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Published in U.S. 1 Newspaper on May 31, 2000. All rights
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E-mail: msherwood@princetoninfo.com
Let’s Talk About Me
All too often employers waste a job interview talking
about themselves and not quizzing the candidate, says Jesse
Behrens,
director of the New Jersey Department of Labor’s Division of Business
Services. “Recent surveys have shown that the job interview is
the least effective way to choose from job candidates, and that’s
usually because it’s done improperly,” says Behrens, a 16-year
veteran of the Department of Labor.
Its Division of Business Services offers several employer human
resource
support services programs, including one on “Selection
Interviewing
and the Selection Process,” on Thursday, June 8, at 9 a.m. at
the Labor Building in Trenton. The seminar is sponsored by the
Employers
Association of New Jersey. Call 609-984-3518. Cost: $10.
Behrens is an advocate for a technique called the “structured
behavior-based interview,” wherein questions posed to job
candidates
are specifically job-related, such that the interviewer elicits
information
about what the candidate has done in the past that correlates with
the job to be filled. If the job demands problem-solving skills, for
example, the interviewer asks a candidate to explain situations in
which he or she has resolved problems in the past. “Structured,
behavior-based interviews involve good, open-ended questions where
the candidate does most of the talking,” says Behrens.
In addition to the resume, results of skill and personality tests,
and references, the interview is an essential component of the hiring
process. But it’s here that employers are most clumsy, says Behrens,
who says DON’T do the following:
Get caught unprepared. Rather, know the job descriptionand prepare good open-ended questions so that the interviewee is doing80 percent of the talking (Behrens calls this the “Eighty-TwentyRule”).Give away too much about the job. This may shape acandidate’sanswers. “If you tell them the job is stressful and you ask `howdo you handle stress,’ they’re going to tell you what you want tohear,” says Behrens.Ask inappropriate questions. Civil Rights laws prohibitmaking employment decisions based on race, religion, gender, age,disability, or family status. “All too often that informationis directly or indirectly elicited,” says Behrens, “and whilethat, in and of itself, may not be a violation of Civil Rights law,it provides the company with information that they should not haveand it may come back to haunt them when they try to justify who theyhired.”Rely too much on credentials or, conversely, intuition.Accept general or vague responses . Probe instead. “Alot of interviewers have a fear of doing this,” says Behrens.Succumb to “pressure to hire.” “In today’stight labor market, there’s certainly a lack of people that have theskills that many jobs require, so there’s a tendency to settle forless than what would be a good job match,” says Behrens.Fail to check references. One excuse employers cite isthat companies only give name, rank, and serial number of the employeein question, but if you don’t make the effort, you could put yourselfin danger, says Behrens. “There’s a legal concept called negligenthiring that applies when the employer should have known that a personwas either violent, a thief, or incompetent,” says Behrens. Whenpossible, try to reach the person closest to the ex-employee.”Sometimesyou get the information anyway because they don’t know anybetter,”he says.Reference checking is critical, says Behrens, because “pastbehavioris the best predictor of future behavior.”Top Of PageBig Banks vs. Small BanksTaking information about customers and translating thatinto new products is an opportunity community banks need to snap up,says George Scharpf, CEO of Amboy National Bank since 1981.”We have been able to analyze our client base and start to promotethose who we believe are more likely to be interested in certainproducts,”he says.Where are big bank “Goliaths” most susceptible? Are Goliath’sone-stop financial services what customers really want? How doesservicework with technology to create powerful customer relations?Scharpf and CEOs from two other community banks, Charles Hammof Independence Community Bank and Stephen Laine, CEO of FirstBankAmericano, will answer those questions on Thursday, June 8, at8:30 a.m. at the New Jersey Bankers Association meeting on “Davidsversus Goliaths” at the Woodbridge Hilton. Call 609-924-5550.Cost: $55.With over $1.4 billion in assets, 15 offices and 250 employees inNew Jersey, Amboy is a Goliath in New Jersey, says Scharpf, but itfunctions more like a David in that it is actively involved in thecommunity — particularly in the area of housing — in Monmouthand Middlesex counties. “We feel homeowners are a very largesegmentof New Jersey so we redirected the company to target homeowners andhomebuyers,” he says. “We will be able to serve a largerportionof the community than the big banks in terms of service loans. Sincewe’re heavily oriented towards housing, we believe we have improvedour capabilities in dealing with customers who either are homeownersor want to be, so we develop products.”In the 1980s, Scharpf, who worked for Citibank in New York aftergraduatingfrom Notre Dame in 1962, introduced the half-pay mortgage at Amboy,which allowed homeowner to make a payment every two weeks. Also, asa result of the Gramm Leach Bliley Act, banks are now able to offerfinancially-related services for the first time, and Amboy is startingwith Title Insurance for homebuyers and Homeowners Insurance,Integrating technology, particularly Internet technology, is stillan uncomfortable area for community banks, however. “We’restartingto see a steady flow of deposits and home equity loans come throughthe Web,” says Scharpf, “but we don’t haven’t anything todifferentiate in terms of pricing. Technology in and of itself doesn’tdo a lot. It’s only if you can increase the quality of the experienceyou have with clients. It also helps if it increases the volume andkeep the same number of people.”Above all, small banks have the capacity for relationship-bankingthat large banks just don’t have, so they need to capitalize on this,says Scharpf.Top Of PageMercer OnlineYou have pop quiz from your professor — it arrivesby E-mail.This is how Mercer County College intends to give its pop quizzesthis summer. In a paradigm shift marking the onset of the electronicage, MCCC is offering nine summer courses online for those who can’tmake it to campus or want to upgrade their skills for a new career.”Students responded so favorably to our first online courses thatwe have expanded,” says Yvonne Chang, Mercer’s director ofcommunityeducation.Appropriately, of the courses offered online many cover Internettopics.There’s a course on creating Web pages, Javascript, Java, and CGIprogramming, Microsoft Windows, Quickbooks, PhotoShop and QuattroPro.Two certificate programs, Project Management Principles and ParalegalCertificate, will also be taught online.Courses are delivered to students via E-mail twice a week for sixweeks and are supplemented by interactive quizzes, assignments,tutorials,and online discussions. Sessions run from June 14 through July 21,July 12 through August 18, and August 9 through September 15. Mostcourses cost $99. Call 609-586-9446, or to get your feet wet, tryregistering online: www.ed2go.com/mccc.edu.Top Of PageSummer WorkSnelling Personnel Services at 350 Alexander Road isoffering local college students scholarship money totaling $1,500for working with the agency on a temporary basis this summer. Eachweek that student works on an assignment for a Snelling clients theirname is entered into a pool. At the end of the summer there is adrawingfor the scholarships. The more weeks students works, the more timestheir name is added to the pool. Call 609-683-4040.Top Of PageCorporate AngelsVolunteers from Goldman Sachs on Mount Lucas Road spent twodays painting rooms in the Eden Family of Services’ newest group home— Noonan House. Located in Rocky Hill, Noonan House is scheduledto open this summer and will house six adults with autism. It isEden’sninth group home, named in honor of the chairman of the board oftrustees,William Noonan. Call 609-987-0099.The Princeton Family YMCA’s Seventh Annual Family Festival and BikeTour, held on May 21, was sponsored by Church & Dwight, Dow Jones,Fleet Bank, Johnson & Johnson, Kepner Tregoe, Mason, Griffin &Pierson,Merrill Lynch, Princeton Capital Management, Princeton Nassau Conover,RCN, Charles Schwab, and Saphire Associates.Rider University received a grant of $150,000 from the New JerseyState Library to support the wrappings and preservation of theLouis A. Leslie shorthand collection housed in the university’sarchives.Last year the state library provided $14,204 for preservation work.Call 609-895-5440.Previous StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
