Recruiting

The #1 Way to Avoid a Hiring Mistake

by Robert Hellmann • Interviewing, Recruiting

So you hired the wrong person. You thought you were getting a smart, creative personable new hire; instead you’ve got an unmotivated slacker employee. Perhaps you feel misled by their great interview, or confused about how you could have been so wrong when your “gut” told you it was so right!

Eliminating hiring mistakes involves many things, including being clear on your goals for the position, sourcing candidates effectively, taking a team approach to interviewing candidates, and checking references. Yet one approach stands out: avoid the wrong hire by asking the right question in the interview.

Ace Your Interview: Tell a Great Story

by Robert Hellmann • Interviewing, Presentations, Recruiting

Telling a great story in the interview, is the single best thing you can do to improve your odds of landing another interview or offer. Powerfully share a relevant example from your experience that illustrates how you can help them. Go beyond just saying that you are good at what you do. Go beyond telling them “I did this which resulted in that.” Help them to picture your value by painting that picture with words; share the full, interesting story in detail.

Hiring managers who know how to interview will ask you for these examples and have lots of followup questions. Those who are

Write These 6 Things to get a LinkedIn Introduction

by Robert Hellmann • Building a Business, Career Change, Getting Interviews, Recruiting

One of LinkedIn’s killer applications is its ability to leverage your “first degree network” to get introductions to your second degree contacts– for recruiting, landing interviews or prospect meetings, partnerships, or just to learn from others. To get the meetings you want, make it easy, for both your first degree connection to forward your request and for the recipient to agree.

Let’s take an example based on a client’s situation. Ellen wanted to meet Susan, a second degree connection, and she saw that John was their mutual first degree connection. Ellen’s introduction request to John contained these six elements, in the sequence below:

Don’t Be an Interview “Know-It-All”

by Robert Hellmann • Interviewing, Recruiting

The best thing you can do in an interview is to keep the focus on how you can help the interviewer with their challenges. Yet even if you are keeping this focus, bringing a “know-it-all” attitude, with accompanying assumptions, can leave a bad impression. In particular, be careful of presuming that you know what the fix should be for a hiring manager’s problem without understanding the whole picture.