Fascinating Authors

Chapter 2

Why You Need to Get the Attention of the Hiring Manager

YOU PROBABLY WILL NEVER RECEIVE a business card with “hiring manager” listed as someone’s job title. A “hiring manager” is more of a functional role than a job title; many managers of other people find themselves involved with that role from time to time when the manager’s team has requisitions for adding to headcount. Some managers do not have any hiring authority—it all depends on how the company structures management duties and responsibilities.

As a manager with hiring responsibilities, my workload was often at maximum capacity. Hiring managers tend to sidestep those tasks that distract, interfere, or impede the completion of the very objectives on which we and our teams are evaluated each year by upper management. When we successfully complete assigned projects that generate revenue for the company, we keep our jobs. Very simple process.

The two biggest intrusions into my day were meetings and the hiring process. Both have their relative importance in the grand scheme of the corporate environment, but by and large, the attention they demanded often coincided with critical project schedules. Whenever I could, I avoided non-critical meetings; however, résumé screening and interviewing were tasks that required my time and attention, regardless of the project workload or schedules.

I once participated on a panel discussion with other hiring managers at a national conference. During the audience question-and-answer session, someone asked, “How do you approach the résumé evaluation process?” I replied that in my experience, the résumé evaluation process is a necessary intrusion into more important project priorities, and that reading résumés and cover letters, for me, was a bit of a chore because the majority of them were so poorly written and did a terrible job understanding and responding to the business need. I added that any hiring manager who said otherwise was either not busy enough or was not providing “full disclosure.”

The hiring manager sitting next to me said, “Well, I enjoy reading cover letters and résumés. It makes my day more interesting.” Six months later, I learned she lost her job because project schedules for which she was responsible kept slipping.

At least she had some interesting reading for awhile.

Starting the Hiring Process

The hiring process begins with a need. Each company has its own specific process but basically, a department or project team realizes that there is more work than people to do the work, and discussions begin for how many positions are needed. Such discussions may include an assessment of how much revenue might be gained by hiring others; or perhaps, how much revenue might be lost if no hiring occurs. Both options require an ability to project future needs based on current activities.

For many hiring managers, the decision to hire additional staff is a cautious one, because no hiring manager wants a team to be “fat” (too many people, not enough work). Such a situation can reflect negatively on a hiring manager’s ability to predict future project workloads.

Once a justification for increasing headcount is documented, the case usually is taken to upper management, and with their approval, forwarded on to HR to alert them to begin their respective process (placing ads in various media, contacting headhunters for résumés, etc.).

Why (Many) Hiring Managers Don’t Enjoy Screening Résumés

The majority of résumés and cover letters I received for the various positions for which my employers were interviewing often only feebly addressed the requirements for the advertised position. I lost count of the number of cover letters that began: “To Whom It May Concern: Please find enclosed my résumé for the position as advertised…” (if even a résumé was accompanied by a cover letter) or résumés that began with the totally useless, self-serving “Objectives” section, or were structured in a way that forced me to embark on a fishing expedition for the information I needed. Was anyone aware of the seven-second rule about getting someone’s attention? My hiring manager peers agreed, and we would often wonder if most of these folks were serious about changing jobs—their cover letters and résumés were simply not getting our attention because they failed to interject any effort into their strategy for getting hired.

Hiring Managers are Overloaded in Up and Down Economies

No matter the industry in which I have worked, I have always had to contend with the constraints of too much work and not enough people to do the work. That was true when the economy was flourishing at record levels in the mid-to-late 1990s, and when it was in the basement and climbing out, as it has been over the past 20 or so months. In a booming economy, the project work arrived at a hectic pace, but hiring qualified people fast enough was always a problem. In a down economy, while reductions in force may have reduced the number of people doing the work, the workload nevertheless increased because of fewer people on the team to perform it. Add to that intensity is the fact that many companies understand the best time to push new product development is when costs are down.

The pressure to complete projects on schedule and on budget is intense in any economy, and any process that competes for the team’s time and effort on Priority 1 projects is often not received with great excitement. Résumé screening and interviewing can often become one of those processes because it involves several people on the team or may involve the entire team. Because résumé screening and interviewing are intermittent processes (not part of the daily routine), sometimes they suffer from inefficiency and poor execution.

Who Extends the Offer: HR or the Hiring Manager?

In many companies, the person with the ultimate authority to extend an offer to a candidate is more often than not the hiring manager and not the HR manager or someone on the HR staff. The hiring manager, who can be a technical or non-technical person, is the individual most intimate with the details of the day-to-day responsibilities of the position that the company is trying to fill. Hiring managers have their finger on the pulse of the team, know what specific skills are required for the position, and understand the kind of personality needed to “gel” with the rest of the team.

While an HR manager or personnel consultant may screen résumés for the “best fit” candidates, in most instances it is the hiring manager that determines who gets called in for the interview. And, while the HR manager may be the person who extends the official job offer to the successful candidate, the hiring manager usually determines who that candidate is and may even dictate some of the terms of the compensation package.

If you receive a job offer and you accept it, it is likely you will report to the hiring manager directly or someone who reports to him or her. Depending on the size of the company, you may never even meet the HR person who sent you the official offer letter (unless you are being hired for a position in HR, of course).

Understanding the “Years Experience” Requirement in Job Ads

Some job ads require a certain minimum number of years experience with a particular process, methodology, or tools, or experience in a specific industry. Depending on the industry and position, that requirement may not be a hard and fast one.

Several years ago, I had a position available that required five years experience with a specific software application. One applicant wrote me complaining about that requirement, probably because he did not have the requisite number of years experience with the software tool the position demanded:

Does the “five years experience” requirement mean having the technical competence of a typical person with five years experience? If that’s the case, then what about the person with six months or a year’s experience who can do pretty cool things? What about someone with five years experience using a different tool but minimally competent on this one? At some point you are concerned more with an individual’s potential to do good work than what he has done (and that is good, isn’t it?)

I’ve always felt that the hardest job skills could be learned by the right person in two years or less. So, by demanding five years experience, you run the risk of hiring someone purely on the basis of the historical accident of whether they’ve worked at a company using a commercial tool…. Requiring “five years experience” may simply result in weeding out the younger candidates most in touch with new ways of doing things.

I disagreed with this young man’s understanding of the five-years-experience requirement. For some companies, such a requirement may be a hard, non-negotiable requirement; in others, it is more of a “wish-list” item. The strength of that requirement depends on the nature of the work, but more importantly, it applies to an individual’s time spent working on a variety of projects, solving a variety of problems using both standard and unique solutions with particular tools, processes, and techniques.

In my example above, individuals can not obtain that type of experience in six months or a year or two years, no matter how many “cool” things they can do with that software application—it may be cool, but does it solve a business problem? What counts more than the tools knowledge is being able to provide solutions to business problems using the tools that require their application repeatedly for many different projects and types of problems. That only comes with years of experience.

As for “weeding out the younger candidates most in touch with new ways of doing things,” I did not think that was a valid point. People who work with a variety of software applications (or “tools” of any kind for that matter) to solve problems every day are usually very current with the latest tools and techniques used in the workplace. People just out of school have had much of that experience in a controlled academic environment. A writing project or programming assignment has a hard delivery date with fewer competing priorities or challenges directly affecting the project, frat parties and Rush Week notwithstanding.

In the working world (a less-controlled environment), that project is now at the mercy of design changes, project priority changes, departures of critical employees, feature additions, endless meetings, layoffs, conference calls, hard-disk crashes, and so on.

The five-years-experience requirement was a valid one. Even though some less-experienced people may have been immersed in “baptism-by-fire” work environments, it can not substitute for many years solving business problems with a variety of tools and approaches.

In some industries and professions, there is little opportunity for entry-level technical positions. Many companies have to demand a minimum number of years experience because of the fast, hit-the-ground-running, think-on-your-feet pace they have to undertake for ever-shrinking product development cycles their customers demand.

What I’ve Learned as a Hiring Manager

Over my 20-plus-year career in various hiring manager positions, I have been involved with hiring interns, cooperative education students, laboratory personnel, scientists and engineers with various advanced degrees, adjunct faculty candidates, and communications professionals for both permanent and contractor positions. During that time, I have reviewed well over 1,000 résumés, hundreds of cover letters and cover emails, and participated in hundreds of interviews in addition to attending training on hiring and interviewing techniques. Despite all the books, training, free information on dozens of websites, and seminars available for showing people how to write résumés and cover letters and prepare for interviews, I have come to this conclusion:

Most job/career seekers do not understand the strategy and tactics involved with securing a new job or career, nor do they grasp the marketing and self-promotion that is necessary to capture the attention of hiring managers before, during, and after interviews. The job/career seeker must have some understanding of the hiring manager’s needs and challenges, and tailor each approach to address those concerns. The individual promoting himself/herself as the hiring manager’s problem solver will be at the top of the list over anyone else with equal qualifications just looking for a job.

If you are a job/career seeker and are not having any success with securing that new job or career, you may need to revisit your approach to the task. Do you need to be more methodical in how you package yourself on paper and in person? Do you need to better anticipate what the hiring manager’s world is like so you can create a memorable encounter in a cover letter or interview? Do you need to present yourself more as a problem solver looking for a new environment that offers fresh challenges, and less as someone in need of a job or career change? Empathizing with the needs and concerns of a hiring manager in a cover letter (and interview) will nearly always get that hiring manager’s attention—much more so than the usual cover letter that reeks of self-adulation for past accomplishments.

A Final Word

The market is full of books, blogs, and websites on résumé writing and interviewing. These platforms offer useful advice, but there are few that provide job seekers and career changers with those tangibles and intangibles from a hiring manager’s perspective sought for in qualified candidates.

As we make our way through this book, we will look at how to create a PSKE Portfolio that hiring managers will remember, a strategy for how to control the job interview (most other books explain how to survive a job interview, which is the wrong approach altogether), and a strategy for how to negotiate the best possible compensation package without leaving money on the table.

None of this is rocket science but it does involve intelligence gathering, creativity, and determination to help you understand which factors influence your next job or career “launch.”

Over your career, you may have to adjust your strategies to the generally accepted practices of those professions and fields you wish to enter. What may work for you in one field may require adjustments to be applicable in another field. In fact, that is the reason why more than one type of résumé is used in the marketplace—to respond to the different needs across a variety of professions.

But one thing should remain fairly constant—those needs, issues, and concerns that are important to hiring managers and your ability to address them through the items in your PSKE Portfolio, by how well you control the interview, and in your on-the-job followthrough.

Become a keen observer of subtleties that can make a difference in being called in for an interview and being passed over without consideration. Study the job postings carefully and try to see deeper beneath the words in the ad. What peripheral skills would be needed for this particular requirement? What parallel skills do I have that are not mentioned in the ad that would separate me out from the pack of other candidates? What does this work environment look like based on the job ad information? How can I position myself to facilitate this team or company’s success and to be the problem solver they are looking for? As you will discover throughout this book—especially in Chapter 11 Postscript—a large part of your success hinges upon your being sensitive to the various interests and priorities of others first, and your own secondarily.