Have you noticed there’s a lot of discussion from employers on how eduction is failing to provide people with the skills and knowledge needed. IT companies complain that graduates can’t understand background programmes, Senior executives despair that new hires don’t know how to communicate, employers shake their heads at qualifications that don’t provide the skills for work that employers are seeking.

Mission Critical opportunities being lost
Yesterday I was contacted by a CEO who told me that a “new hire” he had employed last year “wasn’t working out”. It seemed that the qualification and some experience hadn’t given the new hire the skills the job required and mission critical opportunities were being lost. 

What to do?
Larger companies are sponsoring education programmes to ensure they are
able to hire the skills they need but smaller businesses can’t afford to
do that. So what to do?
When recruiting it’s worth investigating the content and syllabus of qualifications if they are critical to the job skills. Then test them. If computer skills are required test them as part of the interview process. If communication or management skills are required for the job then these too can be tested at the interview stage.

Where skills are being recruited it’s a matter of “Employer be aware”

I was at a meeting today at the IOD (Institute of Directors) and the discussion included a reference to the “Evil Twin Syndrome” which is the fact that one sees the best in a person at the interview. As my old boss used to say “They will always be at their smartest at the interview”

During the probationary period they will be perfect. Work hard and even do overtime. Then the day after a satisfactory probationary period there arrives “The Evil Twin”. The individual who is argumentative, difficult to manage and screams “unfair” at every opportunity.

However, having identified that most managers have suffered from the syndrome it’s also  true to say that at some time in one’s career one has probably also been “the evil twin” and caused some manager to go prematurely grey!

A number of friends are having a debate over the different emphasis that employers should place on qualifications and experience when looking for top talent employees.

Some place greater emphasis on a paper qualification such as an MBA and Degree and suggest that they prove capability and a level of knowledge to do a job. This group acknowledges the importance of experience but would automatically disqualify a job applicant without a qualification.

Those that support experience suggest that paper qualifications, whilst necessary, don’t demonstrate essential entrepreneurial skills such as imagination and drive. These can only be demonstrated by “past success in previous positions” and “related experience”. In addition, they point out, a twenty-year old degree is of little value in the current workplace!

The questions I have are these:

• When would it be appropriate or sensible to hire a person without a qualification?
• At what point do qualifications become less relevant than experience?

I’ve had so many comments on the first sales job interview film clip that I’ve decided to make another that includes some of the questions I’ve been asked to include. The popularity of the first film probably means that sales is an area that I should explore more in future video clips.

Thanks to Paul, Derek, and Sarah, thanks for supplying the questions:

“Do you enjoy working with people?”
“What is it about sales that you like?”
“How do you manage with different types of buying styles?”
“What’s your approach to selling?

Best wishes and contact me if you want a specific interview question answered.

If you are looking for tips on “Interviewing” visit my YouTube channel at stephenharvarddavis

More Sales Job Interview questions

A number of people in my network have complained that I am forgetting those that tend to interview people as opposed to being interviewed.

They also, correctly say that, unless you are interviewing regularly the skills and techniques are often lost through lack of practice and would I upload some advice on “How to interview”

So here goes

Interviewer’s mistakes

This is an answer I made to a question on Linkedin today about the failure of leaders to sack under- performing people. I thought it worthwhile also posting my answer onto my blog so that more of my network could read it.

I believer that business is going through a revolution.

In past credit squeezes firms and Governments would shed talent to reduce costs (the UK Government is about to do this again by reducing civil service personnel by up to 25%). The result was that essential knowledge and skills were lost and recovery took longer as a result.
So, this time round, firms have attempted to retain their talent, even those less productive, as leaders hope for a quick upturn. The problem is that the upturn is slow in the west.

Further problems are that with coming food inflation and possible grain shortages, extended insecurity as the credit crunch continues and Government policy that increases tax whilst reduces spending businesses are now being forced to start to look to their staff costs. This means that some of the “good” people will be shed as well as the “bad” and that the trend is to hire part-time employees.

I suspect that the result is that the “business revolution” will generate a significant percentage of the working population having a number of part-time jobs as opposed to a single full time position. (including professional firms such as lawyers, accountants and financiers)

There is security in this position for employees who may be “shed or fired” in that income is not reliant on one employer and totally and immediately lost on redundancy whilst the employer has a capability of expanding and contracting a workforce more easily.

So, in my opinion, it’s not “under-performers being hired or fired” it’s that we may be witnessing a change in the way employment may work in the future.