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Solving a talent crisis 6 (a multi-part article)

by Miki Saxon

Before approaching Josh, Julie googled Suni to see what additional information she could find—it turned out to be quite a bit. She found a resume, several papers, his thesis, technical discussions in which he’d participated and a Facebook page that was probably the reason he was still available.Julie took Ashok’s glowing recommendation along with everything she’d found to Josh for evaluation; he agreed that it all looked excellent. His concern with the Facebook information was whether it pointed to a lack of common sense or just the typical duh factor he found so prevalent in younger candidates. They agreed the issue would sort itself out during the interviews.

Julie wanted to know exactly how Josh was planning to handle new distance workers. It was one thing to bring back someone she knew well, but integrating someone brand new into the team was totally different.

Josh said that he hadn’t worked out the entire plan, but he did intend to have any new hire work on site for three to six months whether they were local or not—in fact, he’d already worked out a special leasing arrangement in a nearby complex—and had asked the senior staff for input—concerns, approaches, suggestions, ideas, etc.—as a starting point.

Suni’s referral had come before the input could be developed into a cohesive framework, but Josh felt that wasn’t enough to warrant ignoring a potentially good candidate, so they would just move forward slowly with lots of input from the others. If that meant they lost him, so be it. Julie heartily agreed, since she knew that it took very little to tear a team apart compared to the effort and time it took to build one.

Julie called Ashok back and asked him to let Suni know that she’d be calling him, mentioning that she’d googled him so she already had his resume. She also suggested that Ashok give Suni as much non-proprietary information about the company and its products, culture, etc., as possible. Ashok was delighted.

In their first conversation Julie explained that the company followed RampUp’s 70% Rule, treating phone interviews as “real interviews,” so that they (the company) would be 70% sure that they wanted to hire him and that Suni would be 70% sure he was interested in Julie (as his manager), and the company/position/team before arranging for him to fly in.

She explained that he wouldn’t have to relocate permanently, but that he would need to live locally for several months until he had integrated into the team and was up to speed on the products/work. The company would supply housing, a modest per diem, at least one long weekend home each month and a rental car during that time. Julie explained that using distance workers was a new idea that they were still developing, so, if he was hired, he’d be, to some extent, a guinea pig as the program progressed. Suni responded that it sounded incredibly cool and that he had no problem as a guinea pig.

At that point, Julie turned the conversation to the interview. Over the next ten days, approximately 15 hours of interviews with the senior staff, including Josh, as well as staffers from engineering and marketing, took place and everyone was enthusiastic; Suni was so excited he offered to buy his own ticket just so he could meet everybody.

When they did fly Suni in, it was for eleven days. Suni asked if there was some work he could do while he was there, he thought it would give everyone a better idea of what he was capable of and how well they would work as a team and it would also give him a better understanding of Julie as a manager.

Julie and Josh thought it was a good idea, but, to avoid any legal hassles, they agreed decided to pay him for the hours he actually worked.

By the end of the week Julie knew she’d found the right person, and there was no question that Suni felt the same. Even the Facebook issue was resolved. It turned out that the first thing everyone had done was google Suni, and vice versa, and the amount of kidding he took over his posts made him realize that it was smarter to keep his pages private.

When Suni was hired, he asked if they would mind his not using the apartment. He said that “Randy” had invited him to live with his family and that would be much nicer than being alone. Julie was delighted and Josh immediately arranged to offset any costs that Randy incurred.

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