don’t really care about why he left. They aren’t going to change the way they do things because of any employee leaving.

Our poor candidate is in a world of hurt and most of it he created for himself.

By Tony Beshara|2016-02-19T22:37:28-05:00February 19, 2016|interviewing, Job Search Blog|

… You want how much?

There was an article in last week’s Wall Street Journal about how high salaries haunt some job hunters and eliminate them before they barely get started interviewing. The article claimed that:

Human resources executives say that asking about pay right off the bat helps contain compensation costs, insures that candidates have reasonable expectations and spares recruiters chasing prospects they can’t afford.
Focusing on compensation history “holds down wages because now the jobs are being filled by people with lower salary expectations”… “We have a whole generation of people who are permanently adversely affected.”
Finance chiefs are probably looking ahead and saying they want to keep the escalation of labor costs from going up in a way that will put pressure on earnings.
Employers may feel they can lowball applicants because they believe there is still a surplus of qualified candidates.
Workers over 45 years old take a bigger hit than workers under 35 years old
Some employers hesitate to hire at far below a past salary, concerned that the employee would resent earning so much less. (…and therefore leave or look for another job with a higher salary.)

The conclusion of the article is that when job candidates are asked what they want to earn and then tell a perspective employer what their desire is, they get eliminated.

Unfortunately, what the article doesn’t tell the prospective job seeker is how to deal with this issue. Here are ways a job seeker can deal with this question and keep themselves in contention for the job.

When asked, “What kind of money are you looking for?”, don’t try to guess what’s on the mind of the interviewer. Answer the question by stating something like, “In my last position I was earning $XXXXX. I’m not as concerned about what the starting salary is as I’m concerned about the opportunity in my ability to perform. My experiences have been that if I give good service, the money is going to take care of itself.”
Don’t pay any attention to what a “published” salary might be. Just because an organization publishes a certain salary doesn’t mean they’re going to pay that.
Quit thinking that people are trying to “lowball” you are anybody else. When you deal from a defensive attitude like that you won’t negotiate very well.
Remember to communicate that money is the fourth or fifth reason that people work. The company, what they do, the people… all are a lot more important than just money.
Quit thinking that just because you’ve made a certain amount of money that you “owe it to yourself and your family to get an increase.” An increase may not be what the market will bear. A lateral move or even a step backwards in salary is common in today’s market.
Communicate as much as you can that you are “open” regarding money. You might even give an example like, “In the last two jobs that I’ve had I started out at a lower salary than what I had made before and I wound up getting salary advances because of my performance. Again, I’m not as concerned about the entry salary as I am about the company, the people and the opportunity. If all of those things work well, the money usually works itself out.”

It doesn’t take a mental giant to know that older employees, because they usually make higher salaries, are more likely to take less money in finding a new job than younger workers. But that’s not because they’re older, it’s because they have been making more money. A “younger” candidate making more money than a hiring organization might want to pay will have the same problem.

For a while, companies will try to “contain” salaries and earnings. But as candidates become harder to find and the job market gets better, these companies will have to pay more and increase starting salaries to compete for good candidates. It happens every time we come out of a recession.

A job seeker’s pay history may very well be a challenge to deal with. But if it’s handled the right way, it can become no more than a minor issue.

By Tony Beshara|2016-02-09T09:14:30-05:00February 7, 2016|interviewing, job search|

Here’s Why You Should Take Every Interview Available to You

most of the candidates that we work with are presently have a job and interviewing is a hard thing to do. Let’s face it interviewing is a pain in the butt and even though it’s a necessary evil nobody really likes doing it. Michael was an exceptional candidate and two years ago we got them an interview that he really didn’t want to go on.

he actually fought us on it. He said he knew the company, they were a competitor, they had a tremendous amount of turnover, that he never go to work for him and on and on. We convinced him that nobody knows anybody like they think they do and he at least ought to go on the interview and talk to them. He even mumbled something like, “well I guess if I don’t go, you won’t get me other interviews?” we assured him that that’s not the case, but he ought to go on the damn interview.

he went. He really liked the guy he was talking to and wasn’t as unhappy with the company as he thought he would be. He went through a number of interviews, personality surveys and corporate visits. He got the offer but turned it down because we found him a better opportunity. fair enough.

Two years later Miguel decides that he needs to look again. His present company had changed hands and were now being purchased by a private equity company and there was just way too much up in the air about what was going to happen. Being good recruiter’s, we began by looking at the company’s we had referred him to once before.

of course we contacted the company he got the offer from a couple of years ago. Things have really changed. They had a new CEO and a new executive vice president of sales.. Sometimes timing is everything. The new EVP had recently let the manager in the Dallas office go and happen to need a new Regional Director.

the EVP interviewed Miguel on his way through Dallas the Monday after we called him. Not only was the EVP thrilled with Miguel’s experience and background, but some of the managers at corporate, whom he had interviewed with a couple of years ago, remembered him as stellar. It didn’t hurt that his psychological testing that he had done before predicted success.

Within one week of learning of Miguel’s availability, our client hired him as a regional director.

Lesson: … Interview with anybody that even might be interested in your skills or experience. Making a good impression. You never know if you might be speaking to them again.

By Tony Beshara|2016-01-19T13:13:28-05:00January 19, 2016|career development, interviewing|

… Your first impression

The recent cover article in Psychology Today summarizes the latest research regarding first impressions. This is one of those topics that people are aware of but they hardly ever apply them to the interviewing situation. The article summarized as follows:

We look at a person and immediately a certain impression of his or her character forms itself in us. A glance, a few spoken words are sufficient to tell us a story about a highly complex matter.
People depend on first impressions to assess a person’s extroversion, openness, agreeability and conscientiousness. Studies have shown that the judgments of these characteristics made after knowing someone for a minute are usually as accurate as those made after knowing the same person for years.
First impressions are almost perfectly accurate 30% of the time.
The presence or absence of physical warmth similarly sways first impressions. Psychologists found that subjects holding a cup of hot coffee as opposed to iced coffee rated the person they met as especially warm and generous.
People who sit at a wobbly table or sit on a wobbly chair judge the people they meet as unreliable.
A person’s face at first glance can form a strong impression. For instance thin lips and wrinkles at the corners elicit judgments of distinguished, intelligent and determined. Persons who were baby faced were perceived as physically weak, naïve and submissive, although also honest, kind and warm.
The more a face resembles the viewers face, the more the viewer is predisposed to like it.
A single piece of highly negative information undoes a positive first impression, but it takes a lot more… like doing something heroic… to overcome a negative first impression.
First impressions are most unreliable when there’s a narcissist in the room. Narcissists are just plain hard to read. They make incredibly good first impressions.
Getting to know people over an extended period of time alters first impressions. But for the most part it takes a long “getting to know you” period to alter those impressions.

A study at McGill University as far back as 1965 found that people decide to hire other people based on the impressions they get of the candidate in the first four minutes.

These facts about first impressions have a lot to do with the interviewing situation. For a candidate, they need to know that it is really important to make a good first impression. Dressing appropriately, looking people in the eye, having a firm handshake and all of the things I’ve discussed in previous blogs about first impressions and the first interview apply. Most candidates totally underestimate the impact of that very first impression. They will give it lip service and say things like, “Tony, I know that… but everybody dresses casually for interviews.”

If you’re a hiring or interviewing authority you want to be aware of the pitfalls of first impressions. Get to know candidates over a period of time, preferably in different environments to confirm, deny or alter first impressions.

Realizing the psychologist’s findings you might want to reconsider going on a job interview on wobbly, stiletto heels or interviewing at a noisy Starbucks after buying the interviewer an iced coffee.

By Tony Beshara|2018-07-25T13:16:58-05:00November 22, 2015|interviewing, Job Search Blog, recruitment|