TIPS ON HIRING

Tips on Hiring
From the article"How to Guarantee You Won’t Make A Bad Hire"
By Dave Logan | February 2, 2011

Horowitz gives lots of specific steps, including:

* Know what you want.
* Run a process that figures out the right match.
* Make a lonely decision.

I strongly suggest readers take a look at Horowitz’s long list of questions to ask to assess whether the candidate is smart enough, knows how to hire sales people, is systematic and comprehensive on how to think about sales processes, and understands operational excellence.

I would add two points on competence:

* Do not, under any circumstances, hire for untapped potential. Most people develop only a small part of their abilities, and hiring for untapped potential is like buying land in Nevada and waiting for California to fall into the ocean. It’ll probably happen, but not in time to help you now.

* Make sure the person is “scary smart.” People can develop a lot of aspects of themselves, but IQ is not one of them. Unless the person has the mental horsepower, run!

The second key for hiring is, surprisingly, not even mentioned in Horowitz’s post. It is: Hire for a values fit with the management team you already have. This key has three steps:

1. Identify the values the management team already has. A great way to do this is to run the “mountains and valleys” exercise with your team.

2. Get the team’s agreement that the values you identified are, in fact, their values.

3. In the interview with candidates, ask open-ended questions in follow-up to what the person says.

The hard part of this process is asking open-ended questions. In general, closed-ended questions will bring up competencies and open-ended will lead you to values. Note an exchange with a closed-ended question:

Hiring Manager: What steps did you follow to get to that result?

Candidate: First, I knew what I wanted. Second, I made a two-week plan and ran it past the team. Third, I was relentless in the follow-up.

You’ve learned slightly more about competencies, but nothing about values. Contrast that exchange to two back-to-back open-ended questions:

Hiring Manager: Why was that result so important to you?

Candidate: The integrity of the team was on the line.

Hiring Manager: Why was integrity of the team so important?

Candidate: If we lost integrity, we’d lose the trust of senior executives.

This exchange is important for two reasons. First, you’ve gone off script, so you’re probably asking questions for which the person doesn’t have a prepared answer. Second, you’re now understanding how the person makes decisions, and what principles are most important.

When you meet with the hiring team to make a decision, you only want to hire people who both have the competencies and share the team values. If you’re uncertain about either one, keep looking.

Made a hiring mistake? Made a great hire and have a lesson to share? If so, I hope you’ll post a comment below.

MY THOUGHTS

i hire based on potential, something not recommended in this article. hiring based on potential is a strategy i use when, after a really long search, i still can't find the right person for the job. what i don't do is hire someone who will not fit into the culture of the organization. this is a constant struggle between hr and the other departments. department managers would make decisions mostly based on the skills set of a candidate. and culture fit (which translates to values) is equally, if not more crucial. so,as an hr practitioner, i prefer to screen the candidates first and refer to requesting department only those who have the values the organization requires.