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. You know, there's always this
Speaker 1: sense that the voter is going to throw you out.
Speaker 1: Imagine that that in a workplace environment where you're always
Speaker 1: a little concerned that the boss is scrutinizing you, and
Speaker 1: you've got half the office is always against you and
Speaker 1: working on ways to throw you out. It's a unique job.
Speaker 1: Welcome to game Plan, a show about our lives at work.
Speaker 1: I'm Rebecca Greenfield, a reporter for Bloomberg where I cover
Speaker 1: the workplace, and I am Sam Grobert, a writer at
Speaker 1: Bloomberg business Week magazine. And since it's election season, we
Speaker 1: are going to lean into that and we are doing
Speaker 1: an election theme episode. Who are we to shy away
Speaker 1: from the allures of this beautiful election season? I mean,
Speaker 1: nobody cares about anything else, including us. So this week
Speaker 1: we are talking about the hardest job application in the world,
Speaker 1: which is running for president of the United States of America.
Speaker 1: Because that's basically what it is. It's somebody going in
Speaker 1: front of three million people and saying, please hire me,
Speaker 1: and and the best person obviously gets the job, like
Speaker 1: it works in the actual application, total meritocracy every time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: As we've talked about in a previous episode, the hiring
Speaker 1: process in the corporate world has its flaws and doesn't
Speaker 1: always lead to the best person for the best job,
Speaker 1: and the same as probably true for running for presidents. Perhaps.
Speaker 1: I'm sure everybody has heard some crazy stories about the
Speaker 1: hoops that companies like Google or Facebook make their applicants
Speaker 1: jump through with crazy questions and quizzes and things like that.
Speaker 1: Those compare not at all to the rigors and the
Speaker 1: insanity really of running for the presidency the United States. Yeah.
Speaker 1: To get a better sense of how ridiculous it actually is,
Speaker 1: we talked to campaign managers who worked with Marco Rubio,
Speaker 1: Ted Cruz, Bernie Sanders, and Rand Paul and these are
Speaker 1: the ways that they described the process. Ran for president
Speaker 1: is like taking your your personal diary, your resume, your
Speaker 1: entire life history and putting it out in front of
Speaker 1: hundreds of millions of people and saying pick me, pick
Speaker 1: me a baseball guy and I used to be an umpire,
Speaker 1: and I would equate it to being an umpire where
Speaker 1: you have to start perfect and get better. It would
Speaker 1: be like a like a reality TV show, or you
Speaker 1: walk through fire into a shark's mouth. Every four years,
Speaker 1: people choose to go through this insane election process. But
Speaker 1: the more we talked to campaign managers, we realized is
Speaker 1: a lot like the job application process that we all
Speaker 1: go through, but of course a million times crazier. Here's
Speaker 1: how okay, So when we're thinking about the regular person
Speaker 1: job application process, the first step is to make sure
Speaker 1: that you're even qualified for the job, right. You have
Speaker 1: to know yourself, you have to know the position. You
Speaker 1: have to make sure that those things both make sense.
Speaker 1: And if there's something that might dis qualify you, like
Speaker 1: a gap in your resume or a really incriminating social
Speaker 1: media post, it's probably the time to deal with that
Speaker 1: or maybe not proceed. And candidates basically do the same thing.
Speaker 1: Here's Jeff Row, campaign manager for Ted Cruz. I would
Speaker 1: start with an immediate, deep dive background investigation in their lives.
Speaker 1: That's the first thing. What at some point in this
Speaker 1: campaign or we're gonna have to deal with So what
Speaker 1: is the culture of the campaign. What should people who
Speaker 1: joy in the campaign? What should there priorities and which
Speaker 1: what what will they be joining? What are you going
Speaker 1: to get? What's your value proposition for supporting this candidate?
Speaker 1: And it really becomes kind of a branding and marketing
Speaker 1: deep level strategy. Once you've scrubbed your record clean, you've
Speaker 1: made yourself as presentable as possible, you're going to want
Speaker 1: to put yourself out there. You have to start talking
Speaker 1: to people. Even though it is not exactly like our
Speaker 1: job application processes, that is kind of how the job
Speaker 1: application process starts. For anybody, you network, you do some networking,
Speaker 1: and that's exactly what the presidential candidates do, at least
Speaker 1: according to Jeff Weaver, who is Bernie Sanders campaign manager.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit like networking. You're bending the metaphor
Speaker 1: a little bit. But there is only one company, which
Speaker 1: is the American public. And the question is where are
Speaker 1: they and what are they looking for? The question is
Speaker 1: are you a good fit for what the American people
Speaker 1: are looking for at a given a moment in in
Speaker 1: our in our nation's history. You know, you really have
Speaker 1: to do uh, really honest self value about whether you're
Speaker 1: the person at this particular time in history that the
Speaker 1: American people will respond to. So the thing about this
Speaker 1: process is even at the very beginning, once you begin it,
Speaker 1: it's a full time job, right. It's in addition to
Speaker 1: the job you probably already have, just like when you're
Speaker 1: looking for a job yourself. And that to me just
Speaker 1: sounds like it places extraordinary stresses on your day to
Speaker 1: day existence. Yeah, it obviously does when you're applying for
Speaker 1: a job you and me, and it definitely does when
Speaker 1: you're applying for the job of president. And that is
Speaker 1: exactly how Terry Sullivan, who was Marco Rubio's campaign manager,
Speaker 1: explained it to us, just just ridiculously growing it a
Speaker 1: bang on their courtyard Marriott room door at five am
Speaker 1: because the Fox News has set up for a live
Speaker 1: TV hit in the room next door, and you've got
Speaker 1: to go over and you a smile and look away
Speaker 1: can alert it by six am in the morning in
Speaker 1: some hotel room in Iowa and get ball questions whiz
Speaker 1: that you and then booth you're out and you're down
Speaker 1: in the lobby, cramming in whatever free breakfast you can
Speaker 1: before you're onto the next event. You get four or
Speaker 1: five speeches a day, always in multiple cities, but often
Speaker 1: in uh in multiple states. You generally are checking into
Speaker 1: your hotel room at eleven o'clock twelve o'clock at night,
Speaker 1: ready to do it all over again. And and you
Speaker 1: know it's something that's striking is working for marcar Roullo.
Speaker 1: And this is a guy who's got a real life.
Speaker 1: He'd be on the phone with his kids, face timing
Speaker 1: with them good night, you know, every night, will be
Speaker 1: on to the next event, or helping with their homework
Speaker 1: or things real world things like that, or you know,
Speaker 1: the issues around the house. The water heater stopped working
Speaker 1: and he's got to stop and deal with that. And
Speaker 1: you're running for president United States. So it is a
Speaker 1: very demanding job that lasts from when you wake up
Speaker 1: to when you go to sleep. But you also have
Speaker 1: the same real life things to deal with that you
Speaker 1: would if you weren't writing for president. It's not like
Speaker 1: the rest of your world stops. All the campaign managers
Speaker 1: we talked to described similarly insane schedules, which isn't really surprising. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I mean, they basically all we're saying, oh, it's it's
Speaker 1: not just a marathon or a sprint. It's a marathon
Speaker 1: and a sprint. Yeah, it's not kind of you know
Speaker 1: reality for all of these people pursuing this office, and
Speaker 1: it's like not even possible to do everything that you
Speaker 1: need to do to properly apply for the job, which
Speaker 1: is very frustrating, and yet here you are and everybody's
Speaker 1: watching you do it. Here's Chip Englander, who worked on
Speaker 1: the Rand Paul campaign, describing a little bit more of
Speaker 1: that slog. Typically, you have fundraising demands, which can involve
Speaker 1: both phone calls and in person stuff. There's the meeting
Speaker 1: of the voters, right the rallies and the meet and greets.
Speaker 1: There's individual press demands, interviews and the interviews and the such.
Speaker 1: Then there's the logistical demands, you know, going through the
Speaker 1: schedule or these events. Are these the things that we
Speaker 1: want to do, But then because of the presidential campaign,
Speaker 1: you want to do all of these things everywhere. So
Speaker 1: all of the sounds insane to me, and you and
Speaker 1: I have talked about how we don't under stand how anyone,
Speaker 1: let alone like our two candidates right now who are
Speaker 1: pushing seventy people, do this without completely burning out. If
Speaker 1: you think about the stress, you go through on your
Speaker 1: own job search and maybe the rounds of interviews that
Speaker 1: you have. I mean, it's very easy to start to
Speaker 1: feel mentally and physically exhausted. And you know, look, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm a spry forty two year old, but you know
Speaker 1: these people are darned close to twice my age, and
Speaker 1: they're doing it on the road through different time zones,
Speaker 1: totally freaked out and still have to look totally perfectly polished,
Speaker 1: although obviously not always in the case of some candidates. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and the campaign managers had a couple of different
Speaker 1: strategies for how they deal with this. One of them
Speaker 1: was to try their hardest to get the candidates to
Speaker 1: not work sometimes. And here's Jeff Row on how he
Speaker 1: did that. Trying to have a can'd rest is key.
Speaker 1: I mean sleep as a weapon in a campaign, And
Speaker 1: so you try and keep your candon weaponized. So you
Speaker 1: warm them up with a small group setting, and then
Speaker 1: you go into one on one and phone calls one
Speaker 1: on one individually in person, and phone calls means that
Speaker 1: it's fact. The matter is, when you run for president,
Speaker 1: it's hand to hand combat. You're one of these voters
Speaker 1: one at a time. But it's important in a campaign
Speaker 1: to try and keep at a minimum of ten and
Speaker 1: then if you can twelve hours of essentially no interpersonal
Speaker 1: contact so they can actually be a human for a
Speaker 1: few minutes. Today, when candidates get tired of when they
Speaker 1: make mistakes, there's another thing candidates can do to help
Speaker 1: them through some low energy times, and that's to have
Speaker 1: a really well developed stump speech. And if you've ever
Speaker 1: gone through multiple interviews, you know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: You sort of have a prepackaged line or ten about
Speaker 1: yourself that you're gonna just use over and over again,
Speaker 1: because of course, to the person who's hearing it, it's
Speaker 1: the first time for them. And the benefit of this,
Speaker 1: of course, is that you can do it pretty much
Speaker 1: in your sleep. In Sanader Sanders a case, you know,
Speaker 1: he relied very heavily on on a pretty exhaustive stump
Speaker 1: speech that talked about, you know, a whole lot of issues.
Speaker 1: It was quite lengthy by the end of the campaign,
Speaker 1: probably an hour and a half hour and forty five minutes.
Speaker 1: But his use of a sort of standard stump speech
Speaker 1: allowed him to do many more events than a lot
Speaker 1: of other candidates because you know, even when tired, uh,
Speaker 1: you know he had used that speech so many times
Speaker 1: he was very familiar with it. All happens when the
Speaker 1: power and potential of every employee and leader in your
Speaker 1: workforce is released, and corn Ferry can get you there
Speaker 1: by aligning your people to your strategy, attracting, developing, engaging,
Speaker 1: and rewarding them to reach new heights. With corn Ferry,
Speaker 1: you get a partner who truly understands people, leadership, and
Speaker 1: the new landscape of work, a partner who knows how
Speaker 1: to take your business up. Learn more at corn Ferry
Speaker 1: dot com slash up. If you've done everything right in
Speaker 1: this process, and you did all the networking, and you
Speaker 1: have miraculously not burned out, and you wrote a cover
Speaker 1: letter and a resume, and you you did it all right,
Speaker 1: you'll make it to the final step of the process.
Speaker 1: As which for regular job applicants like me and you,
Speaker 1: it is an interview, and for candidates it is also
Speaker 1: an interview of sorts, but one that's in front of
Speaker 1: nine million people. The debate here's Terry Sullivan on that
Speaker 1: It's not like you're sitting across from one person who's
Speaker 1: doing the hiring. You're sitting across from millions of people
Speaker 1: doing the hiring, and honestly a lot of them don't
Speaker 1: know what they want. It is not as cut and
Speaker 1: drive as Okay, here's here's the job description for this
Speaker 1: job that we're hiring for. We need you to do X,
Speaker 1: or we need you to do why. It is much
Speaker 1: more an emotional connection. This is someone just you know,
Speaker 1: live in your living room on the TV set for
Speaker 1: the next four years. It's not just qualification driven. It's
Speaker 1: personality driven. And you'd rather have someone that you can
Speaker 1: drink a beer with than someone that necessarily knows all
Speaker 1: the answers to all the questions, you know. Back of
Speaker 1: The funny thing to me about these debates is that,
Speaker 1: in many ways we talk about them the same way
Speaker 1: people talk a little bit about job into views. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's this idea and job interviews that what are you
Speaker 1: looking for? Are you looking for culture fit, somebody you
Speaker 1: get along with, somebody you like, someone you can see
Speaker 1: working at the company, somebody who also likes ping pong?
Speaker 1: Or are you looking for somebody who has the skills?
Speaker 1: I mean ideally both, sure, but maybe one colors the
Speaker 1: decision more than it should. That's right, And I mean
Speaker 1: the same thing we've seen in politics, right, there's always
Speaker 1: that sort of proverbial who would you rather have a
Speaker 1: beer with as opposed to who is the most knowledgeable
Speaker 1: and competent individual on matters of policy. You know, there's
Speaker 1: some really talented people that get passed over for this
Speaker 1: job because they seem a little awkward. I mean, look,
Speaker 1: you could argue that this was the two thousand twelvers
Speaker 1: in a nut show. Robney was a guy and came
Speaker 1: in for the job interview. You saw his resume, it
Speaker 1: was spot on perfect for the job, but at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, you just didn't feel like you
Speaker 1: identified with him as much as you did the other applicant.
Speaker 1: And it's not just someone I'm hired for a job
Speaker 1: with someone I want to live with. This ide of
Speaker 1: picking a president based on style was something that all
Speaker 1: the campaign managers we talked to almost had a problem with.
Speaker 1: I mean, somebody brought up how Donald Trump sniffing and
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton's glances got more media time than the answer
Speaker 1: on isis for example, And yeah, you can see how
Speaker 1: that isn't great. And this sort of increased role of
Speaker 1: the media, which eventually starts to change the very character
Speaker 1: of the process so it's no longer actually serving the
Speaker 1: same goal anymore. It's somebody who can be sort of
Speaker 1: more entertaining might have an advantage, which you also see
Speaker 1: that a little bit in job interviews, that like the
Speaker 1: hail fellow well met can sort of slide his way
Speaker 1: into jobs that the otherwise better served by other people
Speaker 1: like the man who interviews Well, we'll get the job
Speaker 1: even if he can't do the job, which obviously is
Speaker 1: not what we want for our coworkers or our president. No,
Speaker 1: not at all, But that was just one of the
Speaker 1: problems that our campaign managers had with the process. Here
Speaker 1: are a couple others. The an inordinate amount of money
Speaker 1: that is required to run a campaign makes it prohibitive
Speaker 1: for many many, I think, very qualified people to run
Speaker 1: for president of the United States. So that's the first
Speaker 1: thing I would change. I would create some kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, public financing system that was sufficiently generous that
Speaker 1: an unknown candidate could get his or her name out,
Speaker 1: but also prevented uh the overwhelming advantage that establishment candidates
Speaker 1: have in terms of being able to fundraise, And obviously
Speaker 1: that fundraising doesn't guarantee them success, but it certainly gives
Speaker 1: them a big leg up in the interview process. And
Speaker 1: the second thing I would say is that you know,
Speaker 1: we really need to have and you know, the media
Speaker 1: plays a role this obviously popular culture does, but we
Speaker 1: really need to return to a focus on the issues
Speaker 1: and positions of the candidates rather than a lot of
Speaker 1: the either personal issues or the sort of style points.
Speaker 1: So you know, not everybody in life is a saint.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously Donald Trump is is the anti saint,
Speaker 1: and so you know, his behavior is so egregious that
Speaker 1: it's disqualifying. But there are a lot of other people
Speaker 1: who I'm sure have had missed at tax deadline or
Speaker 1: have had some personal failing in their life. And I
Speaker 1: think there are a lot of really good and qualified
Speaker 1: people who really don't want to have that sort of
Speaker 1: dragged out and become the focus of a campaign. And
Speaker 1: so I think we we just qualify a lot of
Speaker 1: really good people from running for public office by overly
Speaker 1: focusing on you know, personal foibles, the impact of the
Speaker 1: news cycle and the power of the media in politics.
Speaker 1: And there's gonna have to be something done. Maybe we're
Speaker 1: in an ally er cycle that won't happen again because
Speaker 1: Trump is Trump and Clinton is Clinton. But I'm afraid
Speaker 1: that this is the first of what will be the
Speaker 1: likeliest of scenarios. Which is the number one indicator of
Speaker 1: who's going to win a presidential campaign, particularly in the primaries,
Speaker 1: listed in the general, particularly in the primaries, is who
Speaker 1: gets the most media share. We spend in our campaigns,
Speaker 1: and presidential campaigns in general, spend truly almost your entire campaign,
Speaker 1: outside of fundraising, working on how you're impacting the media share,
Speaker 1: how do you get the attention? And it killed in
Speaker 1: the primary system when when you have thresholds for debate
Speaker 1: stages and you have to get to a certain debate,
Speaker 1: you know, to get to a certain percentage, you can't
Speaker 1: advertise grassroots funder. You just can't. You can't buy enough
Speaker 1: media in a primary to move your numbers. You have
Speaker 1: to get more media share. Ted Cruz was not going
Speaker 1: to make the debate stage, the first debate stage. He
Speaker 1: was right, He's right on the bubble. He publishes a book,
Speaker 1: and it was, you know, of some sort of symmetrical
Speaker 1: advantage of the campaign because it was the candidate he
Speaker 1: was talking about his book, But it was negligible in
Speaker 1: the polling until The New York Times left him off
Speaker 1: the best seller list and say didn't sell enough books.
Speaker 1: And then we had a huge fight with the New
Speaker 1: York Times. Every media outlet covered it for entire ten
Speaker 1: days completely. Over the fourth July weekend, his poll numbers
Speaker 1: moved three point three points because of all the attention
Speaker 1: in the media share and we make it the main
Speaker 1: stage comfortably. Now that's kind of ridiculous. Well, we all
Speaker 1: have to shorten the campaign process, but you just can't
Speaker 1: do it. This is a big job we're hiring for
Speaker 1: and trying to put parameters on it and on the
Speaker 1: application process isn't helpful. And just letting it be raw
Speaker 1: and be very open, I think is the is the
Speaker 1: best way to do it. And it's almost a darkwinning
Speaker 1: kind of thing. A survival of it is. I don't
Speaker 1: think that we should just accept the flawed process for
Speaker 1: what it is. I don't agree with that, but I
Speaker 1: do think that there's something to be said for surviving
Speaker 1: the process and that being a mark of your ability
Speaker 1: to be president. Yeah. I mean, if you think about
Speaker 1: all the things we've been talking about in this episode,
Speaker 1: and all these campaign managers have been saying, running for
Speaker 1: president is a test of a candidate's ability to be
Speaker 1: a CEO, to delegate sponsibility, to handle different issues under
Speaker 1: a pressure filled environment, and do all of that at
Speaker 1: the same time and project an image of authority and leadership.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you can do all of that, one
Speaker 1: would hope that you can carry those skills into the
Speaker 1: Oval office. And if you can't, well maybe then the
Speaker 1: oval office isn't right for you. Yeah. So it's like
Speaker 1: the first step to showing that you're qualified to being
Speaker 1: president is being elected president exactly. And now it's time
Speaker 1: for half big takes. Half fake takes. Half big takes
Speaker 1: are when we say some opinions right here on this show,
Speaker 1: that's right as opposed to all the other opinions we've
Speaker 1: been saying. Right, No, those are well researched. Oh right,
Speaker 1: you know, right, right right? Half opinions is what we
Speaker 1: say on half bakedings. All right, so let me just
Speaker 1: drop this in here for a second. Fellas, here's what
Speaker 1: I want to hear from you in the men's room.
Speaker 1: Got it what you did there, that's right. I'm not
Speaker 1: into the chit chat. I'm not going to ask you
Speaker 1: how your day's been going or what you're working on. Really,
Speaker 1: not the time for that. If you feel the need
Speaker 1: to offer any sort of verbal anything, the only acceptable
Speaker 1: thing you can say is this, Hey, I think nobody
Speaker 1: wants to talk in the bathroom mail or not true,
Speaker 1: not true at all. Some people look at it as
Speaker 1: a tremendous opportunity, feel uncomfortable and they don't know what
Speaker 1: to do. I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt.
Speaker 1: It's real simple. Not if you want, Hey, if you must,
Speaker 1: I agree, and that's it. I've definitely agree. I agree. Great, great,
Speaker 1: half big take. My half big take is about the
Speaker 1: fun topic of passwords. I was just asked to change
Speaker 1: one of my three thousand passwords and I started working
Speaker 1: here where everything on the same password, and now all
Speaker 1: ten things I signed into are all different things. You
Speaker 1: can't use old passwords. I'm running out of passwords. It's
Speaker 1: very strang us full. Basically, I want a solution. That's
Speaker 1: my half big take. I'm really looking forward to fingerprints. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that's going to ultimately get us where we
Speaker 1: need to be, where the password doesn't matter anymore. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I want something to just not have to remember all
Speaker 1: of these things. I know there's like password software. I've
Speaker 1: been using a little bit of that, but it's still
Speaker 1: just a band aid over a much bigger problems. Act
Speaker 1: fix the problem. That's my half big take, and this
Speaker 1: has been half big takes, half bag takes. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to game Plan. You can find me on Twitter.
Speaker 1: I'm at Oursley Greenfield and i am at sam Growbart
Speaker 1: and if you like the show, head over to iTunes
Speaker 1: to subscribe, review and rate us. Game Plan is produced
Speaker 1: by Liz Smith and Magnus Hendrickson. Alec McCabe is head
Speaker 1: of Bloomberg Podcasts and We'll see you next week. Don't
Speaker 1: forget to vote by h 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