{"id":374,"date":"2008-02-07T20:38:25","date_gmt":"2008-02-07T18:38:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/en\/?p=374"},"modified":"2014-03-12T16:41:29","modified_gmt":"2014-03-12T14:41:29","slug":"hiring-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/2008\/02\/07\/hiring-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Hiring again"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hiring again
\n<\/strong> While one third of my team is at hospital \/ home being ill for different reasons, we started the 2008\u2019s round of hiring personnel. Honestly I feel quite uncomfortable with the idea, as it takes lots of time and the results are usually not amazing. But when I see around me at my office, I look at some of my people who I chose through this procedure and I become courageous again, being proud of their character, personality, seriousness and decision to succeed in life. As this starts again, it inspired me to write today few things about hiring\u2026<\/p>\n

A\u2026 \u201cdetermined\u201d person wants to be hired<\/h2>\n

-\u201cAnd why do you want to work in my company?\u201d
\n– \u201cI don\u2019t know\u201d
\n– \u201cWhat are your skills?\u201d
\n– \u201cI don\u2019t know, maybe that I like to work hard and I need money because life here is difficult\u201d
\n– \u201cAre you going to succeed in doing the tasks that I described to you?\u201d
\n– \u201cI don\u2019t know, maybe I am not good enough\u201d
\n– \u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d
\n– \u201cI don\u2019t have experience, I don\u2019t know a lot of things to do, I am not sure that I want to work now\u201d
\n– \u201cAnd what are you going to do with your life?\u201d
\n– \u201cI don\u2019t know, I will see\u201d
\n– \u201cI am sorry, why did you come here for an interview?\u201d
\n– \u201cYou called me\u201d
\n– \u201cWe called you because you sent us your CV and asked for an interview\u201d
\n– \u201cI did?\u201d
\n– \u201cYes, this is your CV here\u201d
\n– \u201cOk, sorry, my mistake then. Bye\u201d (he \/ she stands up, turns his \/ her back and leaves)
\nThis is a typical part of dialogue that happens at least in one of the ten interviews I do and whoever DARES to say that I exaggerate, I have another 200 people ready to declare that things are even worse.<\/p>\n

After Agatha Christie\u2019s \u201cThe 10 small Indians\u201d, here it comes:<\/strong><\/p>\n

The 3 secretaries<\/h2>\n

It was the end of a long morning, almost 16.00, in the end of August. I had over 50 scheduled interviews for a secretary and assistant manager, out of which I was happy to interview the record number of 19!<\/strong> (usually not more than 25% appears to scheduled interviews). I shook hands with the last candidate and told to myself for a moment \u201cbetter 3 than none\u201d.
\n<\/strong> While this last candidate thanked me, we decided the details and the existing assistant was showing her the way down (my office is at the first floor of our villa \u2013 headquarters), I was summing up the situation: I had fired one secretary for not working and the second one came to me after few days informing that she will work for a giant multinational company who offered her a salary she could not resist. She was an excellent colleague, but for keeping her I had to pay 2.000 euros \/ month, as the giant offered her 1.800! (25 years old, with few months of experience\u2026 Sorry guys, wasn\u2019t it too much for starters?)<\/strong>
\nFor this reason I decided to hire 3 persons, so as to be sure that at least the 2 of them will prove to be good at my work (yes, I never stop dreaming). So, I agreed with 3 ladies to work together<\/strong>, SHOOK HANDS (for me this is the strongest contract) with them and I felt that this task was completed\u2026 Wrong feeling\u2026<\/p>\n

Three, meaning two\u2026
\n<\/strong> Out of these 3 ladies, the last one<\/strong> I shook hands with was someone declaring that she is very serious and professional, with years of work abroad and desire to start here a successful career. She shook hands, stood up, I called the assistant, the assistant came, she opened the door, I introduced them each other, they shook hands together, I announced to my existing assistant that this lady will work together with us. Maybe it was too long and tiring procedure, because when my \u201cnew colleague\u201d closed the door and left together with the assistant, the assistant said: \u201cI am glad that we will work together, you look very serious\u201d and received the answer \u201cBut who said we will work together? I will go to an interview of HP\u201d. <\/strong>We never heard of her again\u2026 (and honestly I didn\u2019t bother asking HP if they really hired this serious lady).<\/p>\n

Two, this only one\u2026
\n<\/strong> The first one<\/strong> I had hired was a lady around 30. \u201cI am married, I have 2 children, I need the work, I am very serious and determined\u201d would be her motto in few words. After we shook hands with her, she simply disappeared \u201cbecause she decided that she wanted something better\u201d. <\/strong>Believe it or not, she sent us her CV again after around 3 months, I saw it by co-incidence. When we called her, she was willing to come for an interview. After we explained to her who we are, she answered that she doesn\u2019t remember all the companies she applies to. No comment\u2026<\/p>\n

One? None\u2026
\n<\/strong> The second hired lady was around 23 \u2013 24.<\/strong> Needless to say that she declared her professionalism etc and apparently she surprised me by appearing to the first training that I organized for all the new ones (for me even an assistant manager must know the basics of my work, so as to participate, understand, help or simply to have the possibility to be promoted in the future). So, she was there in the training of Saturday, also on Monday at work.
\n <\/strong>The existing assistant was supposed to leave in few weeks (the multinational giant gave her one month period to join) and she asked her new colleague: \u201cAre you going to stay? Shall I show you everything here? If you are not sure, please tell me, so as not to lose our time, you see, the work here is much\u201d \u201cAre you crazy??? OF COURSE I want to know, didn\u2019t I come for this reason? Who do you think I am???\u201d.<\/strong> She showed her all and they both came to my office a the end of the day, so as to inform me that the new one knows now all the basics and she just needs to practice in action what she heard and saw that day.
\n <\/strong>On Tuesday morning, she \u201cworked\u201d few hours and then\u2026 it was the time I cursed mobile telephony \u2026 her mobile rang. She went out of her office to answer it, returned in 2 minutes, took her coat and said to the surprised people \u201cit was nice to meet you, I go because Porsche Romania invited me for an interview\u201d (interview, not even job).<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong>Well, to be very honest with you, after the shock of losing all 3 persons I hired, I felt very happy and saved. My saviors were these 3 ladies, who disappeared and \u201callowed\u201d me to hire in their position 2 very good and serious persons instead. But the lesson remains: While hiring in Romania, if you do not work for a company with a major multinational brand \u2013 known to Romanian people, wait to see if and who will actually come to work.
\n <\/strong>PS. Coming from Greece, I want to assure you that the symptoms are exactly the same there. But the only difference is that usually the % of people who behave like this is not the same.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hiring again While one third of my team is at hospital \/ home being ill for different reasons, we started the 2008\u2019s round of hiring personnel. Honestly I feel quite uncomfortable with the idea, as it takes lots of time and the results are usually not amazing. But when I see around me at my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":59454,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[215,238],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iliaspapageorgiadis.ro\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}