How - Dov Seidman [80]
In the days before hypertransparency, the hiring process could be described as a carefully orchestrated dance between company and recruit, each trying to control and mete out information about themselves in a way that achieved their desired outcome. Interviewees would construct an image of themselves on paper in the form of a resume, and then dress themselves up and put their best face forward, highlighting their strengths while hoping that their weaknesses were well hidden. Many simply make things up. A recent New York Times Job Market research team study indicates that an astounding 89 percent of job seekers fudge their resumes. Typical embellishments include exaggerated job responsibilities, falsified employment dates, and manufactured reasons for leaving a former employer.37 According to a recent article in Time magazine, InfoLink Screening Services, a company that performs background checks on potential hires, estimates that 14 percent of applicants lie about their education. Organizations, in turn, would do their own dance, presenting their greatest successes and painting a picture they hope will seduce the recruit.38
These sorts of common obfuscations no longer fly in a world where almost everything you say can be easily verified. Information technology has driven down the cost of uncovering applicant fabrications to almost nothing. Fully 96 percent of businesses now routinely perform background checks on potential employees. The third-party screening industry, just a handful of firms in the mid-1990s, in 2007 numbers around 700 companies doing $2 billion worth of business per year. On the other side of the coin, almost any candidate can search blogs and message boards and chat rooms, look deep within an organization, and gain accurate information about not only its prospects, but what it is like to work there day to day.
Success in any business relationship flows from the alignment of the parties involved. The more closely an organization and recruit share the same vision for the future, the more productive and fulfilling that relationship will be. In the new, more vulnerable world of business, where innovation and growth spring from the leadership of every stakeholder, achieving synchronicity, alignment, and common goals can cement a relationship that creates enormous value for both parties. So let us ask ourselves a question: On what vision can we truly align? Job description? Salary? Benefits? Production goals? Can we truly align in a way that inspires us to achieve at our highest levels on the basis of these measures of success?
Paradoxically, success is the worst possible answer. People who seek their next job on the basis of these external measures stay in a company’s foxhole only as long as their career goals and aspirations stay in line with what’s happening to the company. Their alignment is coincidental, not deep. They continue to work hard for the company’s mission only as long as the mission works for their resume. Success, in this way, is a WHAT, and in any business journey, the WHATS will change. If, though, you see your career decisions as fueled by the desire to build a legacy, to construct and provide values to others—in short, to do something significant—then you begin to open the doors to the possibility of a deeper form of alignment, alignment on HOW. People and companies align on values, on the HOWS of pursuing a goal, not on personal success or the success of the effort. Values are inspirational, and last long after short-term WHATS expire. Long-term alignment can best be achieved when individual and organization align and mutually embrace the HOWS that drive the enterprise. According to a Watson Wyatt Worldwide WorkUSA study, companies whose employees understand and embrace the corporate mission,