Every senior executive knows that bad hires are expensive. In fact, a bad hiring decision can cost up to 15 times that employee’s paycheck if you aren’t careful. Rather than firing bad employees, your best defense is to not hire them in the first place. So I direct you to Who, the A Method for Hiring, by Geoff Smart and Randy Street. This book outlines some solid strategies to help hiring managers avoid making the wrong choice.
The main thesis of the book is that hiring managers don’t adopt a systematic process when they hire new employees. Instead, they fall back on “gut instinct” or what Smart and Street call “voodoo hiring methods.” If you are going to make an A-class hire, they recommend a four-step process (the four “S’s”):
- The Scorecard – Use a scoring system that aligns the job requirements with the skill set you need. It should include three elements: A) Mission statement, outlining the hire’s corporate objective; B) Outcomes, which details results rather than activities (which is where most job descriptions go wrong); and C) Competencies, which describes the way you expect the candidate to achieve the results. Competencies should include both behavioral and cultural considerations, such as efficiency, honestly, aggressiveness, attention to detail, intelligence, productivity, etc.
- The Source – Where you find your candidates has a direct relationship on their capabilities. You need to consider whether the source was a network contact, staff, recruiter, or some other source. The quality of the source maps to the quality of the candidate, and be sure to offer incentives where appropriate to improve results.
- Select – Smart and Street recommend a set of four progressively intense interviews to identify top candidates. 1) Screening first by telephone weeds out inappropriate candidates. The authors suggest a series of screening questions such as: “What are your career goals?” “What are you good at?” “What are you bad at?” “How would your last five bosses grade you?” 2) Topgrading, where you walk through a chronological job history, including reason for the hire, reason they left, what they achieved, and more. Drill down to get a complete picture of the candidate and how they function in a work setting. 3) Focus, where you have at least three team members conduct in-depth interviews of 45 minutes to an hour using the scorecard for guidance, and looking for details about experience, mistakes, and cultural and behavioral competencies. 4) Check references, including listening for what is unsaid or reading between the lines about a candidate.
- Sell – Once you have found the perfect prospect, you need to sign them up. The best candidates will require a little selling to accept, so the authors recommend using the five “F’s” – fit, family, freedom, fortune, and fun.
There are a number of insights you can take away from this book, but the big idea here is being able to put together a cogent, well-thought-out methodology behind your hiring strategy. Eliminating voodoo hiring practices in favor of a proven, repeatable approach that weeds out the bad apples and brings in the stellar candidates is your best bet for hiring success.
