Posts by Mary Lorenz 

When you’re interviewing candidates, most recruiters and hiring managers already know the red flags you need to look out for – bad-mouthing current/former employers, showing up late and/or unprepared, taking a call during the interview, dressing inappropriately, etc…All for good reason, of course. 

Being overly skittish, however, does you a disservice – potentially letting otherwise good candidates slip through the cracks.  Consider the following ‘traditional’ warning signals, which may turn out to be false alarms: Continue Reading…

• Posted by: Mary Lorenz on October 6, 2009
• There are 3 Comments. Join the discussion.
• Categories: Interviewing

Calling all recruiters and hiring managers:  Help us compile a list of the best interview questions ever asked, and you could be the lucky recipient of a Flip Ultra™ video camera!  

As the economy stabilizes, you will likely need to increase headcount. To help ensure you find the best employees for your upcoming business needs, The Hiring Site is putting together a comprehensive list of great interview questions to ask.  And we want your input…

Continue Reading…

• Posted by: Mary Lorenz on October 2, 2009
• There are 635 Comments. Join the discussion.
• Categories: Contest, Interviewing

Yesterday, CareerBuilder released the results of a survey about confronting awkward office situations.  More than 4,400 workers nationwide participated to reveal which embarrassing observations – from an undone zipper to the need for a breath mint – they would be willing to point out to a co-worker of equal, lower or higher status. (Results after the jump.)

It may seem silly, but when you’re in these situations yourself, it doesn’t always feel that way – personal hygiene and appearance are pretty sensitive subjects, and rather than risk awkwardness by trying to save someone from future embarrassment, many of us will do anything we can to avoid it altogether.  Case in point: When I told a friend of mine about this survey, she immediately related:

“We had a guy at my office who smelled,” she said.  The guy’s body odor was so distracting, in fact, that my friend went to HR about it. When HR told her that it was her job to tell the employee, she went to some male co-workers asking them to say something to the guy, but they, too, refused. 

“What did you eventually do?” I asked her.

“Nothing,” she said. “He doesn’t work there anymore.” 

“Oh.” Not the answer I was hoping for.  Awkward silence.

“He wasn’t let go or anything,” she added. ”He just left. I forget why.” 

For her, the problem solved itself (sort of), but I still felt bad for the employee she was talking about; however, I don’t know how I would’ve handled the situation myself, and as the survey results indicate, not many others would have handled the situation differently than my friend had:

Only 28 percent of survey respondents revealed that they would tell a co-worker at an equal or lower level that he/she needed a shower; while only 11 percent would do the same for a higher level co-worker.    

On a similar note, I recently came across this post on ERE.net by recruiter Sarah Welstead, who suggests that it’s in recruiters’ best professional interests to give candidates with bad personal hygiene a heads-up. After all, the author reasons, “if we don’t tell them, who will?…These candidates will be unemployed for months.” 

What are your thoughts? Do you agree? Have you ever had to confront a co-worker about bad hygiene, and if so, how did you do it?

Keep reading for full survey results. Continue Reading…

• Posted by: Mary Lorenz on September 25, 2009
• There are 2 Comments. Join the discussion.
• Categories: Survey Results

If you’ve ever skimmed the Eat This, Not That! book series (you can admit it), you know the premise of the books is to help you make healthier choices about the foods you eat.  Instead of consuming a thick, rich, creamy chocolate milkshake, for example, you could theoretically get the same delicious taste satisfaction – but fewer calories! – by eating fat-free, no-sugar-added chocolate pudding (theoretically).

Anyway, the list below aims to do for recruiters and hiring managers what these books do for conscientious eaters: Achieve the desired results by making better choices.  In order to achieve their goals of getting certain information out of candidates, recruiters and hiring managers need to be careful in the way they phrase certain interview questions; otherwise, they could face potential legal ramifications.   

Recruiters and hiring managers should already know that any question that asks a candidate to reveal information about his or her national origin, citizenship, age, marital status, disabilities, arrest record, military discharges, or personal information is a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 

But while avoiding these subjects sounds easy enough, it’s not always glaringly obvious what questions might be construed as inappropriate – even when they seem harmless on the surface.  Below is a guideline to avoiding 10 potentially dangerous questions – while still getting the information you’re looking for. Continue Reading…

• Posted by: Mary Lorenz on September 24, 2009
• There are 32 Comments. Join the discussion.
• Categories: Employee Attraction, Employer Advice, Interviewing

This week, while you were planning your Patrick Swayze movie marathon,  apologizing to Taylor Swift, or curing blindness with a tooth, here’s what you may have missed in the world of hiring and recruiting… 
Continue Reading…

• Posted by: Mary Lorenz on September 18, 2009
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• Categories: Week in Review

Okay, so there’s good news and there’s not-great-but-not-necessarily-bad-but-really-mostly-just-good-to-know-for-future-reference news for staffing firms… 

While awareness and satisfaction levels for staffing firms have increased over the past year (that’s the good news), a new survey by CareerBuilder and Inavero Institute indicates there’s still a lot of room for improvement in these areas (that’s…well, you get it)

 “While staffing firms have done a better job delivering their value to clients, job seekers, however, are still looking for a more engaging and positive experience,” said Todd McCormick, president of CareerBuilder’s Recruiter Business Unit. Continue Reading…

• Posted by: Mary Lorenz on September 15, 2009
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• Categories: Employee Attraction, Employee Engagement, Survey Results