Interview Techniques

As you may have read in past posts, I have used a couple of different ways to interview. What I have found to be the best technique when doing accounting and finance search may not be the best way when recruiting for IT or engineering. When recruiting for A&F I found it best to cold call into some of the big firms, attend the CPA functions, etc. Since recruiting I have found email to be one of my best resources since IT folks seem to be more responsive to this sort of communication. I have sent out a list of questions to shorten the time on the phone and have had a good amount of success.

So the question is what have you used in the past to interview candidates and what have you found the best at working?

Biography - I guess I should tell you about myself

This is the bio my company put up for me. I would love to know more about everyone that is reading.

Lance C. Mooney, Regional Director of Recruiting, Southwest Region

Lance Mooney is a veteran of the recruiting industry with nearly 10 years of professional recruitment and management experience. Lance’s experience includes professional recruitment engagements in the retained, contingency, corporate and contract arenas. Lance has successfully completed engagements in several verticals including Finance and Accounting, IT, HR, Engineering, Aerospace and more. His strengths include cold calling, client and candidate relationship building and maintenance, and management and training of recruiting teams.

Lance began his recruiting career in Las Vegas as an Internet Recruiter for a regional search firm in their accounting and finance practice. He was quickly promoted to a full desk Recruiter and managed a small team. After an acquisition Lance moved to the 2^nd largest staffing organization in the world to manage and grow their Accounting and Finance search practice in Nevada and Northern Arizona. This is where Lance first met and began working with Mike Astringer.

Lance spent a short period in California where he established an Accounting and Finance search practice for a regional recruiting firm then relocated to Arizona. In Arizona Lance began to do corporate consulting work and excelled as a Contract Recruiter.

During Lance’s career he has served such firms as MGM/Mirage, Mikohn Gaming Corporation, International Gaming Technology, Sierra Health Services, Honeywell Aerospace, Freescale Semiconductor, Edward Jones, Qualcomm, and many, many others. Lance is also a proud service veteran having served in the United States Marine Corps.

Lance is responsible for management of Human Capital Consultants Recruitment Teams working out of our Phoenix Arizona branch and serving clients in the Western United States.

When not providing human capital consulting services Lance enjoys spending time with his wife Jeanna, daughter Kayla, and son Robert, traveling, and mountain biking.

Lance can be reached by telephone 800-378-0847 Ext 707 or e-mail lance.mooney@humancapitalconsultants.com.

Going to be out

For the one or two faithful readers :-) I wanted to let you know that I will not be blogging during the Thanksgiving weekend. As you may have read on the Wednesday post I have a lot to be thankful for this year and since my family played such a huge role in that I am going to give them my full and undivided attention.

So Happy Thanksgiving from the Mooney family.

Sound off and though shalt be heard!!!!

What are you most thankful for ?????

In May I faced a very hard sickness. While I am not going to disclose what happened, I will say it changed my life tremendously. I had to go on disability and stay out of work until August. Long story short, my claim was denied numerous times and I had to borrow money from my family and my wife had to work a tremendous amount of hours in the ER. While this was a very horrible event, it brought us all together and I am so happy that it happened. I am now a much better father, husband, child and brother.

So what are you most thankful for?

Sound off and thou shalt be heard!!!!!

Contract work - the pros and cons

As you may have read in the past, I love doing contract work, especially on a remote basis. However, it takes a certain amount of discipline and dedication in order to make it happen. When I left semiconductor I knew I wanted to do contract work but at what cost. I knew if I went back to a perm position I would get benefits such as insurance, vacation etc. However, I would be subjected to Corp America and that was something I wanted to avoid. So I figured it would be worth a shot to give contract a try. I found it not only financially rewarding, but also it had a lot of freedom. I wasn't involved in the day to day politics of the company, I was essentially my own body just helping them out when they needed it.

So what, in your opinion would be the pros and cons to doing contract work?

Sound off and thou shalt be heard!!!!

When searching for a new position, what is most important to you?

I have found that when someone is hunting for a new position it is a lot like dating. You have to find the qualities that you like most about your new or upcoming position; you have to know exactly what you want; you can't settle for anything less than what you want; is this going to be a long term relationship or something for the short term etc?

When I was searching for something new I had a certain list of key criteria. I also ask candidates what their key criteria is so we make sure we can help you find an ideal opportunity.

So, when you are searching for a new position, what is most important to you?

Sound off and thou shalt be heard!!!!

What sort of experience is needed, in your opinion to be able recruit

I have heard time and time again from either firms I have recruited for or from firms that have tried to recruit to me while I was in the corporate world that they can't seem to figure out who little or how much experience is needed to be a good recruiter.

When I first started recruiting I had zero experience. I had the desire and drive but needed someone to give me a chance. I was lucky enough to get in with a regional firm where I started as an internet recruiter and quickly moved my way up to a team lead, a full desk recruiter and then a supervisor. So in my opinion, I don't think employers need to look at the experience as much as the persons drive. Is the person going to be able to make 50-80 calls a day? Is this person going to be the type of person that will be able to form and keep the relationships of the sort of people that will make the firm money?

The other question is how much experience is too much experience? Is a senior person going to come in and work a desk with no habits? Of course they are going to have habits! The question is can they conform to a companies way of doing things. When I was in San Diego I interviewed and got a job with a firm that was looking for a Director of Search. Their need was to find someone who would be able to drive their accounting and finance practice from no revenue to a profitable business. While I had no problem doing that, I did have a problem with a micromanaging boss. It got to the point where I didn't like to come in and weekends where not any better because I knew Monday was not too far away. Thankfully I ended up leaving because we had to move back to the desert due to my sons asthma.

Since I left Vegas in 2003 I have kept in touch with a ton of former clients and candidates. I have nothing to offer them and they have nothing to offer me. Through some tremendous relationship building I was able to transition those relationships from pure client/candidate relationships to true friendships.

So the question is what sort of impact will a very junior person have on your firm and what sort of impact will a very senior person have on your firm?

Sound off and thou shalt be heard!!!!

Back to some of the political stuff

I know I was going to try and get away from some of the political stuff, but I read an article this morning about the VA and the treatment of veterans. The article is about a Marine Sgt. who went to Iraq and was hit with an IED (read full story on the CNN site). The bottom line is he was completely disfigured and wasn't getting the compensation he was owed. Granted our service members know what they are getting into but this is ridiculous.

When I was in the USMC I blew my knee out. Obviously not nearly as bad as the story but it hurt like no bodies business. I never received compensation because I didn't put in for it. This devil dog did put in for it and got paid very little. In fact 2 days are the article was published he got a call from the Director of the VA. Why does it take something extreme, like a story to CNN or other media outlets to get things going?

I would like to know what you think.

Sound off and thou shalt be heard!!!!

Reference Checking - is it all what is cracked up to be?

Since I started recruiting one of my biggest frustrations has been the value of reference checking. A reference is only as good as the person giving it. If the candidate puts down a friend of his or someone he says is with his former company but really isn't, how good is the reference? There is also the issue of someone providing damaging information and opening themselves up to a lawsuit. So what is a recruiter to do?

I have spoken to many clients about this and they all have agreed that a reference is a very overrated thing. That is one of the reasons they bring the candidate in for so many interviews. However, referring to my entry from yesterday, there are a ton of good lairs out there that want to make a lot of money for not doing too much.

What are your thoughts?

Extreme moves by job hunters

I found an article about job seekers who do amazing things for jobs. I am happy to say I was quoted in the article and it was in the NY Post. The link to the article is listed here

NY Post Article. It is a great moment for me since this is the first time I was quoted in such a large publication.

So the discussion is what you have seen people do in order to get a position. I did describe the one in the article, but I have an even scarier story than that. I was at a firm in San Diego doing executive level search in accounting and finance. I was looking to fill a Director of Internal Audit/Sox Compliance for a start up focusing on fitness. I found someone who on paper looked pretty good. I brought him in to interview him and the guy knew his stuff. I sent him over to the client and they loved him. They asked for a couple more interviews and they both fell in love. Meanwhile, I had checked 1 reference before sending him over and it came back second to none (I will put up a blog on reference checking soon). I am not in the habit of putting people in the database when they come in, but I did check to see if he was in there which he wasn’t. When I put his SSN into the database I found another person with a completely different name!!!! I was shocked to say the least. I then went to go check his CPA and no one had even heard of this guy in CA or NY. I emailed the Universities he went to in Israel and they had no record.

Long story short this guy was a complete fraud. However, the client still wanted to hire him though. Their only stipulation was that he needed to produce a copy of his CPA by 6 months. Needless to say, he knew he got caught and take the job.

What have you seen?

Sourcing on a global level - what do you use?

OK, yesterday I might have been on a rave because of certain emotions stirred up by politics. Today however, I wanted to focus more on the industry that I am.

I have been recruiting for about 7 plus years. I have been on the agency side as well as the corporate and contract side. I have to say my preference is definitely on the contract side. I wanted to focus this discussion on some of the sourcing strategies you have used in the past. Coming from an accounting and finance background I had been used to cold calling, bouncing around within a company to find names, etc. When I moved to the Phoenix area I thought it best to move to another industry to enhance my background so I moved to Aerospace.

While doing my contract with Honeywell, I found that traditional cold calling wasn't going to get me as far as it did in A&F. So I started enhancing my skills and focused more on the internet searches, AIRS strategies, etc. I was also introduced to patent database searches and more. I could do a lot more digging while using a lot less time and could still do what I love and still hit the phone hard.

When I left Aero, I went to a semiconductor company and went back to the Corporate function side of the world. I was able to get back to pure cold calling, etc. Now that I am doing contract work I realize that time is of the essence and production is more important than it ever has been. I have been researching technologies, internet searches etc. I have done a couple of searches in the past in Mexico, Western Europe and the land down under. The problem I ran into with these searches is that there was a communication barrier.

So the bottom line is what creative resources have you used to find candidates? We all know about some of the old school things, but what are some of the things that you use in order to get the job done?

Future of politics in the US and other countries

With all of the turmoil in the world today, it seems something has to change to achieve peace. Don't get me wrong, I am a former US Marine and love my country with every fiber.
However, even I have gotten fed up with the current political system. I am not sure how it works in other countries (1 of the reasons for this posting) but the US has 2 main parties that are, in my opinion, controlled by the big oil companies, insurance companies etc.

So I guess the question is:

1) What are your thoughts on the current political system in your country
2) What do you think should be done or changed in order to "fix it"

Obviously this would be more of a wish list because the political wheels move slower than my 10 year old daughter but it is always nice to dream :-)