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“They Only Give Us 30 Minutes to Do This, You Know”
“Hey, John (not his real name), why don’t you take a seat? They only give us 30 minutes to do this, you know.” I offer him my hand as he approaches.
“Yes, sir,” he replies, shaking my hand and taking a seat.
“Oh, don’t call me ‘sir,’ that’s what they called my dad. I’m just Jim.” I just violated one of Charles Murray’s Curmudgeon rules: Don’t start the relationship with a young person on the familiar, let it evolve and let the inner curmudgeon offer the time for transition to first-name familiarity. But this is different, I’m at a job fair for veterans and they’ve only given me half an hour to talk to John. My whole day is back-to-back interviews. John isn’t my first interview today and by a long stretch won’t be my last.
I scanned John’s resume last night before the job fair. He’s US Army, doesn’t list his rank on his résumé (some do, most don’t). From the positions that he’s held (the military refers to them as billets) and his time in service, I guess that’s he’s a 1st Lieutenant, maybe recently promoted to Captain. It also looks like he’s been deployed but it’s hard to tell. Some list their deployments, most don’t. He’s Infantry.
“So, were you deployed?” I ask.
“Yes, sir,” he catches himself, we both smile. “I went to Afghanistan in…”
I interrupt him, “Okay, good, when you were over there did they give you an interpreter to work with?” Normally I won’t interrupt a candidate during an interview. I prefer the conversation to be a seesaw-like back and forth. But this is different, I only have 30 minutes and I need to cover some ground.
“Yes, they did,” he says.
“How was his English?” I ask. I already know the answer: not good.
“Not so great,” he replies.
“Okay, so tell me how you worked with, and used, a translator with not-so-great-English,” I ask.
“Well, the first thing you need to do is make friends with him, then you…”
Bingo, good answer. I’m interviewing John for a team lead position with my company. If hired, he’ll lead eight to 12 developers. We do software development and have lots of foreign nationals in our technical positions.
One of things that I learned long ago is that the US doesn’t have a monopoly on people who can develop complex code for software. There are schools in Europe and Asia that can turn out software developers on par with what we turn out here in the States. I’m not here looking for technical talent. We interview at US and foreign engineering schools for that. I’m here today looking for people who can lead technical talent in small teams.
Most of my developers have great English-language skills, but some not so much. You’ve got to work with these guys because despite the fact that they have not-so-great English, their programming skills are world class … literally. There’s going to be a real reluctance on their part to bring you problems or ask for help because, well, no one likes to feel less than capable. The solution is simple: make them your friend and the reluctance will fall away. John’s answer is a been-there-done-that one.
I let John roll for a while but find a place to get the conversation back. “Okay, so when you were deployed, you picked up a platoon that was already there, right?”
“That’s right,” he says.
“OK, so tell me how you went about taking over the platoon.”
“The platoon lead that came before me had been moved up to a company slot,” he said. “So the first thing I did was get a brief from him, then I met with the senior enlisted from the platoon, and…”
Another good answer. If I hire him I will, no doubt, ask him at some point to take over an existing team within a project. He’ll have senior technicians on his team. He’ll learn fairly quickly that they can give him the best data when it comes to day-to-day operations, personalities, issues, relationships with clients, and the like.
We’ll go back and forth like this for the next 20 or so minutes. I’m keenly interested in how he answers team-related questions. Particularly about dealing with members of the team on a day-in/day-out basis.
I work for a global consulting company. If we hire John, his work will be 100 percent travel. We go “on site” with the client to do our development work. When John goes on site he may very likely stay in the same hotel, eat in the same restaurants, and perhaps fly on the same flights as his team members. Needless to say, he’ll work with them throughout the day.
I’ve been a consultant for longer than I can remember (I have ties older than most of the junior members of our team). I’ve gone long stretches where I only went home on the weekends and consequently spent more time with my team than with my family. Ignore for the moment the hardship this creates at home. My experience tells me that people who don’t know how to work for long stretches with the same people will isolate, withdrawing from the team (“Hey man, I just need my space, you know what I mean?”) and then eventually leave. Staying in close, constant proximity to the people they work with is not something they can handle. Service men and women who have deployed overseas understand this “proximity problem” in spades. They already know how to walk the fine line between isolation and over-familiarity, with themselves and with others.
John consistently gives me the answers that tell me he’ll make a good team lead. Service veterans are beyond the question of do-they-or-don’t-they have leadership potential. Men and women without that potential are eliminated by the military as part of their officer selection process and the promotion process for enlisted men and women.
This is not my first veteran job fair. Last year we hired eight veterans into my group. For the most part, we don’t measure individual performance, per se, we measure teams. After one year the veteran-led teams are ranked in the top 10 percent. The client loves them, the team loves them, and management loves them. And their teams deliver.
I may have come to veteran job fairs originally as part of some outreach program. Not anymore. Now I’m looking for leads and this place is a gold mine.
Near the end of the 30 minutes I’ll flip the interview around. “So, I’ve been asking all the questions. Is there anything you’d like to ask me?” The questions are varied but I almost always get questions around the travel. Yes, we reimburse. No, I don’t care where you live so long as you can easily get to an airport served by a commercial airline. John asks me, “during your corporate presentation, you said something about being millennial-friendly. What does that mean?”
On the first day of the job fair each company makes a 30-minute presentation on who they are, the type of business that they’re in, how fast they’ve been growing, etc. Our overview was done by a colleague. I vaguely remember the millennial comment. I can’t remember my exact answer, but tried to leave John with the impression that young people like working for us, which is true.
I later mention John’s question to my son, who is a Captain in the Marine Reserves. My son laughs. “Yeah, in the military, millennial is code for ‘problem child.’” Hmm … OK … Important note, strike the comments about millennials from our overview.
I’ll put John through to the next round of interviews that will be held in a few weeks at our corporate headquarters. These will be a bit more leisurely in structure and he’ll interview with me and several of my team leads. He’ll do well, I can tell. I’m not new to the interviewing process. He’ll do well.
Published in General
Worthy. I’m rooting for him.
Sounds like you know how to hire.
Good luck to you & John both!
Me too!
Nice post. Curious about the inspiration. My family spent the evening with neighbors, the husband/father of who just made partner at your firm or one of of your brethren. And he’ll be on a plane first thing tomorrow for the week away. Each week every week. I marvel at the stress that must place on his family. But he earns that new Jag in his driveway. And his wife seems to be a big supporter. I can’t imagine how tough it’d be if she didn’t, regardless of the money. I am on the client side of such relationships and spend my day managing the relationships and negotiating the contracts with our consulting partners, for services ranging from strategy to app dev. Always good to get the perspective of the other side. I respect the heck out of the role your group’s play and the challenges you face in execution…particularly with your global resources. Thanks for the read. Reminds me of what Ricochet was like back in the day.
You (and your company) may be driving away your best talent by not knowing how to value psychological introverts. (I don’t mean people who are shy, but using the Introvert/Extrovert definition used in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.) For instance, do your teams tend to inhabit one big work room where there is constant conversation between members as they “multitask,” also doing their work? That’s great for psychological extroverts who are three-quarters of the population. In fact, it energizes them. But it drains an introvert. Do your teams tend to go out to dinner together? Great…for the extroverts, not so great for the introverts. The introverts need space, not because they aren’t team players, but because the typical consulting environment is very draining for them.
The problem is that it is certain types of introverts who are twenty years or more ahead of everyone else. They are the ones who get the triple-W response of, “Wait, what? Wow!” when they drop their insights. It’s the introvert who says, “You’re not in the business you think you are.” It’s the introvert who says, “This is how it should be,” years ahead of time.
Indeed. This is a quality post.
Very True!
People like Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of Electronic Television while in High School.
Of course, as a member of an oppressed minority, I would be happy to consult with your firm in order to make it more inclusive and introvert-friendly.
An excellent post. I’d say it should be a “must read” for any recruiter. There’s the beginnings of a book in here somewhere. Oh, and our armed forces turn out better job candidates than any 4 year college ever did.
Amen Penfold. My wife works with college students and often works with these young Veterans. She states that it’s the best part of her job.
These are great young people, love hearing stories of them using their unique skills and succeeding.
Great write up – but don’t just look at job fairs. The Military Officer’s Association of America (http://www.moaa.org) has developed a transition assistance program to help former military (not just officers) make the jump to civilian life.
Great post. My son is team leader as a logistics consultant. It’s everything you discribed. He grabs the first plane out on Monday morning ( usually before 6am) and a late afternoon flight on Thursday. He is the only American born on a team of seven. He is not a veteran though. He was a frat leader at Penn State which I think help in his interpersonal skills strange as it seems.
Is there a way to formally recommend this for the main feed?
We just start commenting: Main Feed!
I just sent an PM to the editors, warning them this post is about to get bumped from the front page of the member feed and lose its exposure.
If that direct action doesn’t work, I echo …
Main Feed!
Good work, Mr. Lance. I would think a guy who understates so much that he does well by your veterans is exactly the kind of writer Ricochet should be publishing officially. There is something decent in the ‘no bragging, just business’ attitude. This should be part of the ‘self-interest rightly understood’ category of Ricochet news.
Now, tell me how to find a decent Help Desk tech…
Why don’t they?
Great to see this on the Main Feed Mountie.
Some “progressive” interviewers didn’t care for my veteran status, but I know for a fact I have gotten a few jobs due to that little section on my résumé.
I was always disgusted by the idiots I encountered in college, who ridiculed the skills you learned in the military: “So what civilian job does killing people prepare you for?” There’s one particular job skill that the military overall, especially the Army, and above all, the Infantry, teaches – a skill so lacking in our “civilized” society: Leadership.
Great post. My company does a lot of lefty things that I don’t approve of. But they have for years seen the wisdom and value of hiring veterans, and even led programs to encourage other big companies in our city to do the same. I’m proud of that.
Thanks Lance, just took the dog for a walk and notice that my 10 year old truck is still in the driveway. I must be doing something wrong. I’ll discuss the issue tomorrow with my boss. Not.
Thanks Instugator, I chat with the recruiters. Finding these guys is one best parts of my job.
I think for the same reasons that they don’t list their deployments. Somewhere they’ve been told that they need to write their resumes so that their military experience mimics private industry experience. I consider that bad advice. Nothing is like the leadership experience that they get in the military. Sadly, some will even “hide” medals like the Bronze and Silver stars along with recognitions like the Combat Infantry Badge (CIB). John is 27 years old with the Bronze Star and CIB. For Pete’s sake show me a 27 year old that has gotten anything like that experience since graduating and taking a job private industry.
The last 5 years of my reserve career have provided the pleasure to spend a lot of time visiting submarines and their crews. It’s been the most rewarding part time job I could have ever asked for.
As Jon can attest, it’s a special breed of person who volunteers for the submarine force.
As a parent of 2 millenials, I can say from that experience they were raised in different times and they think differently.
I see this echoed in the comments and thoughts of chiefs and officers regarding millenials. I don’t find that they think they’re synonymous with “problem child” but they are a challenge for leaders who are a different generation. There is certainly a bit of entitlement mentality and unwillingness to be treated, shall we say, as less than a 100% shipmate, just because they’re not qualified or haven’t been around a while.
Some of the traditions we held for a hundred years have fallen away, and in some cases, I think it’s been good, and in others, it’s been sad to see them go away.
But, for hiring managers, these kids are the people you want to work for you. They have been forced to work with people of very different backgrounds, they’ve been in uncomfortable and unfamiliar situations and they mostly excel.
You generally can’t lose.
I’ve recommended Navy Nukes several times in the last 25 years or so where I work. Not so much for their veteran status, but for what I know they can do– and what they know they can do– if properly motivated. (Been there– class 8304 MM/ELT.) I’ve only been (slightly) wrong once.
Army: a billet is where you sleep. A slot is the spot you fill in the Table of Organization.
Not only do you tell a great story, you do so in straight-ahead style like a mystery or thriller writer–driving the story with dialogue, telling the third person narrative of interpreting the conversation in real time for the reader, making us eager to read what happens next.
You inspire me to get the point more quickly. Great job!