III. If you are doing less than 50% of hiring mistakes — you are the genius

Everything starts with hiring. I can make even bolder statement — the whole our life is full of hiring. Indeed every day we meet different people, we meet new people. With some of them you feel “chemistry”, you feel that this person is close to you culturally, mentally, emotionally… Some of them you avoid… brrrr… they may drain your energy out like vampires, or simply you may feel some rejection on emotional level. Most of the people though are quite neutral. You can work with them, meet for a beer, chat during the lunch. We may say in a way your are “hiring” or “not hiring” people to your “inner circle” or to your “area of influence”. There is a nice proverb: “when you are very young you believe the whole world just loves you, when you are becoming older you started to believe the whole world hates you and only when you are becoming senior enough you understand the world does not really care”. Those who knows me well can immediately spot that I’m still at the very young age…

Coming back to the business hiring. The starting point is always the same — somebody neutral is sitting in front of you. “Neutral” in a sense that typically going to the interview people are dressed more or less similar (no sombreros, no nose piercing, no swimming trunks), there are some exceptions of course (I will touch it later probably) but usually it’s like this — person in a business or smart casual outfit is in front of you. Stressed (both of you are stressed to some extend), avoiding to show emotions, sometime defensive, sometime overly positive and talkative. It’s like a “blind date”. How you deal with this? What is the best possible way of dealing with it?

My first hiring happened back in 2001 almost 20 years ago and you may imagine how many people I interviewed since that time. With time my interviewing technique evolved significantly. In the beginning I was typical P&G’s type of interviewer. In P&G due to “promotion from within” policy (it was a corner stone of the whole people related policy and has been challenged only recently) the practice was to hire straight after Universities, so there were no any need to assess the hard skills of the candidates. Of course in some functions (i.e. finance) still the basic knowledge was important but overall not really. So the most of the interviews were assessing soft skills being grouped around key competencies you all know: leadership, communication, collaboration, problem solving, and so on and so on. The objective of the interviewer was to get a story from the interviewee in the CAR format (Context, Actions, Results). Literally “what was the situation”, “what did you do personally”, “what result did you achieve”.

It was late spring in Krasnodar and I supposed to be an observer on my first round of interviews. To get a permission to be the interviewer I passed a training already and now needed to practice. This day we (me and my friend Alexander) started with the test (kind of entrance IQ test to P&G) and we were testing close to 150 people. By statistic 10% usually were passing the test, so we expected 15–20 people to come to the second round — face-to-face interview. So we invited few managers from neighboring region to help us. But suddenly only one person got above the bar and we all been left with nothing to do. We decided to “give” this “lucky guy” to Igor (he came from far away to help us and it was a gesture of politeness, otherwise he would completely waste his time). Now when I set up the scene you may draw the picture. Late spring, nice weather, we are chatting outside on the street…. 30 min, 40 min, 1,5 h. Usually it doesn’t take so long. Finally we decided we have to go to rescuer Igor.

I’m opening the door to the room a little bit and see the guy in a suite, white shirt and a tie and Igor… COMPLETELY RED. Igor spotted me of course and did some theatrical gesture — “Pavel, can you please come and join me, we are about to finish?”. Then he is asking the poor guy the questions and I understand these questions have been asked already many times.

• You told me you had very interesting topic for your theses, can you please tell me more about it?
• Hmmmm, you know, it’s quite complicated, I’m afraid you would not understand
• Oookey! Tell me about the last job you had
• Hmmmmm, you know, it was quite a while ago already, it’s kind of difficult to recon any specific info
• Oookey! Have you ever led a group of people toward some achievement?
• Yes, sure
• Can you tell me more?
• Or it was quite a while ago, I do not remember the details actually.
• Are you good in communication?
• Yes, sure
• Can you tell me the story when you did solve some problem using your communications skills?
• Or it was quite a while ago, I do not remember the details actually.
• …. The interview has ended here.

Another story happened few years after when I was interviewing some lady for the role of finance analyst with the background in accounting.

• Are you good in problem solving?
• Yes, of course
• Can you give me a story when you solved some problem?
• I do it every day, it’s my job!
• Are you good in communication?
• Yes, of course
• Can you give me a story when you used your communications skills to get some business result?
• I do it every day, it’s my job!
• Are you good in collaboration?
• Yes, of course
• Can you give me a story when you worked in a team and the team achieved some business result?
• I do it every day, it’s my job!

…. You may guess what the outcome of the interview was.

Those two guys failed even to provide a proper CAR story.

And the foundation of P&G’s interview is the CAR story. Once you get CAR story as an interviewer you need to assess the “scope and potential of the person”. For example you are asking the leadership related question — “tell me the story when you get a group of people together as an informal leader and together you achieved some result (not necessary business result) under your leadership”. Some people where given stories like “it was Sunday and I decided to get my friends out for a picnic, so I called them and persuaded to go, we had a great time together”. By the way, I’m not joking, I heard those type of stories many times actually. So this story would definitely get score 2 (out of 5). Another story is “been a student I persuaded my peers and we established the small company and started to send student to USA for work and travel in collaboration with some US institutions”. It’s clear “5”. You feel the difference in the scope and potential, yes? You got the point?

From these early days I took two things which I keep practicing during my interviews. Firstly I understand if person listening to me and if he or she can express her(him)self well. My first question always is — “tell me about yourself whatever you believe is important for me to know”. 95% of the interviewees fail. Almost everybody is starting to re-read me her or his cv from the time the person was born. Do you think I didn’t read the cv, really? Do you believe I need to know what happened when you got your first job? This part may be boring. Sometime we end up here. But overall I can cope with the failure at the first step. Nobody is ideal in the end ….

Still the scope is important. Very important. So I love to ask what was the biggest achievement in person’s career? Biggest failure? Biggest learning? For me it’s important to understand what “biggest” means for the person in front of me. Very often I hear “o! I have many achievements! This, and this, and another one, and another one”… Sorry, the question was different. I do not need the quantity, I need the depth. I need the scope and potential.

With time I understood those two elements are not enough. I added two more. Usually I explain the future role in the great details to avoid any misunderstanding and then I’m asking “are you still interested?” (of course usually people say “yes”) and “how can you help us, what value can you bring us in this role?”. On this point with many of my already hugely successful colleagues, when they were at the interview we ended up discussing in details the strategies and actions, projects and innovations. It was real fun, learning experience for me, exciting!

Finally I always keep in mind it’s not just company choosing its future employee, but also candidate is choosing the company. So my final question is “what is the dream company for you, what is your dream, how can we help you to achieve it?”. It’s a very good moment to set expectations right. I remember interviewing very smart and kind lady. She was working as a big events coordinator. One event came to an end and there were no more projects for her on the horizon. She was running for the position of office assistant and my personal assistant two in one. She was bright and humble, young and mature. We spent good one hour talking about her dream… finally I told her “if you want this job, feel free to start tomorrow” and she told me in return “thanks, you helped me to understand that this is not what I do really need”.

Few funny stories for you now

It was still my round of attempts to hire an assistant (somehow hiring assistants it’s one of the most time consuming and delicate processes). This time candidate was the lady again (do not get me wrong I wouldn’t mind to hire a man as an office assistant, but somehow due to the weird mindset most of the time it’s women). The lady appeared like she would coming to the “hot couture show” from Karl Lagerfeld. She was smart. I asked my first question “tell me about yourself whatever you believe is important for me to know”. She got the point. She moved forward, stopped in 10 cm from my face, put her breast (significant one) on my table and looking deeply in my eyes told me “I believe it’s important you to know I can do EVERTYHING my boss asks me to do”. Fortunately I was doing this interview not along, but with my finance director. I got red (I think) I said few unimportant phrases, like “thanks, we may contact you later” and oooofffff she was gone.

Touching a bit complacence I have one more story. I was interviewing for the position of Supply Chain director. The guy in front of me was very smart, fast, bright, full of energy and passion. Great experience with the beverage industry. We came to the question: “how can you help us, what value can you bring us in this role?”. The response was really chocking, he said “I can help you to bribe the custom, I know people, I know how much, to whom and how and I can arrange everything”… Scary. The next 20 minutes I spent explaining the meaning of company’s code of ethic and antibribery law. We ended up here.

This time is was Kenyan lady. It was in Kenya and I was hiring for the positing of area manager. You can imagine summer, Nairobi, the pool area at Radisson Blu (I was saving Company’s money on renting a conference room and anyway it was nice calm area in a shadow). The lady was very solid. I would not say she was big, but she was literally solid. You felt the self-confidence and self-respect in every her move and in every gesture. We started with the greetings, small talk, she was nice and then my first question came.

She looked at me and said

• listen MAN, you are very lucky today MAN, I believe the only thing you need to know it that YOU are DAMN LUCKY today, YOU FOUND A REAL EXPERT of baby nappies market in Kenya. I’M TRUE EXPERT of this market

Wow! It’s was a surprise. Sorry, I couldn’t cope with my irony, I asked her in return

• o that probably means that you can tell me the size of the baby nappies market in Kenya?
• oh MAN, it’s difficult question to answer, I can’t answer, ask me something else, MAN
• than probably we have to finish our interview, thanks a lot for your time, bye

The guy in from of me is running for the vacancy of Area Sales Manager. He is tall, red, good looking, suite and tie of course. You can feel some army experience in him. He has very good experience and track records in selling beverages. Smart. Ideal candidate.

We are coming to

• how can you help us, what value can you bring us in this role? Our market shares in this region are going down, numeric distribution is not sufficient. What would you do to change it?
• o! It’s very simple, indeed! You set the targets to the people, you control the performance and that’s it. Easy!
• hmm… Didn’t fully get it… Can you tell me more about your strategy of building the business? Let’s say now we are listed in 50 stores around the region, what would you do to get listed in 100 more stores in 3 months? Is it at all possible?
• Yes, sure, it’s easy! You set the targets to the people, you control the performance and that’s it.
• Hmm, ok, but do you concern HOW these “people” will do it.
• I do not understand you probably, in my view its not a problem at all. You set the targets to the people, you control the performance if somebody doesn’t perform you change the person.
• Hmm, ok, but what about building the brand equity and market share? How to make sure consumer loves our brand and buys it?
• O! No brainer here, it’s easy, it’s all about share of shelf. You set the targets to the people to increase your shelf share, you control the performance and that’s it.

I must admit I enjoyed this character and spend good 40 munities asking different questions just to get in return the same answer again and again:

• Yes, sure, it’s easy! You set the targets to the people, you control the performance and that’s it.

Don’t get me wrong, please, I like self-confident people, I love them. I learn from them and such a person next to you in a team is always a source of energy, inspiration and the challenge. But there is a very thin borderline between smart positive self-confidence opened for a world and self-confidence locked in the box of ignorance and arrogance multiplied by inability to listen to the others.

I was interviewing the guy for the position of Commercial head CIS. The role was quite senior. The candidate was slim, fitness alike looking, experiences, smart. All was very good and positive, still my intuition was not convinced. I had a feeling I’m missing some important element. The interview took longer than we expected. I don’t really remember how we came to the point of hobby and the football, but guy said “I like to play football and I do it with my reports few times a week after hours”.

• It’s a great team building, — he continued — all my team is playing football and they all love it
• Ookey — I replied — football is a great game of course, but what if somebody just doesn’t like it?
• I’m true team leader, if I say “everybody play football”, everybody will do it and they will love it. If somebody rejects, than he is not a part of the team, sorry

Here I clearly imagined my sales people led by this individual and how he will push them to play football. Also I imagined them asking me “Pavel, why did you do it with us?”…

Let’s move to the positive side. This is the story about the most positive self-confident man I ever met. His name was Alexey and he was a Sales rep of some locally Siberian produced mayonnaise. And I know nothing more about him. He came to my life for one night and he disappeared for good. Disclaimer: it was not an interview, it was fun.

Kemerovo is a mining town in the middle of Siberia. Not too big, not small either. Of course it has a railway connection to the other cities but it’s only cargo connection to move the coal and other goods (things may have changed since the time of my story of course). So, the nearest passenger station was (or may be still is) in 100 km from the city and was a part of Trans-Siberian rail road. And the name of the Station is Tayga. Its epic name, for those who may not know it’s how the gigantic Siberians forests called — Tayga. I was about to took a night train from Tayga station to Krasnoyarsk (in 600km along Trans-Siberian railway) and arrived to the station in the dark (it was snowy winter with -30C and long long dark nights). I remember us (me and my colleague Inna) driving to the station through complete darkness passing one turn, another turn. The road goes to Anzhero-Sudzhensk at first, than you need to turn to the direction to Tomsk, than turn left, left again and right. The road is becoming narrower and narrower the snow banks around are higher and higher. Inna is answering to the question I had never asked: “what did you expect? it’s real Tayga!”

But suddenly in an instant darkness ceased and disappeared. Road became wider and well lightened. Big area with the chaos of railways, turnarounds, small town of 25 thousands inhabitants around and in the middle of everything is a big green building with the green lighted name “TAYGA” on the top. This is the station. The train is ready to depart, we are getting on board and occupying two compartments in a train carriage — one mine and one Inna’s. Our Distributor in Kenya was very generous to provide us with all the possible food for this night trip. In the box we found sushi, stakes, salads, cake, bread and a bottle of good whisky.

We choose my compartment as a dinner location. The train departed, took off, slowly slowly and then faster and faster and rushed out of the light into the pitch darkness of the night and the only sounds from outside world now were the wind and tuk-tuk tuk-tuk tuk-tuk from the train wheels (the moment I love the most about the railway traveling). We took out our food and exactly this moment the door to the compartment has opened without nocking and we saw the creature occupying literally the whole space between the floor and the ceiling. The guy was young, at least two meters high, with the pink cheeks, looking funny and cheeky.

• I’m your neighbor from the next compartment, there is young mom breastfeeding the small baby, baby is not feeling well probably and crying, and you are along in the compartment, can I stay overnight in your compartment?

The point is that it took Alexey less than 1 seconds to pronounce this sentence. And he kind of asked the question and permission but at the same time he asked it in such a way and looked at me so persuasively that it sounded more like a statement rather than a question. To cut story short, we let him in and in the next 3 seconds we already couldn’t imagine our trip without Alexey with his bags, samples of mayonnaise, his food, vodka, tea and his stories. The way he spoke was so unique and stories were so funny that I couldn’t resist to listen to him again and again and the only thing I wanted is to put it all on the paper immediately. And I can swear he did stop talking for the next 3–4 hours and I enjoyed listening to him. The spicy specialty of his speech was that every second he pronounced “f..ng eyes”. Usually trash words are very annoying, but these “f..ng eyes” were so unusual, so out of place and out of moment, that became a real fun for the next few hours

• You know what “f..ng eyes”, guys, this summer I went with my father-in-law for fishing “f..ng eyes” and stopped “f..ng eyes” smoking. I was heavy “f..ng eyes” smoker for the whole my life and “f..ng eyes” stopped.

We are all listening WHAT so tragic had happened that he stopped smoking

• On Tunguska river “f..ng eyes” there are two villages in 150 km from one “f..ng eyes” another and you know what “f..ng eyes”? In one village vodka “f..ng eyes” was delivered to the local shop “f..ng eyes” and in the other village the fuel “f..ng eyes” for the boats was delivered. The inhabitants “f..ng eyes” of the villages ended up with having “f..ng eyes” two treasuries apart from one “f..ng eyes” another. And me “f..ng eyes” and my father-in-law started to go by Tunguska “f..ng eyes” river from one village to another to exchange the “f..ng eyes” treasuries and make some “f..ng eyes” profit out of it. 150 “f..ng eyes” km “f..ng eyes” apart.

Please, excuse me guys, I will stop putting “f..ng eyes” in between every few words, but you got the point how the speech sounded like

• And then you stopped smoking?
• No, no. Once we were fishing in the middle of Tunguska and we see wow! some animal is crossing the river. Getting closer and closer. Aha, we see it’s a wild cat. Cat saw us and immediately changed the direction toward our boat. He was very wild and became very domesticated after we gave him some fish.
• And then you stopped smoking?
• No, no. Once we were fishing in the middle of Tunguska and I put small Harius (Grayling fish — noted by me) on the hook and threw it into the water. And I see amazing thing, Harius is jumping out of the water and going away. We wonder “what the hell is it?!”, but the next moment the gigantic Taimen (Siberian giant trout — noted by me,) is jumping out of the water trying to catch Harius and oops missing it. And small Harius is coming to the boat knocking the side of the boat with his tale like crying and begging “guys, save me, please, get me out of here”.
• And then you stopped smoking?
• No no, I remember one day we with my father-in-law drunk 8 bottles of vodka and it was not enough and we were thinking shall we go by the river to the shop. Shop was in 100km and we decided not to go.
• So, tell us, finally, how you quitted smoking for God’s sake!
• Ah, it’s easy. We ran out of cigarettes for few weeks and I simply could not get anything to smoke. And when we got some cigarettes finally I felt — ok, seems like don’t enjoy smoking anymore and I quitted.

Alexey left me in Achinsk when I was still sleeping peacefully and when I woke up in Krasnoyarsk the thought cam to me that I would love to hire such a person as a sales rep to my team.

Now you may tell me — you promised us some hiring mistakes stories, but so far the only stores are about HOW YOU AVOIDED hiring mistakes. Indeed, there are few mistakes stories also.

The first one happened long time ago when I was hiring the Sales Rep to be my direct report. The guy was bright, aggressive, super active, ready to fight, super self-confident. I was 100% sure I found the star. I didn’t have “chemistry” with the guy, was not my style, too much of passion over the roof, but still… The last interview the guy had with Henry — my Sales Director at that time. Henry chocked me with his feedback, he simply told me — “nothing special, it will take a long time and a lot of your efforts to make it works and him to be a good sales rep, I’m ok you to hire him, but most probably you will let him go in 6 months or so”. I was soooo desperate, I replied — “Henry, no, no, you are mistaken, no way, he is a star”. Henry just smiled and said — “let’s see in 6 months”.

Indeed I asked the guy to leave us in 6 months. Two things were wrong with him. First — his performance. He was very passionate to win in store. The fist time I came to his customer supermarket he impressed me with his vision of opportunities — “I will improve our shelf space here and there, I will put secondary location there, I will get more SKUs to be listed, etc.” I immediately thought — “wow, it’s a game changer!”. But the next time in one month when we were visiting the same store I spotted no changes. No changes at all. And the guy was still very passionate and telling me about all opportunities “I will improve our shelf space here and there, I will put secondary location there, I will get more SKUs to be listed, etc.”. I thought — “ok, he has very clear vision of what needs to be done, let’s give him more time”. As you may guess there were no changes when we came back again. The guy changed his tone, he was still full of energy, but now he was blaming the management of the customer — “you know what — all of them a simply idiots, they do not understand the logic, they do not want to support me, they are stupid, you know”. It took me few months to do whatever I could to train and coach him with no result. Finally I understood he simply didn’t care. He learn what needs to be said to the management and that’s it. He didn’t take his business personally at all.

And the second thing what was wrong just proved my observation. In 6 months he crushed his company car 3 times. He had a crazy driving style, not caring at all about the whole universe around. When he wanted to move to another line on the road he simply used to switch on the turning signal, count to 5 and turn. Once I asked him to be careful and he replied in the way that it’s not his duty — “Those stupid people around have to be careful”. When he crashed the car third time he wrote the following explanation to me: “on the day X at Y AM in the morning I was coming out of the courtyard of my home and the CORNER OF THE BUILDING BUMPED my car”. It was not his responsibility, it was the CORNER which was guilty.

So, how came I hired so irresponsible person, who didn’t care? How came Henry saw it straight from the beginning and me not. How could I avoid it? Probably my mistake was to be enchanted by the passion and confidence of the interviewee. I did this mistake not only once. I can count at list four more similar mistakes. The typical pattern is: the interviewee is showing great passion about future job, showing energy, wiliness, vision but doesn’t necessarily have proper experience. I’m thinking — “ok, she/he really wants this job, I see the passion in the eyes, let’s give him/her a chance”. Should I take this risk or not? You know what, guys, I can clearly count 4–5 mistakes of hiring inexperienced people demonstrating passion who failed shortly after joining the company. But equally I can count at least 50 cases when I took this risk and it worked out really well. So, I believe we all need to be aware of the risk of hiring “inexperienced passionate individual” try to avoid it, but still consider given the chance to the person on the other side of the table. The risk is there of course, still it’s 10–20%.

Talking hiring mistakes my clear conclusion and my experience is: there are 3 very distinct groups of interviewees. You usually can clearly spot people close to you culturally, with whom you have chemistry. In the whole my life I don’t remember any hiring mistakes with those people. They never let me down. Equally typically it’s relatively easy to spot the person you would NEVER hire. And you simply do not hire. All the mistakes are coming from the third group, from the interviewees who are “neutral”. No clear “chemistry”, but nothing repulsive. No spark, but solid experience. Showing over passion sometime and sometime quiet. No clear motivation, but good solid story overall.

In some countries, especially in Africa, it’s very difficult and costly to hire reliable person with qualification you need. You are coming to the agency and agency is sending your CVs of extremely expensive expats alike people. You are posting job opening on LinkedIn and you are getting 600 CVs in few days (yes, it was the case two times) which nobody is able to process. We were hiring finance manager for one of the African countries and I remember myself going through dozens of CVs and many interviews. In the end I got desperate and we hired the person with whom I was not quite sure, but I though it’s a good compromise between cost, experience, scope and passion. I hope things will turn positive with time and it turned to become a total disaster. The person revealed his enormous ego, unprofessionalism, inability to learn. The biggest mistake you may ever made is to hire those “compromise” people.

Is there any specific in hiring across different cultures and generations? Yes, of course.

Being belonging to Generation X (1965–1980) for me it was always some mystery in hiring Millennials/Generation Y (1981–1996). 5 things I found very special about Millennials while hiring:

• Process and “how” is more important than the future big win “what”. What do I mean? A bit of cliché but if there is a job of barista in Starbucks in the cool environment, great location, nice people around than “typical Millennial” will always prefer this job (if salary is the same, of course) vs working let’s say in the location which is not as convenient, at the place which is not cool (i.e. remote branch of the boring bank) under condition that in 5 years she/he may become a Branch manager… So, “typical Millennial” wants to enjoy life now and here
• They want to do meaningful work now. The motto “you start with the position of an assistant of the assistant of junior manager and then grow steadily while you get more experience” doesn’t work completely.
• They use social nets to investigate your profile, profiles of the management, get all the feedbacks from the former employees and from customers and consumers. They do not want only you to choose them, they feel like they have a right (by the way, very rightly so) to choose or not to choose you as a manager and your company as an employer
• They have ZERO loyalty to the Company. “We are going through the tough time, that’s why we will not buy a new coffee machine and we decided to cancel free apples on Thursdays” will not be accepted. They are ready to change the job for the things you may consider as insignificant and ridiculous
• They really care about their health, environment, nature.

Why those 5 differences are so important? It’s all about “selling” your company and building your expectations from Millennial employee. Usually I spend quite a lot of time explaining how cool and meaningful is the job we are offering, focusing on the office and team spirit, digitalization and other features and benefits. The title of the job also always helps. I know one company which simply took the entrance position “assistant Brand manager” (ABM) and renamed it to “associate Brand manager” (the same ABM) and it worked out really well. And please do not be misled and offended if Millennial asks you “do you have a soya milk in the office for the coffee for free”, they don’t mean to be picky, for them it’s just equally important as their future job description.

Cultural dimension makes hiring a very exiting process. I got an experience in hiring in South Africa, Kenya, Ethiopia, Algeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Mauritania, China, Turkey, Russia, Belarus, Belgium. All hiring experiences where very different. Few points from top of my mind:

• In some cultures it’s absolutely ok to promote your own achievements. “I did this and that”, “I sold it”, “My achievement”, “I started…” — all this is absolutely normal when talking to the interviewee in South Africa or Belgium per say. Other cultures (like Russians) tough people from the school to be “humble” and never ever say “I”. In Russian translation “I” is “Ya” and this is indeed the last letter in Cyrillic alphabet. And we even have a proverb saying — “Do not say “ya”, “ya” is the last letter in the alphabet, be humble”. So it’s always “we”. “We did this and that”, “we sold it”, “our achievement”, “we started…”. Sometime those “humbleness” could really mean “we” but sometime person in front of you just following his/her cultural pattern. You have to be more sensitive and ask more question to dig deeper to the bottom of the case
• Some cultures are more indirect than the others. In these cultures it’s absolute taboo to say at the interview “I want to work for your company”. The maximum you may hear is “I may consider working at your company” and this means in reality that interviewee desperately wants this position. The cultural reason behind is not that they are choosy, they just believe it’s an inappropriate to push you and also not good to express their desire as it will dilute their value. Do not be misled by this while talking motivation
• Some cultures are more hierarchical than the others. Ethiopia, Algeria, Turkey, Russia may be seemed more hierarchical than South Africa, Belgium, Senegal, Kenya. In hierarchical cultures usually (but not always of course) if in the end of the interview you ask if interviewee has any questions to you, than most probably no questions will follow. It’s happening not because they have nothing to ask and they are not interested, they just believe it’s extremely impolite to ask your potential future boss any questions. Saying this I noticed some people are getting advises from different HR agencies on how to behave during interview and it’s so fun when you interview 10 people in the raw in Ethiopia and all of them are asking you the same question in the end — “what is the company mission and vision?”.
• In some cultures it’s highly appreciated if interviewee is talking about his/her family, parents, hobby. In some other cultures it’s only business talk and all the rest is taboo. Privacy should stay private.
• In many cultures (I saw it in Turkey, South Africa, China, Belgium) it perceived as a very positive thing if interviewee is doing something meaningful outside her/his main job. It may be a charity (anything from collecting donations for the hospices to the crowdfunding projects to help blind people to read the menus in the restaurants), it may be some political activity (i.e. person may be elected member of the local village management), it may be some freelance consulting business even. And in some other cultures it’s a very strong perception that if you show some other than work related activities the interviewer will believe these activities will derail you from your work and will affect your performance.

The only advise I have here is to stay open and ask as many questions as you can. Don’t take anything for granted, don’t make any assumptions. Yet to keep cultural diversity is vitally important if you are building international company. If you have your headquarter in Belgium you still may hire people from all around the world. At one moment of time we had Flemish, French, Russian, Danish, Turkish, German, Bulgarian, Ukrainian sitting all together next to each other in one office. And then we hired Colombian. We will talk cultural diversity later down the road for sure, I promise

The last point before we finish this chapter — where is the best to source candidates from? No magic, for me my own networking is number one. You may get the person you know, whom you trust, reliable, culturally close and (equally important) somebody who knows and trusts you. The number two came LinkedIn. If you do the proper search it’s really great unbeatable tool. You can immediately see the connections of the candidate, people and companies he/she follows…

Agencies are standing apart. First you need to hire the agency and only then your candidates will come. I have personal experience with 20 agencies or so and I clearly see two extremes here. There are only few agencies I admire for the way they approach me as a customer. The first meeting is taken few hours during which I’m explaining (and they keep asking questions) all the details about the company, business, market, position opened, etc. The very first time I experienced such an approach I was shocked and puzzled asking them — “why, why do you need all these details?!”. But it was worth it. In 2 weeks agency came with the long list of all the candidates who may be suitable for this position with clear indication whom we may try to approach and with whom we have zero chances. So, the “hunting” started and ended up pretty soon with the short list of 3 candidates. Every candidate was accompanied with the lengthy report disclosing all the strengths and weaknesses of the person. I interviewed them all. After each interview agency provided me with the detailed feedback from candidate. After few interviews by different people we choose the person. The whole process took 2 months. Of course references and formal assessment of the soft skills were a part of agency’s job. Perfect job.

On the other end there are agencies asking no questions and coming back immediately with the long list of candidates. And you can’t choose. All is wrong. Another long list is coming. All wrong. Then they disappear. Another list. It never ends up well.

It was a long read indeed and we all deserved a nice positive story in the end. You probably remember in the beginning of this chapter I promised to tell you the story about “nose piercing exception”. It was not exactly piercing exception it was “tattoo exception”. The name of the exception was Ura and he came to me via LinkedIn simply saying that his dream is to work with Jack Daniels. In the “normal corporate world” (whatever it means) not too often you meet people covered with tattoo and dressed like a rock musician, but it was Ura and his outfit was so close to the equity of the brand and he was looking so naturally and organically that I just did it. Later it turned out Ura has few suits and white shirts and even tie and he can look very official. Though his nature was with the brand standing for independence, rebellion and uniqueness. Ura never let me down and kept working for Jack for many years after I left. So, you have to disregard outfit and appearance some time to get to the bottom.