Speaker 1: From executive search to talent strategy, leadership development, rewards and
Speaker 1: succession planning. Corn Fairy can help you realize the full
Speaker 1: potential of your people so you can take your business
Speaker 1: where it wants to go up. Learn more at corn
Speaker 1: Ferry dot com slash up. Welcome to game Plan, a
Speaker 1: show about our lives at work. I'm Sam Grobard, a
Speaker 1: reporter for Business Week and professional working person, and I'm
Speaker 1: Rebecca Greenfield, a reporter for Bloomberg, where I cover workplace culture.
Speaker 1: This week, we're talking about the horrible, no fun process
Speaker 1: of applying for jobs. A little later, we're going to
Speaker 1: talk to Karen Snyder. Karen's a linguist who's trying to
Speaker 1: fix that situation. But first, let's just talk about everything
Speaker 1: that's wrong with the hiring process. Yeah, applying for jobs
Speaker 1: is horrible. It's effectively, I think a system we can
Speaker 1: describe as broken. Yeah, especially now with a lot of
Speaker 1: the online in job application sites, it does feel like
Speaker 1: you're sending your resume into a black hole that immediately
Speaker 1: will be incinerated. Absolutely, And this is also true I
Speaker 1: think probably on the employer side as well. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, when you talk to employers and you read
Speaker 1: about it, they seem to have a lot of difficulty
Speaker 1: finding the right people. So something's really gone amok here
Speaker 1: if you have applicants not really feeling like they're finding
Speaker 1: the right jobs and employers feeling like they're not finding
Speaker 1: the right applicants. Yeah, and everything, all the whole process
Speaker 1: in between is unpleasant for everybody. So, like on the
Speaker 1: applicant side, even if somebody does read your cover letter
Speaker 1: or your resume, like one small thing can disqualify you,
Speaker 1: and it might be something that you had no idea
Speaker 1: was even something that was wrong with the hiring process.
Speaker 1: Let's let's talk about some of those potential disqualifies. So, actually,
Speaker 1: one of the most popular posts um Bloomberg since I've
Speaker 1: been working here, I didn't write it. A former colleague,
Speaker 1: Natalie kidter Off, wrote it about the best and worst
Speaker 1: fonts for your resume? So could it could throw the
Speaker 1: whole thing? Yeah? What fun am I supposed to be
Speaker 1: using hell Vetico as a popular choice? Very hip? What
Speaker 1: am I not supposed to be used? I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: comics hands but even times New Roman. Oh, your your
Speaker 1: resumes in comics, it's always been in comics. Well, it's
Speaker 1: working for you. Yeah, I'm gonna bring a cookie vibe
Speaker 1: to your office. You're the comics hands of Business Week report.
Speaker 1: Here there we go. But yeah, even times New Roman.
Speaker 1: I think some people in the article liked it, that
Speaker 1: it was fined, and some people thought it was offensive,
Speaker 1: and how are you supposed to know? It's ridiculous. And
Speaker 1: then there's the length of your I mean, there's the
Speaker 1: cover letter itself. Should you even have a cover letter? Right? So,
Speaker 1: you and I have talked about this. We both are
Speaker 1: kind of anti I feel like the more you have
Speaker 1: in the cover letter, the less you have to say
Speaker 1: for yourself. In some way, it's like your resume pretty
Speaker 1: much should do the job. I feel like the cover
Speaker 1: letter these days, in many cases, it's just the email
Speaker 1: that you've attached your resume to, and the email might
Speaker 1: just say nothing more than here's my resume. Yeah that's
Speaker 1: been my move. But we also work in a more
Speaker 1: informal field. That's true. It's not like a law firm,
Speaker 1: which I think is has a very specific rules for
Speaker 1: the kind of cover letters. Well, I guess in a
Speaker 1: way then that makes things a little easier because those
Speaker 1: rules can be known, they can be passed along and
Speaker 1: you can sort of just function within them. It's it's
Speaker 1: in fact, when everything is supposed to be kind of
Speaker 1: loosey goosey and it's up to you and nobody wants
Speaker 1: to say what they should or shouldn't do, that you
Speaker 1: kind of are left going, yeah, but please actually just
Speaker 1: tell me. Yeah. I think that's called like the tyranny
Speaker 1: of structurelessness or something like that, because it's sort of
Speaker 1: a fraud, right, because there are things that you probably
Speaker 1: should or shouldn't be doing, but nobody wants to come
Speaker 1: across as being so dogmatic as to say that you
Speaker 1: should or shouldn't write and and try hard or I
Speaker 1: don't know where do you come down on resume length?
Speaker 1: This is always an issue that I talked about with people.
Speaker 1: I have a one pager me too, I've had I've
Speaker 1: been in the workforce six years or so. It seems
Speaker 1: like a one page amount of time. Also, people are
Speaker 1: just glancing at your resume, so if you have the
Speaker 1: second page where your most important work experiences, they're not
Speaker 1: even going to see it. I have been in the
Speaker 1: workforce for twenty years and I also have a one
Speaker 1: page resume because I like, you feel like there's no
Speaker 1: reason anybody ever needs. I'm not like a physician, Like
Speaker 1: I'm not like having like published articles exactly. Um, yeah
Speaker 1: I should. We should just put links to every single
Speaker 1: article we've written out. It's very important that it is. Yes, no,
Speaker 1: And I've actually started taking jobs off my resume. Things
Speaker 1: that are so long ago. Is well, there are definitely
Speaker 1: some experiences that I didn't really enjoy and we're maybe
Speaker 1: brief for that very reason, and so it doesn't really matter,
Speaker 1: and they were so long ago so that it really
Speaker 1: it's like something that's twelve years ago that was for
Speaker 1: six months, pretty inconsequential. And since I am trying to
Speaker 1: keep my resume to one page, take it off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that one gets eighty six. I know everybody makes fun
Speaker 1: of LinkedIn for being useless, but actually, in this case,
Speaker 1: it kind of can be somewhere you can put other stuff.
Speaker 1: Obviously they're going to google you. The hiring manager is
Speaker 1: going to look at your LinkedIn page. Yes, you can
Speaker 1: expect that to be the case. Yeah, So really all
Speaker 1: of this stuff is just it's kind of formalities that
Speaker 1: waste so much time, and I think once you talked
Speaker 1: to a person, the process doesn't seem as broken to me,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like, oh, we all know Jus and
Speaker 1: done some interviews, and you kind of know when an
Speaker 1: interview went well, and you know that you're like at
Speaker 1: least being considered for our position. So yeah, we've both
Speaker 1: been working for some time now, and I think that
Speaker 1: it's fair to say that if we were heaven for
Speaker 1: friend to get a new job somewhere, it would it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be through a particularly formal process. It would be
Speaker 1: through a social network. It would be through our friends
Speaker 1: and through our colleagues and through our former colleagues and
Speaker 1: so forth, and so you wouldn't even necessarily have this process.
Speaker 1: But if you are trying to break into an industry
Speaker 1: or even just get started, you are going to encounter
Speaker 1: these formalities. Yeah. I remember when I was applying for
Speaker 1: my first job, which was a fellowship at the Atlantic magazine.
Speaker 1: I had to apply again to and there was an
Speaker 1: online system even at that time, and it felt like
Speaker 1: sending something into a void, and when somebody responded to me,
Speaker 1: I really felt like magic or like a miracle, or
Speaker 1: like how did I get chosen? This is crazy, like
Speaker 1: winning the Hamilton's lottery. I don't I don't think anybody
Speaker 1: actually wins. Nobody actually goes yes. Um. And I found
Speaker 1: my cover letter that I had sent and it's just
Speaker 1: so embarrassing and still did. They had given us a prompt,
Speaker 1: which I think at that time journalism was very much
Speaker 1: in this phase of like, technology is coming, what are
Speaker 1: we going to do? Yeah, And the prompt was something
Speaker 1: like that. And in the first sentence, I have it
Speaker 1: right here in the computer, I used the word renders,
Speaker 1: which probably shouldn't use in a cover letter unless you're
Speaker 1: applying to a thought rendering facility renders obsolete. Perhaps it's
Speaker 1: just like I am writing a cover letter. Can we
Speaker 1: just get a couple of sentences here? I just want
Speaker 1: to get a sense of what we're talking about, even
Speaker 1: as technology I can't do. Okay, even as technology renders
Speaker 1: the print and print journalism obsolete, good reporting, researching, and
Speaker 1: writing is more important than ever. Perhaps the medium of
Speaker 1: paper as a way to convey information is fading in importance,
Speaker 1: but Americans still deserve informative media. Rebecca Greenfield, you are hired. Yeah,
Speaker 1: why did that get me? I don't know. They probably
Speaker 1: got a lot of garbage from other twenty two year
Speaker 1: old You managed to string together some sentences they were
Speaker 1: grammatically correct. Yeah, So somehow people get hired. And from
Speaker 1: our perspective, it feels like employers have have a good
Speaker 1: like they have all the power because they do. But
Speaker 1: I talked to a few hiring managers about the process
Speaker 1: and they have a few frustrations of their own. Take
Speaker 1: a listen. I think there's a lot of bad tips
Speaker 1: out there, Like people will tell you you have to
Speaker 1: stand out, so you have to visit the office in person.
Speaker 1: But I've actually never seen this work up favorably. So
Speaker 1: what you usually see is, dear hiring manager, I have
Speaker 1: done X Y and Z for X Y and Z company.
Speaker 1: This will be applicable to you because something that sounds
Speaker 1: like it came from a fortune cookie. Please call me
Speaker 1: back if you're early inconvenience so I can expound upon this.
Speaker 1: Looking forward to it handed it. I've had people send
Speaker 1: me gifts and it never works. It's actually pretty cooky
Speaker 1: and it's not a gimmick that should get you noticed.
Speaker 1: It's your talents. Like I've seen people attached pictures that
Speaker 1: you know, how like when you sometimes see people on
Speaker 1: on Facebook or LinkedIn and they've got it appears that
Speaker 1: they've got their arm around a buddy, and you can
Speaker 1: kind of tell that the photo has been cropped, you know,
Speaker 1: not only are they attaching a photo and maybe that's
Speaker 1: not you know, that's not appropriate. Now you kind of
Speaker 1: see this photo where you're like, oh, is that a
Speaker 1: photo from the last Friday night. I literally had a
Speaker 1: candidate practically lie about getting in a car accident, and
Speaker 1: the candidate kind of said, hey, I'm not gonna be
Speaker 1: able to make the interview got in a car accident,
Speaker 1: like oh gosh, I hope you're okay. Um, And then
Speaker 1: they actually sent me a photo, which I thought was
Speaker 1: kind of odd, like why would you send me a photo,
Speaker 1: I'm not your insurance company right to prove that you
Speaker 1: were in a car accident. I kind of shared it
Speaker 1: with a couple of my colleagues and they were much
Speaker 1: savvyer about, oh, let's go see if that's a stock photo.
Speaker 1: And I actually found like the stock photo up on
Speaker 1: the internet. So the person literally like lied about that,
Speaker 1: and just like, why didn't you just tell me didn't
Speaker 1: want to come to the interview. It seems like from
Speaker 1: an employer's standpoint, from a recruiting standpoint, it's a dreadful
Speaker 1: task and that you would rather be doing almost anything
Speaker 1: else than deal with them, right, although I don't. To me,
Speaker 1: it's like, maybe it's kind of fun to like look
Speaker 1: at people's rescues, but I guess that gets old. It
Speaker 1: might get old. I've always maintained that, you know, when
Speaker 1: I deal. I've tried to tell myself this in in
Speaker 1: my own job seeking situations, and I've also told this
Speaker 1: to friends, which is that you know, you're waiting to
Speaker 1: hear back from somebody, and the days are sort of
Speaker 1: ticking by, and you're going out of your mind. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're going, what's going on? What's going They must be
Speaker 1: considering twenty other people, that's right, Yeah, And the truth
Speaker 1: is probably that they have just like procrastinated that task
Speaker 1: till weeks from now because there's more pressing. There's always
Speaker 1: something more pressing, you know, that needs to get addressed
Speaker 1: that hour or that day or that week. And like
Speaker 1: hiring somebody in many cases is like it would be
Speaker 1: nice to get them in sooner rather than later, but
Speaker 1: we kind of have worked it out without them yet,
Speaker 1: so and so you're on the other end with nothing
Speaker 1: more important to think about than whether or not you're
Speaker 1: going to get this job, they are not nearly as
Speaker 1: interested in filling it as you are. Yeah. God, that's
Speaker 1: so annoying. But the realities so Yeah. Even when employers
Speaker 1: are trying really hard to hire, like tech companies who
Speaker 1: need to staff up really fast, they still have problems
Speaker 1: hiring because there are not enough qualified people, or maybe
Speaker 1: they're trying to hire a more diverse staff hopefully and
Speaker 1: that is difficult. So in some ways we can sympathize
Speaker 1: with the employer a little bit, but it does go
Speaker 1: to this larger notion that the entire system does seem
Speaker 1: to be broken. And this would probably be a really
Speaker 1: good time to bring in our guest, Kieren Snyder, who's
Speaker 1: working to help companies do a better job of hiring
Speaker 1: people alinguist by training. Kieren runs Texto, a company that
Speaker 1: uses machine learning to create better job listings and recruitment
Speaker 1: letters for companies. Up happens when the power and potential
Speaker 1: of every employee and leader in your workforce is released,
Speaker 1: and corn Ferry can get you there by aligning your
Speaker 1: people to your strategy, attracting, developing, engaging, and rewarding them
Speaker 1: to reach new heights. With corn Ferry, you get a
Speaker 1: partner who truly understands people, leadership, and the new landscape
Speaker 1: of work, a partner who knows how to take your
Speaker 1: business up. Learn more at corn Ferry dot com slash
Speaker 1: up hire. Hi, nice to be here, Thanks for joining us. UM.
Speaker 1: I'll start off with just wort of a basic question here, UM,
Speaker 1: given your vantage point, how would you describe right now
Speaker 1: the state of hiring here in the US. Great question.
Speaker 1: I mean, we may be in a little bit of
Speaker 1: a transition point right now, but the last couple of
Speaker 1: years have been tougher for employers than employees in terms
Speaker 1: of hiring, especially in sectors like technology and finance, where
Speaker 1: there are a lot of great jobs available. You know,
Speaker 1: the economy the last couple of years has done pretty
Speaker 1: well and fewer qualified candidates to fill the role, so
Speaker 1: that the most qualified candidates on the market are highly
Speaker 1: in demand right now. I definitely think that's surprising from
Speaker 1: our perspective, the higher the employees perspective, because it just
Speaker 1: seems so impossible to find and look for jobs these days. UM.
Speaker 1: As part of the problem like some sort of mismatch
Speaker 1: and what employers are putting out there. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: really good, good question. I can understand from the potential
Speaker 1: employee your job seeker perspective that it can be tough
Speaker 1: to wade through the content to find the right thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are over three billion job posts on
Speaker 1: the internet, uh, just for North America at any given time,
Speaker 1: and so I do think kind of one of the
Speaker 1: challenges for the job seeker is to wade through all
Speaker 1: of that and find the posts that actually speak the
Speaker 1: most clearly to them for which they're sort of uniquely qualified.
Speaker 1: That sounds like some work for the job seeker to
Speaker 1: like wade through three billion different posts. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: good question. I think job seekers take a couple of
Speaker 1: different approaches, uh, you know, and I think there's the
Speaker 1: employer side of this as well. Obviously, job seekers increasingly
Speaker 1: their number one and two tools for jobs seeking our
Speaker 1: Google and kind of secondarily maybe indeed as a you know,
Speaker 1: a board where they can kind of find one stop
Speaker 1: shopping for listings or they may you know, identify ten
Speaker 1: companies they want to work for and go directly to
Speaker 1: the source. But I think it's a equally a big
Speaker 1: challenge for the employer in that model, because when you're
Speaker 1: part of such a large ecosystem. You have to figure
Speaker 1: out how to stand out so you can be found,
Speaker 1: which is you know, so I think there's some mutual
Speaker 1: challenge on matching. Karen, you've been working with a lot
Speaker 1: of companies um and helping them sort of craft better messages.
Speaker 1: What are some of the key things that you're telling
Speaker 1: your clients to be doing that will attract more or
Speaker 1: better applicants. I mean, for us, given that you know,
Speaker 1: we really make software rather than providing expert consulting. The
Speaker 1: number one thing that we tell companies is that your
Speaker 1: own intuitions may be broken. Right that sort of your
Speaker 1: go to job posts that you've used for the last
Speaker 1: three years, where by the way, you're not happy with
Speaker 1: who applies when you put it out there in the world,
Speaker 1: but you're still using it. Uh Or your intuition about
Speaker 1: what's going to work in the market or not isn't
Speaker 1: as powerful as real use of data from the whole
Speaker 1: hiring community. So your own intuitions and biases may take
Speaker 1: you two outcomes that you don't want to have, whereas
Speaker 1: if you can use real outcomes and real quantitative approaches,
Speaker 1: you know, look at what has actually worked in the past,
Speaker 1: you're likely to bet get a better outcome. So it's
Speaker 1: the number one thing we have to tell companies, uh,
Speaker 1: is that you've got to let go some of what
Speaker 1: you thought were best practices. Do you have any examples
Speaker 1: of those bad intuitions? Are best practices that companies are
Speaker 1: using that we all see it in job listings all
Speaker 1: the time that just really don't work. Yeah. One of
Speaker 1: one of the things that always ends up surprising people, uh,
Speaker 1: is that great, great example, the proportion of content that
Speaker 1: they put into bullets matters, right, the bullet points all
Speaker 1: over job posts. It turns out there's a sweet spot
Speaker 1: for candidate engagement. If you want the maximum candidate engagement
Speaker 1: on your job post, you want your listening to be
Speaker 1: about a third bulleted content. It's probably a visual silhouette thing.
Speaker 1: And then, really interestingly, when you go above fifty you
Speaker 1: see a reduction in the proportion of women who apply,
Speaker 1: so women don't like bullet points. Yeah, And if you
Speaker 1: go below t bulleted content, you see a reduction in
Speaker 1: the proportion of men who apply, which is also not good.
Speaker 1: So this is one of those things you can only
Speaker 1: know when you're measuring outcomes at large scale. There's actually
Speaker 1: a spot that works, you know, inclusively to get the
Speaker 1: most engagement from candidates, and people are always surprised. There's
Speaker 1: an example of the kind of thing like I never
Speaker 1: really thought about that before. I just I just wrote
Speaker 1: it the way I've always written it. Are there any
Speaker 1: other sort of examples that you can cite that? I mean,
Speaker 1: that was great what you were just talking about, UM,
Speaker 1: But other sort of like always nevers or dues and
Speaker 1: don't um that you've come to learn from all of
Speaker 1: the data that you've been sifting through. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess one of the most I can give a
Speaker 1: couple examples, but one of the most important things is
Speaker 1: that there are few, always is and never uh, simply
Speaker 1: because language changes. So the patterns that worked a couple
Speaker 1: of months ago may not work today, and the patterns
Speaker 1: that work today may not work in a couple of months.
Speaker 1: So as as language change, it's just like with any
Speaker 1: marketing content, right, because the job post is essentially your
Speaker 1: way of marketing your company and your job. What works
Speaker 1: changes based on what's happening in the market. I'd say
Speaker 1: one of the most common mistakes that people make is
Speaker 1: use of over formal language or sort of corporate cliches,
Speaker 1: you know, language like synergy or KPI S or r
Speaker 1: O I terrible jargon that nobody. Yeah, exactly, the pretty
Speaker 1: jargoning stuff. Uh. I don't know what it is that
Speaker 1: people get behind a keyboard when they're writing a job post,
Speaker 1: but they don't write like they talk, and actually posts
Speaker 1: performed better when it feels like they're written a little
Speaker 1: less formally. And you know, one thing that we've we've
Speaker 1: found very interesting in our data. So every candidate, every
Speaker 1: demographic group, this is true, they don't like this corporate jargon,
Speaker 1: but it has an even more adverse effect on underrepresented groups. Uh,
Speaker 1: particularly people of color and women uh don't respond well
Speaker 1: to you know, they're much less likely to apply the
Speaker 1: more jargon you have in your post. So yeah, pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: That's really interesting because we did an episode on jargon,
Speaker 1: and um we talked about how jargon is in speak,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's something that excludes other groups. So
Speaker 1: that kind of does make sense that underrepresentative people who
Speaker 1: probably already feel marginalized, you know, they see that language
Speaker 1: and they're like, oh, this isn't for me, that's that's
Speaker 1: that community exactly. Yeah. I think it's because you know,
Speaker 1: it grew up in a pretty homogeneous corporate culture historically
Speaker 1: that wasn't particularly inclusive or representative, so the language has
Speaker 1: become something of a cultural signifier, at least at some
Speaker 1: unconscious level. Karen, can you extrampolate from the data and
Speaker 1: the work you've done with employers and sort of apply
Speaker 1: this to the employee side of the equation? Are their
Speaker 1: words or practices that are either misguided or underused or
Speaker 1: truly beneficial? You know, it's a really good question, and
Speaker 1: I'm i as potential employees, everybody, of course wants to
Speaker 1: put their best foot forward, uh, and they want to
Speaker 1: have their best chance ants of being interviewed, you know,
Speaker 1: to get get kind of through the door and cover
Speaker 1: letters and resumes. On the other hand, there's a part
Speaker 1: of me that always says, uh, yes, there are some
Speaker 1: best practices you can apply, but if you have to,
Speaker 1: if you feel like you have to fundamentally change the
Speaker 1: way you're communicating to get looked at by a company,
Speaker 1: you're probably not going to enjoy working for that company
Speaker 1: once you get there. So I'm always a little cautious
Speaker 1: about telling job seekers to change themselves. Um. That said,
Speaker 1: of course, you know, companies increasingly use things like resume
Speaker 1: resume and keyword scanning software to even decide who to interview. Um,
Speaker 1: we know that shorter resumes do better, you know, with software.
Speaker 1: We know that resumes that include lots of active verbs
Speaker 1: to describe tasks and accomplishments that you've had in the
Speaker 1: past do better than resumes with sort of expository pros uh.
Speaker 1: And its makes me a little bit nervous because you know,
Speaker 1: I've done some work in the past looking at within
Speaker 1: technology resumes of men and women, and men's resumes tend
Speaker 1: to conform to the patterns that resume scanning software privileges
Speaker 1: and women's do not, And so I never like to,
Speaker 1: uh make a set of recommendations for that end up
Speaker 1: being demographically selective in some way. But we can see
Speaker 1: what what scanning software tends to privilege. Wait, that's so
Speaker 1: crazy that companies now are using more technology to separate
Speaker 1: the human interaction in the application process. I feel like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's one thing to just apply to a faceless,
Speaker 1: nameless job site, but now those applications aren't even being
Speaker 1: read by people the first time around. Fewer humans and
Speaker 1: human resources generally speaking, to get to the human part,
Speaker 1: which I think is really scary for job seekers because
Speaker 1: I think the human part is kind of the the
Speaker 1: easiest part. Well, and I feel like you're and you
Speaker 1: were saying before, obviously people don't want to change who
Speaker 1: they are. And yet the way this whole thing is
Speaker 1: being structured is almost like a game. Like if you
Speaker 1: just have to get through a stage or in this case, um,
Speaker 1: a piece of software to do you even just get
Speaker 1: to the point of getting a face to face interview
Speaker 1: with somebody, and so you have to play that game,
Speaker 1: even if the game, you know, is flawed or biased
Speaker 1: or or what have you. Yeah, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: this is just a new game. I don't know that
Speaker 1: it's more game than there's ever been in the past. Right,
Speaker 1: I mean, even before technology was so pervasive, the majority
Speaker 1: of hiring was word of mouth hiring, right, And so
Speaker 1: already there's in network effects when you see that, right,
Speaker 1: if I'm hiring from within my network, I'm hiring people
Speaker 1: that I already know. So there's an advantage if you
Speaker 1: know me and I'm the one hiring. Um. And so
Speaker 1: I feel like you're right, Uh, there's definitely new dimensions
Speaker 1: that come with the inclusion of technology. Um, I think
Speaker 1: they may just reshape the challenge rather than creating a different,
Speaker 1: different challenge, if that makes sense. So that's kind of
Speaker 1: that's push and pull of being yourself and being human.
Speaker 1: But also you seem to trust a lot in the data. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, like you said, companies shouldn't use their intuitions.
Speaker 1: The data might show that other things work. So but
Speaker 1: are there times that when you looked through the data
Speaker 1: and you recommended a company change a word or the
Speaker 1: way they struct their job post and it had an
Speaker 1: unintended effect? Definitely? Textdo has seen that companies may have,
Speaker 1: you know, i'll call them very specific patterns to the company. Right,
Speaker 1: So it turns out maybe what works to hire an
Speaker 1: engineer if you're at a travel technology company, Yeah, all
Speaker 1: of the same patterns that work for technology companies in
Speaker 1: general apply, But if you're at a travel technology company, also,
Speaker 1: the way you talk about travel is going to be
Speaker 1: highly predictive of the quality of higher these days in
Speaker 1: the market. If you talk about travel like it's old
Speaker 1: school with travel agents and bookings, less effective at getting
Speaker 1: great people in the market than if you're talking about
Speaker 1: you know, an airbnb compete or um, you know, crowdsource
Speaker 1: travel planning or something like that. And so definitely Texto
Speaker 1: does find that, you know, sort of algorithmically, the patterns
Speaker 1: that work may be highly tuned to your company's employment
Speaker 1: brand or culture um and so you you know, the
Speaker 1: guidance that that people at that company would want to
Speaker 1: follow might be a little bit different. So you run
Speaker 1: a company, you hire people, what have been some of
Speaker 1: the issues that you've discovered in your own process of
Speaker 1: staffing up Texto us Just like everybody else, one of
Speaker 1: the big challenges is balancing between people are going to
Speaker 1: bring different points of view and people who are going
Speaker 1: to make a harmonious team because they don't always align well. Karen,
Speaker 1: I want to thank you for joining us. Um. This
Speaker 1: has been a terrific conversation. We've learned a lot and
Speaker 1: hopefully well we're both very happy here at Bloomberg. We
Speaker 1: would never dream of leaving the company. I don't never
Speaker 1: going to apply for a job ever again. Should that
Speaker 1: horrible day come, though, we will take these lessons with us.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us. Absolutely having a names, everybody's told
Speaker 1: their entire lives to be themselves in every kind of situation,
Speaker 1: and that's also true for applying for a job. But
Speaker 1: there's this creeping artificiality that starts to come in on
Speaker 1: both sides of the equation. Companies seem to be incapable
Speaker 1: of expressing themselves in a natural way, and probably a
Speaker 1: lot of applicants do the same, and so people are
Speaker 1: not even speaking the right language to each other and
Speaker 1: and not even representing themselves honestly. Yeah, and she mentioned
Speaker 1: language is constantly changing. She's telling companies that they have
Speaker 1: to be more authentic and talk naturally, but then sometimes
Speaker 1: when they do that, that alienates people too. So it's
Speaker 1: a hard game to play. And it is a game exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the thing, right, there's something about this
Speaker 1: that it's a process to get you to the job,
Speaker 1: but it has almost absolutely nothing to do with the
Speaker 1: way that you will be doing your job. It doesn't
Speaker 1: reflect it at all. No, not at all, unless you
Speaker 1: have to take some sort of test or you're going
Speaker 1: to work at like a recruiting agency. And even though
Speaker 1: Karen's discovering some of the problems that employers have, it
Speaker 1: does seem like technology isn't going to completely solve the problem. No, obviously,
Speaker 1: we're never going to fully automate the hiring process, and
Speaker 1: nor should we. I mean, this is going to be
Speaker 1: an aspect of human relations and it's going to just
Speaker 1: require better informed, smarter humans to really make it better.
Speaker 1: Perhaps aided by technology, but not driven by it, which
Speaker 1: is probably good because we work with humans that work
Speaker 1: for now. And now it's time for my favorite segment,
Speaker 1: half bake Takes. Half fake takes. Half bake takes are
Speaker 1: when we have mildly informed opinions about things and air
Speaker 1: them out right here, right now. So what's your take. Well,
Speaker 1: this is obviously my favorite part of the show. My
Speaker 1: half baked take for this week is a little bit
Speaker 1: of table side etiquette. I would just like to put
Speaker 1: out there a friendly reminder. If you're dining with a
Speaker 1: group of people and you're the last person to order
Speaker 1: with the waiter there, um, please have read everything on
Speaker 1: the menu by the time it's your turn. Don't sort
Speaker 1: of stare off into space and then finally you're the
Speaker 1: last one and go, I don't know, salmon looks good.
Speaker 1: If you're the last one to order, you have the
Speaker 1: advantage of everyone else having ordered, so you know, like
Speaker 1: if you just wanted a bite of the mac and cheese.
Speaker 1: You don't have to order it, which is a huge
Speaker 1: calculation in my brain. It is a tremendously advantageous position
Speaker 1: to have. Don't waste it, Yeah, don't spoil it. Don't
Speaker 1: don't just, you know, squander it for nothing. Be decisive,
Speaker 1: be smart, be strategic, and come out of the dinner
Speaker 1: a tremendous winner and hero. Yeah, yeah, are great take. Hey, thanks,
Speaker 1: So my take is related to working in an open office,
Speaker 1: which we have here and a lot of people work
Speaker 1: in now. And I think if you are walking around
Speaker 1: the open office, you cannot read over someone's shoulder onto
Speaker 1: their computer screen without their permission. I know you're thinking,
Speaker 1: what monster does this? Well, a certain producer of a
Speaker 1: certain show has done this to me multiple times and
Speaker 1: she thinks it's okay. And I am just putting that
Speaker 1: take on this here show rhymes with you know, I
Speaker 1: have actually done this on very rare occasions. But I
Speaker 1: will say it's only with colleagues with whom I have
Speaker 1: worked alongside them for many many years in fact, and
Speaker 1: our friendly if not friends with Even then I might
Speaker 1: say like, hey, I'm sorry, I couldn't help, but noticing, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Liz and I are very close and she does have
Speaker 1: permission to do that, and I'm obviously just kidding with her,
Speaker 1: but it's just not cool. It's also true for phone calls.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, if you hear somebody on the phone and
Speaker 1: you say, ah, you know, I had that too, but
Speaker 1: I got an ointment and it all cleared right up.
Speaker 1: It's just the issues we all have working in an
Speaker 1: open office space. It's hard. You have to maintain the
Speaker 1: illusion that you don't know things about Let's pretend at
Speaker 1: least we have privacy. Okay, that's it for this week's
Speaker 1: half big Takes, half Baked Takes. This has been another fascinating,
Speaker 1: amazing episode of Game Plan. I'm Sam Grobart. Follow me
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Sam Grobart and you can find me
Speaker 1: at RZ Greenfield and our guest Kieren Snyder is also
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Kieren Snyder. Thanks for listening. We'll talk
Speaker 1: to you again soon. Bye. Get the most from your
Speaker 1: people and send your business soaring with corn Ferry. From
Speaker 1: executive search to talent strategy, leadership development, rewards and succession planning.
Speaker 1: Corn Ferry knows up is more than a direction, it's
Speaker 1: your future. Learn more at corn ferry dot com. Slash
Speaker 1: up what kind of guests have you gotten? Um, the
Speaker 1: strangest one was probably a magazine cut out of a
Speaker 1: superhero with my face superimposed over it so that that
Speaker 1: person didn't get the job