Have you heard the tale of the job candidate who opened her
purse, pulled out a brownie, and started munching at the CEO's
desk? When the executive vented his shock, the woman said she
was merely trying to maintain her blood sugar level.
What about the chief technology officer who asked a prospective
employee how he could contribute to the company, and the programmer
threw his hiking boot-clad feet on the CTO's oak desk and said,
"What can you do for me?"
Recruiters and human
resource managers sadly recount these stories and dozens of
similar ones, insisting that uncouth behavior has become alarmingly
commonplace in job interviews. They argue that the nation's
low unemployment rate has created a job seeker's market in which
prospective employers are willing to forgive a multitude of
sins. In the process, they say, interview etiquette has become
as scarce as the hand-written thank-you note.
Job candidates for
computer or Internet companies in the nation's technology hubs
seem especially unschooled. From personal hygiene quirks to
body-piercing faux pas, recruiters say their repertoires of
horror stories are growing faster than the preponderance of
tongue studs among urban youth.
Many employers are
willing to shrug off small breaches of civility, including job
candidates who neglect to shake hands or make eye contact. What
most alarms recruiters is the prevailing attitude that the worker,
not the prospective employer, controls the interview.
Their biggest complaint:
job candidates who talk about compensation, particularly their
salary or how many stock options they will receive, before they
discuss their career path. Another annoyance is candidates who
discuss quality-of-life factors, such as telecommuting privileges
or flexible hours, before determining their role at the company.
"The common
thing that I see, particularly with top technology people, is
an attitude that they're the only debutante at the dance,"
said Mark Kesic, vice president of Cleveland-based executive
search firm Christian & Timbers, which specializes in filling
technology positions. "There's some amount of arrogance
that comes in, and civility can sometimes go out the door."
How much has etiquette
deteriorated?
A cottage industry
specializing in teaching manners to engineers and programmers
is sprouting with the tech industry. Recruiters, who get paid
only when companies hire their clients, often find that they
must brief candidates on the most basic interview skills: what
to wear, how to shake hands, how to write a resume.
One recruiter does
a "sandals check" to make sure that candidates wear
closed-toe shoes when meeting a company's top executives. One
screens for tube socks. One tries to meet candidates for lunch
to make sure they don't talk with their mouth open or use utensils
improperly.
Another is adamant
about her "rule of accessories": The fewer earrings,
studs, rings and hoops--particularly on the face--the better
the chance of getting hired.
• Ignorance isn't
bliss.Another pet peeve of recruiters and the people who
conduct interviews is the job candidate who arrives with little
or no knowledge of the company or position offered.
Human resource executives
hang the ignorant candidate phenomenon on aggressive recruiters,
who descend on anyone who posts a resume online--regardless
of whether the potential worker is interested in a new job or
whether that person knows details of the new role.
But others argue
that the Internet is the salvation to the ignorance issue.
"With the Internet,
you've got easy access to a company's annual report and other
information," said William Lampton, a professional speaker
and corporate trainer who specializes in business communication
and etiquette. "The interviewer expects you to know the
basic history, milestones, leaders and the stock price. There
should be no excuse for walking in and saying, 'What's your
product?' but it happens all the time."
Experts blame the
overall decorum decline on several factors: the technology industry's
voracious demand for talented professionals, the sector's relatively
young work force, and its hallmark informality, manifested in
the industry's overwhelmingly casual dress code.
• High-tech talent
drought. Given the supply of and demand for programmers
and engineers, technophiles may have reason to be smug. The
unemployment rate in some niches of the tech sector is less
than 1 percent, compared with the national rate of 4.1 percent
in May, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
According to IT staffing
and consulting firm Management Decisions Inc. (MDI), the tech
industry will create an estimated 1.5 million new positions
in 2001. Because of the severe shortage of qualified workers,
roughly half of those spots will go unfilled.
The job market in
some regions is even tighter. According to the Association of
Bay Area Governments, California's Silicon Valley has 1.06 jobs
for each employable resident, effectively creating a negative
unemployment rate in the tech-heavy region. That means demand
for all local workers, even churlish ones, is heightened.
"High tech
is a very forgiving industry, so everyone is lax," said
John Bongiorno, founder and CEO of New York-based MyRecruiter.com,
a Web-based staffing firm that focuses exclusively on the Internet
industry. "Desperate companies don't care if the candidate
is a job hopper. They're not doing background checks...If they
see C++ or Java on the resume, you're in, regardless of your
manners." Trash talk According to recruiters and human
resource managers, these are the 10 most common mistakes by
job candidates:
1. Have
little or no knowledge of the company, products, culture or
competitive landscape.
2. Presume they will get the job.
3. Want to know about salary or stock options before
they discuss job responsibilities or their career path.
4. Cancel interviews, show up late or leave early for
no apparent reason.
5. Flaunt other job offers or try to incite bidding wars
early in the interview process.
6. Show little regard for hygiene or conventional dress
codes.
7. Use their cell phone during the interview.
8. Have unsightly eating habits at restaurant meetings.
9. Chew gum, suck on water bottles, pop mints or smoke
during interviews.
10. Overextend their stay by asking too many questions.
Bob Winter, the senior
technical recruiter for Atlanta-based MDI, recounted one story
in which a C++ developer from Eastern Europe interviewed for
a position with a U.S. company. The man couldn't speak English
and never uttered a word during the interview.
"Whenever he
was asked questions, he would just nod his head," Winter
said of the job candidate, a coder for Internet-based applications.
"It was without a doubt the most unsettling interview I've
ever sat in on. I wanted to grab the guy by the lapel and say,
'Hey, answer the questions!' But you know what? He got the job
without even being able to verbalize his skills."
• Youthful indifference?
Others blame a decline in etiquette--and downright interview
ineptitude--on the relatively young and inexperienced work force
that has fueled the Internet start-up boom.
Although reliable
statistics are scarce, it's not uncommon for the average age
of a medium-sized Internet company in San Francisco or New York
to be 26 or 27. Small companies are often considerably younger,
with some top execs bordering on the legal drinking age.
"There are these
very wealthy young people in the (Silicon) Valley making a couple
hundred thousand a year, and they haven't had any etiquette
training in 15 years or more, since they were little kids,"
said Sue Fox, president of Etiquette Survival of Los Gatos,
Calif. "There's a lack of social graces, and people aren't
pulled together."
The situation was
becoming so dire that Fox, the former executive assistant to
Steve Jobs at Apple Computer, decided to start a company training
professionals in business etiquette. Fox trains employees on
proper office protocol, and her clients range from small companies
to Fortune 500 corporations.
Another culprit in
the tech industry's disdain for decorum is the sector's notoriously
casual dress code.
Big-city law firms
and investment banks have made headlines in recent years for
their "business casual" approach, in which they allow
workers to wear a uniform of khakis and denim button-down shirts
on Fridays--or every day, if the company is trying to shake
its stodgy image.
But even the most
liberal etiquette experts blanche at the uniform of dot-com
workers, known as "weekend casual": T-shirts, overalls,
cutoff shorts, jogging pants, sneakers, sandals and denim. Workers
may dress up on Fridays, but only because they are planning
to meet a date after work. Nose rings, exposed tattoos and multiple
earrings are common.
Experts say such
informality has made many job candidates confused about what
to wear to the initial interview: Should they wear a conventional
blazer or suit and risk seeming too prim? Or should they dress
to distress, fitting in with fellow cube dwellers but possibly
alienating the top brass?
Anne Gregor, editorial
director at job placement service CareerPath.com, insisted that
conventional dress codes should almost always apply to interviews,
regardless of what most workers wear.
"Unless you
literally know half the people in the office and can approach
it slightly less formally, the old rules still apply,"
Gregor said. "At a minimum, wear a polo shirt and khakis.
No sandals, no bare feet, no shorts, no three-day-old beard.
And please rethink the piercings for that initial appearance."
• Interviewing
101
Casual clothing may be one cause for the deterioration of
interview protocol, but job candidates say much of the blame
lies with companies themselves.
Many job seekers
say that the low unemployment rate, combined with an emphasis
on filling engineering roles before "soft" positions
in human resources, has caused a drop in the skill level of
interviewers and a deterioration of the interview process.
• Watch video
Jim Zaleski, a senior account executive at Mindstorm Communications
Group in New York City, said recent job interviews for public
relations positions in the tech industry were exercises in frustration.
"I have interviewed
with CEOs, HR professionals and senior account personnel to
find, only in the rarest occasion, any formal training in the
interview process," Zaleski wrote via email. "Formal
HR tools, such as the three-tier interviewing process and personal
account recognition, are being replaced with 'Tell me about
yourself' and 'So, do you like technology?'
"As an industry,
we find ourselves pointing at interviewees and asking why they
only meet a minimal level of professionalism. What we don't
ask is, who set the level?"
Some say the very
executives who are eager to hire top talent have helped destroy
etiquette, creating a vicious cycle of desperate companies and
rude job candidates. If employers loudly tout benefits such
as stock options and tuition reimbursement, workers say, why
should interviewers expect job candidates to talk about anything
else?
Gary Wimp, vice president
of human resources at Interwoven, said it's difficult to walk
a fine line between attracting lots of talented job candidates
and weeding out the uncouth. Interwoven, a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based
software company that hires 60 to 75 new workers per month,
recently sponsored a talent search in which qualified candidates
who took jobs received a BMW Z3 roadster.
"On the surface,
it sounds like we're just getting flooded with people interested
in the car, but...it broadens the resume funnel so we have more
to chose from," Wimp said. "If the first question
out of their mouth is something about equity, that's a real
red flag. I'm looking for someone who's talking long term, asking
me questions about what we'll do for their career development."
