How do you know, through conversation, if someone is a good fit for your team and your company, both now and into the future?
My guest is Talent Acquisition Project Manager, Glenn Martin. Glenn talks to a lot of people – candidates and hiring managers. Companies bring him in to find great talent and to create the best hiring experience so from reviewing CVs to the interview, making us an offer, onboarding us and then, once we’ve joined the company, how we can grow, and what career paths are open to us. He works with several clients or companies at a time to help them make smart hiring decisions, fast.
Which is no small challenge because, people, are sometimes unpredictable and sometimes surprising. And there’s often gap he’s helping to bridge between what a company is looking for in a new hire and what that particular individual could offer beyond the immediate need they’d be fulfilling, beyond the first 3-6 months.
How does Glenn influence who gets that job offer and what influences his own decision-making? That’s all in this episode including what he does to put you at ease at the interview and how, as someone who studied sports science, he found himself in talent acquisition.
Jump Spots
2:18 – From sports science to talent acquisition
3:33 – Good quality information and context for influencing
6:06 – Encouraging people to share and respectfully challenge, without fear
8:25 – Respectfully challenging in business culture, calibrating within conversations
10:40 – Extroverted or introverted: should you make an adjustments for your audience?
13:02 – Observations and mental notes of interactions between people
16:34 – Getting candidates in a good head space for interview, show up at your best
18:55 – Radio voice vs being human
21:35 – Being generous, making others feel valued through active listening
22:24 – Conversational stamina vs lazy chit chat; being present; memorable interaction
26:31 – Understanding someone and what’s important to them
28:11 – Highly irrational emotions, reluctance to engage, passive aggressive, dismissive
30:05 – Reconnecting with someone after a bad exchange; the upside of shared high emotion
32:30 – Calm and rational decision-making and agreement; time to process ideas vs feeling ambushed; act of positive intention; not always agreeing
34:33 – Over-enthusiasm to introduce information and opinion; interrupting people and their body language
37:35 – Personal agendas, stubbornness and ego are not open, engaging or generous for conversation; losing advocates and building barriers
39:55 – Listening makes people more willing to share
40:34 – Being humorous, unintentionally
42:03 – Debating opinions; respecting different perspectives; thinking about growth potential
43:22 – Talent acquisition: immediate need vs longer term performance; cultural fit; investment, growth potential, career ladder
46:06 – Be a student of conversation, don’t be a lazy listener, conversational stamina
To connect with Glenn Martin, check him out on LinkedIn and visit his website.
Better Conversations with Sehaam Cyrene
In this Podcast series, I’m wanting to capture and explore what makes for a great conversation, who has inspired our conversation style, and what bad habits we all suffer from. I do that by talking to people. There’s no judgement here – it’s just an interlude of reflection about the finer aspects of conversations as it stands for each of us.
