Finding and
keeping outstanding people is much like finding outstanding
investment opportunities and building a high-return portfolio.
In both cases the odds are stacked against you and in both cases
the decision maker’s own instinctual judgment can get in the
way.
For many companies, a long-term goal for the firm is to build a
roster of talented, dedicated employees. Though most companies
would agree on the importance of this, due to time or budget
constraints, many companies are in the habit of hiring “good
enough” people for now, believing that it is better to do that
and have a person in the role than to wait while the process for
finding the exceptional candidate continues. At a talk at the
Rotman School of Management in Toronto, Jack Welch said that ‘a
great manager builds such strong teams that the manager himself
is rendered unnecessary.’ For that to happen you must build your
team with the best people. In Good to Great Jim Collins talked
about getting the right people in the right seats, stating that
a company’s concern should be ‘who to hire’ before ‘what do we
need to do’.
One key reason that firms look to hire outstanding people is
based on the idea that such individuals will stay for the long
haul. The cost of employee turnover goes far beyond the
opportunity cost of the time spent interviewing candidates and
the cost of an ad in the paper. The cost of employee turnover
includes the time spent training new hires, loss of business due
to client agitation or even loss of clients when ex-employees
take their book of clients with them.
Avoiding these costs and having company superstars stay on your
payroll for a long time is clearly a worthwhile goal. The core
question is how do you plant the seed of employee commitment in
the recruiting process? The answer we propose is using a more
integrative hiring process.
For a star candidate to be engaged and committed to your firm
down the road, your firm has to be the right one for this
employee. Know your company and know what drives your
applicants. It’s that simple. Most firms put off self discovery,
or just don’t make the time to develop an explicit statement of
the company’s values, passions and reason for being. A clear
distillation of your company’s DNA is what must be communicated
to your prospective employees.
Many small business owners hire with their intuition.
Unfortunately, relying on intuition alone can lead the company
astray. The use of heuristics or rules of thumb that we follow
in order to make judgments quickly and efficiently, is useful in
some situations, but should be avoided when making hiring
decisions.
The first step towards developing a more integrative hiring
approach is to stop putting off self discovery. Find out what
makes your company tick, what’s exciting about working there,
what are some concerns that are on employees’ minds and even
what keeps your managers up at night? Use your new discoveries
to write a job description for the position that goes beyond the
technical skills needed and includes insight into the DNA of the
firm.
The second step in an integrative hiring approach is to make a
conscious effort to identify when the firm is making decisions
based on what is comfortable or familiar rather than what is
best for the company as a whole going forward. While diversity
in background and experience is a stated value of many firms,
‘Birds of a feather flock together’ and many managers hire
people just like themselves. Make sure to interview strong
candidates who may not be like yourself. A diverse team will
lead to new ways of thinking and a wider range of
considerations, which often mitigates risk and leads to better
business results. Remember that specific skills can be learned,
so in your next hiring decision, consider the applicant’s
attitude, aptitude, and interest in learning new things.
The third step in an integrative hiring approach involves
breaking the traditional interview mould. Though a consistent
process is necessary to ensure you fairly allow each candidate
the same chance to impress, the format itself does not have to
be the same question and answer approach most companies use. In
the interview, introduce some levity at the start to ease the
tension and break out of the regular back and forth. This would
set the tone for the interview and prepare the applicant for a
less-than-traditional process. When you pose traditional
interview questions, such as ‘what is your biggest weakness?’
make sure you dig deeper into the answers; much deeper.
Otherwise, you won’t get much more than well-rehearsed answer. A
great technique is to get the applicant to talk about what
didn’t work out in their last work environment. It is common
practice to depict every job experience in your past as a
positive experience, but behind these stock responses are
interesting stories that could tell you a great deal about how
the applicant works with other people.
Through the use of these steps, companies can begin to hire
employees who are not only technically proficient, but who are
individuals with values, goals and personalities that are
closely aligned with that of the firm. By adding elements of the
above approach with technical or skill-testing questions that
get at a candidate’s ability to perform the duties of a role,
you dig deeper into the applicant and what makes them tick.
Furthermore, you give yourself more information to answer the
key questions of any interview process - Is this person a star
candidate? Is this the kind of person who is aligned with how
our company does business? Perhaps most importantly, is this the
kind of person who can lead (in thought, in work, in drive)
within our organization?
When your firm looks back at how your ‘hiring investments’ did
in the past, remember that the goal should be to beat the
performance of the market index, not just match it. Put a more
integrative hiring approach to work and you will be on the right
track to having the best portfolio of employees, a key
ingredient to a long-term, sustainable competitive advantage,
and real value for your clients. |
