Eric asks the questions that make us wrestle together with the ‘big picture’ issues.
Posts tagged Hiring
Stop Making Bad Hires: 8 Steps for Improving Any Interview Process
I first realized how unscientific the hiring process was in most companies when I worked as a recruiter in the financial arena. I was placing CFOs, Controllers, and other financial personnel with some highly regarded companies. My clients were very successful senior executives. Yet there hiring process was unstructured and ineffective. They were, of course, very busy people. They would emerge from a meeting and head to the conference room where they were to interview a candidate. Often, they would read the resume as they walked to the interview! Once with the candidate, they would often spend too much time talking and not enough time asking questions and listening. After the interview was completed, they would stop by the office of someone else who had interviewed the person and ask that perennial question: so, what did you think about that guy?
This is no way to run an interview. If you are falling into some of these traps, then consider adding some or all of the steps below to reduce hiring mistakes:
1. Determine an A-Player Profile. In my new book How to Hire A-Players, I ask the question: would you know an A-player if you met one? How so? What would tell you that an individual you currently employee or that someone you are interviewing is an A-player? I know this sounds obvious, but you would be surprised at the lack of clarity within companies about the profile of an ideal candidate. If you don’t know exactly who you are looking for, you and your team will be slow to agree upon and actively pursue the right people.
2. Look for overall patterns of accomplishment. The best way to reduce hiring mistakes in an interview is to get a very clear picture of someone’s overall pattern of accomplishments in their life and career. Then, compare that pattern to your A-Player Profile for the role. Unlike mutual funds, with people past performance is the best indicator of future results.
3. Ask initial screening questions to weed out unqualified people. For example, some roles require that applicants have certain software expertise or industry experience. If you can’t determine this from the resume, ask about these abilities early in a phone screen. If someone does not meet these minimum criteria, they are eliminated and the phone interview is over.
4. Starting with their most recent role, confirm their dates of employment, including both the month and the year. People often fudge these dates – you want to verify them.
5. For each role, ask questions specifically designed to dig into their accomplishments. The best overall question to ask is: Please tell me briefly about the top accomplishments for which you were personally responsible while employed in this role?
6. Ask follow-up questions that keep the candidate talking. These questions include: How did you do that? Why so? Please tell me how you made that happen? What were the most important steps you took to make that happen? Such open-ended questions dig beneath a candidate’s initial, pre-planned answers and programmed responses to find out what he or she really did.
7. Take verbatim notes: I have found that jotting down the word-for-word responses that people provide during interviews is helpful. When you go back and look at your notes, those verbatim quotes will help you to recall the person’s strengths and weaknesses.
8. Score each candidate: Create a scorecard for yourself using the A-Player Profile that you created. Give candidate’s a score for each key area in the profile as well as an overall score. This helps you to objectively compare and contrast the strengths and weaknesses of all the people you interview.
In the end, it is your job as an interviewer to gain a complete picture of the accomplishments, failures, strengths and weaknesses of each person you interview. Then, you compare that picture to your A-player profile for the job. By taking this approach, you uncover more about job candidates than your typical interview and determine the person who best fits the role. The end result will be fewer hiring mistakes and more A-players hired.
Eric Herrenkohl is the author of How to Hire A-Players www.howtohireaplayers.com , being published by John Wiley & Sons April 12, 2010.
Check out Auren Hoffman, Summation, on A-players
Auren Hoffman writes the blog Summation. Take a look at one of his not-so-distant posts on A-players: http://blog.summation.net/2009/10/common-traits-of-aplayers.html
He makes a number of good points, including:
The A-player janitor: As Auren points out, you don’t need a Harvard MBA to qualify as an A-player, and every role in your organization can be filled with a superior performer. So, I would ask you: what is the A-player profile for a janitor? If you were going to hire a truly superior person to fill that role,what results would demonstrate superior performance and A-player status?
Relentlessly resourceful: A-players in general know how to get things done. They don’t settle for results that are easily obtainable with current resources. They leverage what they have and find new ways to achieve results that go beyond what most other people are achieving.
Getting back to people: I think this is a great point – many highly effective people are incredible at following up and following through. They “close the loop” with people. They write a note to say thank you. They get back to others quickly. I wonder if this is not in part driven by the fact that very successful people often recognize that it is relationships and relational capital as much more than technical expertise that creates success.
More good points in this article, worth your time to take a look.
Know Your A-Player Profile
Earl Weaver, former manager of the Baltimore Orioles, has nothing but contempt for modern day baseball philosophy that emphasizes statistical analysis to manage games. Weaver’s philosophy (minus the expletives) is simple: get the strongest players you can and have them hit the ball out of the park. You can read the article from Sports Illustrated, July 13, 2009, here http://bit.ly/7Y5qdI
I recently talked to the president of a marketing business who told me that he wants to double the number of “homerun hitters” that he has in his organization. He wants people who can anticipate problems, see opportunities, and create solutions that serve customers. Another way of saying this is that the most valuable people in his business are those who know how to create solutions for customers and who can lead other employees to be a part of that process.
If you want to increase the number of strong leaders and performers in your company, here are two points to consider:
Every position has a combination of technical skills and behavioral skills required to qualify as an A-Player. What is the A-Player profile for key roles in your company? Don’t assume that people “will know an A-Player when they meet one.” They won’t. Or, worse, every person involved in the hiring process will have a different picture of what it means to be an A-player. Get everyone on the same page regarding this A-Player Profile so you can put on a big push to find and hire the best people.
In addition, not all employees are created equally. You should be investing your time with the A-players you already employ. Keep track of how much time you spend with your A players versus your problem children employees. Don’t spend too much time trying to solve problems for your average to poor performers while neglecting your best people. Your best employees don’t need their hands held. They do need you to provide them with the training and resources necessary to be successful. When you spend your time putting out fires for weaker performers, you do exactly that – spend your time. The only return you get is a resolved problem that should have been taken care of by someone else. However, when you invest your time with A-players, you give your best people the time and attention they need to do their jobs better. They take on even more responsibility and you fulfill one of your priorities – building an organization that has greater capacity to create value for customers and generate strong financial results in the process.
A-Players Want to Have an Impact
A-Players want to make money, yes, but typically they want to do more – they want to leave their mark and have an impact on an organization. They have good ideas. They don’t just want their ideas heard. They want the resources and the freedom to implement those ideas and make a difference.
The New York Times ran an article about a year ago where this dynamic was discussed. People move from Google to Facebook and from Facebook to the “next big thing” because they want to hit it big financially, but also because the vibrant, flexible company they joined has become so huge that they can’t have (or at least don’t think they can have) the impact they once did.
What’s the implication for your business? You have to both be and perceived to be a place where great people can make their mark. A-players don’t want to hide behind bureaucracy. They want direct access to people who can “green light” their projects. They want to be included in your inner circle. They want freedom to try new things.
The time to think about assembling your dream team is now, before the economy heats up. Who are the handful of individuals you want to attract and hire to your business? How can you provide them with the environment they want to give them the money they need and the chance to make a big IMPACT?
See “Another Difficulty for a Microsoft-Yahoo Marriage: Recruiting,” Published: February 4, 2008
Domino’s Pizza and Building a Team of A-Players
Last January, the New York Times ran a great article about building a business by creating a team of A-players (For a Franchise, Success is in the Hiring; January 6, 2008). The article introduces Dave Melton, who owns 5 Domino’s Pizza stores in NYC with total sales of $5 million, has 100 employees – and experiences essentially zero turnover.
This retention rate would be impressive in any business, but the average turnover rate for “limited service restaurants” is 51%. In other words, a similar franchise owner is losing 50 employees every year while Dave Melton loses 1 or 2. How did he do it? Here are some points that I pulled out of this article that are relevant to any business when it comes to finding, hiring, leading, and keeping A-players.
He knows his A-player profile. In my upcoming book How to Hire A-Players, I talk about the importance of understanding the A-player profile for key roles in your business. You can tell Dave Melton understands his A-player profile. He says in this article that he looks for people who “can work quickly and have nice personalities.” My guess is that there are few other things he looks for as well, but don’t dismiss this basic profile. A lot of people have bubbly personalities but can’t get things done. Some people can get things done but are surly. He is looking for the combination.
Focuses on creating a great customer experience. Melton lists the bad behaviors that got some of his early, bad hires fired. They include “arguing with customers, refusing to wear uniforms in the correct way, visiting friends en route to delivering pizza, and failing to show up for work. What do all of these have in common? They all create a bad experience for customers. Let’s face it, the average retail experience in the United States is not impressive. If you can put a staff together that creates a good customer experience (much less an exceptional one), that is going to show up in your customer retention. It’s pretty easy to connect the dots between an exceptional retail staff and customer retention.
Creates an Internal Talent Incubator. You wouldn’t think that a Domino’s Pizza franchise could be a talent incubator, but read this article and you realize that Melton has accomplished it. He starts all his employees as hourly workers who make minimum wage + tips delivering pizzas by bicycle. But they can end up as Store Managers making $70,000 annually.
Shows People a Career Path. Again, you don’t associate the concept of Career Path with working at a place like Domino’s, but Melton realizes that you don’t have to send someone to Wharton to provide them with a career path. Melton and his wife Angie (who helps to run the franchise) encouraged one of their employees to take a New York City food safety certification course to “enhance her credentials.” The employee’s initial reaction? “I was a little skeptical. I don’t like tests. But I took it and I passed. I did well. I got a raise and I got a bonus for passing the test.” (She also got promoted to assistant manager).
Promotes Internally. Melton promotes from within when he has a job opening. When a company can promote good people from its ranks into leadership roles, you know they are doing a great job of hiring the right people, developing them, and keeping them around.
Taps into undervalued pools of talent. The article quotes Zia Shah, 35, a native of Pakistan with a degree in business who came to New York at age 26 looking for more opportunity. He started delivering pizzas for Mr. Melton’s Domino’s franchise and today is a manager of one of his 5 stores. Here is a very sharp, educated guy who was “overeducated” for his initial role but hung on because of the opportunity that was ahead of him. I am sure he was a lot hungrier for opportunity than many of his 26-year-old American peers. Sometimes finding and hiring A-players is like being a value investor in stocks. You have to find people who have been undervalued by the market and give them a chance.
Gets entry-level hires from employee referrals. Today, this Domino’s franchise gets most of its employees from employee referrals. I make the point in How to Hire A-Players that recruiting is just marketing and sales in different garb. We all know that positive word-of-mouth is critical in marketing and sales. The same thing is true in creating a team of A-players. If you hire great people and give them opportunities to succeed and win, they are going to tell their friends! Your job is to get your employees engaged in this A-Player mindset.
Grew his business organically. Melton grew his business from 3 stores to 5 in part because he already had groomed the talent to do so. Show me your business plan for growth over the next 3-5 years, and I will ask you if you are developing the talent today to fuel that growth.
You can find the New York Times article For a Franchise, Success is in the Hiring here:
How to weight personnel assessment results in a hiring decision
A client recently asked me how to weight personnel assessment results in a hiring decision. Here is my answer:
The assessments should not exceed 1/3 of the hiring decision. In rank, I would say:
1. Drive and passion – what are their goals and how do they align with what you have to offer, including $. Also, are they prepared for the interview? Have they taken the time to understand your business? People who are passionate about a job prepare for their interview.
2. Accomplishments and experiences – what has the person accomplished and how do those accomplishments match up with what you want done?
3. Assessments – how well does their profile match the job? Are their “holes” in the profile? Do their drives and motivations match the job well?
4. Performance in any role-playing or “work with us for a morning.” How do they do? Are they proactive and engaged? Do they jump in and take ownership or do they sit back? How do they communicate with customers and with co-workers? Do they learn quickly?
5. References – what do other people say about them? Are they enthusiastic or polite in their nice comments (rare to get truly negative comments)?
Do your new salespeople need to have industry experience?
In a down economy, everyone wants to hire perfect candidates: great sales skills, industry experience, and a book of business. If you find that person and can afford them, hire them. Beyond that scenario, keep in mind that you are typically better off hiring someone with great sales skills who does not know your industry vs. hiring someone who has been in your industry but has a weak sales track record. Or, target companies that sell products related to but not competitive with yours. You will attract strong salespeople if they see you and your company as a step up in money, prestige, and opportunity. Figure out how to be the next rung on the career ladder for a pool of strong salespeople, and your recruiting results will improve dramatically.
Couples in Business Together
As a consultant and executive coach in the Philadelphia area, I have worked with numerous married couples in business together. Here is some advice drawn from my work with these couples:
1. Define each person’s roles and responsibilities. You should absolutely make big decisions jointly, but stop trying to make every decision a joint decision. Define each partner’s area of responsibility, and agree on the issues that each will make without consulting the other. This will improve the velocity with which you make decisions. It will also help your employees’ productivity by giving them clear reporting structures.
2. Have a weekly Starbucks meeting. The two of you should meet weekly at a Starbucks or other off-site location. Review the key issues facing your business, agree on next actions, and create a to-do list for each of you. Not only will this make each of you more productive, it will help you to communicate with your staff more effectively.
3. Start planning your exit from your business immediately. This is sound advice for any business owner including couples who own businesses. By planning your exit from your business today, you force yourself to design and build a business that runs without you. In the long-run, this is the key to building a business that can be sold for a meaningful sum. In the short-term, this perspective will help you to design a business that attracts strong employees to whom you can delegate meaningful responsibilities.
5. Keep your personal drama out of your business. Nothing creates a negative work environment like a couple that bring their personal problems to the office. The best employees do not want to be a supporting actor in the drama of your life. Leave your personal issues at home.
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Category: Business Owners, Eric's Blog, Executives
Tags: Hiring, Leadership
Building a Farm Team in a Down Economy
In a recent talk to Philadelphia executives, I explained how to build a “farm team” of strong potential employees. Farm team is a baseball term. Every major league baseball team has multiple minor league teams made up of players ready to be called up to the big leagues with little notice. In business, a farm team is your active list of strong performers who currently work for someone else but could be enticed to work for you if the offer is right. By taking the initiative to find and interview these people now, you build your own farm team of strong potential employees.
After the talk, a banker came up to me and said, “I am going to implement this farm team idea immediately. I get phone calls every day from job hunters, and I have been telling them that we are not hiring. Now I am going to tell them that we are not hiring right now, but I want to interview them anyway.”
Performance Principle: A bad economy is a great time to build your own farm team. In the midst of short-term pressures, take the time to interview and network. Here are some specific payoffs from building your own farm team right now:
1. Good people are available in bad times. Great performers shake loose in times like these. Now is the time to make connections with these people even if you don’t hire them immediately. Joel Spolsky in his book Smart & Gets Things Done estimates that one truly gifted computer programmer is worth at least five times as much as a competent programmer. The ratios may be slightly different in your business, but the principle holds fast across all companies and industries. If your interviewing yields just one terrific person, it is worth it.
2. Interviewing does not necessarily mean hiring. You are not making a commitment to hire anyone; you are simply meeting with them for an initial interview. The only cost to you is your time, and the investment of time is worth it.
3. Build your own network. Every person you interview today is someone that you add to your own network. If you treat people with respect and stay in touch, that relationship may well be valuable whether or not you hire the person.
4. Market intelligence. Having a regular schedule of interviews keeps you apprised of what is going on in the marketplace. Building your farm team makes you more intelligent about your marketplace and better connected within it.
5. Confidence to deal with poor performers. One of the primary reasons that managers don’t confront poor performers is that they do not have anyone to take their place. If your executives and managers have active candidates who can fill positions in their departments, they will be more willing and able to deal quickly and directly with sub-par performance.
Until next month,
Eric
