Magic Pot of Jobs

If Jeff Clark wants to come to DC, I bet I have some clients who would love to talk to him.

Rubik’s Art - 3 - img_8804.1

Originally uploaded by ZWNJ.

The new Rubik’s Cube World Record has been set, and it reminded me of a candidate I interviewed some time ago.

Joseph was a C++ programmer with a clearance and some impressive experience. When he arrived at my office for an interview, I noticed that he had some odd mannerisms and speech patterns, but since that’s not at all odd in programmers, I didn’t think anything of it.

Until he got out the Rubik’s Cube.

He asked my coworker to mix up the colors for him for a while so he could solve it later. When my coworker finished, he set the cube on the table between the Joseph and me.

Big mistake. For the entire interview, Joseph had trouble looking me in the eye. He always answered my questions, but he kept fixating on the cube on the table, like he was mentally figuring it out.

When asked why he had left his previous position, Joseph became a little agitated and said it was due to a personality conflict with a coworker- he was being threatened. And when I asked him if there were any work environments or tasks that he had a specific preference for or against, he said, “Not really. I just want to program in C++. As long as I get to program in C++.” I see…

I concluded the interview, and he looked up at us and said, “Wanna see me solve it now?”

Amused, we agreed, and he solved the thing in what must have been less than 30 seconds. We were impressed, but it was a very strange thing to do in an interview situation.

In thinking about it later, I came to the conclusion (in my extremely uneducated opinion) that Joseph probably had something like Asperger’s syndrome- people with that disorder tend to be drawn toward fields like programming where their hyperfocus and laser-sharp attention to detail gives them an edge, and where lower social skills tend to be less of an obstacle. Also, they tend not to pick up on the subtle social mores that would indicate that bringing your Rubik’s cube to the interview might not be the most appropriate thing.

I was telling this story to a friend later, who said half-jokingly, “Oh, so you’re going to exploit his disability?”

Let me set that one straight. Finding someone a job doing something he clearly enjoys and feels strongly about at a fair salary ($70K-$80K!) is not exploitation. It’s good recruiting- the candidate is happy in a job that’s a good fit for his strengths and weaknesses, the client is happy with a talented employee, and I’m happy with the fee I get for a job well done. Whether the person has a disability or not is completely immaterial.

Maybe I should call him and tell him about this Rubik’s competition.

I hit on a new measure of a person’s charm and social grace the other day as I was running late to a client meeting- Minutes.

How charming and pleasant a person is can be measured by the number of minutes late they can be for a meeting and still convince you to forgive them.

I always figured I was about 15 minutes of charming- I’m pleasant, I’ve got the little-and-cute-girl thing going for me, and I’m pretty funny.

Tuesday, I was 20 minutes late for a meeting, but the client forgave me anyway. Clearly going to that meeting on how to thrive at networking events paid off in an extra 5 minutes of charm.

The company I work for has a certification program that everyone has to go through if they want to be promoted. It’s a few tests of operational knowledge and a couple of online trainings. The idea is that you have to be there at least a year and have a performance review rating of “good” or better before you can become certified. If you’ve been there less than a year, you can request to have the service duration requirement waived.

The catch is, you have to write the “business case” for why you should receive this special treatment. A business case. For why the company should send me a certificate and a pin, and allow me to put the word “Certified” on my business card 6 month early.

We’re taught to be modest and not to brag about our accomplishments, which is a nice ideal for social settings, but can screw us a bit in business. In interviews, resumes, client presentations, we have to sell ourselves as much as is necessary to achieve our desired objective. But we still don’t want to appear arrogant.

So how do we accomplish it?

First, there are numbers. Everyone wants high-producing people who work ahead of deadlines. I wrote about how I achieved the productivity standard of X dollars for a new employee in 7 months instead of twelve. So talk about how at your previous position, you finished a project a month ahead of deadline and 15% under budget. This works in sales, too- talk about how much time and money your product or service will save the client.

Second, understand how you can solve an employer’s problems. It’s a rare company where they hire on extra people just because they have some extra money in the budget. Companies have problems that they believe can be solved by additional staff. So what do you bring to the table? In my business case, I wrote that since I have recently become the most senior technical recruiter in my office and am participating in the training of the others, it would make sense for me to be certified, lending me extra credibility in that role. Give the employer an additional way to think about how you would fit in at the organization. What’s special about you that will solve their problems?

It’s not enough to present your qualifications and expect that the employer will connect the dots to see what a great employee you’d be. You have to show them all the reasons that you are uniquely qualified for their opening.

This is one of the most dreaded interview questions, and for good reason. Unless the answer is, “I was laid off,” it’s a minefield. But that doesn’t mean there’s no good way to answer.

The key to successfully answering this question lies in understanding what it is that the interviewer is trying to uncover. A potential employer is not only trying to discover your strengths, but also any red flags about traits that might make you a “problem employee.”

So first, don’t bash your previous employer. No matter how much your previous employer might deserve it, taking that approach is just going to make you sound like a whiner and make the interviewer wonder what you’ll be saying about his company when you leave it.

Second, don’t complain about your workload, even if it was unreasonable. See above warning against sounding like a whiner.

Basically, understand that an interviewer is going to view your answer from the boss’s perspective- if you didn’t like your workload at your last job, maybe you just aren’t a hard worker. If you hate your boss, maybe you’re just hard to work with.

Instead, think about how to frame your reasons for leaving in terms that a new employer can sympathize with. Instead of talking about the excessive workload, consider the conditions that make it that way. Talk about how you weren’t empowered in that position to make the decisions that would have made the department run more efficiently.

It’s perfectly reasonable to explain why your last job wasn’t a good fit- it gives the new potential employer a good picture of your work style and preferences. But it’s important to do so in such a way that doesn’t give an unfairly poor impression of you to the interviewer.