Well, it’s close to the end of summer and I have nothing profound to write this week. However, I did feel the need to do an entry to the blog, as it’s been 2 weeks since my last entry. (When I think that statement out loud – it sounds like I’m doing confession. But, I’m not Catholic, so, I’m not…)

In any case, summer is often quiet from a business perspective. People take vacations and sales or approval cycles, or whatever, just seem to take longer. Even activities organized by professional associations and training/development opportunities seem to dwindle. For those of us left around the office, it’s a great time to get projects done.

Interestingly, I have been working recently on some compensation planning, and I thought I would just make some comments and observations on general economic activity. If I am not mistaken, recent numbers for the most recently tracked period indicate that the rate of inflation is down to -0.9% from the prior month of -0.3%. There are still depressing reports talking about job losses. However, in reality, down here on earth where we live day to day in the trenches, it seems to be a different story…

Every day I hear about people finding new work or changing jobs. Stores, malls and movie theatres are still full of people. Union employees (Toronto Inside/Outside Workers, Driver Test Examiners, etc) are willing to go to the picket lines without pay to fight for increases they feel are justified in this so called “down economy” or shall I say, recession. (Although, by definition, I believe we are at the tail end, or officially out of the recession). And, the salary surveys and data I have recently been reviewing – don’t paint such a bland picture either. While it’s not all sunshine and roses, survey data does not reflect the devastation that mainstream media would lead us to believe.

So, here I am, end of August. Big projects on the go (for more on what projects, you’ll just have to wait). Driving organizational change and ramping up as business begins to return to “normal” for the September back to school / back to work rush. And, all is good!

While interviewing and hiring is very serious business, there are many funny situations which arise. It is important for many reasons to be well prepared – to ensure that you are legally compliant, to asses the best candidate match for the job, to reduce hiring costs, etc. In preparing, most interviewers will review the job specs, read the candidate’s resume, prepare interview questions, arrange for a room and time, have resources available to take notes, etc. Some newer interviewers may also practice their skills or techniques with colleagues or HR.

There are possibly two scenarios where one may not be prepared.

The first can be trained and will grow with experience. This is an area I have commonly been asked by hiring managers and interviews about how to hone. It is the ability to probe and ask the “right”questions to make an assessment of a candidate. To have the ability to know how well the questions are being answered, how truthfully, and how completely. While there are many techniques out tricks out there to practice with, it is usually a matter of finding the right questions, preparing some possible follow up questions or probes ahead of time in anticipation, and continuing down a questioning path until you are satisfied with the response. think about the “5 Why” approach to soliciting information or root/cause analysis and apply it loosely to interviewing.

While I wanted to bring up the above as food for thought, I really wanted to focus today on an area that gets little attention and can be difficult to prepare for. And that would be dealing with situations arising that are inappropriate, unethical or just plain silly. We’ve all had interviewers where we know within the first couple of minutes that things would not work out, but what do you do when you experience blatent racism? Harassment? Vulgar language? Sexual inuendos? And the list goes on.

While I cannot tell you how to handle each and every scenario that may arise, if you are in a position where you will be interviewing, you should think through some possible scenarios and pre-determine how you would respond? In which scenarios would you continue the interview? Which ones would you end it? And, which ones would you find yourself calling security? If other candidates happened to be present in an interview or in a waiting room to experience inappropriate behaviour, how would you handle your response to those other candidates from a PR perspective?

While it is rare for issues to come up, it is the few that you want to be prepared for. In some cases, how might you keep yourself from laughing out loud at a candidate during an interview? Go HERE for for some light hearted humour in a CNN article about “43 weird things said during job interviews”. There are some pretty brazen candidate statements quoted and referenced.