Most of my day is spent working with clients and part is spent with candidates they may want to employ. The one piece of advice I give to every candidate that is going to interview with the hiring manager is to ask this question:
“If we were meeting here one year from today and you were to say that I did a good job this past year, what would have had to happen in order for you to say that? Now not an exceptional job but also not a poor job but rather a good job?”
“Hey, look at the email I just received,” one of my recruiters said as she came into my office. “This is really neat and we should be doing this,” she stated.
It was an email she had received soliciting her to make a career change. She was excited because the email contained an embedded presentation about the position.
“We hired some salespeople and not everyone worked out,” the conversation started. Where have I heard this before I thought to myself? Oh I know… almost every conversation I’m in starts out this way. “Not unusual,” I stated, “How can I help?” “We need a pre-hire screening assessment and I heard you can help us out with that.”
I love everything there is about movies. Recently I watched “The Samaritan,” staring Samuel L. Jackson who plays an ex-con named Foley. The movie opens with Foley being released from prison and stating;
“If you keep on doing what you’ve always done, you keep on being what you’ve always been. Nothing changes unless you make it change.”
In church the other day I overheard a conversation. “You appear to be happy and content most of the time, how do you do that”,a congregation member asked of the minster? “I have no expectations of people”, he responded.
While this may work for the minster, listening in on this conversation put into perspective for me why leaders frequently feel disappointed in the performance of their people. It’s the expectations we have.