Recruiting Process: Candidate Sourcing and Selection for building a deck

Now that we’ve had one 70 degree day, my husband and I are interviewing contractors to build us a deck. We started off by searching for a pool of candidates. We had no idea how to approach this.

My husband asked all his buddies what to do and they had no ideas. Most forgot which contractor they used themselves. Finally one friend said to go to the local home improvement store and ask for recommendations.

So, he got a list of three names and called the first one. That would be Candidate #1, Harry who agreed to come to our house the next business day at 5pm. He arrived on time. He showed us a book of sample decks. He gave us a rundown of his experience. He measured; he talked to us about what we wanted. He drew a rough sketch and promised that he’d hand-deliver an estimate the day after tomorrow. He did so, and he phoned to let us know he’d left it in our mailbox. His estimate and design were professional except that we kept saying we wanted either cedar or composite and his estimate was for pine. (Candidate Tip: Listen to your interviewers –don’t just talk)

Meanwhile, we decided we needed some more candidates.

My husband searched online (that’s how he found me…which worked out pretty well). Nothing ‘local’ came up. Hard to believe all these business don’t have websites in this day and age, but we are in Indiana, not exactly the leading edge of technology. Anyway, a few were listed within about 50 miles, across the Illinois state line, and seemed kind of far. Still, one of them had a map showing their service area. The map wasn’t the greatest but some of those blue dots looked like they were in or near our town so I called them and set up an appointment. (Candidate tip: make sure you know where the recruiters are looking for you. Be there.)

None of the other Illinois websites gave any indication of their service area so we skipped them. I imagine Recruiters may sometimes pass over a candidate for a job if they think the candidate lives ‘too far’ away. (Recruiter tip: Don’t eliminate someone because you assume they aren’t interested. Let them tell you.)

So I called this far-away-in-Illinois contractor, candidate #2, Lenny. He came out a few days later, at lunch time. Lenny listened to what we wanted, took some measurements, showed us his book, showed us sample materials. Lenny has a PASSION for deck building. He told us the story of how he got into the business, his love of architecture. He talked us out of some goofy ideas we had about the deck and gave us some better ideas. (Candidate tip: Sometimes it pays not to blindly nod and agree with everything the interviewer says). He talked to us about cedar versus composite and told us about how cellular vinyl is actually the latest ‘fake’ material used in deck building. He helped us decide on material. He didn’t try to sell us; it truly felt like a conversation. He left us with a drawing, an estimate and a business card. He promised my husband he’d get real professional drawings with bill of materials if we select him. This caused my engineer husband to salivate.

The next day we decided we needed more names. Meanwhile I had pulled out the phone book to find the location of health food store to buy a remedy that was recommended to make my cat stop her nocturnal meowing (long story) when it hit me. Hmmmm…I bet there is a Deck section in here! Yes, there was! How old-fashioned is that? My husband kept marveling that “all the people I asked how to find a contractor and no one told me to use the phone book” (Recruiter tip: Don’t overlook ‘old-fashioned’ methods of sourcing candidates). Sure enough we saw ads for Harry and Lenny. And we also found two different Dwaynes. Were it my own choice, I probably wouldn’t have picked a second Dwayne but the same-name thing didn’t seem to bother my husband like it did me. (Recruiter tip: It’s OK to have two Dwaynes).

Candidate #3, Dwayne-the-first, came out another day at lunch time. One of the first things he said “Oh….I probably should have brought my book” (Candidate Tip/ Boy Scout moto: Be prepared). Dwayne did a quick sketch of what I now realize is a weird deck but at the time I liked it. I think because he and I realized we went to the same high school and grew up a few blocks from each other. (Candidate tip: If you aren’t good at your job you might get away with it by schmoozing. For awhile.) Anyway he made a drawing of ‘weird-deck’ but then took it with him so he could remember it (and we couldn’t). He left us with an immediate estimate which was an exact round number, yet no details with that number. (Candidate tip: Give your salary preference in non-round numbers. It appears to have some logic and thought behind it. )

Which brings me to Candidate #4, Dwayne-the-second. He was supposed to come yesterday at 5pm. He called that morning. “I just was informed that I have to attend a function at my daughter’s school” (translation: my wife just reminded me about my daughter’s thing and even though she told me about it weeks ago, I totally forgot and there’s NO WAY I can get out of it).

Dwayne-the-second asked to reschedule for a week out. I said sure. I informed him he is our last guy, so he should come sooner or not at all. (Candidate tip: If you must reschedule, you maintain the appearance that the interview is a priority for you) Dwayne-the-second hasn’t even given me an estimate or drawn a deck (weird or otherwise) yet I already have a negative impression of him. Not good.

Those are all our candidates.

I’ve drawn some conclusions on this process and how it relates to candidate selection. The candidate you select should meet the basic requirements, which of course should be stated in your job posting. We didn’t have a job posting. We didn’t sit down and agree on any criteria ahead of time. We didn’t really have any screening questions. Well, we had a few but we kept forgetting them and didn’t always ask all of them consistently. Our interview usually started with us flailing our arms in the backyard giving our vision of the deck (which probably varied from candidate to candidate depending on whether it was cold outside that day).

We didn’t even have a well thought out plan about how to find our candidates, we just searched willy nilly. Because of our poor Deck-Builder Recruiting Practices we are in danger of making a decision based on subjective versus objective job-related criteria. Namely:

1) We like Harry because he was punctual, polite and professional (how is this related to building a deck?) OK this one is marginal – sometimes those soft skills matter. It feels like it could correlate to getting the job done on time.

2) I spent too much time in the ‘interview’ talking to Dwayne-the-first about people we knew in high school. I like him because he’s ‘like me’. I should have kept the interview more focused.

3) We don’t like Dwayne-the-second because he seems like a flake. He did not make a good first impression.

For these reasons, we chose…….Lenny.

My social software success story

It just occurred to me.  I am not as new to social software as I thought.  I was doing some research earlier this week and came across the Wikipedia definition of social software.    I was originally trying to understand social bookmarking.  I’ll probably come back to talk about that experience in another blog….but the point for today is, I was on one of those random explorations through Wikipedia where you click one thing and then another and the next thing you know you are reading about the philosophy of artificial intelligence.  Hmmm, interesting but not why I came here.  And now it strikes me that the social bookmarking may be helpful when I start losing my place, huh? OK yes, like I said, that’s for another blog.

Anyway during this particular stroll through Wikipedia, I came across a  list of social software.  And there I saw it: match.com.   Match.com would’ve been my first foray into social software, I suppose. The year was 2003.  I decided to join just to see what would happen.  My first obstacle was uploading a picture of myself since I didn’t own a camera, let alone a digital one.  I finally decided to use one that my colleague (and Meg’s fashion consultant) had posted from the PeopleSoft User Conference.  Yes, a photo of me standing in the Meet-the-Experts booth with the dorky red “experts” shirt.  Of course I cropped out the actual booth, but still.  It’s a bit sad that the only picture of me is while I am at work, isn’t it?  And thus the reason I had turned to match.com in the first place!

And then I had to write a profile.  Torture!  I think I write the most boring self-descriptions known to man.  Though maybe I need more interesting subject-matter.  In any case, it was a rather drab, yet truthful, description of myself that I posted that day. So for a couple of weeks I fielded some messages from various guys (most of whom were just blindly messaging everyone).  Spelling was atrocious!  I’m sorry but I weeded out a lot of them for using horrible spelling and punctuation.  I mean, if you are going to cut/paste the same lame message to every girl in a 20 mile radius at least do a spell-check on it first.  And take the time to capitalize “I”. 

For my part, I was still a bit clueless on the whole message exchange process.  The messages were sent ‘blind’ but I kept messing up and replying directly, thereby revealing my true email address.  Most guys were pretty cool and pretended not to notice. Hey at least I can spell.  But I guess I established my inability to quickly master social software right from that first experience. So, one day a brief email came in from a cute guy with good spelling.  He thought it was interesting that I developed software for a living. (Again I am a dork.  What kind of a profile is THAT to attract guys?!? Didn’t I learn in college that you never reveal you major in Computer Science in social settings?  Unless it’s Triangle Fraternity.  Those guys were always cool with it. ). 

The guy-with-good-spelling and I wrote back and forth for a week and then he asked if I wanted to meet. I think he was just growing tired of my meandering emails as I’m sure you readers can relate. After my initial panic: meet!?!   So soon?  Well OK, I agreed.  I got to pick the date.  I shot down March 17^th because I didn’t want to forever ruin St Patrick’s Day if he was an idiot.  I settled on March 20^th.   We met at the local BW3s, a sports bar, where March Madness was underway, as well as the first shots of the Iraq War, which we assumed would be brief in it’s duration. We talked for a few hours, we ended up dating for awhile….

Five years later, he and I still connect online from time to time.  Just the other day I contacted him on video chat.  He was in the kitchen and I was upstairs in my office.  Just checking in with my husband to see how things are going in the lower half of the house.  Yes, that cute guy with the good spelling that I met five years ago is now my husband.  And I owe it all to social software.

I want to join the Anti-Social Network

Confession: I don’t like Facebook.  I tried.  Well, I haven’t tried a lot…but I do pop on from time to time, and, well, I just don’t like it. Problem #1:  I am generally anti-social.  And, when I do have something to share, it’s usually sarcastic, which is better shared one-on-one, not broadcast to the world (or to my 23 friends).  I mean, I’m often grumpy and sarcastic, but I still want people to like me, right? 

So there’s that.   

And Problem #2: what word can I use in this blog? Can we say crap? OK I don’t like all this crap that is on my Facebook page. Where did it come from? Did I put it there?    

People are always sending me things and ok, maybe that’s fun, but in order to actually see what they are sending/ waving/ throwing/ gifting/ writing-on-my-wall I am forced through some multi-step process of accepting this unknown application before I even see what it is. So of course I uncheck all the boxes. No you cannot access my information (oh? So then you won’t let me play? FINE!), no you cannot put a box in my profile (what does that even mean?), maybe I’ll let you put a link in my left-hand navigation, because I am a fan of links…but I think I might have too many links so can I decide later?…well if I must decide now then NO to the left-nav links, no you can’t publish stories in my feeds, and why do you need another link below my profile picture, didn’t you just ask to put one on the left…isn’t that enough? 

So, I get through all of that and already I’m crabby from saying ‘no’ so many times.  And then I see all my “friend’s” pictures and now it wants me to send this unknown thing that I haven’t yet seen to them?  It’s like those pesty “forward this to 10 friends within 60 minutes and you’ll have good luck” emails?  So now I’m carefully reviewing this and unchecking all my friends names and looking around, ok now how do I find my ‘free gift’ or thing that was just thrown at me?  Sometimes I give up at this point, so if you threw something at me that you wanted back, I’m sorry, I lost it.  Just today I accidentally found a bunch of my outstanding invitations – seven zombie/vampires and some walls that I don’t understand yet, and some compares.  My “friends” must hate me for not accepting their vampire bites…but I’m sorry that just scares me…… 

All right, I paused this blog exercise and attempted the fun wall…I believe I may have accidentally sent something stupid to all of my “friends”.  Brings me to Problem #3 with Facebook.  Everything is so hard to use that I have a fear of accidentally spamming my friends with crap (see problem #2) which means I am fearful to type anything or press any button or check any box.  

So mostly I just log on and look at my friends pictures from time to time. I’m too lazy to always scroll down (unless it’s during a Recruiting Team status call) so I just mostly see the “B’s” (I don’t have any A friends for some reason).  So I see Ravi and Louise and Meg (and maybe Mark and Klaus if I scroll a bit…but sorry Vivian and Christine, I rarely get down to see you) and then I log off. 

That’s all I want – to log on, see my friend’s faces and log off.  The Anti-Social Network.