Padding accomplishments: half truth or half lie ?

Consider the following statements recently taken from a few senior professional resumes:

·        Leading a team of professionals providing technology solutions across Asia Pacific enabling digital business transformation

·        Managing change with a high performance team in all business domains

·        Consistently rated “High Performer” for 12 appraisals

·        Deep understanding of technology solutions and their application to business in a cost efficient manner

·        An entrepreneurial result oriented business executive with focus on performance

The statements impress you well enough to decide to call the candidate for a meeting; you start the discussion with the accomplishments mentioned and realize that it was a case of good linguistic skills combined with jargon and superlatives that tugged you to shortlist the person. Quickly you realize that the person is a waste of time but you still have to spend some time being polite and attempting to stretch the conversation to a respectable time of at least 15 minutes. You end the meeting with a sigh and move to the next candidate.

This cycle repeats itself everyday many times across different organizations wanting to hire good talent at senior levels. This is despite the fact that executive placement companies and head hunters make loads of money filtering and fitting candidatures to roles. It is not just language that skews perceptions and makes people look better than what they are; many resumes have accomplishments with little or distant association to success as described, or suppressed facts that somehow makes a bad job start looking good.

Take the case of this CXO who was highly recommended by another; the picture painted made the person appear to be a guru, someone who will bring about transformation, the best resource anyone can find, high performance individual ! The accolades created an urgency to hire and get on board at whatever cost. Interviews were surreptitiously organized with management team members who had no way of judging capability but were influential enough to endorse the hire. Any stray thought or query on the credentials was frowned away.

The person came on board with a lot of fanfare, given a red carpet welcome and assigned the most coveted and visible projects to manage. The questioning brash and opinionated, the team began to provide information tentatively unwilling to stick out their neck. The shallowness and superficial was evident to them; fearing retribution the news did not travel upwards with the shield provided by the CXO who brought the person onboard; he continued to build an aura that was beginning to be larger than life ! (see Living with Bad Hires)

In another instance a person posing as an expert high performer was hired by a mid-sized company based on claims made in the resume and the fact that the interviewer could not see through the façade. He always changed within the same industry and alignment with specific vendors ensured survival for a reasonable time. Everywhere he went, the same solutions were implemented and after a few years he moved on to greener pastures in an industry where technology adoption was based on need to survive and used only by a few as a competitive advantage.

So how to separate the truth from the written and the real ? What steps can be taken to take a better decision which leads to no regrets later ? The fine art of interviewing has to do not only with assessing the person based on the written word, but being able to extract the finer details behind the language. The starting point is to let the person speak as you thread the story around the keywords on paper. Inconsistencies in behavior and/or disjointed patterns should trigger additional probing or leading questions to understand reality. (See Selecting the Right Candidate)

Interpretations from the list we started with:

·        Leading a team of professionals providing technology solutions across Asia Pacific enabling digital business transformation

My Boss quit and left me holding the baby which I did for a short while until a replacement came onboard and rescued me.

·        Managing change with a high performance team in all business domains

I write follow-up emails to the project team to provide weekly status updates

·        Consistently rated “High Performer” for 12 appraisals

I spent 23 years in the company, we had quarterly appraisals; was indeed rated “High” in 12 times

·        Deep understanding of technology solutions and their application to business in a cost efficient manner

For the last 20 years I have been working with one technology, and after that much time I know a fair bit of it

·        An entrepreneurial result oriented business executive with focus on performance

My brother runs a company to who I outsource which has worked well for me

PS: in both cases the candidates were fired from their previous companies a fact that emerged much later.

Living with Bad Hires

When you have been at the helm of IT for global companies and US government agencies the pedigree speaks highly of your reputation as a technologist and getting things done. Been there done that and that too in culturally diverse situations; that kind of reputation is easy to get choice of openings to pick from and that is what he did ! He decided in favor of a mid-sized company already a leader in using technology to help them with his global experience and expertise. He was welcomed with awe and open arms.

His start was what fairy tales are made of; review the landscape, suggest changes, enhance the team with technology skills to deliver the dream of surpassing global industry leaders. Everyone bought into the story and budgets rolled for him to make magic. The company strutted the catch and he reveled in the glory of being the architect of IT led transformational change. Expectation levels were high and discussions around the solutions and technology ended up being displays of professional superiority honed by practice.

He was a role model for workaholics arriving at workplace when most people are getting off their beds and would leave in time to reach home before the date changed. His ability to get into the detail was legendary at times bordering on micro-management. From programmers to network admin, everyone had experienced his need to get involved and he did ask all the right questions. There were stories about his backseat driving with his chauffer including status reports on fuel used and time between air pressure checks.

Business leaders approached hesitantly for help because they had received highly technical discourses on why the chosen solution was best for the enterprise. Not knowing better they nodded and waited for results. The chasm between business and IT began to grow and the murmurs became louder challenging the CIO. He cracked the whip on his team and realized that they were working hard; his agreement to timelines was difficult to honor. When you can’t explain, confuse; and that’s what he did buying some more time.

The team toiled the best they could attempting to balance between their boss’ need to know everything and restrictions on communicating with business users who wanted to know what is happening. The CIOs new hires had no past experience of organization culture, the older ones who knew better were feeling stifled. He continued to revel in technical prowess until whisper of voices became a din too loud for anyone to ignore. Confronted with challenged deliverables, the CIO realized the situation was getting out of hand.

Under severe pressure and resultant stress, few initiatives were completed though by then the business had no faith in the credibility of the global hero. All talk and no substance, no connect with people, limited understanding of industry dynamics and company realities, a substandard team, and finally no leadership were the barbs thrown at the CIO. He had been given a free hand to build a team based on his articulation of requirements. He was responsible for who he hired, he was accountable for what his team delivered.

Retaliating he blamed differences in culture, the immaturity of the company and people to change with evolving technology trends, their unwillingness to adapt to the new world. It was evident that there was no fit by any yardstick almost like putting a square peg in a round hole; the CEO acknowledged the fact and decided to take action and end the misery for everyone. The decision was a relief to everyone and the CIO soon made his exit after almost 4 years of attempting to fit into the role without adapting to the organization.

The sentiment within the enterprise around IT slipped underwater. Good investments suddenly appeared to be white elephants with no future. Old timers stuck their neck out and promised to recoup the losses and put back on track the technology agenda. The problem was not just that the CIO was an alien to the company; the effect of the CIOs bad hires which he refused to acknowledge and the CEO giving him too much rope that killed IT credibility and set back the company on their IT leadership in the market.

If you have a bad hire, correct it immediately before you fall into the crevice of under performance.

Selecting the right candidate

The flood of resumes was overwhelming; I was surprised by the numbers wondering if there was a crisis out there with people wanting to leave. Maybe it was the company and its reputation that created a pull of sorts that the applications found exciting. Or it could be that the economic situation has resulted in uncertainty in their current positions and thus they sought a comparably stable environment. Anyway the problem of plenty was a good problem to solve which gave us the option to choose from the best and the brightest.

Sifting through the lot it was difficult to shortlist probable candidates; everyone appeared to have been there done that, a menu card of technologies that they professed to know and work experience that would make you want to hire them right away bypassing the process. Discounting spelling errors in favor of experience, the final list of interviewees was drawn up. The list was not as short as expected, but then we did not want to miss out on deserving candidates just because they had turned off spell-check or had bad grammatical mistakes.

Not having conducted so many interviews at a go, they had to be spread over 3 days with almost 20 candidates. In tow a HR colleague and the functional lead who wanted to evaluate technical skills, armed with a formal assessment sheet to capture impressions, we started the process; questions were divided to suit our respective functions. HR would break the proverbial ice, settle down the person, my teammate tossed difficult technical questions and I looked at attitude and confidence. The days passed by in a whirl and we had a winner !

We have been taught to keep our demeanor friendly and suppress emotions while conducting job interviews; it was difficult to hold on to sanity and control laughter in few occasions. The journey to the end was excruciatingly painful and frustrating; the candidate with the perfect resume turned out to be a disaster. She had put in all the right keywords, technologies and projects; she had been in projects with the technologies in a role that barely gave her basic understanding. Scratching below the surface revealed no substance.

Another one believed that he scored 10/10 on every skill mentioned in his resume and that he had reached the pinnacle of learning. He was stumped on most of the questions which led to his quick exit. One candidate kept repeating that the information about the projects he had worked on was classified and that he was under NDA and thus could not talk. One person narrated the long story of her life for about 30 minutes immune to any attempts at interruption. We thanked her for the enlightening moments and heaved a sigh !

The quality of most discussions made us wonder about current state of knowledge and expertise; or is it that the unwanted and incapable having realized their shaky existence decided to seek newer pastures. Are these the types who find themselves on the left side of the traditional HR performance bell curve ? My HR colleague mentioned something about finding the right talent through references and not an open process. Junior and mid-level hiring filtering done by executive search companies and headhunters is typically based on keywords.

The selected candidate did not have all the skills required for the position; he was short on qualifications though the experience was relevant. Knowledge on technology was above average with understanding of his own limitations. He demonstrated how he stayed abreast of current trends and could articulate how he worked in teams. His enthusiasm and candid responses had all of us liking him; his can do attitude clinched it in his favor. We exchanged notes and everyone was in agreement; so we made him an offer.

We were pleased with our find and wanted him to join us expeditiously. He accepted our offer and promised to revert on when he could be part of our company. Weeks passed and HR kept following up on his joining date. One day I receive an email: “I thank you for your offer and opportunity to work for your company; I have carefully considered it and after much deliberation and discussion, I have decided to stay back with my current employer. I wish you all the best and hope our paths will cross again in the future”.

Life is tough !

A new government

The country is going through the most complex exercise of voting for and electing new representatives to the government. Selecting amongst the candidates is difficult; some of them are easy to disregard as they have no visible credible experience to stake a claim to the seat. Handfuls have relevant experience and on paper they look like good options.  References to past work demonstrate their ability to deliver and execute; a couple have the backing of their respective political parties who lend the promise of a collective manifesto.

Every 5 years this process repeats itself, sometimes a little earlier if the incumbent government is unable to serve out a full term. Soon we will have a new government, a new head, a set of ministers who will vie for the most visible and high profile ministries. The correlation between portfolios and core competencies is always a good thing to do; however many a times that does not happen. Bureaucrats and the staff within the ministries does not change much, they follow the new directions set by the ministers irrespective of expertise.

Running an enterprise is very much like running the country, especially a large diversified group with interests in varied businesses. Each company and function has a head that is selected from outside more often than inside. The selection is most of the time purportedly on core competency and merit. The difference between a government and an enterprise is normally the available options from which a candidate is chosen. In a government, the candidate is from the elected party, in the other case almost everyone can apply.

Government portfolios are presumably distributed by the head of the winning party and head of the country collaboratively. Most often decisions are based on seniority, past experience, credibility and interest. Cross functional movements are the norm and it is expected that the person would do equally well in the new function too. The rationale here is that a leader need not be a functional expert; the team has adequate skills to advise the leader on the best options when taking a decision. We know how well this process works.

In the corporate world the skew is more towards functional expertise while selecting a person. Cross movements do happen at beginning and mid-careers; moving up the ladder, these are rare. Leaders at the top take on additional responsibilities at times; lateral moves occur but are not frequent. Success rates are higher in comparison as everything is expected to be time bound. It is not a sure shot recipe for success; we do observe failures across the board, many attributable to the leader not being effective or fitting in.

It is not necessarily the interviewer or selectors inability to assess that result in a bad selection. Drawing parallels, it is evident that the best person does not always get selected for the job; favoritism and at times other factors like past workplace association, belonging to same religious sect or geographical area, been to the same school/college, having the same ideologies, result in sub-optimal choices. While not always avoidable, enterprises do watch out for such hires critically lest they end up with unwanted baggage.

It is relatively easier to replace a person within an enterprise as compared to the government; performance appraisals even though many a times skewed do elevate non-performance. On the other hand, recently observed citizen activism has its place in creating change. Cabinet reshuffles however move the problem from one area to another; this is rare in the enterprise though not unheard of. Are there learning that can be applied to enterprises to not follow the same path that ails many parts of the government ?

I believe that when we choose an elected representative or a new hire, in both cases rigorous due diligence is essential. Our choices can come back and haunt us not just in the short-term but also in the long-run. Both impact our lives and future; we tend to spend more effort in our workplace due to impact proximity and blame bad decisions to the ill choice of others. If we want control of our future and destiny, we have to exercise our rights and influence outcomes. Can we afford not to ?

You decide, you have a choice !

A good resume

Recent times have seen some distinguished CEOs and leaders biting the dust literally when some untruths were discovered in their resumes, a clear case of unnecessary padding. A few did not possess the qualifications they professed, some had not been to colleges they put in there. These are not run of the mill average Joe kind of people, they are in high offices and have shaped the future of many. It created news for a short while, and then everyone moved on relegating the tainted ones to oblivion.

To expand the team I recently started hiring fresh and experienced talent and was flooded with resumes. It was a task to navigate through pages of hundreds of eager professionals looking through spell check errors, acronyms that I have no clue what they mean, grammatical goof ups, and multiple formats that challenged me to find information in a maze game. These were not freshers, unexposed to corporate culture; they included experienced professionals with decade plus behind them.

I did not challenge the veracity of the information presented even in cases that stretched conventional wisdom, though annotating to explore further in the interview. I discovered that IT folks are largely truthful and sometimes too much; if they have been on a project that involved a leading edge technology, they will ensure it catches your attention. Only on digging deeper you realize that their role could have been just testing or documentation; or maybe peripheral and not technical or functional.

The conscientious mentioned every project, every assignment, and every new company even if they spent only a few months in each; though the interesting ones were the gaps which during the interview were explained in shy and embarrassing tones. They believed that if you join a company and realize that it was a mistake, don’t mention it; skip the experience that does not reflect well on your resume. No mal intent here, just that not always in interest of keeping an abridged and concise representation; just to put the best foot forward.

So how to get the real person out of a few pages of history including education, experience, achievements, personality, potential, technical skills, and what have you. There are umpteen reference websites that offer to teach the art of interviewing and getting the best out of the person sitting across the table, the potential candidate. The intent though not adversarial is to assess everything possible about the person in the typical less than an hour spent, lateral thinking and what not.

I am not sure if this would make sense, but it is not just the responses to the questions that help us in the selection process, there is a lot more. The first few minutes have already decided the way the interview goes; subconscious mind or body language, you already know if you will like the person. The resume and the detailed planning are then thus pointers to the discussion. I have rarely seen a situation where the candidate was able to swing it around though many did not live up to initial expectations.

Coming back to the moot point, why do people manipulate resumes ? Is it just to look better than who they are or a desperate urge to get something that is not rightfully theirs ? Is it misplaced self-esteem or belief of personal value ? I don’t know, everyone probably has different motivations; do they realize that in the end they are really undermining their integrity and the way people see them ? Or has the value system changed in a way that we are comfortable with little lies if they go unnoticed ?