Job Search Solution Blog by Tony Beshara

I don’t think I’ve had this happen five or 10 times in 49 years. And looking back on it, it’s usually for crazy reasons. Like a company being sold, a total change in management or poor references after an offer has been made. But, this one takes the cake. And there are lessons all over the place.

This was the vice presidency’s position, for $400,000. My client had been interviewing for six weeks and finally settled on an excellent person. On Thursday, the human resources director calls the candidate and makes the final offer. The candidate says that it looks fine but he’s giving up a lot of stock where he is presently working and he would like our client to make it up. The human resources director gets together with the executive VP, who talks to the CEO and, amazingly enough, they come up with something that, he says, will make him happy.

He then tells the human resources director that he has to talk it over with his wife (mistake number one: he refers to his wife as “the boss.”). He says he can’t make any decision until he talks it over with, “the boss.” He also explains that he has to go out of town Friday and over the weekend to a sports tournament with one of his children, and he may not be able to talk to his wife until Monday. He then calls back the human resources director and explains that he has a golf tournament on Monday and he may not be able to speak to his wife (“the boss”) until late Monday.

He didn’t communicate correctly or the human resources director didn’t understand it, but she communicated to the Executive Vice President that the candidate was playing golf all weekend on Monday and wasn’t going to be able to give them a decision until Monday evening. The candidate claims that he made it clear to the human resources director that the weekend was devoted to one of his kids, out-of-town tournaments and that he and his company were actually hosting a golf tournament on Monday. It was work.

When Monday rolled around, the Executive Vice President was furious. First of all, he couldn’t believe that the candidate kept referring to his wife as, “the boss.” There was a slight miscommunication between the HR director and the executive VP. The executive VP was under the impression that our candidate was playing golf all weekend, as well as on Monday. Our candidate thought that since he had explained the situation to the HR director about going out of town for the weekend with one of his kids athletic events and being a sponsor for a golf tournament on Monday, it would get communicated to the executive VP in just that way. Well, it didn’t.

The executive VP couldn’t imagine why the candidate couldn’t talk to his wife (“the boss” still rankled him) and let them know Monday at the latest. The executive VP just plain old had it with being postponed. He had gone to the CEO and gotten more stock than they originally offered. And when he felt like the candidate had better things to do than decide about the job, he figured there ought to be a candidate available who would be more grateful and committed.  We started the search all over.

This is one of the saddest situations I’ve experienced in many years. My candidate missed a phenomenal opportunity. I found the company another really great candidate, so it worked out well for my other candidate and the executive VP.

I’m really sorry for my first candidate. I don’t mind if the candidate loses out on an opportunity for really good business reasons. But this wasn’t one of those situations. I take responsibility here for not encouraging my original candidate to let my client know on Friday, the day after he got the offer.

P. S. Don’t refer to your spouse as “the boss.”

“Well Tony, three of us were interviewing him and we asked him if he could give us an example of where he put together a deal and how he did it from scratch. We thought he was going to start an example of what he had done in the past and all he did was talk in circles for five minutes. Then one of us asked him, “Just give us an example of where you’ve been successful. And after a long pause, he said, Let me think about it a minute.”

That pretty much ended the interview and my candidate’s opportunity to get hired. He didn’t have a story of where he’d been successful. Ironically, he had lots of successes in his background, but he just hadn’t practiced them for the interviewing situation.

This is a short lesson. It’s really a sad lesson. It doesn’t matter what kind of position you are interviewing for, you’ve got to have stories of where you’ve been successful. If you’re a candidate, you only need two or three of them. But you have to have them. This guy lost a job at a $150,000 base salary with an absolutely phenomenal company.

I had given him access to “the job search solution,” our 60 hour tutorial on finding a job which has a whole section on how to tell stories. But, unfortunately, he said he just didn’t have time to do it. And, besides, “I’m really good at interviewing.” Famous last words…

A wise man learns by mistakes, the wiser person learns by others mistakes. Please, please, please, if you’re a candidate looking for a job, you better have some really good stories as to how you’ve been successful.

The CEO of one of our long-term clients, writes me an email: “We’ve been looking for a controller through you all for almost six weeks. How come we haven’t gotten any candidates?” So I call our associates in the accounting division and I asked him why we haven’t been able to get this guy any good candidates, and here is what they tell me:

“Here’s why we don’t send this guy good candidates. He makes us send a resume, instead of just seeing the candidates that we tell him are qualified. He tells us to send their phone number and he’ll call them some time. We are getting our candidates interviews right and left at specific times, with specific people… face-to-face. If we tell a candidate that hiring authorities going to call them some time, they aren’t interested. And why should they be? We don’t like to tell them that because we never know when the CEO is going to call them. And if they get caught off guard, they are not going to interview very well, so it’s a waste of time, especially when we can get the candidates we have other really good interviews.

Besides, sometimes he sits on the resumes for a day or two and we never know whether or not he’s going to interview the candidates. And then, instead of just interviewing the candidates we tell him he ought to interview…there just aren’t very many of them…he tells us we have to send him the resumes. He’s just not worth the investment of the time and effort. We like him and he’s a nice guy, but while he’s asking us to jump through hoops, other clients are interviewing our candidates face-to-face…and hiring them!”

This is the kind of market we’re in today. Candidates are really hard to find. We are very fortunate here at Babich, because we have more than 100,000 candidates in a database that we have interviewed face-to-face and we are contacting these candidates all the time. So, we can always come up with some good ones. But we ask our clients that they need to interview quickly and decisively, because it is not uncommon for us to be able to get our candidates three or four interviews very quickly, as well as offers.

So, if you’re a hiring manager, please, if you need to hire someone, please listen to our advice.

It’s often very hard to explain our business works. Some people think we simply send a few resumes, make a couple of appointments and charge a big fee. I quit trying a number of years ago to explain to people how it works. And even after all these years, it’s still a mystery. And frankly, I’m humbled by the whole thing, every day.

But once in a while things happen that make it just plain so much fun. And last week one did. I placed a candidate. I got him only two interviews. It took me 25 years to do it. When we met 25 years ago, obviously we were both a whole lot younger. I got him one interview then and he didn’t get the job. Every three or four years, he would call me when he needed a new opportunity. Every three or four years I would call him with an opportunity for his kind of background. The timing for each of us was off every time we connected. When I would call him, he was happy with what he was doing and wasn’t interested in moving. When he’d call me in need of a new opportunity, I simply couldn’t find anything for him. I couldn’t even get him an interview.

But last week, an opportunity came along that fit him perfectly. I made two calls, got him the interview and after two subsequent interviews with our client, he got the job. He did it all within three days.

Our profession is simply one of timing. It’s really simple, but really hard to do. Sometimes it just takes 25 years.

• There is nowhere near the number of candidates available to you that you thought there were.
• The candidates you do see are going to come into your interview with two or three offers.
• Most candidates are going to be a little cocky about the situation their in because for the past few years, up until lately, you were rude to them, didn’t given the time of day, didn’t call them back, took forever to let them know how they stood (if you did it all) …and they remember it.
• Candidates are “in control” and they know it.
• Over the last 10 years, most employees (maybe including you) have developed an attitude of “there is no loyalty on the part of the companies I’ve worked for, so, I’m going to get everything I can that’s good for me., these companies have treated me like a “rented  mule” for all these years, and there’s no reason for me to feel compassion for them. I’m going to get all I can.”
• Candidates are going to accept your job and then leverage it with two others, or try to get a counter offer.
• The longer you drag out the interviewing process, the less likely you are to land the candidate you want. The candidate you want, others want too.
• You are likely to have to pay more money for the kind of candidate you want than you did even six months ago, which of course is going to infuriate all of the other people in the department, which will cause them to ask you for more money or leave.
• Everyone in your company knows that the market is hot, so be nice and be appreciative of everybody (the major reason why people leave their job is that they feel unappreciated…especially if they are underpaid.
• Expect that all of the people in your company are being recruited by your competitors.
• Pursue at least three or four candidates at a time to the final stages of an offer. If you hone in on one candidate and drag the process on for more than a week or so, there’s  a good chance you’re going to start all over.
• Expect candidates to negotiate from a position of strength.
• Don’t make the negotiation adversarial.
• No matter how your best candidate turns you down…. even by calling you up the day before they are supposed to show up for work and tell you they’re going to work somewhere else…be graceful. You may need this candidate again down the line. (If you have two or three good candidates in the queue, you don’t have to worry about this.)
• Cut down your interviewing process to no more than three people and do all the interviewing within a week.
• Realize that you may not get all of the experience you might really like for what you would like to pay. So, look for as much “athleticism” as you can find in lesser experienced candidates.
• Until your new employee has been on the job for at least 9 to 120 days, don’t be surprised if they come into your office one day and explained that they got an offer “they simply can’t pass up” from someone  they had been interviewing with when they were interviewing with you.
• For all kinds of reasons, expect these market conditions to last for another two years.

• there are nowhere near the number of candidates available to you that you thought there were
• the candidates you  do see are going to come into your interview with two or three offers
• most candidates are going to be a little cocky about the situation the’re in because for the past few years, up until lately, you were rude to them, didn’t given the time of day, didn’t call them back, took forever to let them know how they stood (if you did it all) …and they remember it
• candidates are “in control” and they know it
• over the last 10 years, most employees (maybe including you) have developed an attitude of “there is no loyalty on the part of the companies I’ve worked for, so, I’m going to get everything I can that’s good for me. , these companies have treated me like a ‘rented  mule’ for all these years, and there’s no reason for me to feel compassion for them. I’m gonna get all I can.”
• candidates are going to accept your job and then leverage it with two others, or  try to get a counter offer
• the longer you drag out the interviewing process, the less likely you are to land the candidate you want. The candidate you want, others want too
• you are likely to have to pay more money for the kind of candidate you want than you did even six months ago, which of course is going to infuriate all of the other people in the department, which will cause them to ask you for more money or leave
• everyone in your company knows that the market is hot, so be nice and be appreciative of everybody (the major reason why people leave their job is that they feel unappreciated…especially  if they are underpaid
•  expect that all of the people in your company are being recruited by your competitors
•  pursue at least three or four candidates at a time to the final stages of an offer. If you hone in on one candidate and drag the process on for more than a week or so, there’s a good chance you’re going to start all over
•  expect candidates to negotiate from a position of strength.
•  don’t make  the negotiation adversarial
•  no matter how your best candidate turns you down…. even  by calling you up the day before they are supposed to show up for work and tell you they’re going to work somewhere else…be  graceful. You may need this candidate again down the line. (If you have two or three good candidates in the queue, you don’t have to worry about this.)
•  cut down your interviewing process to no more than three people and do all the interviewing within a week
• realize  that you may not get all of the experience you might really like for what you would like to pay. So, look for as much “athleticism” as you can find in  lesser experienced candidates.
• Until your new employee has been on the job for at least 9 to 120 days, don’t be surprised if they come into your office one day and explained that they got an offer “they simply can’t pass up” from someone  they had been interviewing with when they were interviewing with you
• for all kinds of reasons, expect these market conditions to last for another two years