What Do Hiring Managers Really Want?

ASK ANNIE
What Do Hiring Managers Really Want?
Employers don't always prefer ambitious high-achievers. Plus: Is eating
lunch at your desk a smart career move?

Nov 09 2004
By Anne Fisher
Fortune.com


Dear Annie:
I've been job hunting for about six months now and, while I have a lot of
experience and the right credentials for every position I've applied for,
I'm getting nowhere. A friend took a look at my resume and suggested that
it may be too focused on my individual accomplishments and not enough on
teamwork (working well with others, leading a group to achieve a goal,
etc.). Do you think he's right?
—Lone Ranger

Dear L.R. :
It's hard to say without seeing your resume, but your friend may have a
point. Pittsburgh-based HR consulting firm Development Dimensions
International (www.ddiworld.com) recently polled 1,515 employers to find
out what they're seeking in new hires, and discovered that 75% want
employees who work well in a team setting. Only 20% cited individual
ambition as a desirable trait. "In today's working environment, very
little is accomplished without strong collaboration," says Scott Erker, a
DDI vice president. He believes managers worry that "overly ambitious
hires will only look out for themselves, which can harm team productivity
and morale."

The DDI survey yielded a few other tidbits that are rather surprising, at
least to me. For instance, the conventional wisdom holds that being late
for a job interview is an automatic black mark against a candidate, as is
showing up (late or not) with only a very sketchy knowledge of the
company's business. But according to DDI's research, just 15% of job
interviewers say they'd be turned off by these shortcomings. By contrast,
the majority—57%—say they'd turn thumbs down on "inarticulate candidates
or those who are vague about their previous experience." Says Erker:
"Hiring managers don't want to have to train people to communicate well.
If an applicant is a vague communicator in an interview, chances are that
he or she will not communicate well on the job either."

So, while you're tweaking your resume to make more mention of your
collaborative skills, think too about how clearly you're able to describe
your experience in person. The clearer and more specific you can be, the
more likely an interviewer is to be impressed.

Dear Annie:
I hope you don't think this is a dumb question, but here it goes: I'm in
my first "real" job after graduating from college last spring. I'm still
getting the hang of the work, so I tend to keep my nose to the grindstone
and work through lunch (which I bring from home). Other people around here
go out to lunch together, even if it's only for 20 or 30 minutes, and I
wonder what I'm missing by not joining them. Gossip doesn't interest me,
and half the time I don't know who they're talking about anyway. But
should I go? What do your readers think?
—Lucy in the Sky

Dear L.S.:
I'll be interested, as always, to see what readers say. Meanwhile, Pat
Key, a vice president at the Chubb Insurance Group and a 31-year veteran
of the corporate wars, thinks brown-bagging lunch is "one of the most
common mistakes" that overly conscientious neophytes make in the
workplace." Why? Because lunch can be a relaxed opportunity "to talk to
people about what they're working on and find out what's going on in other
parts of the company"—and, of course, to network.

"Consider networking part of your job," Key says. I applaud your
inclination to try and avoid nonproductive gossip, but lunch may be your
best chance to get wind of important happenings that people would prefer
not to discuss in the office. And heck, you might have fun, too. No law
against that, grindstone or no grindstone.

Send questions to askannie@fortunemail.com.

From: annieadm@TIMEINC.NET