Realistically, however, making a well crafted elevator speech can be just as valuable to employees, prospective employees, and really anyone who’s attention you have for three minutes.

Why?

Yes, shortened attention spans are a reality, but a concise elevator speech forces you to boil down the value of what you do and even your role within a company.  In a meeting that lasts an hour, spending 25 minutes on “Who we are and what we do” takes valuable time away from real discussion.  When you’re interviewing prospective employees, sure, you could take all the time in the world — but hearing their elevator speech is really more valuable.

So treat everyone like a CEO and assume their getting off that elevator in just a few minutes.  Besides, it’s good practice for when that really happens.

Need help building your elevator speech?  Here’s a handy tool from the Harvard Business School:

http://www.alumni.hbs.edu/careers/pitch/

For many large companies, like Toyota, providing their own healthcare system provides workers with great care at a low cost reducing downtown and preventing illness.  Many companies like General Motors have even employed weight loss and quit smoking campaigns recognizing that, essential, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

But many small and medium sized companies cannot provide such large scale programs.  Technology may be able to help. Marianne Kolbasuk McGee at InformationWeek writes about how many insurance companies are providing portals that are a wealth of information and may streamline healthcare for many employees:

Health insurers have been early adopters of Web portals, providing help checking the status of claims and locating doctors in their health plans. But some insurers are taking those services further, making it easier for members to find other information, such as information on illnesses, treatment cost comparisons, and physicians in a certain zip code that care for a particular condition.

These portals go far beyond the typical list of providers in network:

Aetna, which for years has had relationships with Harvard Medical School and Columbia University College of Dental Medicine to provide content for Aetna’s site, is expanding search capabilities on its Web portal, said John Bahl, Aetna’s head of digital media strategy in an interview. Rather than having to click through long lists of search results or on multiple places on a website, “we’re offering one-stop shopping,” for portal visitors to find medical information, Bahl said. With fewer clicks, portal visitors can more quickly and easily track down the information they’re seeking, he said.

That includes advanced search services for the general public looking for information aboThreaded searches and connections to medical taxonomy are making it easier for members to find information related to health conditions in the context of what’s most relevant to them, based on their gender, age, zip code, as well as the information about other conditions in their Aetna personal health record, he said. For instance, if searching for information on migraines, portal visitors can also easily pull up a list of doctors in their region who treat the headaches.ut a particular medical condition and its symptoms, but also more conveniences for Aetna members who have health coverage through the company.

Portals like this can help companies large and small integrate healthcare into the lives of employees.  It is foolish to believe in a strict separation between health and work.   Encouraging health maintenance to take place and streamlining efforts particularly for preventative medicine reduces downtime and more serious illness down the road.  A health portal isn’t going to cure anyone, but it is a technological tool that can save time and money.  And that’s not only a health issue — it’s a business issue as well.

Read the full article in InformationWeek here.

I don’t think that recruiting is any different than any other decision process in a company. You’re never really going to know how somebody is going to perform in the role, how good of a cultural fit he or she is going to be and how motivated they’re going to become until they’re on the inside.

I’m not arguing that no screening is required. There are obvious questions you have give staff to get a gut feel on cultural fit, intelligence, aptitude and the like.

It’s interesting because he’s not actually talking about hiring more quickly.  He’s actually talking about creating a framework that gives you information beyond simple qualifications.  He calls this cultural fit, intelligence, and aptitude.  And he’s pointing out a fact about hiring and recruiting that’s not often talked about:  even if you find a perfect candidate on paper, they may not work out in the realities of every day life in the company.

Call it what you want: company culture, ability to adapt, or simply like-ability — these are important elements that are often ignored in the vetting process.  Working with a recruiter or through HR, you can outline questions that will give you the information you need to satisfy your gut feeling about how someone will perform, adapt, and ultimately produce the results. you need.

One story from the trenches tells of a manager that would take potential hires out to lunch and insist that they drive.  He could tell a lot from the appearance of a person’s car and also the style of their driving.  Too cautious signalled they might not fit with a fast paced sales culture.  Too reckless meant that they might be impatient with the slow sales cycle.

A drive test might not be important to you, but creating a framework to evaluate candidates beyond simple criteria is vitale.  How do they react under genuine pressure?  What is their personality like once the ‘interview mask’ is dropped?  How adaptable will they be when situations change?  How will they fit in not with your personality, but those people around them?  Will they be a positive influence

Perhaps the best question to ask is the following: Is the employee they’ll become in 6 months better than the one that is qualified today?

So many times we focus on qualifications and not quality.  Suster is pointing out that it all needs to go into the mix at a startup c0mpany.  Should it go into the mix at every company?

Read Mark Suster’s full article here:  http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2011/05/26/startup-mantra-hire-fast-fire-fast/

Charney is a complex figure. His website, filled with photos of him and provocative shots he took of the company’s young models, tells the story of his immigrant family, religion, creating the company as a teenager, philosophy on sexual freedom, and politics.

He is quoted as saying:

“I think it’s a First Amendment right to pursue one’s affection for another human being.”

All well and good, but O’Brien rightly points out that when one person has power over someone’s career and salary, can there really be consent?  And this is key.  While we don’t live in a puritanical society, we have an ethical obligation to uphold fairness in the workplace.  Company policy should make it clear that no personal relationship, sexual or otherwise, should be leveraged against salary or promotions.  In other words, having power over how much someone gets paid and what their title is should never be used to motivate anything other than work performance.

O’Brien’s article on this topic as well as her article on how Mark Hurd’s failure to disclose a relationship he had with a consultant while he was CEO led to his downfall, are both excellent analyses of the ethics of power and sex.  She also makes the case that good ethics equals a strong work force and, ultimately, strong business.  It’s also important to point out that, while it’s all well and good to chastise the bad behaviors of a few CEOs, companies need to look at their policies and their implementation carefully to see if it’s realistic, and productive.

At focus.com, they’ve put together  a handy ‘cheat sheet’ that is aimed at covering the basics for managers.  And it’s pretty basic:  stand up straight, keep you hands out of your pockets, smile.  These are not tips that are going to build a ‘best and brightest’ team.  However, this article does point out the need to supply your managers with tools they need to succeed.

You may not be able to pick only ‘great leaders’ to head up different parts of your company.  You may, instead, have to choose people who have the right experience and are respected within an organization.  And so the conundrum is whether or not to choose natural leaders over those with the right experience and skill set to manage a certain area.  The right answer largely depends on the situation at hand: a new social media campaign may call for a young, ambitious go-getter, but safety issues definitely call for the even handed of experience.  And this is the point exactly.  You probably don’t have the choice to pick your ‘dream management team’ so it’s important to recognize those who lack leadership skills and help them along.  A cheat sheet for these folks may not be a bad idea.

In the end, good management is about results.  Managing managers is, more than anything, recognizing the different styles of leadership that are all valid pathways to success.  A cheat sheet might help some folks manage more effectively, but they need to know that they have the trust and support of the corner office to ultimately lead in a way that they think is most effective to achieve the results you expect.

Read the all 101 tips here.

The details were entertaining, including candidates who:

• listed “God” as a reference (though without any phone number)
• sent a 24 page resume to detail a five year career
• included a personal email address “lovesbeer“
• listed “Master of Time and Universe” under his experience.
• insisted that any new employer allow him to bring his pet monkey to work

Coincidentally, the same day that I read the article in The Telegraph, I received an email from the CEO of a local technology company who forwarded what may be the single worst resume I’ve ever read. (click on the image to view in all its glory). The resume is reproduced exactly as it was received, with only names and phone numbers excised.

As appalling (and amusing) as this singular resume disaster is, job seekers can learn a number of valuable lessons from its mistakes.

1. Pick a font size and format and stay with it. It’s expected that your name at the top of the resume will be larger than the rest of your copy, but you should not mix font sizes and justification throughout the resume. It’s distracting, visually disorienting and unprofessional. And, for most resumes, 12 point copy should be large enough.
2. Have someone else proof your resume before sending it out. This resume has dozens of spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors that could have been corrected easily by an attentive proofreader. I know employers that will trash any resume that contains errors, believing that any job seeker who doesn’t pay attention to the details of their resume won’t pay attention to the details of their job.
3. Procure a professional email address. Who would have thought it necessary to admonish job seekers not to include email addresses like “bonglover@gmail.com” or “dazednconfused@aol.com” on their resumes? This is your personal billboard, folks. You don’t want to broadcast your personal peccadilloes or your weakest personal attributes, even if you mean them in jest. Assume that every prospective employer is devoid of any sense of humor and include a direct email address consisting of “yourname@site.com“. You can’t go wrong with that.
4. Lead with your qualifications. I’m not sure what resume genius first suggested to lead your resume with your personal objective, but it’s lousy advice. Employers aren’t interested in your personal goals, but in the value you can bring to their organization. What are your strengths? What specific qualifications do you possess? What value are you capable of demonstrating? If you want to grab their attention, you need to appeal to their wants, not yours.
5. Tell a story with each job listing. Employers don’t want to know what tasks you performed, they want to know what you accomplished. And they want to know that you are aware of the difference. There are no unimportant jobs. Every job contributes to the organization’s goals in some way. Do you understand how you contributed? Did you apply yourself with care and attention? Did you demonstrate your commitment and work ethic? Tell us how.

And one final thought… don’t just shotgun your resume out to dozens of prospective employers (as this worst resume candidate did) hoping that it will get attention from one of them. It makes you look desperate and incompetent and may get attention, but not in the way you intend.

Finding and hiring bodies to occupy desks is actually pretty simple. Filling those desk chairs with genuinely talented individuals is extraordinarily difficult.

How Hard Can It Be?
For many job seekers, this dilemma seems unbelievable. With unemployment over 9% and millions of people actively looking for jobs, how tough could it be to find the right employee? Shouldn’t the biggest problem be selecting only one of many qualified candidates?

Regrettably, the answer is No.

While job seekers focus intently on communicating their professional qualifications – their degrees, certifications, and specific technical skills – employers are looking for personal qualities like work ethic, loyalty, commitment, passion, eagerness to learn and devotion to excellence.

What Do We Want?
As the CEO commented, there are two types of people in the world: people who can’t bear to watch the ball hit the ground and people who don’t care if the ball hits the ground. She only wants to hire the former. But they’re hard to identify and harder to hire because they’re in the greatest demand.

The CIO agreed and related that her recent employee selections for a necessary layoff were determined by the employees’ personal attributes not by the lack of any specific talent. Because every manager knows that an employee’s personal qualities are extraordinarily difficult to change, while new skills are relatively easily acquired.

Both lamented the lack of any foolproof method to ensure that a new hire would possess their desired qualities and would continue to demonstrate them while employed. No personnel test has worked, behavioral interview techniques aren’t certain, references don’t necessarily reveal motivation and even a proven record of success doesn’t guarantee future accomplishment.

Finally, the Secret Revealed
So, what’s the secret to finding and hiring talent? As far as we can tell, there isn’t one. But suggestions are welcome.

The transition from sales mode to negotiation mode will likely be jarring, but you can proceed with confidence as long as you prepare yourself for this brief but critical period of your job search.

1. Proceed with confidence. Companies don’t proffer job offers unless they’re eager to have you join their organization. Once they’ve made their decision to bring you on board, they’re as motivated as you are to complete the entire hiring process. They’re highly unlikely to change their mind just because you don’t leap at their initial offer.
2. Take your time. Upon receiving your offer, convey your thanks and immediately ask them for a couple of days to consider the details of their offer. Few people accept an offer in the instant that it’s offered, so your request for a brief amount of time will be expected and will provide you with the time necessary to evaluate their initial offer.
3. Know what you want. Only you know what combination of salary, vacation, benefits, training and workplace amenities are acceptable to you. If the offer doesn’t meet your minimum expectations, you’re faced with two choices: lower your expectations or plan your negotiation strategy to achieve your goals.
4. Negotiate gently. After a lengthy courtship, the last thing that either party wants to for the relationship to degenerate into a series of combative offers and counteroffers. Both of you are still in the ardor stage and neither wants the relationship to derail, so this isn’t the time to issue ultimatums. Instead, ask for the things you want without ever suggesting that you won’t accept the job if you don’t get them. “Would it be possible…” or “Could you…” or ‘Other companies I have been talking to have offered, is it possible….” are non-threatening ways for you to ask. And don’t forget to continually let them know how excited you are at the opportunity and how much you’d love to join them.
5. Consider compensation other than salary. Compensation comes in many forms. Should your request for an increased salary be met with resistance, you can frequently negotiate for more vacation, equity in the company, a commitment to pay for ongoing education, professional memberships, travel to industry seminars, assignment to specific projects, flextime, telecommuting, job title, car allowance or a commitment to review your progress at six months instead of one year to adjust your salary if your performance merits an increase. Many companies will agree to creative compensation elements as long as they don’t have to write a larger check each week.

Understanding these simple guiding principles should allow you to effectively negotiate the best possible terms in your next job regardless of the state of the economy. Then, once you’re hired, your potential is limited only by your imagination and hard work.

That’s why it’s essential for companies to look outside their own organizations to bring in talented individuals who have proven their ability to nurture innovation and guide organizational transformation. But, when the recruitment process is turned over to HR, do their established policies and procedures aid in the recruitment process or actively repulse creative talent?

I was reminded of these organizational conflicts last week when talking with an executive who had recently been approached by a large public company whose CEO determined that the company needed to emulate successfully innovative companies like Whirlpool and Apple to fuel their company’s growth.

Overcoming Organizational Memory
Recognizing that their current staff was likely incapable of crafting and implementing a dramatic shift towards an innovation culture, the company directed their HR department to recruit talent to help direct these new initiatives.

What followed was a laughably complex, lengthy and ultimately unsuccessful attempt by an entrenched HR department that followed their carefully choreographed hiring processes that served two purposes: to consolidate HR’s central role in the hiring process and to repel precisely the type of candidate they desperately need in-house.

The Process
The steps followed over the course of months (yes, months) was:

1. contact by internal recruiter
2. conversation with internal recruiter to determine nature of position and corporate commitment
3. conversation with senior recruiter to review candidate’s qualifications
4. requirement by HR for candidate to apply for the position through their unnecessarily complex online process
5. request for candidate’s resume, despite the fact that the company approached him and his entire portfolio, blog, references, presentations and public appearances were all publicly available online
6. follow up interview with senior HR recruiter to confirm level of interest (which was waning sharply by this point)
7. telephone interview with hiring manager
8. follow-up interview with senior recruiter
9. second telephone interview with hiring manager
10. in person interviews with hiring manager and four other executives lasting over half a day
11. request for personality assessment and permissions for assorted background checks
12. interview debrief with senior recruiter with promise to provide an answer within a couple of weeks, after they had processed several other candidates as well
13. silence

For those people involved with corporate HR there’s probably nothing surprising about the length or detail of this hiring process. And that’s exactly what repels the corporate innovator. After all, if the corporate processes to bring in a single hire are so complex and embedded, how sclerotic is the rest of the organization and how likely will any individual change, or even shift, an entire corporate culture?

The entire hiring process so repelled this executive that he ultimately abandoned any interest in the organization.

Do your hiring processes communicate what’s best about your organization or are you losing the competition for talent because your initial contacts turn off the best and brightest?

PLease see attached resume . My slasry requirements would be in the middle of your range. I am organized creatuve and detailed oriented. I never miss work and put 110% into everything I do. I look forward to spoeaking with more about this oppurtunity.

Where to begin?

With the four misspelled words in a mere two lines? With the mistaken capitalization in the first word? With the lack of punctuation in his third sentence? With the unmistakeable irony contained in his assertion that he’s “detail oriented”? Or with the absence of the sentence’s object in his final sentence?

Actually, any one of these errors could result in immediate elimination from consideration for a job. The collection of errors ensured that not only would he be removed from consideration but that his missive would receive wide distribution. And, unfortunately for the candidate, his resume was equally devastating, replete with spelling and grammatical errors.

The lesson here is clear and can’t be stated forcefully enough: have your resume, email introductions and follow up messages reviewed and edited by a trusted colleague before sending.

Even professional writers and journalists have editors. There is no embarrassment in having your work reviewed by a third party, but there is enormous embarrassment in seeing your email being used as a case study for what not to do.

NOTE: the CEO asked whether he should provide the candidate feedback and alert him to the mistakes in his message and his resume. I suggested that he should, as a gesture of support, since this candidate may be destroying his potential to land any job. Would you let him know about his assorted errors or just let it go?