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Why is it acceptable for companies to embellish their "employment value proposition"?
This question springs from another Focus Q&A that explores whether it's ok for candidates to embellish (or "bend the truth") on their resumes. The overwhelming response has been, "it's not ok." John Prpich submitts that it's not better than when employer's embellish or bend the truth about what it's like to work there. But doesn't this happen all the time. Don't we leave the details out? Don't we often portray an incomplete picture? At the very least, don't we really embellish?
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8 Answers
Hiring has become a joke.
Candidates are having resumes professionally written and formatted by others, keyword optimized, embellished and, in the end, are utterly misrepresented by their documents. On the other hand, corporations are increasingly utilizing electronic means to evaluate those resumes and documents and screen the applicant pool, based upon criteria that often are NOT the most important requirements of the job. In large corporations, candidates often have no clear path to looking into the specific team in which they will be involved until the handshake. To believe the team on 5th Avenue is dynamically equivolant to the team on Shoreline Blvd is naive.
Furthermore, through the years I have sat in on hundreds of interviews that have convinced me hiring managers are utterly untrained and unprepared for a quality interview and selection process. They misrepresent their companies and teams often without realizing it by using pat phrases and questions. What hiring manager ever says, "Okay, here are all of the culture problems withing our team"? The mechanics, maybe, but never the culture.
I hear hiring managers every day complaining about catch and release hiring-- bringing on someone they hope will fill the bill, then filtering through them until they find someone who is truly right for the company. In truth, though, too many mediocre people come into companies this way and are never weeded out. There is too much investment in that employee, and no manager likes to engage in the hiring process any more than they absolutely have to.
Mr. Sesh suggests above that there exist candidates who embellish documents knowing that when they jump into that pool they will learn to swim quickly enough to survive. Candidates who constantly learn, grow, improvise and deliver are the very candidates you want in your organization, but this method of finding them is purely accidental. The entire application and interview process should instead be geared specifically to finding such people.
On the flip side, corporations generally are what they are, and have a responsibility to represent themselves openly and clearly. Mr. Bruce suggests companies are becoming more and more transparent. That is simply not the case in the interview room. The faces of successful corporations are carefully crafted and marketed. But the marketed face is not necessarily the same as the culture beneath it. No interviewer comes into an interview, however, saying their team lacks, well, teamwork. They are expected to represent the company in the best light, and that is exactly what they do.
When I was a kid, my dad taught me I had a responsibility to know the truth about my family and to function within it, to support it in good and bad, work to make it better, enjoy the smiles, grow up and deal with the arguments and petty differences. I was to promote family members to the world in success, but draw in tight and protect them away from public view in sickness or failure. And through it all, I was to keep that culture within the family team, and only present the best to those outside the family circle.
Modern corporations might do well to learn from that. Market the glitzy face to the masses, but hire, promote and discipline openly, honestly and with integrity.
Together, let's put the fun back into work!
Belldon Colme
belldoncolme@gmail.com
It's not acceptable and "yes" it's done all the time, but all that means is that candidates have to dig seep into their social networks to find out what the truth is. I've turned down jobs and have walked away from opportunities based on what my research turned up about the company, management team and the hiring manager.
Frankly, I find John Prpich's contention that company mis-representation is wide spread, to be a dubious factoid. I believe businesses are far more transparent than ever before. I believe that the trend is much more towards transparency then deception. Yes there are still many companies that play by the old rules of deception, but it's so much easier to see through today as every company has a digital footprint that rarely lies.
Given the mad rush to hire, most of the time interviewers don't tend to get into the details, teams are often hired based on the subcontractors relationship with them & or some referrals. Hence "bend the truth" even if it exists doesn't stare at you during interview timeframe.
However companies have become a lot more diligent with a possible evaluation cycle for the new joinee in the first few months, where one is considered to be in probation. These testing times, really pull out the wheat from chaff.
I'm currently experiencing this in our own organization, where a tech-support experience is tweaked as a development experience, which fails miserably for the candidates in the very few weeks of them joining. We've been able to isolate these cases with a strong evaluation cycle in the first few months of candidates joining us.
However there are definite exceptions with candidates,who aspire to become something & tweak their documents, however thier meticulous & constant learning to fill the gap, has always helped them succeed.
Embellishment, am sure is here to stay on both sides of the spectrum (employee & employer), am sure both parties are constantly on the watch to evaluate & actionize..
Good question Charlie.
I wouldn't profess to say this is wide-spread, however I know it does exist as a common practice with some companies. These companies, of which I am aware, are scrambling for particular types of professionals and are feeling the crunch of competitiveness with securing these individuals before their competition does.
Generally, the embellishments are centered around retention rates, likelihood of employee referrals, management style of the hiring manager and plethora of interesting work and advancement opportunities.
Given the availability of information and how easily it can be obtained in today's world, companies that practice deception or secrecy as part of their value proposition will be found out and subsequently will suffer from this practice that will undoubtedly tarnish their brand reputation.
Once our economy/workforce moves out of the "I just need a job" scenario we're in, companies that deceive will pay a higher price than perhaps they are now, in both retention and quality of prospects. Whether in the job market or even in marketing, people are looking for and responding to authenticity.
I agree with Belldon. I realised early on in my career that I needed to 'learn how to hire' and can now write appropriate ads to get appropriate applicants. But this was a deliberate action on my part and rarely promoted or required by an employer. I've been in interviews and participated in others that were not even focused on the requirements of the role, or the long term direction of the role.
Too many companies represent themselves, or the function, as something other than what it is, placing ads that request the "ideal" person. Once the person has been hired they struggle as the role is not what they were led to believe. I have seen ads asking for "innovative, progressive applicants, fitting with the culture...", yet I knew these people would not get hired or if they did, they would not last long (one did and lasted 3mths).
I believe this practice of embellishing falls into two buckets - intentional and un-intentional. One is obviously malicious, the other not, but ultimately both have the same result - the employee suffers, as well as the employer.
To Cyndy - I realise some companies have generated a negative brand reputation, but these have gone to the extreme or this conduct has been over a long time. A lot of companies do not suffer to the same extent, or at all. Although it would be ideal to have these practices identified and visible to the world, in reality this is not the case with most companies, hence the pratice will continue and both employee and employer will get burnt.
On the corporate side of hiring, the typical model is to have the HR guy do the rounds of interview, who's there only as a marketing piece for the organization, with some Job Desc provided to him & he goes own with his own story.
The reality on the ground on the execution side, may be totally different, for eg., you present a case of a development project to the candidate during the hiring process, however when he joins he's pushed into maintenance work for some international projects (with some development, mostly bug-fix).. Though corporates haven't misled the interviewee in this process, the understanding inside the various levels of the interviewing team is so shallow, that one gets multitude versions during the various phases of the process.
Companies should have a mechanism to stay unison in their stories to target employees, to make sure they get the right candidates, failing which the desperate ones will definitely join, not productive though.
On the ethical side of corporate, I don't think it's going to happen anytime sooner, given the pressure corporates are going thru, to hire the same guy against a project, which 5 other companies are also vying for.
It's a balancing act, left absolutely to the management team to decide the level at which they will stoop down or go head-high.
@Belldon.. Agree with you, forget about the interview processes, companies especially the offshore ones, have always put the cart before the horse (employees sold to potential clients) without even the employee onboarding process.
Now that leaves only one thing to do--- get the best of your talkative crowd in the organization to market/sell/bully & every other tactic possible to bring the guy on board.
This is a never ending journey, all things about we've the best training models, good bench strength & other marketing techniques are always backed up some hope that you'll find the right guy when the project is ON.
That leaves us with the only Question ---- can anyone be ethical in the hiring process (both sides)...
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