Believe Candidates Or Not? How Can We View it?
China Law Blog said you should have a contract with your China friends in business. You are friends, and you think you know them? Get a contract. Do you really know what your China friends are thinking or saying behind your back? Given that, why do you believe candidates who say they sold $1M last year? Or who said they worked 5 years at such and such company?
Should We Believe Candidates?
We know business has a lot of sorrow as they hire the wrong people. A manager lamented to me last week that his company had hired a high-level manager. My friend said he is a ticking bomb. Top leaders cannot see it, but it will go off and cost the company a lot in the not-so-distant future. The top leader who hired and protected him certainly does not think he is a bomb.
My experience causes me to believe the lower-level manager who sees this. The company no doubt will unwhittingly pay a good salary to the bomb and do so until he harms them in some big way. We are all easily deceived. Candidates have found that it is true. We did not add a mandatory background check because it was easy to do. We added it, so we could reduce the sorrow at our client companies and increase the happiness as well.
The Case of the Perfect Resumes
Why are you so attracted to perfect resumes when 90% are lying? Given that, should we not run from people with perfect resumes? Unless we know how to find the 10% among them? SHI Group knows how to sort them out and so know that 90% are lying, so we moan when we have a perfect resume as know they are unlikely to get our recommendation. See 11 Things You Need For Excellent Executive Search China.
We also moan when we get work for Salesmen, General managers, or Country Leaders. They also lie 80% of the time. We cheer when we get Finance controllers as only 60% of them lie on their resumes, so they are so much easier for us.
The overall average at 72% is our day-to-day work. It is sad when we find a resume where the candidate can interview so well, and we know that the customer will be wowed, but we will not be able to recommend as the client needs more than good interview skills.
Believe Candidates SHI Group Supplies?
That depends. Interestingly, we have a special philosophy to coach our candidates before they get interviewed by the hiring manager. Coaching is bad, right? What would you say to coach? We say,
“Relax and be yourself. Tell the whole truth about what you have done. Oh, and if you are not clear what the questions means, then ask for clarification before trying to answer.”
That does give you as a hiring manager a better chance of hearing the truth. Despite that, 72% will lie under the pressure of trying to impress you and tell you what you want to hear. Finally, almost all will give us permission to background check, and then they will fall like a house of cards. Only some amazing candidates will stand when the dust clears. Those are the ones that get the nod from us. They told us a compelling story, and it really happened. Those are the ones we put forward.
So why do you trust candidates who talk so well and tell such good stories? Many candidates try to make us feel good by any means and fail as they get sniffed out in the interview. They are the bad liars and get caught doing it. How about the guy you really liked and you could not catch him? Are not these guys much more dangerous? Can you imagine why there is so much confusion and politics? It is not because Chinese are nefarious. It is because many candidates with good interview skills fool Western Managers.
An Example To Help Us Think
Back a few years a US company I know hired a China leader from TRW. They made him the GM and country leader for them in China. He got great pay and mostly played. He even had office basketball games during the work days as he was there to play. At least he did not steal anything. He was a great talker. Even though he was this bad, he could last more than 2 years. He knew how to game them in the interview and while working as their China leader. They could not have imagined as it could not happen in Topeka apparently. See Beware the Dog and Pony Show.
I was a good recruiter before I started background checking. Our background check changed me and my whole company. It gave us a whole new world that again and again surprises us. We will find a guy who seems very trustworthy and then find out he was lying about 4 years of achievements when he was not even at the company. It is altogether too common.
Believe Candidates or Not?
So, what do you think? Believe candidates? Our policy is to first doubt and then believe after background check. Given that 72% are lying to get the job in ways that we can prove are not true, I see no other way. After hiring, I trust and check. If you cannot trust, then do not hire. But do not say trust until you catch them. You may not catch them until too much harm has passed. It is a lot of work to background check. Call us if you find it burdensome. As a leader, I check as I plan to catch them doing something right. Managers are glad to be noticed doing something right. The process we see is Doubt, Background check, Trust based on results of background check, then hire. Finally, Trust and check while employing.