WHAT IS YOUR PERSONAL MISSION STATEMENT?

Steven Cesare, Ph.D.

An efficient business owner from Michigan called me the other day to provide me with an update on his ongoing staffing issues. As we all know, employee staffing is a seemingly interminable task for business owners, whether it is focused on field employees, office staff, or snow laborers. It takes time. A lot of time.

Despite my repetitive admonishments, many business owners continue to participate in the employment interview process, rather than delegating it to the respective Department Manager who should be unilaterally responsible for staffing his/her business unit. Department Managers are solely accountable for everything else in their chain of command, why not for their departmental employees? Though I overtly disagree with them, I understand business owners’ apprehensions regarding a bad hire, capable of leading to a workplace injury, discrimination claim, or challenging the company culture.

It’s their company and I wholeheartedly support their decision.

During our conversation, the always well-prepared business owner aptly reminded me that all job interviews are conducted in a two-on-one format to minimize potential discrimination allegations, each interview incorporates a structured set of questions uniquely tailored for the position at hand, and the interviewers have been trained on illegal questions, rating biases, and documentation procedures. Superb!

Ultimately, the business owner revealed that he and his co-interviewers were becoming increasingly inefficient by going through the entire interview protocol even though the interviewers knew the applicant was not going to be selected. Their commitment to a valid, legal, and thorough interview process was now becoming time consuming, empty, and bureaucratic.

“Any ideas, Steve?”

Realizing that the employment interview process represents a large segment of a company’s brand image, marketing strategy, and public relations effort, interviewers must act with sensitive discretion so as to not irritate or show any form of disrespect to any candidate, in that such brusque treatment could result in negative commentary, gossip, or social media posts capable of contaminating the local labor pool against the company.

You don’t believe me? Read some company reviews from applicants/former employees on Glassdoor.

In response to the Michigan business owner’s appeal for guidance, I harkened back to my days as the Human Resources Director at Bemus Landscape, Inc. During our heyday, we were doing $67,000,000 in annual revenue with 1,150 employees. We were busy! A lot of that busy time was obviously spent on staffing our aggressive growth plans to keep our five branch offices operating at full capacity.

Similar to the Michigan owner’s plight, the executive team expressed frustration with the amount of time wasted interviewing candidates who were going to be rejected. We agreed on multiple courses of action to reduce inefficiency: more detailed job postings, better application review procedures, and improved telephone screening to eliminate unqualified candidates from even getting to the actual selection interview.

While those pre-emptive measures were put in place, we, as an executive team, also agreed that if the hiring Department Manager felt the interviewee was unsatisfactory, the Department Manager would ask the candidate “What is your personal mission statement?” That statement implicitly signified to the other interview panel members that this process, for all intents and purposes was over.

That silly technique worked wonders. Interview time was saved, the candidates never conveyed any aspect of disrespect, and the Department Manager was firmly positioned as the decision maker for his department’s staffing needs.

By the way, if you were wondering, my personal mission statement is: “Pray for wisdom, dig for gold!”

Just curious: Does your personal mission statement align with your company’s Mission Statement?

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