Keyword: hiring and firing

Like many police departments these days, Seattle’s is under fire for the handling of a number of incidents, and the possibility that the officers overreacted.  I’m not going to dive into the depths of the argument over individual cases.  It is so hard to be sure of the facts, and all sides immediately jump to polar positions.  No, I’m more interested in the effect this has on the department and its leadership.

Unfortunately that effect is not good.  And it’s not at all assisted by the Chief, Gil Kerlikowske, who has spent the last few weeks angrily lashing out at the various review boards that have criticized the department and specifically his leadership of it.  His reaction has been shrill, and embarrassing.  It’s achieved a level that the only reasonable result can or should be his resignation.

But then today comes the Seattle Post-Intelligencer with an interesting article about this issue.  In the article entitled “Few police officers trigger complaints” the Police Officer’s Guild (the union) attempts to shine a good light on the department.

Their main point is that, in a department of over 1200, something around 10 officers get more than three complaints a year.  That’s less than 1%, they argue, and that shows this is a good department.  Their point is that everyone should get their knickers out of a twist, this just isn’t that big of an issue.

In some sense, they are right.  This is a small number, and we shouldn’t overreact.  However, to me, this is just a leadership problem…  and a union problem.

You see, I’m a strong advocate of losing the bad apples promptly.  I have always advised leaders to cut their losses, and to escort the poor performers, the troublemakers, and the bad attitudes quickly to the door.  And choose again from the barrel of apples.

I always tell managers: “wouldn’t you like to be done with this problem, and have a chance at getting a superstar in the exchange?”  Imagine life without the hassle of this person, and with the true possibility that you replace them with someone who could really light the place on fire.  Most managers with whom I have this conversation realize the logic immediately.  Their eyes glaze over and they dream of life in the post-hassle era.

I even advocate moving on from the only average performers. “Wouldn’t you want to change that C player for a chance that you could get an A+ player?”  As long as you hire carefully, make decisions quickly, and cut your losses often, you’ll end up with an A team in no time.

In the case of the Seattle Police Department, my question after reading this article, is “why the heck do these officers still work there?”  Move them on.  Choose again from the barrel of apples.

I’m not advocating firing officers who get any complaints.  Clearly some complaints are baseless.  But when only 13% get one complaint, fewer still get two, and only 10 get three or more, the course is clear.  Move them on.  I don’t even care if these complaints are questionable.  By the time you get three complaints, something is wrong.  Where there’s smoke there’s fire.

And this is especially true when there are people lining up to be police officers.  They got 1200 applicants for their last police academy class.  Surely somewhere in that mod are some truly good apples.

The stickler in all this, of course, will be the Guild themselves.  They have, no doubt, negotiated a terrible contract where firing someone takes years and something just short of an act of God to accomplish.  They should be embarrassed themselves to be creating an environment where these bad apples can sully the reputation of the whole department.

But the lesson here is clear, if you are spending time managing the bad apples, lose them and choose another from the barrel.  You will thank me for it.

In the world of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) to me, one of the most frequent is “how do I get a job at Microsoft?”.  If I had a dime for every time I’ve been asked it, at parties, on the street, and especially when I post comments on the internet, I’d have…  probably a couple of hundred dollars.

Microsoft is not that much different than most large companies with respect to getting in the door.  The keys remain the same: apply for a specific job not just “any job”, work to make yourself stand out (in professional ways), and, if possible, leverage any kind of personal connection you can make.

The things that make MS different are things that only make these more important — they have thousands of hiring managers, many thousands of open positions, and tens of thousands of applicants.

At Microsoft, the crush of tens of thousands of applicants a month meant that we resorted to “data management” to get the pile under control.  If you simply add your name to this pile, your odds of getting lost increase exponentially.  So, just like at other companies, the need to become an individual, not just a résumé, is paramount.

So what does that mean?  Sure, you can submit your résumé through the web.  In fact, you should do that.  But don’t expect this “shot in the dark” to work.  Your résumé will be scanned into a huge database, searched for keywords, and maybe, just maybe, will get pulled up by the recruiter trying to fill the job for a hiring manager as a potential candidate.  But the odds are, literally, 10,000 to 1 of that happening.

It means you need a great résumé, and I’m sure you’ve worked on yours.  I’m working on a post that will help with that.  I’ll update this link when I get it completed.  A great résumé helps you get it out of the pile and onto the short list.

It also means you really should decide exactly what you want to do, or at most a couple of jobs that are what you want to do.  Search the career site, and narrow your application to just a couple.  Huge “anything you’ll take me for” kinds of applications are just ignored.  You clearly don’t have any meaningful goals, you just want in.  That’s not interesting.  So research heavily what the jobs are, and what you want to do.

Be realistic, don’t apply for a higher position than one for which you can be an obvious candidate.  You want to be a clear consideration, not a stretch and not “overqualified”.  So apply perhaps just a tad low.  There are a million jobs at the company, people move around all the time, so just get started in a job you can be great at, then move on to your dream job from there.

But, the best way in is with some recommendation, or at least some contact with someone in the company.  Résumés that come in from someone in the company (even if just with a note that says “I don’t really know this person, but…”) come in the system through a different pipe and have a better chance of spending 10 seconds on the desk of someone who can move it on to a short list.  Coming in through the normal channels just gets it into the massive pile with everyone else.

This means you should leverage any contacts you have.  And before you ask, I’m sorry to tell you that I don’t have any direct contacts any more.  At one point I was a super contact.  As VP of HR, I could virtually guarantee that someone who cared would look at your résumé.  But that time has long passed.

So, if you know anyone (and I mean anyone) who works at the company, buy them a drink, ask them about working there, and ask them if you can send them your résumé for them to forward on to their HR person, and maybe a manager they might know who would be hiring.  Most people will do it, and most people provide just enough added emphasis to get your résumé read.

I can guess that your best friend doesn’t work there, or you wouldn’t be asking me for help.  But, I’m sure you know people indirectly.  You’ve met people at parties, or someone lives down the hall in your apartment complex, or you have a friend who knows someone.

Life is a network, leverage it.  Get an introduction, strike up a conversation, and enlist their help.  If you are kind, earnest, and sincere, it’s almost impossible to people to resist helping you.

If you really don’t know anyone, fix that.  Find out where people go have lunch or go after work, and find a way to introduce yourself.  Look for the telltale employee badge and find some way to strike up a conversation.

“What’s it like to work there?” “How long have you been there, do you like it?” “Wow, it’s always been my dream to work there, how do I get in?”  Just listen, and be interested.  Everyone is human and likes to be listened to, and even though you may strike out, eventually someone will be a friend and will help you get past the door.

Don’t paper the place with your résumé.  Don’t send in hundreds, don’t ask everyone you’ve ever met to send in one, and don’t play games (like “cute” or “trick” résumés).  They will notice.  And will immediately put you on the (informal) black list.  It’s not a game, don’t treat it like one.

Once you do get a call from a recruiter, make sure you hit the ball out of the park.  You are likely to only get only one shot at it.  The recruiter is doing a phone screen and will get a feel for who you are from that phone call.

While they are probably calling about one specific job, they have more power than that.  If you are interesting, and someone worth following up on, they will consider you for other openings they are working on, or even pass your resume on to a colleague.  In any case, really work on making that phone call the best you can make it.

If you do get called in for an interview, be prepared for a really lousy experience.  Interviews are never fun, and for some reason Microsoft seems to delight in beating people up.

There are books about it (one example is: “How would you move Mount Fuji”), and lots of anecdotes on the internet.  It all should be taken with a grain of salt, but like most things they are based in some fact.  In any case, the results are a day that is not a joy, but can be worth the pain.

Whatever you do, don’t exaggerate your experience or your skill set.  They will check up on it, and during the interview, they will test you on it.  Don’t be overly modest, it comes off as insincere.  Be confident of your abilities, but be careful about blowing smoke as people will detect it immediately, and that will be the end of it.  As in most things, a good balance is hard to find, but when you do, it will feel right and will seem sincere.  Practice these conversations, it will pay off.

Remember that your goal is to get in the door, not to get the perfect job.  Just work on that, then once you’re in, you can get what you really want in the long term.

As I said in the beginning, Microsoft isn’t that much different than most other companies, so most of this will apply to other companies as well.  Best of luck in your search.

Alberto Gonzales

Once again, I’m going to risk taking this blog into the political realm by discussing a current political controversy.  But, I promise, the emphasis here is not on the who, or the why, but rather the how.

Alberto Gonzales, the United States Attorney General, is in a lot of hot water lately about the firing of eight US Attorneys around the country.  This action has stirred up a hornet’s nest of political noise, and has once again backed the Bush administration into a corner.  No matter the outcome, there is a lot to be learned from how this was handled.

Let’s begin by stating that I firmly believe the Bush administration has every right to have whoever they want as US Attorneys.  These are political appointments, and often turnover between administrations.

But there are ways to handle this problem, and ways to not handle it.  With most incoming administrations, the typical approach to these political appointments is to fire the whole lot of them, then fill the positions with people you want.  This has the great advantage that you get all your own team, and more importantly is it eminently fair.  Nobody feels singled out because everyone was escorted out.  Sure it feels harsh, but it is hard to argue with the process.

Unfortunately, Mr. Gonzales took another approach.  Drawn into the incessant politics that seem to permeate the Bush whitehouse, it appears that he yielded to the pressure of the machine.  He picked only a few attorneys who had somehow angered the powers that be, and summarily fired them.

The problem with this approach, aside from the overtly political nature of the process (a discussion I’ll leave to others) is that is was inherently unfair.  Of course it was biased by the politics of the decision, but more importantly to our discussion, it violated my number one rule for job actions: no job action should be a surprise.  As witnessed by the testimony of the fired attorneys on capitol hill a few days ago, clearly every one of these people was at least somewhat surprised by their termination.

All of the terminated attorneys received stellar performance reviews in the last several appraisals.  They were praised for their hard work, their integrity, and their results.  Then they walked in one day and — poof, they were fired.

Now this is just simply bad management.  I’d like to recommend that Mr. Gonzales, the entire Bush administration, and you all read my FAQ on how to fire people correctly.  It is a clear guide on how to move someone out when you’ve decided they need to go.

But to make matters worse, and perhaps a more devastating political issue than the suddenness of the firings, was the uniform denial of the reason for the action by the entire Bush clan.  They denied the fact that they were political actions (which I will remind everyone the Bush administration has every right to do), but instead called them actions based on performance problems.

Just as I note in the FAQ article, this is bad management because it’s not being honest and straightforward with the victim, and is likely to cause them to get upset.  Especially when the facts do not back up a claim of performance issues.  Quite the opposite, in fact.

So, it should come as no surprise to anyone that the terminated employees cried “foul!”  And it should come as even less of a surprise that an overtly political process handled poorly would become a firestorm.

Too bad, because if they had simply handled it right, we’d all be arguing about vastly more important things, like how to get out of a quagmire and who the next person to lead us there should be.

If you’ve been following along with me, you know that I’m a huge fan of clearing dead or diseased wood from your organization.  Nothing rots an organization more effectively than people who don’t carry their share of the load, or who complain all the time, or are jerks.  These people become a cancer to the team, and if you leave them around you send a very strong signal that this behavior is not only tolerated, but perhaps even preferred.  Removing these people from your organization is often the fastest, best, and maybe even the only cure.

So, after much pain and deliberation, you’ve decided that the only really good solution to your problem with that person is to simply get them out of your organization.  Good for you.  Now the question is: how do I do it?

The short answer is: quickly, like removing a band-aid.  Dragging it out is just like slow death, and it doesn’t make it any easier for either party.  You just need to buck up, sit down with the victim, and fire away.

No, I don’t mean to let them have it with both barrels.  If you’re firing someone, they don’t need to hear your long litany of reasons why this is the right thing to do.  You may in fact be better off just keeping it simple, and not getting into specifics.

But you do need to be honest.  You do have to tell them that there is a problem, you consider that problem insurmountable, and the time has come for them to leave.

You should do it quickly, frankly, and professionally.  Don’t talk about the weather and “those darn Red Sox”.  Don’t get wishy-washy and say “I think that maybe this is the right thing.”  You have to be definitive and not make this seem like a time for negotiation.

And you absolutely have to be a professional and take responsibility.  It’s not “the company is making me do this”, it is “I am doing this because…”.  Just like every other aspect of being a leader, it’s not “them” that are doing this, it’s you.  You have to be an adult and take ownership.

None of this is to suggest, however that you violate my number one rule for all employee job actions: no job action should ever be a surprise.  Period.  I don’t care if you are hiring or firing, promoting or demoting, giving a raise or laying them off.  If you sit down with the person, and the action comes as a surprise, you, not they, have done something wrong.

If you are firing someone, this is especially true.  They should have received steadily more dire performance appraisals.  They should have had at least a couple of different private conversations warning that the behavior is not what’s expected.  And they should never get mixed messages that makes them think that the behavior is sometimes OK.  It needs to be clearly, and always wrong.

This progression of warnings is not only true because it’s just good management, but it’s also the law in many places.  You can’t simply go merrily along telling someone they are doing fine, and then — BOOM — drop the hammer on them one day.  It’s morally (maybe criminally) wrong, and it leads to the whole organization wondering if they are next.

So be sure you telegraph your intentions, in several different ways.  Make that final conversation when you let them go be one they knew was coming, and is now finally here.  It will make the conversation easier for both of you, and will also make it less likely to turn into a debate, a negotiation, or worse, a lawsuit.

Finally, you also really should check out your local (usually state) laws and/or union rules if they apply.  As I say in my disclaimer, I am most definitely not a lawyer, nothing about this is to indicate you should violate any laws, regulations, or contracts.  Your mileage may vary.  Some conditions apply.  Yadda, yadda.

But, you’ve made huge progress, you’ve decided they need to go.  Good for you.  Now get it done with and move on with your life, and make your organization into that great team you envisioned all along.  Everyone, the team, you, and maybe someday even the victim, will be proud of you for it.

I get asked this question frequently.  Why is my résumé so important?  Why can’t I just impress the hiring person in the interview?  Why can’t people see past my rough résumé, and see me for who I really am?  In this internet day and age, does a silly old, outdated piece of paper truly hold that much value?

When I get this question, I tell them that building a great résumé is the single most important thing you can do when searching for a new job.  Here’s why:

It takes four basic steps to get a new job: finding the right opportunity, getting considered seriously by the hirer, selling yourself, and closing the sale.  I will have a great deal more to say about the first and last of these, but right now let’s consider the middle part – the “sales process” of getting the job.  It helps to put yourself on the other side of the desk and consider what it takes to make you the top prospect for the opening.

Assume for a minute that you’re the one doing the hiring.  You somehow get out the news of the opening (more on that here), and sit back and wait for the prospects to roll in.  They invariably come in the form of a résumé, or CV (curriculum vitae) as some call it. [Side note: why is it that the two names for this document are French or Latin?  Why don’t we have a good English word for this thing?] Yes, you may get some emails, and certainly you’ll get a few referrals from friends and associates.  But even these will eventually end up coming down to looking over the résumé.

Why?  Because we all need some kind of shorthand way to represent who we are, what we’ve done, and most importantly, why we’re a great fit for the job opening.  Certainly the hiring manager could do a long parade of auditions like the American Idol circus.  But even there, some filtration happens.  Some lowly producer sifts through the tens of thousands of people and decides who among the throng will get their chance to be embarrassed on national television.  Simon Cowell and company simply can’t be expected to see thirty or forty thousand applicants.

The same is true for most jobs.  Some level of filtration happens at every step.  Perhaps it’s some HR person or recruiter who takes the first cut at the pile of applicants.  Perhaps the hiring manager themselves goes through them looking to separate the wheat from the chaff.  Or perhaps the software that the hirer is using allows them to do some filtration.

As another aside, don’t kid yourself, the use of software to filter résumés isn’t just for huge corporations.  It’s being used more broadly with every passing day.  If you use Monster, they filter your résumé to prevent clearly unqualified people from clogging the mailboxes of hiring managers.

When I led Microsoft’s HR world we got over 30,000 résumés a month, and we had two, sometimes three, shifts of people who did little but scan them into sophisticated software to build an extensive candidate database.  There is simply no way to handle these kinds of volumes without some assistance.  And as this software comes down in price and is more accessible to smaller companies, you bet they are using it.

In any case, the first step in hiring someone is filtering out the high-quality prospects from among all the candidates who apply.  You have to come down to a manageable list (perhaps 5-15) that you can seriously consider, and perhaps interview.  There is no better way to do that than by reviewing the résumés.

This means that, to most hiring managers, you are really little more than that one piece of paper. (Yes, it needs to be one piece of paper, more on that when I get to telling you how to create a great résumé, stay tuned.)

If you really want to be one of the people who gets that precious interview, this one piece of paper better be the best it can possibly be.  It is the first step in selling yourself into the job.  You can’t get to the interview, where you are so sure you’ll shine, without getting out of the pile and onto the short list.  The thing that drags you out of the hoard is that lowly piece of paper.

I will carefully discuss each of these steps (finding the opportunities, getting on the list, selling yourself, and closing the sale) in future articles.  But right now, get to work on your résumé.

Your résumé is probably the single most important element of your job search, and as such it deserves a great deal of your time and attention.

Most organizations with over a handful of employees need some kind of Human Resources help.  But, unless you are a company of more than 100, you probably don’t want or need a full-time HR person on staff.  This leaves you with an interesting problem: either you hire someone part-time or get a consultant.

With a part-time person, you can find yourself facing some additional problems.  HR issues tend to be a crisis when they happen, and the person may not be there.  It’s hard to say: “can you wait to storm out the door until Friday, when Susie’s here?”  In addition, the real pros in HR tend to be just that — real pros, and they work full-time (most I know work far more than full-time).  So part-time help may not be a good solution.

On-call consultants can certainly be professional, and helpful.  But they can also be expensive for routine matters, and they too can be hard to reach just at the moment of a crisis.

So what to do?  Many small firms use “HR Outsourcing” companies that provide HR services from recruiting and hiring to crisis assistance.  There are a number of firms out there, but the one I’m most impressed with is Personnel Management Systems.

Personnel Management Systems, Inc.

They are based in the Seattle area, but they also have an office in Denver.  If you are small- to medium-sized firm looking for HR assistance just when you need it, you owe it to yourself to check out PMSI.

They have decided to leave, now you have to decide how long to keep them around.  In general, there are two schools of thought:

• Get them out the door as fast as you can.
• Get as much work out of them as you can.

There are a lot of variations in between, and a lot of contingent factors to consider, of course.  But in general, all the choices boil down to something approaching these.

I’ll cut to the chase scene and tell you, I’m firmly in the “show them the door” camp, unless there are some extenuating circumstances.  The key reason is that the person has already committed to the new job, they are mentally there already.  Also, they are a short-timer, and even the most dedicated and faithful of employees gets “short-timer syndrome”.  They will introduce, even unintentionally, an “I’m outta here” mood with it’s lax attention to detail, a poor attitude toward their peers, and worst of all, make others think about leaving.  So, most of the time, I’m in favor of “thanks for playing our game” and a quick exit…  measured in hours.

The only real exception is when the person holds essential responsibilities that simply no one else knows enough to handle, and you think the extra time will help train a replacement.  In this case, where the outgoing person essentially has your organization hostage, a little extra time is worth the downside.  But I rarely see value in more than the customary two weeks, and always recommend that you keep your options open and monitor the situation on a daily basis.  If the mood is going south, cut the person loose, immediately.

I talk about replacement training elsewhere, but it’s important to be realistic, if not pessimistic about it.  In my experience, short-timer syndrome takes over and completely engulfs any potential knowledge transfer you may gain from the departing employee.  They usually are leaving their job because they don’t like it, or see it as a dead end, and there is zero chance they won’t (even unintentionally) pass this attitude on to their replacement.

And as a side benefit, I usually find that a complete re-think of the job, with the new employee revitalizing the position, can work wonders for both the effectiveness of a position, and the morale of the incoming replacement.  So don’t rely on the outgoing person for knowledge transfer.  Assign a new employee, give them the essentials, and tell them you are looking for their input on how the job would best work.

So, unless you have done a very poor job in providing backup on an ongoing basis, or you have allowed an employee to develop unique and secret knowledge about their work (both mortal sins — on your part), prompt exits are the best.  Simply thank people for their work, and offer to help them clean out their desk.  Seriously.

Same day exits are the best.  This leaves the least amount of time for morale damage to the rest of the team, for questions from all concerned (and not concerned) about why, where, how much, etc., and perhaps often overlooked in this information age, the least amount of time for them to steal or damage essential information.  Change their password immediately, get them out the door with the least amount of stuff possible, and offer to settle up on all other issues (pay, COBRA, personal items left in the office, business items still at home, etc.) later.

And, for your amusement, it usually catches people off guard and sends a wonderfully strong signal to the rest of the organization: Thinking about leaving?  Fine, but don’t expect me to beg you to stay.  That’s never a bad signal to send.

It’s a common management situation: someone walks into your office, and says “I think I’m leaving.”  The next move is yours, and it stumps a lot of managers.  Should you:

• Try to talk them out of leaving
• Beg and plead for them to stay
• Wish them the best of luck in their new job
• Advise them to be careful of the door on their way out

Of course, your answer is highly dependent on the situation, the person, and the timing.  If this is a crucial position, and you’re within weeks of a crucial deadline, you will respond differently than if it is a loser who you’ve been trying to figure out how to handle for months.  So I can’t give a single, pat answer for every situation.  But I can tell you how to approach the decision.

Are they special?

First, you need to ask yourself honestly how important this person is to your organization.  And here, it is important to differentiate the person from the position.  Right now, it’s all about the person. (We’ll assume for the moment that this is a position the organization really needs.)

If this individual is quite special, someone you can see in almost any position in your organization, then they are worth saving.  If they are good, even if they have years of experience, but not truly special, you should probably just let them go.

This is the crucial choice, the one that deserves the most attention.  And you need to be very self-critical on this.  Are they honestly unique?  Or can you imagine finding someone as good within weeks?  This is the crux of the decision, but if you are honest with yourself, it’s not that hard to make.

Why are they leaving?

Assuming they are worth saving, you should place yourself in the other person’s head, for just a minute.  Ask yourself how hard this decision was to make, and how difficult you think it was for them to tell you.  If you think this was a very big decision for them, that they anguished over it for weeks, and they have been dreading coming to tell you, you need to take that into account.  In such a situation, trying to talk them out of it will only make them feel worse, solidify their decision, and make you look desperate.

If, on the other hand, you think they just got an offer and decided quickly to take a shot at it, perhaps you do have a chance to convince them otherwise.  How you approach this conversation is critical.  If you are flippant or ridicule the other opportunity, you are essentially telling them how stupid they are for considering it.  Not a good approach.

If you are calm, reasoned, and considerate, you may have a chance to convince them to stay.  You need to move into “trusted advisor” mode, and try to help them evaluate the choice.  This is your only chance to change their mind.  If you become someone they can trust, and rely on to be objective, maybe they will want to stay.  It’s a slim chance, but well worth a try.  And if it fails, you still have credibility — and perhaps they will return when the grass isn’t that much greener over there.

Is it a ploy?

Another possibility is that they are threatening to leave simply to gain concessions from you (more compensation, for example).  If this is the case, you need to call their bluff.  Quickly wish them well, and offer to help clean out their desk.  If it is a ploy, it speaks volume to their character, their dedication, and their relationship with your organization.  You don’t want/need them.

If they are willing to leave on those terms, what will happen when the going really gets tough?  And if you cave, what’s next?  Will you offer them your job to stay?  No, just let them go, and send a clear message to all in the organization that this behavior is not condoned.

Can you afford it?

Finally, if you find yourself needing to make some kind of committments to keep them (more money, fewer hours, new manager, etc.) you need to do so very carefully.

First, be sure you can actually deliver.  Nothing could be worse that for you to convince someone to turn down another offer, and then not follow through on your part.  They will never trust you again.

Second, be sure it is something you are willing to do for similarly placed individuals.  Word will get out, and you may well end up with a parade in your office looking for the same concession.  This is another reason to be sure the person is truly special before you make the decision to convince them to stay.  That way, you can differentiate when the others come marching in.

Summary

In summary, the important decision is the uniqueness of the individual.  If they are truly special and unique, try to save them.  Otherwise, simply let them go.  And if you want to save them, it’s vital you understand their motives, so you can best change their mind.  In general terms, I’m a “thanks for playing our game” kind of manager.  Special people just don’t come around that often.