Monday, October 5, 2015

Training Human Resources for Hiring


Human Resource professionals, like police officers and school teachers, are underpaid.

Period.

They do far more than their pay scale shows and a good one is worth his or her own weight in gold. For the one-hundred solid employees they hired, who work honestly, little or no credit or recognition is given.  For the one of the one-hundred who files the fraudulent claim, the HR professionals is blamed. That is not easy to bear up under.

In helping HR hire the best and brightest, we begin in the "negative"; that is, what is in the negative outweighs in importance, that which is stated in the positive.  The "thou shalt nots" provoke more internal reaction than the "thou shalts" in life.

                                                       "Who hired this idiot?"

This is what comes after the debacle that has hurt the company or the department.  How did this troublemaker, racist, thief, liar, whopping moron, get past the interview process?

When you conduct an interview, it is a learning lesson.  What you learn in the interview about yourself  is far more than just what you learned about the interviewee, including if analysis gave you the "missing information" you sought.

Even if you flagged the language as signals of deception, followed up in the interview process, and were able to effectively discern that this potential hire could have ended up costing my company a great deal of time, money, stress and reputation damage, you must remember:

1.  What did the interviewee teach you?
2.  You will not get credit for that which does not happen.

One of the frustrations of law enforcement anti-terrorism prevention is success.  When a counter-terrorism expert has successfully uncovered a suspected plot, there is not always a splash of news, and this is for good reason:  it would only signal to other terrorists the nature of the work.

Therefore, should an agency successfully save the lives of thousands, through scores of foiled terrorism plots, over the course of a year, it is, perhaps, that no public knowledge of such will ever exist.

If you foiled 99 plots, which each plot aimed at killing 100 people, making for almost 10,000 lives saved, and one plot is not derailed, failure is all the public knows.

When a company is running smoothly, it is only the most astute and caring of business owners or leadership that will recognize, "no news is good news" and recognize and reward HR's hiring record. This is especially true in positions of high turnover; entry level jobs that are either stepping stones to other positions, or those where low pay and high stress combine for the turn over.  These are the most vulnerable positions for trouble.

We train HR professionals, first, in lie detection.  They learn to analyze statements and become good at it.  The formal training requires much practice and the professional is urged to train in a formal, monthly manner, for 24 months.  If this is combined with regular practice, this professional is going to be very good at analysis.  He or she will now be of even greater value to the company, but the resume now holds greater value, as well.

Those who complete this 2 year study are given special certification in advanced analysis saying so, and can, in any job interview, demonstrate this prowess in "getting to the truth."

When the basics of analysis is established, the HR professional (who's duties often include internal investigations.  If this is not part of the job description, and the company simply allows law enforcement to investigate, this is a major mistake and something I address directly with ownership or upper level management. A company, small or large, should always investigate any and every claim, and keep a good written record of the investigation, including all the interviews, and freely share this information with law enforcement (as well as their own attorneys, unless the attorneys have a very strong reason not to; usually in very limited and rare cases) as it creates good will, facilitates the flow of information, and will get to the satisfactory results that honest, hard working companies want.

Few people want to see a fraud get away with pilfering from a company.

Yet in the hiring, the trained professional recognizes that potential employees will tell you exactly who they are, and what they want. 

"I am outgoing, hardworking and diligent. I multitask well.  I learn quickly and do not require repeated directions.  I am very punctual."

Here is a statement that the analyst should consider that if the question was the open-ended, "Tell me about yourself" (in some manner), the Interviewer has permitted the interviewee to choose his own wording.

When one begins with the pronoun "I", and continues with it, consistently, it indicates that the applicant believes his own words.

Now remember:  each one of us has a personal subjective dictionary.  This person has said,

"I am outgoing" first.

Is this a sales job?

Or, is it a record-keeping job with little interaction with others?

When the person began with "I", it is a strong signal of psychological ownership of the statement.  In other words, it is likely to be reliable.

This does not mean "accurate."

It means the person believes he is outgoing and it is only if his personal, internal subjective understanding of "outgoing" matches yours, as the representative of your company, that would make it fit.  We do not know his reference point for what "outgoing" means.  He believes what he says, and is not attempting to deceive you, which is what makes it "reliable."  You must learn if it is "accurate."

The pronoun "I" was used, without sensitivity, regarding:

a.  outgoing
b.  hardworking
c.  diligent

Before we rush to "dropped pronouns", we consider the 'flow' in context.  True, some will say, "I am outgoing and I am hardworking and I am diligent", but this is to lengthen, unnecessarily a sentence.  The additional and awkward emphasis, therefore, would have to be explored.  This is a judgement call that only comes from doing many statements and job interviews.  Often, the older the HR professional, the better, just as we say, "the more trained the better"; unless the older is immovable and has stopped growing.  This is readily seen in the experienced HR (and detective) who has the attitude of "been there; done that" and cannot, nor will not, learn anything new.

An investigator once deliberately skipped mandatory training and could not be assigned a case without it.

He began with a statement about not being notified, which was an outright fabrication.  I showed him his notification and receipt of the same.  He then said he did not "recall" the date and apologized.  I then countered with a statement from a co-worker to the contrary, where he told the co-worker he would not waste his time on such.

He then, cornered by his own lies, did what all liars do:  he went on the offensive.


I said, "Sir, this is the first time in our conversation that we are in agreement. "

He was off the job a few months later.  Had I been inclined to "game the system" under him, his ego would have prevented him from catching me in the interview.

Back to our sample:

The pronoun "I" was used, without sensitivity, regarding:

a.  outgoing
b.  hardworking
c.  diligent
d.  multi task well
e.  learn quickly

These are all given from the pronoun "I", making them reliable, and they are in the "positive" and without any qualifier. We note the order as speaking to priority.  This priority is unknown:  is it a priority of what he possesses? Is it a priority of the company?  Does he think that given this position, that "outgoing" is the most important element?  The interview will uncover why it is listed as it is.

Next:

He gives us this "in the negative", increasing its importance:

"I am outgoing, hardworking and diligent. I multitask well.  I learn quickly and do not require repeated directions.  I am very punctual."

f.  "do not require..." tells us of what he does not need.  To him, this is very important; therefore, we are going to explore it.

We will learn why.

This is where you must be open minded.

Did he work in a situation where he had subordinates that drove him crazy by repeated questions?  Did he work for an impatient boss who blew his top if clarification was needed?
Is he the type of person who moves quickly, and hates being slowed down by needless chatter?
Does this position prosper by such?

And so on...

You know better than me as you know the job.

Next note:
"I am very punctual" is the first time he gave an indication of sensitivity with the adverb, "very" used.

g.  "very punctual"

The interview will learn why this is given the additional word (showing effort) making being "punctual" a sensitive topic to him.

Again:  be open minded!

Some possible reasons why the word "very" came in here:

1.  You call his supervisor for reference.  The supervisor says, "I can only confirm that he worked here..." but you are trained otherwise and get the information you need:

He was chronically late; written up, and drove his co-workers crazy because it threw them off schedule.

2.  As a supervisor, he was dealing with many late employees and found that chronic lateness and unpreparedness were closely related.

3.  As an employee, those around him were often late, but never disciplined and he often started work alone, and it bothered him.

4.  He is recently divorced from a woman who had a habit of lateness, which caused him embarrassment.

5.  He was late for his last job interview and lost his dream job opportunity because of it.

6.  When younger, he was chronically late and was ripped by a superior, and really learned a lesson and prides himself on being onetime.

7.  He considers punctuality lowest on his priority list because:

a.  no one should be late
b.  he thinks the job has open hours (some do)
c.  he thinks he is so important that he should make his own hours
d.  (enter your own answers based on other interviews)


This applicant has some need to persuade about punctuality, as he has emphasized it.  It may seem minor to some, but every analyst knows that when a series of statements are made, and there is an uniformity about them that is suddenly changed, there is always an important reason.

In the above statement, we have strength as seen in the use of the pronoun "I" and in the lack of qualifiers.  We then have a change to include the word "very" yet it comes at the end of the list.

If I were to guess and "give odds" on what it is, I would not be surprised if this applicant was punctual, but worked alongside of others who did not take it as seriously as he did.  I would look to see if he was early for the interview, appeared well dressed and prepared, and throw him a few curveballs to keep him "off script" (this has to do with order of questions in trainings) and provoke memory of working at a position previously.

Without specific training, the indicators of deception, which, if missed, means greatly increasing the risk to your company and you being asked rhetorically, "Who hired this mess?" after you have hired so many qualified content hard working employees, is thrown at you.

If your company will host a training, your company receives a discount.  If you can take individual training, it is done at your pace, but support is also offered.

The Analytical Interview training is done after the initial analysis training, and is videotaped for review by you, and will sharpen your skills.  It is not always easy to watch, but it will advance the course of learning greatly.  Maine's "Muskie Institute" did this with their "Legally Sound Interviewing" in which they put students through a nightmare of attorneys barking at them each time they asked a leading question or did not pick up on a particular word given.  It was not easy watching mistakes over a big screen, but through this emotional/intellectual impact, along with repetition and eventually encouragement, these attorneys did a terrific job of getting Interviewers to follow patterns that gained information without interpretation.  We mimic this in our training.

                                   See HYATT ANALYSIS and contact us on how you can get started.

The analysis training is uniformed, but the interview training is specifically tailored for your needs.  We use the analysis to uncover not only the deceptive, but those who have a propensity towards violence, and how law enforcement must seek well balanced employees, as well as those who come to a business looking to be hired for reasons of agenda that do not match the goals of the company.

Once formal training is complete, you are eligible to join in the monthly, intense training, of which I will soon update here at the analysis blog.

PH

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

If your company will host a training, your company receives a discount. If you can take individual training, it is done at your pace, but support is also offered.


Is this the best "plug" out of such a great article?

Anonymous said...

Peter, you are all wet. HR only hires people who work in HR. Everyone else is hired by the manager who works above them, called "the hiring manager." The job of HR is to screen out those who are patently unqualified. Once those have been filtered out, it is up to the hiring manager to pick the candidate.