If the reason your job applicant is looking for work is related to them being made redundant in their last role then there are several things that you can expect to occur when you interview them;

• They MAY have some baggage from their last employment (ouch sorry).
• Your job applicant may not be very forthcoming with advising you if they met their targets.
• Your job applicant may appear overly nervous and desperate.
• You will be able to gain referee’s details

Redundancies come in phases. There is a pattern as to who gets laid off and when. Broadly speaking:
Phase 1: Incompetent and low performers are the first to go.
Phase 2: Staff working on projects that are not going to give a viable return within the next 6 months are the second to go.
Phase 3: Next to go are the staff working on the owner’s Pet projects and finally
Phase 4: the staff associated with currently viable projects.

With that in mind, right now most employers that are undergoing redundancies are in phases 1 and 2, namely low performers and non-viable projects. Because of this, you can expect that you will be seeing a lot of low performers applying for your role.

Right now, more than ever, any company employing a new staff person needs to see a fast return on investment – or in other words their viability.

How do you determine the viability of an employee?

Viability =
How much income they can bring to your employer
minus the cost of their wages
minus the cost of training them
minus the cost of managing them
minus the loss of income you made on the difference
in hiring them over a better candidate for the same role.

So, to have a successful interview you will need to clearly determine how well your candidate meets all of these variables. You do not want to be hiring an incompetent worker or low performer.

How do you calculate how much income that a job applicant can bring to a potential employer?

Ask yourself: what is the product that they are going to provide to your company?
How much is that worth as a proportion of the sale price of the item?
Is this role saving other people’s time?
How much is their time worth? A good rule of thumb is that a person’s time is at a least three times what they are being paid.
How much would it cost if the job was not being done?
Who would have to do it instead? How much is their wages?

What is the cost of their wages?

IT Contractors are currently asking between 15-20% less than compared to last year. So you have to know for sure what their skills are valued at presently. Asking your recruiter is the first step. Remember recruitment agencies get paid their fee on the percentage of  salary – the higher the salary the better for them, but they have to get the placement first to be able to invoice!
If you are seeking a contractor using a recruitment agency you can bet that they are taking a hit on margin to get the work – as they too in general are struggling. If you think they are asking too much – come see us!

What is the cost for training them?

They need to show  you that they can hit the ground running. Past similar projects or technology that they have worked on will go a long way to proving this. Have they done their research on your company and the role before your interview? This shows that they are keen and seriously want to make a difference.

What is the cost of managing them?

A high maintenance employee sucks a manager’s time – which in this market is something you surely do not have at the moment. Examples of how they have made things go right, successfully worked autonomously, and/or reconciled noisy factions is worth looking for.

The loss of income they made on the difference in hiring one candidate over another for the same role. Did the applicant meet their targets? Where they in the top 20% for that role over the last 12 months?

How do you calculate the difference in their contribution to another candidate’s?

There is no tangible way you can accurately predict one candidate’s contribution to another person without seeing both their track records. You can of course use the line that hiring a less experienced or less productive person will result in a longer production cycle for the business due to mistakes, learning and re-do’s on inferior work. So what is your applicant’s production record? How much did they produce and in what time frame?

And lastly but most importantly –

How long would it take them to become viable?

Action Plan

Any highly successful person will tell you that ideas that are acted upon within the first 48 hours of conception are those that are most likely to lead to success. OK, so now let’s use this information now before life gets in the way!

The first step for you right now is to create a checklist of questions based on the notes above that you ask every job applicant that you interview.

In the interview, you can guarantee that the checklist responses won’t be easily comparable. That is ok. What you will clearly see is who is a non performer and who has a high probability of being a good-high performer.

Daryl Keeley
B Eng, Dip. Journ
Managing Director
Follow me on twitter

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From Anon on 22/6/09 9:36 am

“Yes thank Daryl, you have got to be fair to both sides because you can make employers preempt this situation and then applicants are knocked back at the first stage.

I can let you in on a secret. “My past employer” would not employ anyone from “a competitor” over 40… There were a few exceptions but 40 was the age and baggage was mentioned. The problem is rife in the major airlines… I might be shot for saying it but that’s inside info.

If I were Macro, I would not give an employer a chance to focus on these issues that applicants should be promoted into the job purely on merit regardless of age and the baggage is actually “credits”. Loyalty and methods from previous employers can be very good protections for employers.

I remember when “another airline” hired very inexperienced staff for ground handling. They had a lot of weight and balance and dangerous goods problems. In the end, hiring experienced staff can safe a lot of grief in training and exposure to incidents.

Anyway thanks for that.

Reply from Daryl Keeley on 22/6/09 10:50 am

Hello Anon I totally agree.
Unfortunately many employers do have fixed ideas on what works. This is usually due to a bad experience in the past.
At the end of the day it all comes down to a persons ability to produce. In my experience, most employers do not screen that area well. This leads me to spend around a 10% of the recruitment process in re-educating those employers.
Pre-empting fixed idea concerns and heading them off early if they are red-herrings has proven to be very useful step to ensure efficient recruitment cycles.

Thank you for your email BTW

From Anon on 22/6/09 10:44 am

Here’s another interesting situation for you to combat (?).

Just say you are going to represent an employer. The employer,Geoff says, “Daryl, I am not really interested in employing anyone over 45.”.

Straight away you would of course say, “Look Geoff we cannot discriminate on age.” right? Despite what was said, you would not present Geoff with a >45 y.o. candidate would you? That’s because you don’t want to get Geoff’s ire up.

Presumably you don’t get into this situation and say things like, over 45s can bring excellent skill and experience into the job (i.e. base on merit) and there are advantages.

See the reality is Daryl, that this is going to occur more and more as the population ages and at some point in time commerce is going to find itself in a bit of a bind.

Again thanks for commenting.

Reply from Daryl Keeley on 22/6/09 11:07 am

Thank you Anon,
Unfortunately, given that we deal with a large number of employers, we do come across these situations.
I always first acknowledge the concern and then ask why this is a concern. I then ask if I could find some one that is an exception to your rule, would you like to hear of them?
So far no one has said no (albeit with a bit of coaching)
I am happy to say that we have successfully placed good candidates that were the exceptions to their rules.