Case Study: How not to conduct a selection interview

I have long maintained that you can tell everything you need to know about a company by how they hire and how they fire. I had a client go forward for a senior global position with a household name luxury brand recently and it turned into a case study for how a company should not behave if they want to attract and retain talented, confident people.

My client has a senior role in a European capital in the fashion trade. She is very well paid, highly respected, and very much enjoys what she is doing. The only reason she entertained the idea of the new position was that she can see herself ‘topping out’ in her current role in the near future and in the flat organisation in which she currently works, any kind of meaningful advancement is highly unlikely. So a global role had obvious attractions.

When a recruiter contacted her regarding this global role, she called me, we discussed it and came to the conclusion that there was no harm in dipping her toe into the water. She asked for a role spec and a backgrounder on the company - at which point she was handed over to HR in the company, who told her that a role spec might be available closer to the interview and that she could find everything else she needed to know in the company report.

The hiring company also seemed to think that it would be okay for my client to organise her own flight and that they would reimburse her afterwards. “What about a hotel?” My client asked. “The interviews start at 11.00am and your HQ is in another country three-and-a-half hours from where I work." She was told that interview candidates are not accommodated overnight and that was the reason for the late start of 11.00am. My client quietly pointed out that she would have to get up at 3.45am in order to travel on the morning of the interview and, as this was such a senior role, she would far rather overnight it and be fresh and ready. The hiring company (eventually) grumpily provided her with details of a nearby hotel - which my client duly booked and paid for.

With 48 hours to go to the interview, my client still hadn't received a detailed role profile and the HR person she was liaising with finally admitted that they "hadn't ironed out the details of that yet" and that no profile or job description would be forthcoming. At that juncture, I told my client it was time to pull out of the process, as these people were obviously clowns. My client agreed, but as she had already taken the two days of annual leave to attend the interview, she decided to go ahead - "Just to see what they're like up close."

So I talked to her on her way back to the airport after a half-day of meetings with this top-end company and asked her for her overall impression. "Disorganised. Unprofessional. Unwelcoming. Arrogant."

Ouch! Can you imagine any customer thinking any one of those four things about your product or service, much less all four? O-u-c-h.

• There was no one waiting for her in reception when she arrived. When a junior HR person did arrive to bring her upstairs, she was 10 minutes late.

• She had to wait around again once she got to the board room, which was cluttered.

• She had a first interview with the VP of the Business Unit and the HR Manager The VP didn't show and the HR person hadn't read her CV prior to the interview.

• When my client asked a few pertinent questions about the business, based on her reading of the company reports and analyst comments, she was pooh-poohed by the (female) HR Manager; who basically told her not to "worry her pretty little head" about these things.

• The second interview was with the MD - who yawned throughout the interview. My client ended up sitting back in her chair and suggesting that he get himself a cup of coffee.

• After the second interview, it was lunchtime, and my client was basically told - "See you in 90 minutes." No attempt to entertain her, no attempt to engage with her and find out more about her in the comfort of a social setting.

• The afternoon interview was with the HR Director (still no sign of the VP of the Business Unit). This was a much more business focused interview, with useful, commercial questions of the sort you would expect from someone in the Business Unit. My client engaged with relish into this part of the process until she asked the HR Director, "What is your company's strategy for this business unit in the next 3-5 years?" to be answered: "Well, we're (insert major luxury goods brand name here) and we have great products." My client then gently said, "Yes, but your competitors also have great products and, for the most part, even better brand recognition. So, given that competitive landscape, what is your strategy?" At which point the HR Director did an impersonation of a goldfish ...

It is truly amazing what arrogance will do to a company. As I was writing this up, it occurred to me that the hiring company may not have been serious about my client, or that they might have already identified their preferred candidate before my client's interview; but I don't think so. For one, they approached her through an executive headhunter. For two, they set aside 5 hours of senior management time [despite the VP becoming the Scarlet Pimpernel] to meet with her and some of those interviewers had clearly done their homework. For three, they obviously desperately needed a warm body on a chair to take on this role, but their internal structures were in such disarray, they were incapable sitting down and discussing what they actually needed this person to do.

No, it just seems to me that these people had started to believe their own manure-that-comes-from-the-rear-end-of-a-male-bovine. They were so immersed in the glitz and prestige of working for this luxury house, that they seemed to expect candidates to arrive like penitents on their knees, queueing up for the privilege of working there. The warning bells on that started ringing for me very early in the process.

Hiring is a difficult, expensive, time-consuming pain in the ass. Senior management, Line management and HR professionals sometimes let the mask slip and the candidate becomes aware of just how much of a pain in the ass the process is to them. But to me, this case study is an example of arrogance run amok.

At its most fundamental level, hiring is a purchasing decision - but the purchasees get to have a say in whether or not they want to be purchased. Which means that the hirers need to be on their best behaviour. Hiring, therefore, is akin to seduction. If the candidate gets the faintest sense that you are misbehaving in the seduction process, it's game over. If you're not behaving impeccably at the earliest shake-a-tailfeather stages of the mating dance, then it's highly unlikely that you are going to respect me in the morning ...

You can tell everything you need to know about a company by how they hire and how they fire. Disorganised. Unprofessional. Unwelcoming. Arrogant.