S4E3: Navigating the Interview Maze

In this episode, Jason tackles the topic of job postings, applications, and interviews, using survey data and anecdotes from listeners and his network.

• "Ghost" jobs
• Evolving AI landscape of job posting/applying/screening
• Your stories!
  • Interview lowlights
  • One unique story
  • Interview highlights
• Takeaways for job seekers and hiring managers/recruiters

Leadership Voyage
email: StartYourVoyage@gmail.com
youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LeadershipVoyage
linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonallenwick/, https://www.linkedin.com/company/leadership-voyage-podcast/
music: by Napoleon (napbak)
https://www.fiverr.com/napbak
voice: by Ayanna Gallant
www.ayannagallantVO.com
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Transcript

wherever you are on your leadership Voyage it starts [Music] here okay welcome back everybody it's good to be with you all another episode of leadership Voyage the podcast dedicated to your pursuit of becoming a great leader I'm your host Jason Wick and thanks for joining for season 4 episode three this one is called navigating the interview Maze and I put a post out on LinkedIn a few weeks ago um get asking for some people to get in touch with me and several people did which was great uh sharing some stories um about interview low lights highlights and and a small part that came out of this that I wasn't quite anticipating it makes sense I suppose but it's uh it's some advice as well and that's the episode we're going to have today which is um something I'm really excited to share with you all um let's see if you go in the show notes you'll uh see that you can text me Jason directly if you like or you can email me at startyou Voyage gmail.com uh LinkedIn you can find the show if you search leadership Voyage podcast or uh just for myself Jason Wick was probably easier any of those means to get in touch with the show share your thoughts about episodes pitch ideas for episodes uh maybe you yourself want to be on the show I've had probably half of my guests throughout the uh three plus years just people who've reached out and wanted to come on the show for one reason or another so uh don't be shy if you think you've got something to offer or a topic of expertise I'd love to hear from you and see if it's a good fit because leadership as a topic is quite Broad and that's what I like about this is we can dive into different areas of leadership and management as we see fit but today to's topic uh is again interviewing and it's the interview maze as we're going to call it today here are the three main parts of the episode uh the first is going over a little bit of the context of some of the things that I have um learned about in the last let's see uh I'm guessing it's about the last six to eight months uh about what's going on out there I know things change fast but there's a little context setting then we're going to share some of the interview low lights and highlights that you all have shared with me the uh the horror stories and successes and that's probably the most fun part of today it all it's all Anonymous but if you're a listener and you hear your story then you know it came from you so thanks for your contribution and then finally I have some closing thoughts about it all right it's easy to sit here behind a microphone and say you know what to do I I don't know what to do but there are definitely some opinions I have and I hope they can be helpful for both both interviewers and interviewees and just some kind of Concepts to keep in mind as we as we really look to the landscape in 2025 and and we all want to make it better right we all want to have great hiring experiences we all want to find work that's uh that calls to us and all of this so some conclusions uh to wrap things up in the third section so let's start with this context kind of navigating the interview maze itself here here's the first thing I wanted to call out ghost jobs there was a a a survey done uh frankly I've never heard of the website before I don't know how great or or it is you know but they did survey over 700 recruiters myperfectresume.com so I'm not going to vouch for the site I I've never heard of it before uh late last year or early this year but my perfect res.com I've got a link in the show notes they have a survey they did with recruiters 81 well what's a ghost job a ghost job is a job that's posted that directly you know not necessarily directly doesn't there's no intention to fill it 81% okay in case you took a swallow of your coffee or ran over a speed bump in the car or uh saw your neighbor while walking your dog while you're listening to this I'll say it again 81% of recruiters admit to posting a ghost

job I heard this statistic in the fall of 2024 so maybe about five months ago um I felt I'm gonna I'm going to be honest I felt really naive when I read this I thought

how how could four fifths of the people who have the title recruiter who um who responded to this survey how could they have F posted a job that they didn't intend to fill and and I felt really naive maybe that shows I haven't talked closely enough to the friends I have have who are in recruiting and hiring but um I I just know that for my own professional experience where I have worked I have never contributed to this and I've never heard of it happening at the organizations I was at that's all I'll say about it 81% of recruiters admitting to posting a ghost job now when you you you uh drill down a a little bit you first understand the scale of this which I think is where I really felt my naive over half of the recruiters surveyed say that between 1/4 and one half of their jobs that are posted are ghost jobs again I don't want to be too pedantic here by being so dramatic and repeating myself but I just the numbers are just stunning to me when I read them over half of the recruiters surveyed said that between a fourth and a half of their jobs that they have posted are ghost jobs which again means there's no intention of directly filling that position as

posted so why and there's a long list and I think that this provided a little more context for me but still if you flip it over to be the person who's seeking work it's very frustrating to not be able to discern between a ghost job and a what we'll just call for now a quote unquote real job here are three things I chose to highlight from this list why would companies and recruiters post so many of the jobs as ghost jobs uh three things I've highlighted is number one to maintain a presence on the job boards so presumably that just means your company's name is showing up I don't fully know how it works when you post jobs on these sites I've not actually done it myself with my own hands right uh there's always been a recruiting or a talent acquisition Department I've worked with when I've been hiring so maintaining a presence on the job boards is one of the top reasons another one is to assess the effectiveness of their job descriptions I'm not clear exactly how they're doing that but okay here's a job description for a job we've posted it by going through the motions of that we can assess the effectiveness effectiveness of that job description maybe how many applicants they get maybe how well aligned the skills are of people who apply I'm not sure but here's this third one that's really interesting so there's the job board presence there's the job description Effectiveness the third one to assess how easy or difficult it would be to replace employees they currently have so maybe you've got an employe or a department or maybe you're thinking of of getting rid of folks at a company I don't know maybe downsizing not sure exactly how this applies but if I got rid of some people how easy would it be to replace some of them so maybe you're just talking Performance Management maybe there's a 10% of the workforce people are looking to get rid of the bottom performers the lowest performers or something like this how easily could I replace those 10% with more qualified and more skilled individuals and that's a third reason I thought I'd highlight here about why a ghost job is being posted now if you're listening to this as someone who's looking for work either you're currently unemployed partially employed or just looking for a better opportunity than the one that you're currently in because I know that 51% of you out there whether you're a manager or a contributor 51% of you out there who have work are also looking for work so right now what comes to mind for me for those folks is wow what a waste of my time right you're looking at jobs and there's I don't know how this translates to the percentage of jobs that are posted but it's plausible that the job you applied for isn't even going to be filled so it's a just interesting context if you step back objectively and clinically and without emotion which I acknowledge is very difficult if you step back from all of this it's like what a fascinating circumstance but once you put yourself into it both as the applicant or the recruiter what a demotivating environment how would you like your job to be one where they tell you to post something but it's never going to be filled the point of this job at the end of the line is to acquire talented individuals skilled individuals hardworking people who will contribute to a purpose and a mission but hey 81% of you at one point or another who are recruiters apparently have not even have taken steps that that don't serve that at all and that that's a bummer I I would say and then of course it's very emotional for the applicants because they spend a lot of time applying to jobs and you know it's plausible that those jobs don't even exist so I won't beat that uh over and over I think the point's made but the ghost job phenomenon I just think it was very very important to to make sure to call out because some of you may not be aware of it um and and that's important to be aware of really briefly in this uh you know the overview the context setting here of navigating the interview maze I think there is this evolving landscape you know even that survey I just cited I think it was from August of 24 so who knows what the numbers are today but um that was one I I read a while ago and I just couldn't get out of my mind so I had to share it but the evolving landscape right AI of course of course of course AI is indeed critical to the p uh to the workflows for many organizations when it comes to hiring right right you've got tools anyway but AI is changing this game um I I mean we're in a time of Rapid change right the last two plus years since chat GPT really became uh since you know it became used by the masses and then so on and so forth since then every quarter half year the technology is rapidly advancing and that is having huge impacts on the job market whatever rule R if you've been in the workforce a while and you're not really working directly with AI all the time um some of those conventional rules you might hold in your mind they may not be relevant anymore this same survey myperfectresume.com again the link is in the show notes the same survey says that 96% of recruiters are using AI only 35% of them feel that whatever a tool or tools they're using is very

effective so that's part of it right companies are using the tools but we're not quite sure if it's effective and everything's changing so rapidly that it's kind of hard to to to take the you know if you if you uh bear with the metaphor the plane's in Flight already it's kind of hard to land it and then assess what's happening with it because we're already already in the air and I just think it's really fascinating that only a third of recruiters think their tool is very effective but there 96% of them are using AI I I had a call with a recruiter um several weeks ago and this person told me that the the folks using the tools don't understand how they work and I suppose that's understandable but I can tell you from personal experience you know I I've as someone who who as I as I shared in the first episode of this season someone who was laid off from uh my job last year um I have used some of those you know resumé reviews and whatnot and the most valuable thing to me was seeing how does your resume end up looking in the applicant tracking system or what does the um AI summary of your uh resume my resume look like and I would have to share with you I got this AI summary of my resume uh through one of these Services it's nothing related to what I've done for my career it's it's it's a summary that's not in any way related to my experience and I look at the resume again and I'm like well what is it picking up on that it shows this inaccurate summ summary of my 20 years 15 to 20 years of work experience uh but this is what people are consuming right where I was on a call last a couple weeks ago unrelated to the podcast unrelated to any of this the person on the other end of the call said are you using the AI overview or are you looking at the Google search results really important question now isn't it the AI overview is at the top of your page and it's the quickest and most efficient to consume but depending on how important your task is you don't know that it's actually accurate or effective you got to drill down one more step to the sources and that's what's interesting this AI overview for my own resume was nothing resembling what I have to offer but I have no influence I don't well I probably do but I don't know what technical influence I could have to make the AI summary work correctly because what I have in my resume is an accurate chronicling of what I've done and the results I've gotten so the recruiters consume this AI summary from the tool but it may or may not even be close to Accurate to what the applicants done that's all I guess I want to point out here it's a very confusing time right it's a rapidly evolving time it doesn't help a lot to just get cynical and jaded about it though because what the heck are you supposed to do about it the influence lies in the quality of the tool and the company's use of those tools and maybe I can just help influence one person in this episode today to really think about how they're approaching this process but maybe not it's hard to say right but let's get into it right that's the context the ghost jobs and the quick evolving landscape of using these AI tools and what they're actually producing for recruiters it's it's a wild wild world and since I'm in Colorado I guess I could just say it's it's the wild west I suppose of of interviewing these days so here we go we're on to the second section so thanks for bearing through that that introduction it was a little longer than I planned but I just uh it's just a lot of interesting information and I hope you find it interesting as well so the second section here the meat is the interview horror stories and then the uh the success stories the wins right that's what we love to hear actually so here a few stories of low lights as a quick reminder if you want to check out that survey of recruiters it's in the show notes I've got a link to it uh along with the whole summary of this episode um if you have to run at some point but here are the low lights Story number one AI gone wrong couldn't resist so there's a story I came across uh recently that was shared with me about someone who had a phone screen with AI and unfortunately the AI phone screening uh it didn't work it would not it wasn't listening to the answers it was saying thank you for your answer it wasn't even allowing the candidate to answer the question and at some point I shouldn't be laughing right CU this is people people's livelihoods were talking about but at some point it just is like thank you so much and the Call's over and and you know you're like if you were the person on this call you're just thinking this this was a chance apparently I I actually had a shot at a job and then AI is interviewing me with screening questions on the phone except it isn't working properly it's defective and then it ends it and you just got to wonder what does the recruiter get on the end of that right it makes me think of customer needs or uh jobs to be done if you've heard of that framework sometimes just naming a solution IE or uh EG um an AI tool isn't actually solving your problem at all if you think you're getting more efficient by getting quicker phone screenings as a recruiter let's make sure that you can test that once or twice before you roll pull it out and maybe maybe make sure you're receiving candidate feedback about it in some form or another because at least this horror story that I came across uh it basically nicked the applicant's opportunity of getting to the next round because the AI was defective in the phone screen AI was supposed to in theory take the mundane tasks off of our plate so that we could embrace the nuances of humanity

efficiency isn't efficiency if it doesn't work so where is the human important where is the the machine or the program important and I think that's one thing that's really important coming out of this AI gone wrong story second Horror Story is geographical deception the geographical deception and there is a story that was shared with me where there was a posting for a remote uson job and this candidate said yes yes I'm in the United

States well they said they were in a certain location in the United States so the the company said well we have someone in our company who's in that area so we'd love for you to uh meet with them in person for the next stage the applicant agreed apparently along the way there were some Zoom uh Zoom interview or Zoom discussions already where you could see the candidates uh room and there were like uh EU outlets right the European Union outlets which you know if you've traveled well some of you listeners many of you are in the EU EU so I don't need to tell you about it of course but you have a little adapter right between uh American outlets and European Outlets to get the power to work correctly and it was apparent that they were in the EU probably during out this throughout this process and then they still swore yep I'm in this location in the United States I'll be there for the in-person interview and then when the interview happened and was scheduled they just never showed up it just why right obviously hiring remote is challenging uh verifying candidates is challenging but again why waste anyone's time in this case we've been you know we've been ripping on the companies today mostly for their use of tooling uh ripping on the recruiters and the for their uh posting ghost jobs but here we are somebody applying for a job that's remote o a remote us only they swear that they're in the US all the way till the end and they just don't show up why why waste anyone's time just be honest oh darn it I misunderstood the job uh I'm not I'm not eligible so what a huge waste a time in that geographical deception and then the third Horror Story I'm going to share for you today and I mean I guess I'm overstating it but that's marketing right these aren't truly horror horror stories but they're just negative experiences uh the excessive interview process I spoke with someone who and I've heard this many many times of course throughout time but they had a multi-stage interview process that just seemed to continue to go nowhere and no where and nowhere and it felt like they were the one who was driving the application process and that's just a very interesting situation to be in right it does make you go do you really want to fill this job so they were you know putting their energy out there over and over trying to say okay are we going to go on am I moving on are we going to the next phase and uh it just was dragging and dragging and dragging and and this applicant ended up even though they were not actually like denied uh they just ended up kind of giving up on that lead because it just was going nowhere I don't know how you all feel I think I'd rather hear nothing uh from the get-go or just be told no from the onset rather than having to work so hard to push through each stage where it felt like I was the one almost hiring the company in that case so the excessive interview process is the third one I'm throwing a curveball in here by introducing a quick section that is not low lights or highlights it's called the unique section and this was shared with me in a comment on on LinkedIn most of the people reached out directly and um privately but this was a a public comment someone who was applying for an elementary music education position and of course um singing is a big part of that right in elementary you've got recorders other maybe percussion instruments all kinds of interesting ways to to integrate music into the pedagogy but singing is is a really important part of it right so in this case uh this applicant who has sung for you know crowds literally of thousands was asked to sing in their Zoom interview and this really caught them off guard that's why I don't think it was it's not good or bad it was just kind of like oh okay and in this case there were nine individuals on the zoom call principls teachers parents and it was like hey why don't you sing us something uh that to me that kind of reminded me of like an awkward um like an awkward family gathering where like maybe you were the only one to sing Happy Birthday or something I I don't know I I it would be kind of fun to be a fly on the wall but this one I don't think of as as as a highlight or a low light it's just kind of like okay that's different so we're calling that the reme remote singer not the mask singer like that show on uh on on television but the the the remote singer so that's this kind of unique uh example of a interview process okay now we get to move on to the best section right which are the highlights and I've got two of them so again thank you everyone for actually there are three of them uh in the Highlight section the unexpected interview wins section and I appreciate everybody sharing uh it's been fun to interface with so many of you and hear some of your stories so thank you if you uh if you did contribute so first one I loved I talked to someone on a call a couple of weeks ago and they shared with me that they've had interviews uh well at least one I don't remember if it was multiple times but at least once where they were instantly offered a job on the spot and with so many stories you hear particularly in the white collar uh world uh of long interview processes uh being ghosted so on and so forth right it's really nice to hear someone having a call and just be oh you are what we need come on and join us I think that's really cool and we'll get to the end of that in a second why the face to-face part why the networking Parts can be really important and leverage uh those can be leveraged but we'll get to that at the end so the last part here and I mean for those of you who listen right I don't really try to do anything political I I I certainly don't try to ever do anything religious uh but this is a this is a story that was shared with me um about faith in the process excuse me and another story that was shared uh kind of uh kind of like an existential way about you know what the universe gives you and so first uh someone I spoke to you know they said throughout the process of of a lot of this back and forth of interviewing um they kind of were reminded about hey take what the universe gives you and make that work you know don't work so hard to change it and I think in kind of business terms you know Roi is what comes to mind or maybe what are what are the strengths and what are the weaknesses of someone or something right this person told me essentially if you're having to work so hard to try to procure a job with a particular company you know just take what the universe gives you and make it work find the right places to put your energy and I just thought that was really inspiring and nice to think about because it can be negative a it can be cynical it can be frustrating for people who are looking for new work or trying to escape the job they're in that they aren't happy with and the second and final story in this area and the final story in general today is uh shared with me by someone who's um a 25-year software industry veteran uh an engineering leader out there and they shared a really powerful story with me they said in their most recent I mean they've been um a couple different periods in their career they've been looking for work but in this most recent time which was in 2024 they would characterize it as the best experience they've had and and here's the reason why and I'll read to you relatively verbatim here the most recent experience in 2024 was the best not because of anything specific to the company but because it was the first time I leaned on my faith throughout the process and completely let go of the outcome in the vast majority of cases my initial application went nowhere with a with some companies I made it through several rounds in advance to the final two candidates before hearing no but regardless of which Step I was in if I got turned down that job was not part of God's plan for me and it meant that there was something even better out there and they did end up finally getting and accepting an offer throughout this process and like I said I don't need to disclaim it over and over I I don't really get into religion in this show but this is a personal experience shared from someone else and um the Comfort they found in kind of giving into the process and the story that immediately preceded that take what the universe gives you and make it work nothing in these two stories suggests laziness nothing in these two stories suggests giving up it suggests surrendering to what you're given and working as hard as you can within those constraints but you kind of have to recognize those constraints don't you you kind of have to recognize where your energy can go and that is where we dovetail into the final section here and I've got some takeaways for the job Seekers whether you're unemployed or currently employed looking elsewhere and then some takeaways for hiring managers or recruiters and this is just my take right based on these stories these anecdotes talking with people chatting with people about some of the things they've been going through looking at the landscape itself for those of you looking for work prepare for the unexpected find a way to develop that resilience because so much is out of our control the parts that are in our control Embrace those do them the best you can be smart but so much of it's out of our control and if we get hung up on that especially the way people tie their identities to their work it can be really difficult to handle secondly for folks looking for work let's maintain honesty integrity and integrity you'd like to think this goes without saying I mean yes we like to make our resumés look really good right that's fantastic all that stuff is in play I'd say but lying in the process when you know it'll be a dead end anyway that's just a waste of time for the employer right and the third thing which we haven't talked about but it came out of this conversation I had with someone a few weeks ago about your network from their point of view the blind application process of LinkedIn or wherever you know indeed wherever you're imply applying of course is just a low odds uh proposition you need to put tremendous volume out there most likely to have good

chances use your network reach out to people you know find out if they have job openings if you're applying to a job through indat or LinkedIn look out look for anyone in your Alumni network who works there and just reach out to them see if you can do anything to get the humans involved that's the advice I think that I heard from this person and I stand by it and support it Network strategically in a way that supports the jobs that you really think you want the most take advantage of

that okay on the hiring manager recruiter side we're almost up folks we're almost done on the recruiting side or the hiring manager side please be transparent and respectful of candidates time right my goodness hearing about the ghost jobs is a heartbreaker I understand the reasons that are listed for why you might put a ghost job out there but think about the other end how many human beings time are you wasting secondly for hiring and recruiters make the screening and interview process effective I think that word efficiency is is an interesting one if you if you were around in season 2 you might have heard me talk to Trisha broadrick if you haven't listened to that episode go to uh season 2 and find the episode with Trisha broadrick um while I'm talking I'll look it up right now as a matter of fact and we talk about efficiency okay we talk about what does the word mean it was March 3rd 2023 season 2 episode 6 talking teams with Trisha broadrick uh efficiency what does the word mean we have a whole conversation you can look in the the episode show the uh show notes in that episode and see there's a heading efficiency versus Effectiveness effect Effectiveness that is something that I would love to encourage you to think about when you're putting out jobs and using AI tools to screen I'm going to read directly from those show notes right now efficiency is doing something fast but what if it's fast and wrong Effectiveness is doing something well collaborating is not

efficient at the end of the line being effective is more important if it's not right it's not efficient it's just fast if it's not right it's not efficient it's just fast so let's think about that okay gosh if even one person listening to this episode who is in a hiring position could think about this and just like second guess the tool they're using press the pause button and ask if we could step through this from the candidate's point of view if you've never done that like really really walk the mile of what that looks like if even one person can do that as a result of this show I would be thrilled because it means Downstream there are hundreds of hours of time being saved in this whole process finally for hiring manager recruiters the takeaway that I'm thinking about is I I said it a little bit earlier consider the human element where should humans be involved and where should the tools be involved tools are great as long as they're the right tool for the job and let's use humans when they are the most meaningful and most impactful in the right

context for those of you who W hung through till the end I really appreciate your time the whole point of this podcast is to help everybody become better leaders where they're at and remember anyone can lead regardless of your title until next time and the next episode of leadership Voyage everybody take care [Music]