Job Search Solution Blog by Tony Beshara

This is a message for any candidate interviewing for a job as well as any hiring authority interviewing candidates. Over the past few months, since the pandemic forced lots of organizations to interview candidates via some kind of video technology, it has become popular for people to interview candidates for 30 minutes.

It appears to be that among many other unintended consequences about video interviewing, people think that they can accomplish a thorough interview in 30 minutes. It’s very rare for in person interviews to ever only last 30 minutes. But for some reason, the 30 minute video interview is perceived to be effective. Let me tell you, IT ISN”T!

In fact, they’ve turned out to be a disaster, especially for candidates. It seems like these 30 minute interviews are more prominent when candidates go beyond the first or second interview. Three times this week, three different candidates of mine had their final interview with three different CEOs. All of them seemed totally hurried. One of them lasted 40 minutes and the second one lasted 45 minutes. In both cases the candidates told me that, once the interview got to 30 minutes, the CEO, in both cases seemed hurried, distracted and really wasn’t listening at all. The third interview was abruptly stopped by the CEO because she said she had to move to another meeting. My candidate said that he was in the middle of a sentence, answering one of her questions when the CEO stopped the interview. All three candidates were totally disappointed because they were not only interviewed poorly, but felt dismissed. None of the candidates got hired.

These situations made me look back over the last six months and I have come to the conclusion that candidates should not agree to 30 minute video interviews. Interviewing or hiring authorities should not insist upon this type of interviewing either. I’m absolutely convinced that it’s unfair to everyone.

In all three of these situations the candidates were absolutely stellar. One of our hiring authorities in one of these situations has been trying to hire someone for three months. He’s interviewed more than 20 candidates and he was absolutely convinced our candidate was the very best one that he saw. The candidate had gone through three other management interviews and all of those managers claimed he was stellar. But the interview with the CEO was so bad, the CEO told the hiring manager he shouldn’t hire the candidate. The CEO really didn’t give much of a reason as to why he rejected the candidate, but he didn’t want to hire him. The candidate said that the conversation was so hurried and disjointed, he didn’t even think the CEO knew who he was talking to. The CEO admitted that he didn’t have the candidate’s resume in front of him and didn’t even offer to look at his LinkedIn profile. The hiring manager was furious. He even asked, through his superior, if the candidate could interview with the CEO again. The answer was no. (The hiring authority is now so frustrated, he sent me his resume.)

The other two interviews were just as bad. Another unintended consequence of video interviews is that hiring and interviewing authorities for some reason, get terribly distracted by the background of the candidates video environment. I’ve had a phenomenal number of candidates disqualified because the interviewing or hiring authority thought the background of the candidate’s video environment was distracting or in bad taste. One employer disqualified one candidate because he had comic books on his bookshelf. Another one eliminated a female candidate because her earrings were too big and distracting. Another female candidate was eliminated because she interviewed with a bed behind her and the interviewing authority thought it was “too intimate.”  With in person interviews, I can’t remember anybody ever complaining about “the background.”

So it appears that 30 minute video interviews are to no one’s advantage. Keep in mind that this has been going on since the pandemic, but I’m just now realizing what the disadvantages of these kinds of interviews are. So, I’m going to share this with all of the employers that think they want to do a 30 minute video interview and I’m going to tell my candidates to try not to agree to a 30 minute video interview. As with the “background” phenomenon there’s something about a short, 30 minute video that is inherently poor.

One thing is certain. Person to person interviews would rarely last only 30 minutes. Very little information can be exchanged or understood in only 30 minutes. And that would be true for even a person-to-person interview. The medium of video interviewing seems to accept the idea that a thorough interview can be given in 30 minutes. It can’t.

So, on either side of the desk, please don’t perform a 30 minute interview. They are to no one’s advantage.

Well, Tuesday I heard from a candidate of mine who brought up the proverbial future problem that was bound to arise. Greg has only been on his job for three months and his company has told him that he’s going to have to take the vaccine in order to keep his job. Greg calls me because I’ve known him for a number of years and he asks me, since he doesn’t want to take the vaccine (he’s only about 40 years old)  that if he quits his job or gets fired, could I find him another job?

Now this is a real dilemma. I understand people not wanting, basically the government, telling them what they can and can’t do regarding their own health. This is especially true with the Covid vaccine. There is so much medical and political stuff being bantered about it’s really hard to know what is right.

Keep in mind, there is nobody in the world who dislikes “mandates” more than me. When I was young and the military draft still existed, I filed for conscientious objection. I understand religious and faith-based objections. It took me almost 4 years to obtain the conscientious objection status, first through the US Army and then through my draft board, a very conservative one in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was very difficult and a real test of commitment. I understand how passionately people need to feel to adopt a commitment like that.

Now also keep in mind that I got the vaccine…all three of them. My sense is that whatever downside the vaccines might have, at 73 years old, the downside of Covid is probably worse. So, I took the risk of the vaccines. However, I have a keen appreciation for Greg’s dilemma. (I had two friends of mine, both in their 60s, who refused to take the vaccine. They both died of Covid within the last two months.)  I will admit that this is a personal decision, and maybe a person feels differently about it when they’re 40 years old.

But, my calling in life is to help people find jobs and advise them about keeping them. Greg is going to have a phenomenal uphill battle if he gets fired or resigns because he will not take the vaccine (he has no medical reason, as he is quite healthy) because he just objects to it morally or religiously. Here is why. He has been on this job for only three months. How is he going to appear to a prospective employer if he goes into an interview and explains that since he wouldn’t take the vaccine he left his job before he got fired and that’s why he’s looking for another job?

Even if a prospective employer totally disagrees with the vaccine mandate and empathizes with Greg’s situation, the employer is going to think to him or herself, “Greg gave up a job over not taking the vaccine! Hmmmm, I don’t know this guy at all. Is he a malcontent? If I hire him and he just doesn’t like something down the line is he going to walk out or get fired like he did in this last job? Well, I may very well agree with Greg on the particular issue he has explained, but I can’t run the risk of hiring someone that might walk out on me after three months for any kind of reason when I have all these other candidates available that are probably just as qualified. So, I’m going to pass on Greg. It just doesn’t make sense to run the risk. Besides, if I hire him and he leaves or gets fired for some cockamamie reason, the boss can ask me why I even hired him in the first place. This is too much of a mess and I can’t afford to run that risk. I really like Greg, but I’m not going to hire him.”

I explained this scenario to Greg. I told him he was going to really have to think about it. My humble opinion would be to take the vaccine and keep the job. This is not because I agree with the mandate, because I don’t. But the scenario of him trying to find a job is going to be awful. Like I mentioned, it really doesn’t matter if the employer Greg would interview with agrees or disagrees with the mandate, he or she doesn’t know Greg well enough to know if they might run into problems over other issues if they hire Greg. It’s just not worth it for them to run that risk. There are too many other qualified candidates.

This is a very sad state of affairs. I personally do not think it’s right for the government or any big company to put anyone in this kind of awkward precarious position. It’s wrong. But losing your job over protesting the situation is the worst of the evils. Again, it doesn’t matter what I or anybody else thinks, the issue is how it’s going to appear to a prospective employer.

So, Greg has a real dilemma. Let’s hope he does the right thing.

Not a week goes by that somebody somewhere writes about advice for resumes. A week ago last Saturday (one of my favorite psychologists), Dan Ariely, wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal about how to “avoid bias” on your resume. He quoted a study in the UK where a group of psychologists sent out resumes and cover letters responding to more than 9000 real job vacancies. The cover letters were all the same, but the resumes varied slightly. Some showed an unexplained 2.5 year gap since the last job. Others explained that the 2.5 year gap was for childcare purposes. A third set simply adopted a less traditional layout replacing the dates of employment with the number of years of experience.

There was no difference in the number of callbacks for resumes that explain the gap versus those that did not. However, according to Ariely, removing dates and presenting previous employment in terms of years of experience increased the callbacks by 15%.

I’m not doubting or questioning the results of the study. I’m sure Dan reported it correctly. But I am here to tell you that that kind of resume does not work very well at all, at least here in America. These are usually recognized as “functional” resumes. They normally list the amount of experience one has had in terms of total years of experience. What they avoid is the chronological dates of specific jobs. The vast majority of employers are looking at 150 or so resumes. They scan those resumes. They don’t read them. They look for, “who did the person work for?… What does that company do?… What did the candidate do at that company?… And, how well did the candidate do it?”

Whether it’s a hiring authority or an interviewing authority or even a resume “screener,” that is what they’re looking for and if they can’t see it quickly…like in 10 seconds, the resume will be usually passed up.

So, don’t believe everything you read.

A new report came out last week that quoted “one in three Generations Z and millennial workers are looking for new job, according to a survey of 630 full-time employees at small to midsize businesses by Paychecks Incorporated. Older generations including baby boomers and Gen Xer’s are more content with their current employment. Only 11% of boomers and 27% of Generation Z are actively seeking a new job, compared with 35% of millennials and 44% of Generation Z.”

Ever since I’ve been in this business, I have seen these reports. When I was younger, I believed them. It’s not that I don’t believe them anymore, it is just that I have a much better perspective than I did years ago. Here is the reality. If you ask most people if they’d like to find a new job, lots of them will tell you “of course.” And you’re especially apt to do that when you’re young and just a bit ignorant. But there is a real big difference between saying that you would “like to find a new job” and actually going to the trouble and effort to actively look for a job.

How do I know this? Because I meet all kinds of people all the time who tell me they want to find a new job, but when they have to make an investment of time and effort and go through the emotional strain of having to get interviews, take the time to  interview, get rejected and then have to do it all over again, maybe over a two or three or four months period of time, it’s a different story. Objectively and when it doesn’t cost any time, trouble or effort, most people will say, “Yeah, sure… I’ll change jobs!” But doing it is a totally different matter.

Maybe the younger generation just doesn’t know how hard it really is to just “change jobs.” Maybe the other generations know that most jobs might just be what you make of them. Maybe they also know how hard it is to really change jobs even if you think you might want to. The actual doing of it, since maybe they’ve done it before, runs through their head and they think better of the idea.

Changing jobs is really hard to do. It’s a first-class pain. So, when you read surveys like this, take them with a grain of salt. People’s intentions and their actions might be different.

John went on to try to explain to me that he just wasn’t going to take that vaccine no matter what. He gave me all kinds of excuses, but what it came down to was, he just didn’t want to. the whole thing was a hoax and a scam, etc. to him. He was nice about it… wasn’t angry. He just said that he wasn’t going to take the vaccination and therefore his company was going to fire him and he wanted to know what I can do to help them find a new job.

The unfortunate aspect about this is that he’s only been on this job for three months. So, I asked him, “how are you going to explain to a new, prospective employer that you quit your job before you got fired because you weren’t going to get vaccinated.” Now whether an employer may or may not agree with the whole vaccine mandate they are going to have to deal with it. None of us employers like it, but we all have to deal with it. It doesn’t matter whether we agree with the vaccine are not.

Think about John’s situation. I advised him that he ought to take the vaccine unless he has an underlying medical reason of why he shouldn’t. It doesn’t matter whether I agree with the vaccine or not, anybody that gets fired because they won’t take the vaccine is going to have a real hard time finding a job. A prospective employer isn’t going to get hung up so much on the vaccine issue itself, they are going to get hung up on the fact that a potential employee would sacrifice their job over the vaccine. What that implies is that the potential employee may just as easily balk at one of their policies should they be hired. Most hiring authorities think, “we already have enough problems, there is no reason to run the risk of hiring someone who might give us more problems. We will just interview someone else.”

John is going to create a mess for himself. It turns out that he is simply being stubborn about the whole thing, has no underlying medical issues for not getting vaccinated. He finally admitted that he was an official “antivaxer.”

I don’t like being told by the government what to do over my own personal life either. But in my case, I’m running a business John is trying to keep his job, or if he has to, find another one. Arguing over this issue is nothing but a waste of time.

John, keep your job, get vaccinated!

WE WILL NEVER FORGET….EVER !!!!