Do tenured teams lack empathy?

 

The Strength of a Tenured Team Culture

Having a tenured team says a lot about your company. Likely you have a strong culture where most employees feel valued, and fairly compensated. Your employees enjoy working with one another and value the long term internal relationships built.

Although this is a fantastic way to attract candidates, there are some downfalls when hiring. Having a very tenured team can mean there is a lack of empathy for candidates as they go through your company’s hiring process. Those who have not had to look for a job in several years, or decades, don’t realize how much things have changed.

Corporate Amnesia: When Teams Lose Market Literacy

When a team hasn’t been on the market in a decade, they don’t just lose empathy, they lose market literacy. It’s like some type of corporate amnesia. When a team has been “safe” inside an organization for a long time, they often lose touch with the sheer vulnerability of the current job market.

They can be insensitive to the fact that these candidates are grateful to be able to have a conversation with a real person, rather than communicating only through job postings or with those managing your recruitment process (if you have them). Once they have gotten to the interview team they have already spent hours of time and put in a great deal of thought process and effort.

The Hidden Downside: Loss of Empathy in Hiring

Let’s say the hiring team likes the candidate. Well, then come the projects. Tenured teams have seen the internal evolution of their own products for years, so they judge external projects against their own deep, insider context. They forget that the candidate worked with different constraints, smaller budgets, or different tech stacks. They compare a candidate’s presentation to their own team’s “incredible” work, forgetting that the candidate doesn’t have the benefit of the team’s internal institutional knowledge.

When a candidate brings a high effort project, a tenured team may think it’s “just okay” because they are comparing a 30 minute interview presentation to the 6 months of polish they put into their own internal daily work. They may lack the context of what “good” looks like in the current external market.

The disconnect usually stems from a gap between the internal reality, where the team is comfortable and established, and the external reality, where the job search process has become a dehumanized, high-stakes marathon.

How can this be avoided?

If this is happening at your company, as the recruiter or hiring lead, prior to the interview remind the panel “This candidate has already cleared many hurdles to get here. They are likely exhausted and nervous. Our job is to help them feel comfortable so they can shine, not just to audit them.”

Periodically show the team the metrics: “We had 500 applicants, 425 were deemed not qualified, 25 did not complete the application process as requested, and 50 were interviewed by the TA team. We narrowed it down to these 5 candidates. This candidate is the top 1%.”

Remember, that the candidate isn’t just “talking about their job”; they are performing under the weight of potential rejection. A tenured employee who hasn’t felt that weight in a decade can mistake a candidate’s focused, nervous, or exhausted energy as a lack of passion. Or they see a candidate’s gratitude or relief as being “too eager” or “unprofessional,” rather than recognizing it as a response to a grueling process.

Finally, if a tenured team member wants to reject a candidate, they should be able to prove the candidate cannot do the job, rather than stating they don’t feel like a “culture fit.”

Be Proud of Tenure. But Avoid Superiority Bias

If you have a tenured team, you should be proud, especially at a time when early career employees only stay a couple of years at each company. However, it’s important to not let your team fall into a sense of superiority, as in “We are amazing! Look how long everyone stays!” Which is likely true, however, they also could be job hugging.

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