WHO: The A Method for Hiring
The book that made my recruitment process intentional, confident and fun.
Summary & key takeaways:
Introduction
WHO is your number-one problem. Not WHAT.
What refers to the strategies you choose, the products and services you sell, and the processes you use. You can spend your whole career chasing solutions to the million what problems plaguing your business. That is what most managers do. Unfortunately, focusing solely on what means you will continue to feel stressed, make less money than you desire, and lack the time to do what you want.
Or you can decide today to focus on the who. Who refers to the people you put in place to make the what decisions. Who is running your sales force? Who is assembling your product? Who is occupying the corner office? Who is where the magic begins, or where the problems start.
Who mistakes happen when managers:
Are unclear about what is needed in a job
Have a weak flow of candidates
Do not trust their ability to pick out the right candidate from a group of similar-looking candidates
Lose candidates they really want to join their team
The purpose of this book is to give you a solution to your number-one problem—to help you make better who decisions.
Chapter 1 - Your #1 Problem
Finding the right people is the single biggest problem in business today.
The techniques you will learn in the book will help everyone—boards, hiring managers at every level, even parents hiring a nanny—find the right who for whatever position needs filling. The method will do the due diligence for you. It lets you focus on the individual candidates without losing sight of the goals and values of your organization. Before our method can work to its optimal level, though, chances are you might have to break some bad hiring habits of your own.
Voodoo Hiring
“Otherwise smart people struggle to hire strangers. People unfamiliar with great hiring methods consider the process a mysterious black art.”
Top 10 voodoo hiring methods:
The Art Critic. When it comes to judging art, going on gut instinct sometimes works just fine. A good art critic can make an accurate appraisal of a painting within minutes. Gut instinct is terribly inaccurate when it comes to hiring someone. If you extend an offer based on a good gut feel, you are going to have a stomachache!
The Sponge. A common approach among busy managers is to let everybody interview a candidate. Unfortunately, managers rarely coordinate their efforts, leaving everybody to ask the same, superficial questions. The Sponge’s ultimate assessment of the person he hires rarely goes deeper than “He’s a good guy!”
The Prosecutor. Many managers act like the prosecutors they see on TV. They aggressively question candidates, attempting to trip them up with trick questions and logic problems. In the end, trick questions might land you the most knowledgeable candidate, and maybe even someone who can beat a Russian chess master, but knowledge and ability to do the job are not the same thing.
The Suitor. Rather than rigorously interviewing a candidate, some managers spend all of their energy selling the applicant on the opportunity. Suitors land their share of candidates, but they take their chances with the candidate actually being a good fit.
The Trickster. Then there are the interviewers who use gimmicks to test for certain behaviors. Use this method, and you are likely to find yourself in the awkward position of explaining to your friends why you fired that nice guy from the party who helped clean up the mess.
The Animal Lover. Many managers hold on stubbornly to their favorite pet questions—questions they think will reveal something uniquely important about a candidate. Not only do questions like this lack any relevance or scientific basis, but they are utterly useless as predictors of on-the-job performance.
The Chatterbox. This technique has a lot in common with the “la-di-da” interview. Although enjoyable, the method does nothing to help you make a good decision. You’re supposed to be picking up a future trusted colleague, not someone with whom you can bat around baseball stats.
The Psychological and Personality Tester. It’s certainly not predictive of success on the job. Savvy candidates can easily fake the answers based on the job for which they are vying.
The Aptitude Tester. Tests can help managers determine whether a person has the right aptitude for a specific role, such as persistence for a business development position, but they should never become the sole determinant in a hiring decision. As we’ll see in Chapter 2, aptitude is only part of a much larger equation. Use these tests as screening tools if you like, but do not use them in isolation.
The Fortune-Teller. Just like a fortune-teller looking in a crystal ball to predict the future, some interviewers like to ask their candidates to look into the future regarding the job at hand by asking hypothetical questions: “What would you do? How would you do it? Could you do it?” Fifty years of academic literature on interview methods makes a strong case against using these types of questions during interviews.
Finding “A” Players
Finding A Players begins with setting the bar higher.
What is an A Player? For one thing, he or she is not just a superstar. Think of an A Player as the right superstar, a talented person who can do the job you need done while fitting in with the culture of your company. We define an A Player this way: a candidate who has at least a 90 percent chance of achieving a set of outcomes that only the top 10 percent of possible candidates could achieve.
You Are Who You Hire
In business, you are who you hire. Hire C Players, and you will always lose to the competition. Hire B Players, and you might do okay, but you will never break out. Hire A Players, and life gets very interesting no matter what you are pursuing.
How do you get an A team? That’s what we at ghSMART have spent thirteen years learning and all the fieldwork for this book testing and refining. We call the solution the “ghSMART A Method for Hiring,” or the “A Method” for short. The A Method defines a simple process for identifying and hiring A Players with a high degree of success. It helps you get the who right.
You can think of each line in the letter A and the underline as four steps that build the whole method. The four steps are:
Scorecard. The scorecard is a document that describes exactly what you want a person to accomplish in a role. It is not a job description, but rather a set of outcomes and competencies that define a job done well. By defining A performance for a role, the scorecard gives you a clear picture of what the person you seek needs to be able to accomplish.
Source. Finding great people is getting harder, but it is not impossible. Systematic sourcing before you have slots to fill ensures you have high-quality candidates waiting when you need them.
Select. Selecting talent in the A Method involves a series of structured interviews that allow you to gather the relevant facts about a person so you can rate your scorecard and make an informed hiring decision. These structured interviews break the voodoo hiring spell.
Sell. Once you identify people you want on your team through selection, you need to persuade them to join. Selling the right way ensures you avoid the biggest pitfalls that cause the very people you want the most to take their talents elsewhere. It also protects you from the biggest heartbreak of all—losing the perfect candidate at the eleventh hour.
The simplicity of the A Method means it is easy to understand and implement at all levels, from CEO to receptionist. But the fact that the method is simple doesn’t mean that implementing it won’t require real effort on your part. The payoff, though, is huge.
Chapter 2 - SCORECARD. A Blueprint for Success
Scorecards describe the mission for the position, outcomes that must be accomplished, and competencies that fit with both the culture of the company and the role.
The first failure point of hiring is not being crystal clear about what you really want the person you hire to accomplish.
The scorecard is composed of three parts: the job’s mission, outcomes, and competencies. Together, these three pieces describe A performance in the role—what a person must accomplish, and how. They provide a clear linkage between the people you hire and your strategy.
1. Mission: the Essence of the Job.
The mission is an executive summary of the job’s core purpose. It boils the job down to its essence so everybody understands why you need to hire someone into the slot.
For a mission to be meaningful, it has to be written in plain language, not the gobbledygook so commonly found in business today.
You’ll know you have a good mission when candidates, recruiters, and even others from your team understand what you are looking for without having to ask clarifying questions.
Don’t Hire the Generalist. Hire the Specialist. Mission statements help you avoid one of the most common hiring traps: hiring the all-around athlete. Hiring all-around athletes rarely works. By definition, they are generalists. That’s their charm. They are good at many things and can wear lots of different hats. But job requirements are rarely general. If you’ve defined the position correctly from the outset, you should be looking for narrow but deep competence.
As Nick Chabraja, the CEO of General Dynamics, puts it, “I think success comes from having the right person in the right job at the right time with the right skill set for the business problem that exists.”
2. Outcomes: Deciding What Must Get Done
Outcomes, the second part of a scorecard, describe what a person needs to accomplish in a role. Most of the jobs for which we hire have three to eight outcomes, ranked by order of importance.
While typical job descriptions break down because they focus on activities, or a list of things a person will be doing (calling on customers, selling), scorecards succeed because they focus on outcomes, or what a person must get done (grow revenue from $25 million to $50 million by the end of year three). Do you see the distinction?
Not all jobs allow you to quantify the outcome so easily. In these cases, seek to make the outcomes as objective and observable as possible.
3. Competencies: Ensuring Behavioral Fit
Competencies flow directly from the first two elements of the scorecard.
Competencies define how you expect a new hire to operate in the fulfillment of the job and the achievement of the outcomes.
Critical Competencies for A Players
Efficiency. Able to produce significant output with minimal wasted effort.
Honesty/integrity. Does not cut corners ethically. Earns trust and maintains confidence. Does what is right, not just what is politically expedient. Speaks plainly and truthfully.
Organization and planning. Plans, organizes, schedules, and budgets in an efficient, productive manner. Focuses on key priorities.
Aggressiveness. Moves quickly and takes a forceful stand without being overly abrasive.
Follow-through on commitments. Lives up to verbal and written agreements, regardless of personal cost.
Intelligence. Learns quickly. Demonstrates ability to quickly and proficiently understand and absorb new information.
Analytical skills. Able to structure and process qualitative or quantitative data and draw insightful conclusions from it. Exhibits a probing mind and achieves penetrating insights.
Attention to detail. Does not let important details slip through the cracks or derail a project.
Persistence. Demonstrates tenacity and willingness to go the distance to get something done.
Proactivity. Acts without being told what to do. Brings new ideas to the company.
Additional competencies (without priority)
Ability to hire A Players (for managers). Sources, selects, and sells A Players to join a company.
Ability to develop people (for managers). Coaches people in their current roles to improve performance, and prepares them for future roles.
Flexibility/adaptability. Adjusts quickly to changing priorities and conditions. Copes effectively with complexity and change.
Calm under pressure. Maintains stable performance when under heavy pressure or stress.
Strategic thinking/visioning. Able to see and communicate the big picture in an inspiring way. Determines opportunities and threats through a comprehensive analysis of current and future trends.
Creativity/innovation. Generates new and innovative approaches to problems.
Enthusiasm. Exhibits passion and excitement over work. Has a can-do attitude.
Work ethic. Possesses a strong willingness to work hard and sometimes long hours to get the job done. Has a track record of working hard.
High standards. Expects personal performance and team performance to be nothing short of the best.
Listening skills. Lets others speak and seeks to understand their viewpoints.
Openness to criticism and ideas. Often solicits feedback and reacts calmly to criticism or negative feedback.
Communication. Speaks and writes clearly and articulately without being overly verbose or talkative. Maintains this standard in all forms of written communication, including e-mail.
Teamwork. Reaches out to peers and cooperates with supervisors to establish an overall collaborative working relationship.
Persuasion. Able to convince others to pursue a course of action.
We use the competencies section of our scorecards as a checklist during the interview process, but we encourage clients to personalize it to fit their individual needs.
4. Cultural Competencies: Ensuring Organizational Fit
Competencies work at two levels. They define the skills and behaviors required for a job, and they reflect the broader demands of your organizational culture.
Evaluating cultural fit obviously begins with evaluating your company’s culture.
Culture fits—or misfits—inevitably affect the bottom line, but they are about much more than money.
Don’t be afraid to write down what might seem blindingly evident. In the heat of a hiring crisis, the clearest things sometimes get overlooked. By translating your culture and values into a series of competencies that matter for every job, you can avoid making the mistake of not evaluating candidates for the cultural fit that are absolutely crucial to your enterprise.
“Part of successful hiring means having the discipline to pass on talented people who are not a fit.”
From Scorecard to Strategy
The beauty of scorecards is that they are not just documents used in hiring. They become the blueprint that links the theory of strategy to the reality of execution. Scorecards translate your business plans into role-by-role outcomes and create alignment among your team, and they unify your culture and ensure people understand your expectations. No wonder they are such powerful management tools.
Properly constructed and used, scorecards spread strategy through every aspect of your organizational life.
Scorecards:
Set expectations with new hires
Monitor employee progress over time
Objectify your annual review system
Allow you to rate your team annually as part of a talent review process
How to Create a Scorecard
MISSION. Develop a short statement of one to five sentences that describes why a role exists. For example, “The mission for the customer service representative is to help customers resolve their questions and complaints with the highest level of courtesy possible.”
OUTCOMES. Develop three to eight specific, objective outcomes that a person must accomplish to achieve an A performance. For example, “Improve customer satisfaction on a ten-point scale from 7.1 to 9.0 by December 31.”
COMPETENCIES. Identify as many role-based competencies as you think appropriate to describe the behaviors someone must demonstrate to achieve the outcomes. Next, identify five to eight competencies that describe your culture and place those on every scorecard. For example, “Competencies include efficiency, honesty, high standards, and a customer service mentality.”
ENSURE ALIGNMENT AND COMMUNICATE. Pressure-test your scorecard by comparing it with the business plan and scorecards of the people who will interface with the role. Ensure that there is consistency and alignment. Then share the scorecard with relevant parties, including peers and recruiters.
Chapter 3 - SOURCE. Generating a Flow of A Players
The CEOs of billion-dollar companies that we interviewed for this book recognize recruitment as one of their most important jobs. They consider themselves chief recruiting officers and expect all of their managers to view their jobs the same way.
These successful executives don’t allow recruiting to become a one-time event, or something they have to do only every now and then. They are always sourcing, always on the lookout for talented people from diverse backgrounds, always identifying the who before a new hire is really needed.
Referrals
Of all the ways to source candidates, the number one method is to ask for referrals from your personal and professional networks. This approach may feel scary and time-consuming, but it is the single most effective way to find potential A Players.
Referrals from Your Professional and Personal Networks. Create a list of the ten most talented people you know and commit to speaking with at least one of them per week for the next ten weeks. At the end of each conversation, ask, “Who are the most talented people you know?” Continue to build your list and continue to talk with at least one person per week.
Referrals from Your Employees. Add sourcing as an outcome on every scorecard for your team. For example, “Source five A Players per year who pass our phone screen.” Encourage your employees to ask people in their networks, “Who are the most talented people you know whom we should hire?” Offer a referral bonus.
Deputizing Friends of the Firm. Consider offering a referral bounty to select friends of the firm. It could be as inexpensive as a gift certificate or as expensive as a significant cash bonus.
Recruiters
Recruiters remain a key source for executive talent, but they can do only so much if you don’t expose them to the inner culture and workings of your business. Think of recruiters much the way you would think of a doctor or a financial advisor. The more you keep them in the dark about who you are, what’s wrong, and what you really need, the less effective they will be.
Use the method described in this book to identity and hire A Player recruiters. Build a scorecard for your recruiting needs, and hold the recruiters you hire accountable for the items on that scorecard. Invest time to ensure the recruiters understand your business and culture.
Researchers
External recruiting firms often contract with recruiting researchers to explore a market, identify sources of talent, and feed names back to the recruiting firm. You can do the same by hiring researchers to augment your sourcing efforts. Researchers won’t conduct interviews themselves. Instead, they’ll identify names for your internal recruiting team or managers to pursue.
Identify recruiting researchers whom you can hire on contract, using a scorecard to specify your requirements. Ensure they understand your business and culture.
Sourcing System
Sourcing talent through these proven practices is easy. The challenge is less a matter of knowing what to do than of putting a system in place to manage the process—and having the discipline to follow through. When the crunch is on, you and your hiring team are likely to be meeting people all day long, every day. Many of them could be A Players for some role in your company. If you’ve brought in recruiters and recruiting researchers, they will be bringing still more people to your attention. How do you capture all these names and, more importantly, follow up with them to build a relationship?
A good system will enable all of the employees in your business to contribute names and other useful information to the company’s database of potential A Player candidates.
Here’s a best practice that puts that thirty minutes to work. Close the door to your office or go into a conference room. Pull out your list of potential A Players and sort the list by priority. Now, start making calls until you have at least one live conversation. The conversation does not have to be long. We frequently begin with something simple like, “Sue recommended that you and I connect. I understand you are great at what you do. I am always on the lookout for talented people and would love the chance to get to know you.
Most people will be thrilled to chat. Done well, you will find you can connect with forty or more new people per year. That’s a quick way to build an impressive network. One more thing. When you are done with the call, assuming you were even moderately impressed with what you heard, be sure to ask the key follow-up question: “Now that you know a little about me, who are the most talented people you know who might be a good fit for my company?”
Create a system that (1) captures the names and contact information on everybody you source and (2) schedules weekly time on your calendar to follow up. Your solution can be as simple as a spreadsheet or as complex as a candidate tracking system integrated with your calendar.
Chapter 4 - SELECT. The Four Interviews for spotting A Players
Steve Kerr, the chief learning officer for Goldman Sachs and former head of GE’s learning center, believes that the common interview processes are “almost a random predictor” of job performance.
To be a great interviewer, you must get out of the habit of passively witnessing how somebody acts during an interview. That puts you back in the realm of voodoo hiring methods, where you end up basing your decision on how somebody acts during a few minutes of a certain day. The time span is too limited to reliably predict anything useful. Instead, the four interviews use the time to collect facts and data about somebody’s performance track record that spans decades. The four interviews are:
The screening interview
The Who Interview®
The focused interview
The reference interview
The Screening Interview
The screening interview is a short, phone-based interview designed to clear out B and C Players from your roster of candidates.
We recommend that you conduct the screening interview by phone and that you take no more than thirty minutes.
As with all the interviews we present with the A Method, we advocate a structured approach to screening interviews. This means following a common set of questions every time you screen somebody.
Review the scorecard before the call to refresh your memory.
Begin the call by setting expectations: first 20 minutes to know the candidate and after answer any questions for the candidate to get to know us.
Four essential questions will help you build a comprehensive fact base for weeding out clear B and C Players in a screening interview.
What are your career goals?
This first question is powerful because it allows you to hear about a candidate’s goals and passions before you taint the discussion with your own comments. You give the candidate the first word, rather than telling the person about the company so he or she can parrot back what you just said. Ideally, a candidate will share career goals that match your company’s needs.
Talented people know what they want to do and are not afraid to tell you about it. You also want to hear the candidate speak with passion and energy about topics that are aligned with the role. A clear misalignment should put you on alert.
2. What are you really good at professionally?
This second question always generates plenty of dialogue. You won’t have any trouble getting people to list their strengths. We suggest you push candidates to tell you eight to twelve positives so you can build a complete picture of their professional aptitude. Ask them to give you examples that will put their strengths into context. If they say they are decisive, press for an example of a time when this trait served them well, and remember, you are listening for strengths that match the job at hand.
3. What are you not good at or not interested in doing professionally?
The third question captures the other side of the balance sheet. You could ask for weaknesses outright, but too often that approach yields cookie-cutter, self-serving answers like “I am impatient for results” or “I work too hard.” Instead, let the candidates answer as they will. Then if you’re not satisfied, push them for a real weakness or a real area for development. If you hear these cookie-cutter answers, simply say, “That sounds like a strength to me. What are you really not good at or not interested in doing?” Talented people will catch the hint and reconsider their responses.
If you still find yourself struggling, we recommend that you put the fear of the reference check into the person. You say, “If you advance to the next step in our process, we will ask for your help in setting up some references with bosses, peers, and subordinates. Okay?” The candidate will say, “Okay.” Then you say, “So I’m curious. What do you think they will say are some things you are not good at, or not interested in?” Now you’ll get an honest and full answer.
Who were your last five bosses, and how will they each rate your performance on a 1-10 scale when we talk to them?
The language in the question is important: WHEN, not IF. This slight nuance is key to unlocking the truth. Ask for the rating and follow up by pressing for details. Look for a lot of 8’s, 9’s and 10’s in the rating. 7’s neutral; 6’s and below are bad (people giving themselves 6 often mean 2).
Getting Curious: What, How, Tell Me More
For additional questions, follow a simple process called “getting curious”: after a candidate answers one of the primary questions, get curious about the answer by asking a follow-up question that begins with “What”, “How”, “Tell Me More”. Keep using this framework until you are clear about t what the person is really saying.
Hit the Gong Fast
The whole point of the screening interview is to weed people out as quickly as possible. Don’t waste time with the people who are not fit. Spend more time with those most likely to be A Players.
The screening interview will allow you to quickly narrow the list of candidates to a small handful that you want to pursue further. Once you have narrowed list of two to five candidates, you can wheel out the heavy interviewing artillery.
The WHO Interview: the Power of Patterns for Choosing Who
Conduct the WHO interview of 1.5-3 hours by walking chronologically through a candidate’s career, using the same five questions for each job or chapter in the person’s work history.
The WHO interview helps to be more confident and accurate in your selection, as it uncovers the patterns of somebody’s career history, which you can match to your scorecard. It unlocks the power of using data and patterns of behavior for making predictions about how somebody is likely to perform in the future.
The WHO Interview is a chronological walk-through of a person’s career. You begin by asking about the highs and lows of a person’s educational experience to gain insight into his or her background. Then you ask 5 simple questions, for each job in the past 15 years. The discussion these 5 questions generate seems more like a conversation than an interview.
WHO Interview Questions:
What were you hired to do? It’s a window into a candidate’s goals and targets for a specific job.
What accomplishments are you most proud of? This question generates wonderful discussions about the peaks of a person’s career. Ideally, candidates will tell you about the accomplishments that match the job outcomes they just described to you. Beware if a candidate’s accomplishments seem to lack any correlation to the expectations of the job. A Players tend to talk about outcomes linked to expectations. B and C Players tend to talk about events, people they met, or aspects of the job they liked without even getting into results.
What were some low points during that job? People can be hesitant to share their lows at first. As everybody as work lows, you can reframe the question over and over until the candidate gets the message. Don’t let the candidate off the hook.
Who were the people you worked with? Specifically:
What was your boss’s name and how do you spell that? Forcing the candidate to spell the name out sends a powerful message: we are going to call, so they should tell the truth. What was it like working with him/her? At the positive extreme, you will hear the praise of their bosses and how they received mentoring and coaching from them over the years. What will he/she tell me were your biggest strengths and areas for improvement? Say WILL, not WOULD. It shows that your question is not hypothetical. This approach is referred to as TORC - the threat of reference checks.
How would you rate the team you inherited on an A, B, C scale? What changes did you make? Did you hire anybody? Fire anybody? How would you rate the team when you left on an A, B, C scale?
Why did you leave that job? This question can be one of the most insight-producing. Were they promoted, recruited, or fired? Were they taking the next step in their career or running from something? How did they feel about it? How did their boss react to the news? A Players are highly valued by their bosses. B and C Players often are not. Don’t accept vague answers. get curious.
Conducting an effective WHO Interview
Divide a person’s career “story” into the equivalent of “chapters”. Each chapter could be a single job, or a group of jobs that span three to five years.
Go chronologically. Don’t go backward. Candidates cannot think clearly that way.
Take time. The WHO interview takes three hours on average to conduct. But for every hour you spend in the WHO interview, you’ll save hundreds of hours by not dealing with C Players. The return of your time is staggeringly high.
Do it yourself. You as a hiring manager or board member would like to conduct the WHO Interview yourself. You own the hire. You will suffer the consequences of making a mistake.
Do it in tandem. You can also conduct the WHO Interview with a colleague. This tandem approach makes it easier to run the interview.
Kick off the interview by setting expectations - literally describe the approach you are going to take.
Master Tactics
#1. Interrupting
You have to interrupt the candidate. The good way to interrupt somebody is to smile broadly. match their enthusiasm level, and use reflective listening to get them to stop talking without demoralizing the candidate. It is through maintaining very high rapport that you get the most valuable data, and polite interrupting can build that rapport.
#2. The Three P’s
Use them to clarify how valuable an accomplishment was in any context.
How did your performance compare to the previous year’s performance?
How did your performance compare to the plan?
How did your performance compare to that of peers?
#3. Push Versus Pull
People who perform well are generally pulled to greater opportunities. People who perform poorly are often pushed out of their jobs. Do not hire anybody who has been pushed out of 20% or more of their jobs. Listen carefully to the answers to the question Why did you leave this job.
#4. Painting a Picture
You’ll know you understand what a candidate is saying when you can literally see a picture of it in your mind. This ability is called “empathic imagination”.
#5. Stopping at the Stop Signs
You can watch the shifts in body language and other inconsistencies. Saying great things while shifting in a chair, looking down, or covering the mouth is an inconsistency, a stop sign. When you see that, slam on the breaks and get curious.
The Focused Interview: Getting to Know More
Involve others in the hiring process by assigning team members to conduct interviews that focus on the outcomes and/or competencies on the scorecard.
Focused interviews offer a chance to involve other team members directly in the hiring process.
The focused interview is similar to the commonly used behavioral interview with one major difference: it is focused on the outcomes and competencies of the scorecard.
Primary questions:
The purpose of this interview is to talk about (competency/outcome you want to explore).
What are your biggest accomplishments in this area during your career?
What are your insights into your biggest mistakes and lessons learned in this area?
Assign members of your team to perform focused interviews based on the scorecard you prepared.
Each interview will take 45-60 minutes, depending on how many outcomes and competencies you assign to each interviewer.
Double-checking the cultural fit
You can create a specific cultural fit interview based on the focused interview framework, using questions built around your cultural values.
The Reference Interview: Testing what you’ve learned
Conduct seven reference calls with people you choose from the WHO interview. Ask the candidate to set up the calls to break through the gatekeepers while minimizing your own effort.
Don’t skip the references.
Pick the right references. Review your notes from the Who interviews and pick the bosses, peers, subordinates with whom you would like to speak.
Ask the candidate to contact the references to set up the calls.
Conduct the right number of reference interviews. 4 yourself, 3 - by colleagues.
Questions:
In which context did you work with the person?
What were the person’s biggest strengths?
What were the person’s biggest areas for improvement BACK THEN?
How would you rate his/her overall performance in that job on 1-10 scale? What about his/her performance causes you to give that rating?
The person mentioned that he/she struggled with ____ in that job. Can you tell me more about that?
Avoid accepting a candidate’s reference list at face value. Reach out to the informal “references” who have been out on the frontlines.
Understand the code for risky candidates. You can hear excellent references from some, and negative from others. False positives are given because people don’t like to give a negative reference. If someone just confirms the date of employment, this is a bad sign. If someone really thinks the person is good, they’ll say more than that. Pay close attention to WHAT people say and HOW they say it. Listen carefully when you hear the “if… then…” formulation. Um’s and er’s are another code of unspoken problems. Lukewarm or qualified praise is likely to signal ambivalence or worse about a candidate. A truly positive reference should brim with enthusiasm and obvious admiration.
Decide: Search for the Skill-Will Bull’s Eye
Grade the scorecard using the skill-will framework. Look for people whom you would rate A both for skill and will. Nobody is perfect, seek those who are strong in the most important places of your scorecard.
Throughout the interview process, you gather the facts that help you decide if somebody’s skill (what they CAN do) and will (what they WANT to do) match your scorecard. When a candidate’s skill-will profile matches up perfectly with the requirements outlined in your scorecard, you candidate has the skill-will bull’s-eye.
Begin by examining skill - the candidate’s ability to achieve the individual outcomes on your scorecard. if 90% or more - give A rating for the outcome.
Next, evaluate the will - motivations, and competencies a candidate brings to the table. If you evaluate that there is 90% or better chance that the candidate will display this competency, rate him an A for this competency.
When (1) you are 90% or more confident that a candidate can get the job done because his or her skills match the outcomes on your scorecard, and (2) you are 90% or more confident that the candidate will be a good fit because his or her will matches the mission and competencies for the role.
Red Flags: When to Dive Beneath the Surface
Red flags are not deal killers, but they are likely to signal that there is something worth exploring beneath the surface.
The major red flags:
omission to mention past failures
exaggerated answers
taking credit for the work of others
speaking poorly of past bosses
inability to explain job moves
people most important to candidates are unsupportive of change
for managerial hires: no experience to hire or fire anybody
more interest in compensation and benefits than in the job itself
trying too hard to look like an expert
self-absorption
Behavioral warning signs (as per Marshall Goldsmith)
winning too much: boasting about winning battles that do not matter much
adding too much value = ego went awry
Starting the sentence with “no”, “but”, “however”. Prefer “Yes, that’s a great idea” to “No, I agree with you but”
telling the world how smart we are
making destructive comments about previous colleagues
blaming others
making excuses = not taking responsibility for their performance
the excessive need to “be me”. Listen for “That’s just me, I am not organized” = no opening to adapt their style to fit your culture
Decide Who to Hire
take out all the scorecards
make sure you’ve rated all the candidates. If you have not given each candidate an overall A,B,C, do it now.
If you have no A’s, go back to sourcing more candidates
If you have one A, decide to hire that person
If you have multiple A’s, rank them and decide to hire the best A from among them.
Chapter 5. SELL: the Top Five Ways to Seal the Deal
Most managers fail to sell a candidate.
The key to successfully selling your candidate to join your company is putting yourself in his or her shoes. Care about what they care about. It turns out that candidates tend to care about five things, so make sure to address these five areas by using 5 ways to seal the deal with confidence. these are the 5 F’s of selling: fit, family, freedom, fortune, and fun.
Fit ties together the company’s vision, needs, and culture with the candidate’s goals, strengths, and values. People want to make an impact. They want to be needed. They want to be part of something feels right.
Family take into account the broader trauma of changing jobs. What can we do to make the change easy for your family?
Freedom is the autonomy the candidate will have to make his or her own decisions. A Players never like being micromanaged. They’re looking for positions where they will be left alone to excel. This scares some executives because they feel like they are giving up control. This is one of the great paradoxes of management. In reality, great leaders gain more control by ceding control to their A Players.
Fortune reflects the stability of your company and overall financial upside. ‘If you accomplish your objectives, you will likely make X over the next 5 years’. While money can be a disincentive if it is too low or not linked to performance, it rarely is the key motivator. If all you have to sell is compensation, that is not good. That does not mean you can ignore it. Demonstrate how a candidate would be rewarded if he or she joins your company.
Fun describes the work environment and personal relationships the candidate will make. What “fun” means is closely tied to corporate culture.
Five waves of selling
Selling is something you should be doing throughout the entire hiring process. Like sourcing, selling requires constant attention. Be persistent. Don’t give up until you have your A Player on board.
The five waves of selling are:
When you source. Understand where somebody is with their interests. Spot the hooks
When you interview. Typically happens towards the end of each interview. Pay attention to what the candidate says during the interview. Frame the offer that would ultimately attract the candidate and put on your sale’s hat, assuming you still see the potential in the candidate.
The time between your offer and the candidate’s acceptance. Baking too far away during this period can feel a lot like a cold shoulder. Silence is your worst enemy at this stage. Stay in touch with the candidate on a regular basis. Pinpoint their concerns using the five F’s as your guide.
The time between candidate’s acceptance and his or her first day. Celebrant's the their acceptance by sending something meaningful, such as flowers, balloons, or gift certificate. Make a splash. Continue to stay in touch.
The new hire’s first hundred days on the job. You’re still not done selling when the candidate joins.
10 Things to Do to Install the A Method in Your Company
Make people a top priority
Follow the A Method yourself
Build support among your executive team or peers
Cast a clear vision for the organization and reinforce it through every communication with the broader team
Train your team on best practices
Remove barriers (olives, standards, practices) that impede the change.
Implement practices that support the change.
Recognize and reward those who use the method and achieve results
Remove managers who are not on board
Celebrate wins and plan for more change
Legal traps to avoid
Relevance. So not reject candidates for reasons not relevant to the job
Standardization of hiring process
Use non-discriminatory language during interviews and in written forms
Avoid asking candidates illegal questions
A rising tide lifts all boats. So it’s with A Players. The right hire in the right position at the right time with the right cultural alignment echoes throughout an organization.