hullmark's hallmarks

tips for job-seekers from a hiring manager

You would think that in this economy, where the California unemployment rate has topped 10%, that it'd be a total piece of cake for hiring managers to find great folks to fill any job opening. But I think that in my 15 years of hiring, right now is still a pretty hard time to hire folks, too.

Why? The signal-to-noise ratio is way out of whack, and it's about finding the right fit.

My most recent Senior Product Manager opening has attracted 125+ LinkedIn candidates, 200+ Craiglist applicants, and another 100+ coming from referrals, twitter, other job sites etc. Recruiters have probably screened another 500 candidates for me, so call it 1,000 applicants. I've phone screened probably about 25 people (~3%) and brought in 6 people for interviews (0.6%). My earlier post for an office manager role attracted the same volume, including former VPs from Merrill Lynch. It's a tough market out there.

People have gotten smarter with getting hiring managers' attention. Obviously, it's easy for me to filter out the semiconductor engineer from Cairo, Egypt (true!) for my consumer online job. Thankfully, I'm seeing more candidates who more closely meet the requirements to try and get a phone screen. Great! Btw, I'm willing to take a chance on people who may not be a perfect fit if they bring other unique things to the table. I'm sure others are, too (so take heart, mr semiconductor)

So, first off, congratulations on swimming in a really tough current, and getting noticed. Now, that you have my attention, here are 5 things you can do to help me think you're the right person to bring in (this may be biased toward product managers, but can apply universally, I think).

1) Spend time with the product. A lot. Go figure, but very few people I talk with spend more than 10 minutes with the product, if at all. It shows really fast when you ask them questions about the experience. It's important to spend time with the product for a lot of reasons, but I'm mostly interested when you use that time to...

2) Share your top 5 ideas for making the product/service/experience better. This tells me a lot. It tells me whether you did #1, and also, how you think about addressing customer needs. I don't care if the ideas are wrong, or if you missed the customer, but if your ideas are good at helping improve the user experience, and ideally, advancing the company in a strategic way, I'll immediately be intrigued. Chances are we'll only have time to talk about one, so have a little depth, but be prepared to discuss others.

3) Ask good questions. How do I know whether you're really interested in my company, or whether I'm just Company #235 on your list today? By the questions you choose to ask me. I always save time at the end of interviews to see what questions people have. If it's only about next steps, then that's not enough. Ask the questions that will help me know you understand what it takes to be a great part of the team (i.e., if you're a product person, ask insightful product questions. One example: Ask how we learn about our customers and their needs.)

4) Have some understanding of the marketplace. I love it when people understand what we're facing in the marketplace, how that might be affecting our strategy and revenue model, and how competitors may have influenced this thinking. Industry knowledge isn't in the top 3 of criteria for me, but knowing you've done some homework, even if you're not from the space, helps me know that you can adapt quickly, and that you'll have a context for making good decisions.

5) Show me you care. The market is terrible, yes, and I'm very hopeful that I can do something to help you and as many others as I can. Ideally, I want to know at the end of the call, or cover letter, that you're the person I should get to know because you LOVE this kind of role and LOVE this kind of company (e.g., startup), and LOVE this kind of space (e.g., consumer online). Passion goes a long way, but it has to be focused in a relevant way for it to matter. Btw, I share opportunities at other companies with former candidates I've spoken with who I thought were great, but not a right fit with my place, so if I'm left with that feeling, I'm going to want to help you, and stay connected with you. Who knows what will happen down the road.

My best advice: Apply for fewer jobs. But when you apply for one, really invest your time so anyone would be a fool to not bring you in for at least a round of interviews. The rock stars I was lucky enough to hire in the past all did these five things with flying colors...

I'll be surprised if anyone is surprised with these tips. No brainer, right? Well, I don't think it happens enough, and it surprises me. So I hope this can be helpful to someone. Let me know if you have any tips to add in the comments below, and let me know if there's anything I can do to help you.

5 ways google health could be better

I tweeted over the weekend about how I wondered whether Google Health was completely useless, or just partially useless. Well, someone asked why, and since Twitter only gives you 140 characters to respond, I thought I'd write a really really quick post on the topic to respond back. I just picked 5 from the top of my head, but if I had more than 10 minutes, I could probably easily come up with 50.

The whole reason for this is that I worked on taxes over the weekend, and it took me several hours to go through all our medical bills, itemizations, and health insurance paperwork. We're parents of a special-needs child, and we spend a lot more time with the health care industry than I'd wish on anyone, so maybe we have a unique perspective (although the more I learn, sadly, not so unique). In short, the health care industry is kind of jacked, so it feels like there's room to innovate. Yeah, I know Steve Case and Doug Hirsch are probably smirking since they both ran startups that tried to tackle this, nevertheless, work with what you've got, right?

1) Physicians Index. Yeah, thanks for the link to Google Yellow Pages. Why not leverage your community better? Can't someone make an Angie's List for physicians? I'd pay $100/year for the best recommendations/reviews on everyone in the medical community, as written by patients. I know Goog has a link to some reviews, but mostly not, and they're buried, and they're not relevant. Five stars and a description doesn't cut it. Why not rate on quality, time waiting, expertise, bedside manner, etc? Sure, you don't always want to rely 100% on cardiothoracic referrals from the same guy who reviewed the donut shop down the street, but right now there's an absence of community reviews out there. If I wanted the Yellow Pages, I'd use the Yellow Pages. Even better, look at my medical info I've submitted, and make suggestions. Also, know my schedule (leverage Calendar data) and suggest professionals that can accommodate my schedule better. Finally, can't you learn my health care provider or insurance preferences and then refine the searches? Apply just 5% of your search juice prowess to this site. Ta-da, now you're better than Yellow Pages.

2) Create a Contact. Really? You want me to make a pseudo address book for you? Why does this create value for me? Why not store information on billing, or provide a better mechanism for medical providers to provide contact info or other details other than what's generically available? (Maybe that exists, but I can't see it since I'm not a provider). At minimum, why don't you let me store billing information here? See #3)

3) Lack of Billing/Claim Information. Ok, i get it. The whole thing about the health care industry is that the information is hard to get. It's not universally stored, nevermind consistently online. That's tough. So why don't you do something about it, at minimum putting in the hands of users? Look at Mint.com. Crap, that site is just beautiful in how it aggregates account information, and stores it in a meaningful way that is easy to parse. Can't I give you my login information, and let you scrape the data from the major providers? No? What if I uploaded claims forms to you? (PDF/Doc scanners?) Not that? What if I emailed my receipts/claims to you (e.g., TripIt style).  Still no good? Crap, just give me a web form where I can type in the details myself. Link to provider, treatment, claim status, oh and let me link to my HSA/FSA accounts, too, since there's a good chance I'm sending requests for pre-tax reimbursement, too. You let me do that, then bingo, I now have a reason to fill out your Create a Contact. Also, you can begin to infer payment data as to how well insurance companies reimburse for what treatments, and how fast (holy crap, that'd be totally useful information that I'd be willing to pay for in suggestion #1). Finally, let me export/track data in aggregate easily at tax time so I don't waste a bunch of hours doing it myself.

4) Why Am I Working So Hard? I love what you're trying to do by getting me to write up my complete medical history (good luck with that one), but can't you make that an easier experience? What about a "medical interview" where you're doing a Q & A style analysis? Something that guides me through the process? Or what if you made it progressive? Everyday, email me a question, or when I log into Google, ask me one more thing to help fill that out, because looking at it right now, I ain't got time for the pain of filling out all those forms. If you're going to still do it the hard way, at least make it easier and more convenient for me. Think about Lose It on the iPhone. Great app, and easy to access as I eat and exercise (or not).

5) Where's the Love? In case you missed it, one of the biggest parts of a health site has to be the community. OK, I'm biased because I run community sites, but search Google Groups, Yahoo Groups, and look at the success of Daily Strength (go ask Brandon Long who built those first two things -- he gets it). They thrive because of the people in there. Managing your health sucks. The community helps it suck less. Suggest communities for me to join based upon what I tell you. Make that a bigger part of your experience, because while I'm not going to tell you my latest asthma symptom each day, I am instead very likely to log in every day to see what my Parents of Autistic Children support group has to say about what treatments they're finding successful, and how they're coping through the day. While I'm there, maybe I'll help build the other stuff. Btw, I know Marissa loves plain-white design, but could you do anything to make your service feel less like a tool, and more like a place I can build a relationship with? You're asking me to give you very personal information. Don't make me feel like I'm in the doctor's office filling out forms next to some guy with whooping cough. Actually, if you could do that, it could be kinda funny.

Notice that I didn't rip on y'all for not getting significant medical providers signed up for Google Health to transfer medical records. I totally get how hard that is. But while you're focusing so much on trying to solve that problem, you're neglecting to do something today that you could easily have a major impact on the people you serve. You could do this in about 4-6 weeks I think. Don't have the time? Ok, find some team and pay them $100K, because hell, that's the most it should take.