Hey Y'all!

Boy is this an interesting thread! We've kind of side-tracked from the point (Poor Maisie) but then I guess you can't stiffle interesting debate?

Thanks for the welcome Brent! I only found this site last week and as a Trainer and someone who has a passing interest in HR matters; I find it fascinating and do hope that I can genuinely contribute some intersting stuff! (As well as finding new contracts and ripping off other peoples qoutes to use as my own!)

This site reminds me of my days at the University Mooting Society....although we don't all go get drunk afterwards; shame!

Paul

Getting way off topic: But what is Mooting?

Thanks,
Marianne

A Mooting is when cows get together to discuss a topic! (Ha ha ha - I am SOOOO funny!)

But seriously; mooting is basically another word for debating! My University had a society where the Law Students would get together and discuss a set legal point and all the related cases!

More fun than you can shake a big stick at....or maybe not! The drinking afterwards was usually the best part!

Paul

Ahh... that would fit my theory that it was somehow related to the term 'moot point'.

Thanks!

Hi all

I am currently a Team Leader but participated in a recruitment course last year and facilitate one on one interviews for our Contact Centre Staff (please note, I am not by any means noting myself as a professional HR or Recruitment person). My views are mainly based on Customer Service, although we do also offer products. It is however my firm belief that the same basic principles apply in both Sales & Customer Service.

Yes, political correctness has gotten somewhat in the way of discovering the real person (position applicant). The question is; do you really want to know the "real person" or do you simply need to know the "work person"?

As both an interviewee and an interviewer I find questions like "what television show are you like" and "what type of person does your mother see you as" highly offensive in the professional scope. I myself am a very different person outside of work, although my values are generally aligned. I believe that interview questions should be based around relevant to areas like:

>Ability to gain agreement/resolution
>Conflict resolution
>Professional rapport versus rapport
>General aptitude (a degree means they are good at learning but not necessarily applying)

A good specific question is "what do you know about our organisation?” This is a question not often asked but very valuable.

There are many job hunters out there with aptitude and they know about your organisation. They know about it at least in general term’s i.e. your products, company values or general reputation. You may not be a high profile organisation, but they know what there is to know. This establishes an interest in the culture of the company/organisation itself, not to mention a lot of "proactivity" on the behalf of your potential future employee; two great qualities in any type company.

There is however the question of relevance of question to the type of position offered. As someone stated in an earlier post, specific questions for interviews should be based mainly on your KPI's and general position description. You are more likely to get a professional candidate back for the second interview if promote a more open but professionally based culture.

Anyway, thank you for posing the question Maisy. I have enjoyed reading everyone’s comments for the first time and have saved this on my task bar. I suppose the most important thing for us all to remember is that all opinions are valid. Let’s assume that we all speak from experience (unless otherwise mentioned) and we quote the experiences that have worked for us. Yep…it’s a forum. Enjoy!

Pauline

Ps…typing words in Word works for me…it has spell check *S*

Harumph...

Damn that sneaky Cut and Paste Command.



Goes and sulks in corner.


DaveA

Mr. Preece-- in your earlier posting, you wrote:

"true HR people should have an excellent working knowledge of local and federal laws as they pertain to fair hiring. One of the key responsibilities for any HR person is to ensure that their company is never accused of unfair hiring practices."

Personally, I disclaim any knowledge *whatsoever* in the area of distinguishing "true" HR people from those who are not. But if you are under the impression that 'working knowledge' of "local and federal laws as they pertain to fair hiring" should be HR's job, it seems to me as if whomever you are using for legal talent is falling down on the job.

First off, it is impossible to ensure that one's company is never accused of unfair hiring practices-- in the U.S., at least. It is simply a litigious environment, where people have acquired the habit of using legal threats to get what they want. You can get sued for no good reason.

Your legal talent should be teaching HR how to **manipulate** the fair hiring laws. Memorizing them is a waste of (expensive) time.

May I call you Wiggle?

Please, call me Brent.

Thank you for your post, but I'm afraid I do have to stand by my comment.

A couple of points:

1. While I agree that the 'legal group' must help the HR department learn and understand about fair hiring practices, it is ultimately the job of the HR department to ensure that these practices and laws are adhered to.

2. I'd wager that most anyone who has had to 'run something by legal' before they can make a decision will tell you that it's a lot like sitting in the waiting room at the doctor's office: no telling when they will get to you, and when they do, you will be asked to make any number of superfluous changes unrelated to your initial inquiry.

That's a true waste of (expensive) time, I think. :)

3. Yes, the US is quite the litigious society. Unfortunately. But most 'legal groups' do not reside at the call center itself. They are usually located at 'home office' and are not readily at the call center staff's disposal.

In my humble opinion, the legal staff should only be brought in when absolutely necessary. And the HR staff has the responsibility of protecting the company's interests within the realm of fair hiring practices (among other things, of course).

Brent

Brent,

Feel free to call me whatever you like ;).

I suspect that we probably disagree on little. The tone of my earlier post was perhaps a bit *off*...What I was intending was more along the lines of indirect commentary on (what I'm guessing is) the performance of *legal* where you are.

I entirely agree with your comment,

"While I agree that the 'legal group' must help the HR department learn and understand about fair hiring practices, it is ultimately the job of the HR department to ensure that these practices and laws are adhered to."

I am just not sure that your 'legal group' is doing a particularly good job, mostly because I read the tone of your comment (perhaps incorrectly) to suggest that fair hiring practices are complex to learn and difficult to implement. If they seem that way, this (I suspect) is the 'legal group's fault, for not explaining them in a practical manner that makes intuitive sense.

And in response to your other points, please forgive me for saying this, but it sounds as if you have a case of bureaucratic sclerosis. The legal group should be *more* accessible to the other units of your organization than most, not less. Yes, their time is *cruelly* expensive, but it is better spent identifying the standard problems that tend to arise, and fixing them *before* they happen-- instead of fixing problems *after* they have already escalated.

If the lawyers have been permitted to organize themselves into an inaccessible bureaucratic hierarchy (as is their tendency, left to themselves), they should be brought into the 21st century.

W.

WP,

Thanks for your reply, and I agree with your stance on the legal teams. My experience with legal teams in the call center has been on a national level, meaning that not only is legal not accessible to the disparate local centers, but their knowledge of state-specific hiring practices is often lacking.

If a company has 10 call centers in 8 different states, and the legal department resides at home office only, it is usually up to the individual call center's HR groups to be resonsible for understanding the variations in hiring laws in their own individual state. The 'big guns' at corporate are usually held in reserve for things that *don't* get done correctly. To your point, it would certainly be better if they were utilized before the fact.

I'm enjoying your posts, WP, and looking forward to reading more of them.

Brent

Hi Maisie

Apart from other things mentioned by others, one thing you could do is to have telephonic interview with prospective team members. Let them pich themselves for the said position.This works well to have the basic team which is capable of convincing a prospective client; including you-who is essentially a buyer in this case.They sell themselves.

Here if they are able to convince you as to why they should be considered positively by you, for the position, they must be conversant with fundamental telephonic conversations and sales pitch.

You could derive benchmarks for such an interview.

Telephone interviews can be faked. I've known people use their relatives to answer for them and pretend they are the candidate, also its sometimes easy to get help from friends and family to help with answers whilst on the phone as well.
Reagrding the sales pitch of their own skills, I've known candidates who had excellent influencing and objection handling skills yet no awareness of their own strengths and weaknesses thus they cannot describe the 'product' and despite being adept fail due to self awareness which isnt a critical factor in sales.

In the area of recruitment face to face communication is always preferable, however a structured role play is often incorporated into the visit/event to assess predicted performance.

One can try and fake a telephone interview but eventually that person will need to come in for a face to face. There are ways to re verify the telephone discussions as well as validate how qualified the candidate is. In the 28 years I have been recruiting for clients, not once have I had encountered someone who faked the pre interview call. A recruiter should build their recruiting efforts based on the majority of the positive results achieved and not the negatives. If there are people who do fake it, I am positive that it is such a small percentage of them, eventually they will be found out. We conduct two pre interviews over the telephone before deciding if this candidate is good enough for an in person interview. If they sound good over the telephone (this is my primary objective), then it will warrant my time for an in person interview. We make it a challenge for candidates to get a job in a call center, as all too often call center agents act as if the center is fortunate to have THEM as an employee instead of the other way around!

Kathy Sisk
consultant and trainer

Hi again, Brent.
Thanks for the compliment, by the way.

I do feel I should respond to your comment:

"If a company has 10 call centers in 8 different states, and the legal department resides at home office only, it is usually up to the individual call center's HR groups to be resonsible for understanding the variations in hiring laws in their own individual state. The 'big guns' at corporate are usually held in reserve for things that *don't* get done correctly. To your point, it would certainly be better if they were utilized before the fact."

If you do not mind me asking, just how large is your legal department? Because real-time tracking of the changes in 'hiring law' jurisprudence in 8 states is hardly an insurmountable task, even assuming that two of the states are NY and Cali. By 'hardly insurmountable' I mean that one lawyer, with IT support, could probably do this. Part time. IF tracking disparate states is somehow a concern, then you just segment the work out to several different lawyers, and have it occupy a smaller portion of each one's time.

I do not want to sound as if I am telling your legal dept. how to do their jobs, but if I understand your organization's existing approach...well, it seems *wasteful* to me.

To use an admittedly poor analogy, if an auto engineer were to say something like this:

We do not use our top safety engineers for design purposes. Rather, we use the ergonomics specialists to do the safety work, design and testing. We only call in the safety engineers **after** the brakes fail on one of our models, and it smashes into something. Then the safety engineer inspects the wreckage to figure out what happened, and fix the problem. If the car is really wrecked, our safety engineers call in outside consultants, and **they** figure out what happened. Then we issue a recall on all the cars of that model out there on the roads, and get (most of) them fixed.

It strikes me as if HR has enough to do, just keeping call center environments adequately staffed. Asking them to be (amateur) lawyers seems a bit much-- I for one, would spend those salary dollars on getting HR to beat the staff attrition monster back into its cave.

WP

A staffing manager at a multi-billion-dollar technology company interviewed a job candidate from India. The staffing manager felt the candidate was a terrific match for the open position so he arranged a meeting between the candidate and the vice president. The meeting with the vice president only lasted about five minutes, and when the candidate returned to the staffing manager's office, he looked upset. The candidate said that when he walked into the vice president's office, instead of introducing himself or getting to know the candidate, the executive abruptly said, "Why should I hire you?"

The candidate was not accustomed to such blunt behavior. He thought it was offensive and he felt hurt and bewildered as to why the vice president didn't want to learn more about him and his qualifications. In his culture, building a rapport with people was an important part of any communication

- Develop a rapport with candidates. Take time for small talk and introductions. Thank candidates for coming. Provide some information about the organization. Such efforts exemplify respect.

- Don't use the "lazy person's interview question," which is asking—as the first question—"Why should I hire you?"

- If a candidate seems humble or reluctant to talk about personal accomplishments, it may be because the candidate is used to work in a team environment where individuals don't talk about their own accomplishments. To help draw out the information, take the time to ask questions about the team. "Allow the candidate to talk about what others did on the project," Then ask the candidate what was his or her role was on the team.

- Don't assume that taking more time with a candidate during the interview is a negative, or a strike against an individual's performance. Rapport- and relationship-building is highly valued in many cultures. Don't assume the fast-paced way is the best way to communicate.

Body language. Do not assume that lack of direct eye contact is a sign of shyness, lack of assertiveness or not being truthful. In the Latino culture, sustained eye contact can be interpreted as disrespect and is particularly discouraged between members of the opposite sex because of its implied sexual connotations.

Self-marketing. Because of cultural values that discourage self-promotion, many Latinos will use “we” as opposed to “I” when describing their accomplishments.

As a Manager that has climbed up the ladder from the bottom rung, I have had extensive opportunities to work not only with local ER/HR but also Legal, in regards to hiring practices..


Since I work at a satellite site, instead of the home office, one would think that to be quite challenging. But in reality, it has been very thorough, quick in response time, and quite satisfactory.. But that could just be due to the quality of our legal/HR/ER teams.


Typically, during an interview, we have a standard set of questions, designed by our HR department, for each specific position. Very few questions are asked outside of that guideline. And any questions I do ask outside it, must be asked of all applicants that I interview. I can't pick and choose which questions to ask, and which not to ask. Overall, the questions given for each position have been quite satisfacory for the job. But, when it comes time for the interview to end, "after" asking all of the standard questions, I do ask pretty much the same question...


1. Well, you have answered the questions so far, pretty well. You have told me what experience you have, but we both know that all of the candidates I will interview, have enough experience.. So I need to know what it is about you, that you believe sets you above the rest?

(This question allows the candidate to break out of the "routine" of just experience, and embellish on their own talents/accomplishments a bit. It also gives you a sense of their own confidence level.)

Typically, I only interview the top 10% of all applicants. I allow my HR department to weed out those non-qualified, and then recommend to me, whom I perform 2nd interviews on, based on thier 1st interviews. This has been extremely successful, and usually nets some fine candidates.. And it frees up a great deal of my time and allows me to focus on people I know HR will approve of, and that I know are qualified.


Whatever you decide, I strongly recommend that you ask your HR group for recommendations in regards to what you ask..

>>>1. Well, you have answered the questions so far, pretty well.

HR would advise against this approach in the UK; any subjective judgement given during the interview eg "you've answered pretty well, excellent, good, that was fine" can be interpreted by the candidate that they have ACTUALLY done quite well, the candidate will be most peeved if they are later rejected.

Casual use of superlatives is not advised in the UK as you could well find yourself in an employment tribunal as a result causing the company bad publicity and a great deal of legal cost as well.