“Is it OK if your friend is on the interviewing committee, if they tell you all the questions that are going to be asked, so your kid can prepare?”
Please do not be silly. I have no idea what you are talking about. What “committee”? Here in the US, we have teams, committees are for communists."
When I first got out of college, I was hired by Company X in a certain field. It was their first time recruiting at undergrad for this position, as they typically hired MBA’s for this position. I loved the company and the job, and a few years later when the company came back on campus to recruit, I suggested to a friend of mine that she try to get on the interview schedule - that I thought it was very well suited to her interests and abilities. She did, and got very excited about this job prospect. I knew who was going to be interviewing her (it was someone I thought very highly of and had a particular style) and I helped prep her by talking to her about what this person was like, the types of things he would respond well to, and told her about the qualities I thought they would be looking for and what about her education and other experiences would be things to emphasize. Long story short, she got the job, did a fabulous job and has had a great career in the field as well. She credits me for having helped her, and everyone knows that we knew each other in school. Would I do that again for someone I thought was talented and would do well? * In an instant. *
I found out that I actually know the CEO of the company my daughter is working for – I worked for him many years ago at a different company. I haven’t had any direct contact with him in years but we do have mutual friends in common. One of our mutual friends said to me - oh, now that I know your daughter is working there, I’ll let him know – he’ll get a kick out of knowing that’s your daughter. Now, my daughter is low man on the totem pole as she’s a fresh-out-of-school college graduate just learning this particular field. But so what? Maybe he’ll keep an eye out for her.
Are you on LinkedIn or similar social networks, Sorghum? That’s the whole freaking POINT of these types of networks - for, um, networking. I think you are a little confused because nepotism, cronyism, whatever is using power to FORCE someone into a position that they can’t handle, against the objections of the people who will be working most closely with that person. We’re not talking about this.
Cronyism - the appointment of friends and associates to positions of authority, without proper regard to their qualifications.
Nepotism - the practice among those with power or influence of favouring relatives or friends, especially by giving them jobs.
I challenge you to find a dictionary definition of these terms which base them on ‘force’ or state that the favored person can’t handle the job at all.
Um, your very first definition of cronyism includes “without proper regard to their qualifications,” which would be the same concept as “the favored person can’t handle the job at all.”
No situation being discussed is one in which the person isn’t a fully viable candidate for the position at hand.
Agree with DrGoogle. Google (at least as recently as last year when one of my kids interviewed) uses a hiring committee, not a hiring manager to make decisions about making an offer. Son was found by a recruiter through LinkedIn, went through 3 rounds of interviews (including an all day thing with 5 different people), no offer (although he was still being considered for another one of their offices when he took an offer from one of their competitors-so not sure whether something would have panned out with Google or not). But, it sounded like an intense process and the only feedback he could get from the recruiter was that the committee’s decision was not unanimous in terms of making an offer. http://www.businessinsider.com/google-hiring-process-committee-2014-10 For the offer he did take last year, he was referred to that company by a former co worker. That seems pretty common.
D1 ended up getting offers from 3 different companies - where her Godmother worked, where her Godmother’s H worked, and where a good friend worked. My good friend was called in by HR when D1 turned them down. HR wanted my friend to put some pressure on D1 to accept. My friend said it was up to D1 to do what’s best for her. So it could work the other way too.
sevmom, we used a similar hiring process where everyone interviewing the candidate fills out a form rating the candidate’s skills and personality. Call it a committee if you wish, but there is usually one person whose opinion counts more and understandably so, because this person has to supervise the hire directly. This person is assigned a temporary role of “hiring manager”. So HM = direct supervisor, not a position in HR that makes hiring decisions as some might think. A janitor can be a HM - no kidding. HM has more weight in tipping the scale for or against any given candidate, but no HM could override the team’s completely negative feedback.
BB, Google does not do it that way. The people who interview would rarely be the ones who would be supervising the candidate. Hiring is done by consensus. It is not hierarchical. http://www.impactinterview.com/2011/03/demystifying-the-google-interview-process/ As DrGoogle and I have said, we have kids who have been through this process.
Google is an outlier. Most companies have a version of the model I described - with different weights attached to the opinion of the interviewers depending on how close that hire will be working with them. Hierarchical hiring it is not.
Almost everyone I know has gotten a job through networking. I don’t think it could hurt; at worst, the recommendation could be ignored.
As for qualifications vs. ability to do the job, I can see you not hiring someone without a MD to be a surgeon.
But time and again, people are hired as managers with no business or management experience, and often no experience in the field. A friend was transferred to be an engineering manager with an English degree and no engineering experience. People are promoted based on who they know.
You can see it at Fortune 50 companies regularly; pay skyrockets for managers, and promotions are based on getting along with upper management. I know someone who made 200K per year as a manager with no direct reports and no direct job responsibilities. Paid contractors many times his salary to do the work he was supposed to.
And yes, I agree that turning down a job can bite someone in the butt if they referred you. Also in my case, I knew that I couldn’t leave my current job until my “sponsor” retired because I wouldn’t want it to look bad on him if I left the department in the lurch.
There’s nothing at all “magical” about how Google does things. Nobody said there was. Links about their hiring processes were provided in the interest of accuracy.
Sevmom, I have friends who work
there and am sure not all departments of Google use the process described in the link which mentions engineering, marketing, and business roles.
Just saying, even if there is a “committee”, there is usually a chairperson. Google can make this system work because:
(1) it is a big company and can afford to waste some of its employees’ time on the “committee” work; and
(2) individualism and creativity among the employees of certain divisions trump team skills and fit - because there are no permanent, tightly-knit teams.
Plus, it interviews and hires people daily, so this system makes sense from the efficiency perspective. In other companies, there aren’t enough both new hires and current employees to justify this, so the “hiring teams” are assembled on as needed basis, with the “hiring manager” taking the lead in organizing the schedule and making sure the team fills out the feedback forms and shares the opinions etc.
Google has teams and some stay together longer than others. The ability to work as a team member is important and I would imagine Google does look for fit , flexibility (as many do move between projects) and ability to work as a team member, especially for their engineering positions… http://research.google.com/workatgoogle.html
Sevmom, I don’t disagree, but Google R&D teams have their unique characteristics and are quite fluid, as it is stated on their site. I have friends who work there… It is a very big company. It can afford a few mis-hires.
I agree that the teams tend to be fluid. You still are way ahead of the game if you are a good team member, even if you are on a team for a relatively short time. I doubt there’s any company on the planet that hasn’t made an occasional bad hire.
Um, no, proper regard means seeking the best candidate, not doing favors for friends and relatives. Most crony hires are on a spectrum from minimally qualified to nearly as good as the top person they displaced.
Managers and hired CEOs have a duty to do what is best for the company, not what increases their own social capital (guanxi, protectsia, etc.).
In the world I live in, people are not hired for “social capital”. I’m not even sure how that would work. You get invited to better parties because you hired someone’s child?? More practically what happens is after a few interviews, you come down to a few candidates and then you see that one candidate comes highly recommended by someone whose opinion you value. All things being equal, you would pick the highly recommended candidate and then be grateful to the recommender because you got a great employee. It’s more of a tip in the scales for a prospective employee, not some sort of heavy handed order or imperative or slimy pay-back thing.
Of course not, we won’t do anything that heavy handed. We are too sophisticated, aren’t we? We will just put our resume on top and flaunt what we might be able to do in return if it comes through. Without promising anything of course. Does that make it less wrong? Is it a murder only if you kill by force or is it still a murder If you kill by holding them gently down in a luxury pool or slowly by injecting their favorite drugs?
However you dress it, it is tilting the playing field through family relation. Distinction is in the degree of tilting, do you tilt all the way down in your favor or just wee bit but enough?
Google can make this system work because: