Not a VentOk so this is not a Vent really but I am in a strant situation at work right now and would love to hear some suggestions. I declined to apply for a promotion. I really just didn't want the job. Had a long discussion with my immediate boss and his boss about the reasons and we agreed that at this time I serve better where I am. My immediate boss will be moving to a different position in the near future (which makes me unhappy). His current boss is our Executive VP, he was originally not very happy that I wasn't going to apply for this new VP position reporting to him but I think now he is quite happy and understands my reasoning. So now to the weirdness. He is hiring a new VP, who I will report to. I am part of the hiring committee. Anyone ever have to interview their future boss? Yes, it is very common, especially in companies that value the "team" and everyone's input. Good luck! Tess So Tess here is the weirdness of it and I would love your thoughts. The committee is made of a very disparate group of people with very different skills and background. Our XVP brought in some folks to fill some senior roles early on (which he is not regretting) who really weren't qualified for those roles. We are a very specialized consulting group and to be consistently successful you really have to know the technology, industry served, and in some cases the hosting environment. That being said we have what we have and oh well. So out of the interview committee my boss and I have a great deal of experience, between us nearly 50 years of IT, specialized technology, solutions delivery, consulting, org change management, and hosting. He has been with our company for a long time and has worked internationally, so knows the environment really well. I have been here just under 5 years, so I know it but only in the US. The XVP has a decent consulting background but really doesn't know our specialized focus although he knows IT from a consulting delivery perspective, he has been with the organization just over 1 year. The balance of the committee has various experience but no experience in our specialized industry; one has a sales background with less than 5 years in IT. The other has some hosting experience but not with our industry or solutions. Needless to say what has happened so far is I find a candidate acceptable, meaning good experience in industry, solutions, consulting; my boss will agree with me. We look for specific things including knowledge of service models, run a P&L, built consulting practices, sold services in excess of $25m per year, managed portfolio of sustained business in excess of $250m per year. There more but I suspect you understand our approach. When we find someone who can have this type of discussion with us our counterparts turn the candidate down cold. We think that this is happening because they feel threatened by a competent person. We aren't sure because we don't see their feedback. What we do know is that they people we have turned down have not had the experience to fill the role that is currently opened. Meaning I would not work for that person because I would have do manage that person and do to much of their job for them. I don't want that. If I wanted that job I would have taken it. So how do we resolve this? If you can organize, it, I'd call a meeting of the committee (no candiates) and have a brain storming session. You're going to need a few hours but if you've already done a bunch of interviews, you shouldn't have to do any more. You should be able to pick from those you've already done (espcially if you and your boss have favroties in that pool). If you can get someone neutral to facilitate that would be perfect. This is one of those things that takes longer to write out than to actually do, it is really pretty simple. Give everyone big post-it notes and markers. Have everyone write down what they think are parts of the role of this position (one item per post-it). Put them all up on the wall, discard duplicates. Read, discuss, fight, resolve any discrepancies. This should get you all on the same page about what this job actually is. You may discover that someone in the room thinks it is completely different than you and your boss do (especially if they don't have much background). That stays up on the wall for reference. Then take your post-its in a different color and have everyone list what they feel are the skills for this job. Put on wall, discard duplicates, read, discuss, fight, resolve. Then prioritize into MUST (must have this or won't be successful), SHOULD have this, MAY have this for bonus points. That gives you the basis for your grid. If you stick these post its vertically along the left edge of a white board (or put flip chart paper up next to them), you can draw a grid and put your interviewees horizontally across the top. Then the group should be able to discuss the people you've interviewed and rank them on a grid. I used to work with a lot of engineers and believe you me, they love a grid! Score each candidate 1 (minimal), 3 (average), 5 (expert) in each area. You do this part as a group and just say "Ok, now remember Bob Smith? Here's his resume to refresh you. He's had 20 years experience in this specialized area (which should be on the MUST list), so let's put him at a 5 in that category. OK with that?" Heads nod or no one objects and you go to the next line. Do this for everyone you interviewed and for each area. The facilitator can ask "Do you think Mary was more of a 3 or a 1 on this one?" that way everyone feels they have input into the process. Add the scores for MUSTS, SHOULDS and MAYS separately. Multiply the MUSTS by 2, the SHOULDS by 1.5 and the MAYS stay the same so that a guy with a lot of mays and no musts doesn't total higher than a guy with all musts and no mays. That should pop up your top 3 candidates to pick from. If none of those 3 is still available, it should resolve any further debate for any future interviewees. Chart them and pick. I've used the Post-it thing a lot of times for a lot of different things, I've used the MUST, SHOULD, MAY a lot of times for different things and I've used the assign a score and grid it for the non-cooperative a lot of times. Combining them should get you over the hump and into more objective measurment of subjective data, bring you all on the same page about what's important here and shush up the problem children from the other side of the fence. Good luck (and my consulting fee is only 10% of your annual salary, cash, checks or pay pal are acceptable) :) Tess Great idea and I think I am going to have all the criminal minds in the room (well on a conference call anyway) on Friday. Think I will turn it into a net meeting. Think I will ask our HR guru to facilitate. We will have completed 5 interviews by then and thus far 4 have been rejected 2 by me for good reason (no experience) and 2 by the ijits for bad reasons (to much experience). Thanks for the idea. I have used this approach in other areas but never to hire a senior person into a practice role. I just need to keep people out of the personality realm. Yes I know personality is important. Yes it is even important to me, we are ultimately in a people business. We ultimately will have to work for and with this guy (thus far it has all been guys). In this business there are very few women and very few minorities at the top (I think this is one of the reason my XVP wanted me to take the job - he would get a tofer). Lets see would be happy to send you your fee --- is that before or after taxes? do you want as a percent of my salary or salary + bonus and commissions? | |
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