Seeking Gems in a Sea of Manure

The Cranky Product Manager dislikes hiring people. DysfunctoSoft's entire recruiting process is a bore. And frustrating. And seemingly designed to ensure the hiring of the mediocre.* 

Each step, each phase, is pure tedium:

1) The crafting of dreary "this is a totally wicked awesome job and DysfunctoSoft is such a crazy FUN company that (get this!) we have a PING PONG table. And we feed you Costco pizza FOR FREE on Fridays! Wow! What perks! Pretty please apply!" job listings.

2) The tiresome meetings with headhunters who just can't seem to "get" that the Cranky Product Manager needs a local candidate and is not willing to interview wannabes in Singapore or Hyderabad.

3) The sifting through hundreds of cryptic resumes from incompetents, who all proudly list "Excellent Word, Excel, and Powerpoint skills" on their resume. Sweet Cheesus, the Cranky Product Manager certainly HOPES that applicants for an ENTERPRISE SOFTWARE PRODUCT MANAGEMENT position have some basic computer skills.  Why not also list that you know how to use a pencil and paper?  Or that you know that a chair is a cushion for your ass, not a pillow for your head?  That you know how to share, the names of all the animals, and how to wash your hands, like any good preschooler?

4) The phone screens.  These are usually very difficult for the Cranky PM since she is (i) a piss poor listener and would rather talk about herself constantly, and (ii) she sucks at understanding accents of all sorts, especially over the phone.

5) The breakfast interviews. This is when the CPM traditionally eliminates half the candidates because their basic table manners are so lacking that they would revolt and sicken any customer the candidate might meet.  Tips for candidates: Don't launch into a Web 2.0 diatribe with your mouth full of a semi-digested substance. Keep food - especially the creamy kinds - out of your skanky, smelly, overgrown beard or mustache. If you're a woman (or gay, or a metrosexual), don't try to bond with the CPM by yapping about SHOES (Seriously, what is that? Is the Cranky Product Manager the only woman in the world who gives not a s&*# about shoes?).  Wear some deoderant. Make some eye contact here and there. And don't CRUSH the Cranky Product Manager's wimpy little excuse for a hand with your iron-deathgrip-handshake.

6) And then the marathon multi-day interviews with every PM, PMM, and Dev Manager, Director and VP at DysfunctoSoft. After the CPM wrestles to set up a perfect interview agenda that accomodates all interviewers' completely inflexible schedules, without fail at least two VPs will bow out of the interviews at the very, very last minute. And of course, neither VP will have any availability for at least 2 weeks. But the CPM will not be allowed to hire anyone without the go-ahead of these individuals.  So, the process drags on and on over weeks. Meanwhile, good candidates are snapped up by other companies.

7) Then the offer letters and the salary negotiations. Why does HR take 10 days to generate a letter they no doubt have on file? Why does it not take 2 minutes?

8) And then, at long last, the only decent candidate rejects the offer. All because DysfunctoSoft's retarded payscales prohibit the Cranky Product Manager from making a competitive offer.  Apparently, HR thinks that having ping-pong table and free Friday pizza mean that it is okay to cap salaries at 10% lower than market.

Rinse. Lather. Repeat. And Repeat and Repeat and Repeat.

End result: the Cranky Product Manager ends up with a lack-luster hire who is not business savvy enough to realize he/she is majorly underpaid. Someone who has not researched the product manager market nor his/her own value within it. Fan-effing-tastic.

*Yes, the Cranky Product Manager realizes that she was originally recruited through the same process and is therefore probably mediocre herself.  Probably so. No denials here. Not only that, she's got a fat ass and piss-poor attitude.

Comments

[Sue]

This cranky product marketing manager had to stop the search-for-candidates process because she got too embarrassed to ask qualified candidates to settle for the pitiful salary being offered by the company (even though it comes with a bonus to bring you up to market levels - which you're not likely to achieve because you never quite hit all the objectives, but it's neat to *think* that one day, maybe you will). There is still a glimmer of hope that one day I'll be given enough budget to hire someone a mild level of experience (not including summer camp and call centers).

[me]

*This* cranky Product Manager works on enterprise software that supposedly helps to *hire* people. Can you smell the irony? The reason it takes forever is because recruiters spend a lot of time complaining that the software doesn't do their entire job on their behalf.

[me]

*This* cranky Product Manager works on enterprise software that supposedly helps to *hire* people. Can you smell the irony? The reason it takes forever is because recruiters spend a lot of time complaining that the software doesn't do their entire job on their behalf.

[therese]

The reason offer letters from HR take so long is because unlike Product Managers, Human Resource Managers* do not have to list Word, Excel and Powerpoint in their resumes. That accounts for the inability to cut and paste properly.

(* are there Inanimate Object Managers in companies too? Just wondering)

[Don]

Awesome rant! I laughed out loud over every point. There is humor in pain, and we've all felt this one.

My anecdote: former CEO/chairman was SO supportive of good product management that he required candidates to be "future CEO's". You can imagine our pay scale didn't match the talent he described. And good luck finding such a person. Result: protracted hiring process, open reqs eventually went away and everyone coped with the lack of more (semi-able) bodies.