Windridge eNews
July / August 2008
Effective
Hiring: Set the Bar High
“When in doubt, don’t hire—keep looking.” –Jim Collins
This month’s newsletter features a slightly
different message than usual simply because I believe that smart,
educated, and informed hiring is a critical area that many times is
treated with indifference and is one of the biggest failures in
organizations today.
Why are there rigid standards for everything within organizations and
yet when it comes to hiring it is left to gut level subjectivity, the
urgent need to fill a position with a warm body, no objectivity or
consistent measurement, which results too often in hasty/uneducated
hiring decisions?
If those same standards (or lack thereof) were applied anywhere else
within the organization it would spell immediate disaster. The most
critical pieces of the puzzle should include the people who hold it all
together and have the capacity to make or break an organization’s
productivity and success, yet too often we just don’t want to take the
time.
A manager’s job is difficult, but much of this difficulty is directly
related to poor hiring practices and not identifying people who will be
the most capable of success in the positions being filled. This
encompasses not only technical fit, but even more importantly behavioral
fit for the work being done and the culture of the organization . . . do
not hire poorly and then complain.
Make no mistake, poor hiring practices directly affect profitability. At
the end of the day it is profitability that is the bottom-line for any
organization, and you better have people on board who are competent and
behaviorally fit so that production in their specific area of expertise
happens seamlessly and without issue.
Set the Bar High
1) Time is only your enemy if you allow it to be.
• Do not allow yourself to be swayed by the tyranny of the urgent, take
the time necessary to identify best fit candidates.
• Do not be blindsided by sudden open positions and rush to make hiring
decisions.
• Do not think about hiring only when you need to fill an opening. Give
thought and attention to hiring at other times.
• Do not celebrate managers who hire too quickly—this ends in tears when
speed is put over quality.
• Truly effective managers are constantly interviewing, networking
(relationship building), succession managing and are always ready to
fill positions.
2) Halos and Horns
• Every warm body has a halo . . . “Anyone would be better than no one”
is an extremely dangerous mentality.
• Any warm body will improve productivity: NOT true!
• Poor hiring sends a message to the team that management doesn’t really
care, and in nine months when the new hire develops “horns” managers
will then spend all their time having to deal with the hasty hiring
decision.
• As the team begins to develop bad morale, production is lost. Great
employees may choose to go somewhere else.
3) Four Hiring Scenarios
1) Ideal outcome — identify and hire a “great fit” candidate (good
outcome)
2) False positive — not a good candidate fit; hired anyway (bad outcome)
3) Ideal outcome — identify a bad candidate fit, no hire (good outcome)
4) False negative — good candidate, passed over and not hired
(disappointing)
Most managers’ primary motivation is not the caliber of a candidate, but
the need to hire . . . managers don’t like the pain they are in right
now and thus they “settle” simply because the position is open. Always
remember, it’s better to leave the job open than to fill the position
with a false positive.
A very useful habit to develop is to continually do the work of hiring:
identifying, developing, and retaining. Make the hiring process a tough
one; be more selective so that when the time to hire actually arrives
you won’t make the mistake of a bad hire. Decide before the interview:
“I’m going to say ‘no’ because I want more than pretty good, I want
GREAT!” Make it a habit to be a bit skeptical heading into the interview
and look for reasons NOT to hire the candidate.
Take these guidelines into the interview:
1) Default answer in interviewing must be “no.” Make the candidate prove
to you they are worthy of a “yes.”
2) Staff expresses concern. If your staff is involved in the hiring
process and they voice concern—say “no.”
3) If you have to look for good things—say “no.”
4) If you have doubts—say “no.”
5) Look for reasons to say “no.”
6) In small companies the bar should be exceptionally high. The impact
of mis-hiring is far greater when there are less people to soften the
bad hire’s effect on the workforce.
7) No reasons to say “no?” Then and only then start thinking about
hiring.
Remember: Set the Bar High
• Time is your enemy only if you let it be—do not be dictated by the
tyranny of the urgent.
• Every warm body has a halo now, but won’t later on, set a high
standard.
• Watch out for false positives, those people who look good on the
surface but underneath have capability and behavioral shortcomings that
will affect their success.
“When you hire people that are smarter than you are, you prove you are
smarter than they are.” –R. H. Grant
Happy Hiring!
Lindsay
**** Check out my
BLOG!
Lindsay Colitses, President
Windridge Consulting LLC lindsay@windridgeconsulting.com