LOU ADLER is founder and President of The Adler Group, a training and consulting firm based in Southern California. He is a noted recruiting industry expert, national speaker, and columnist for a number of major recruiting sites, including HR.com, ERExchange.com, Kennedy Information, and Workforce Management magazine.

Hire With Your Head

John Wiley & Sons

Chapter One

Hire smart, or manage tough. -Red Scott

A RUDE AWAKENING-WHAT IT REALLY TAKES TO GET AHEAD

I still remember the following situation like it was yesterday. I got the call sometime in the morning on a mid-October day in 1972 at my first management job, financial planning manager at Rockwell International's Automotive Group in Troy, Michigan. At the time, I was working on my first presentation, due the next day, to the Group's president and vice president of finance. It was going to be a very long day and night. I didn't mind, since my new wife hadn't made the move to Michigan yet. My boss, Chuck Jacob, and the reason for my being in Michigan, was on the phone with a desperate plea. Chuck was a 29-year-old Harvard MBA whiz kid, just out of Ford Motor Company, trying to prove to everyone that he deserved his position as controller for this multibillion-dollar automotive supplier. He was also my idol. I listened. He was over at the University of Michigan interviewing MBA students for planning analyst positions to fill out our department. We needed these people urgently. The good news-too many had signed up for the interview, and Chuck needed me there to interview the overflow. We were going head-to-head with Ford, Procter & Gamble, IBM, and every other top Fortune 500 company, who wanted the best candidates from this prestigious MBA program. He told me there were stars in this group that we needed on our team. The bad news-I didn't have a minute to spare. I protested, vehemently, pleading 14-hour days, a long night, and a critical presentation the next day. There was a momentary delay. Chuck's response still blasts in my ears today: "There is nothing more important to your success than hiring great people! Nothing. We'll somehow get the work done. Get your_______ over here now." He then hung up.

I was there within the hour. Together we interviewed about 20 people, took eight of them to dinner that night in Ann Arbor, and hired three of the top MBA students within two weeks. I've lost track of Russ, Joe, and Vivek, but I want to thank them and Chuck (who passed away at a too-early age) for an invaluable lesson: There is nothing more important-to your personal and company success-than hiring great people. Nothing. Chuck and I got back to the office at 10:00 P.M. that night and worked together until 3:00 A.M. to finish the report. The handwritten version was presented the next day to Bob Worsnop and Bill Panny. We apologized for the format and lack of preparation, but told them we were doing something more important. They agreed.

BENCHMARKING THE BEST

I learned 50 percent of what I needed to know about hiring that day. Since then, I've been trying to understand the rest. I'm not quite there yet, but close. For the past 30-plus years, I've been fortunate to be able to work with other people, like Chuck, who always seem to hire great people, year in and year out. Few have had any formal training. They learned through trial and error. Equally important, I've lived and worked with managers who've made every possible hiring mistake in the book. This is their book, too. It's the collective stories of the good and the bad, sharing what to do and what not to do. There are some great techniques in this book, but none are more important than your belief that hiring great people is the single most important thing you can do to ensure your own success.

Many years later, I heard Red Scott's adage, "Hire smart, or manage tough." As far as I was concerned, this summarized everything. I've never met anybody who could manage tough enough. No matter how hard you try, you can never atone for a weak hiring decision. A weak candidate rarely becomes a great employee, no matter how much you wish or how hard you work. Instead, hire smart. Use the same time and energy to do it right the first time. Brian Tracy of Nightingale-Conant fame said on one of his audio programs that effective hiring represents 95 percent of a manager's success. This seems a little high, but from what I've seen, 70 percent to 80 percent seems about right to me. This is still enough to keep hiring top talent in the number one position.

Every manager says hiring great people is their most important task; however, few walk the talk. Although important, it never seems urgent enough until it's too late. When it really comes down to the actual hiring process, our words don't match our actions. Here's how you can quickly test yourself to see how well you score as a hiring manager. Rank the performance of every member of your own team. Are most of them top-notch and exceeding expectations on all aspects of their work without being pushed? If they are, consider yourself a strong manager. Unless you're hiring people like this 80 percent to 90 percent of the time, you need to throw out everything you've learned about hiring, and start with a fresh new slate. If you're already in the elite 80 percent to 90 percent, don't relax. We're undergoing some major workforce shifts that will make it even more difficult to continue to hire great people every time.

Ongoing demographic changes, global expansion, the Internet, and the great dot-com boom and bust changed the hiring rules forever. This resulted in a cultural shift of major proportions. Changing jobs every few years no longer carries the stigma it did pre-2000. Company loyalty is no longer a hallmark of character. It is no wonder, considering that reductions in pension plans, the shifting of the cost of health care to the employee, and the outsourcing of whole departments have forced each employee to look out for him- or herself. Companies no longer set the hiring rules, the best people do. While this has always been true, evidence abounds that this shift is accelerating. Just consider the increase in turnover. Retention is now the new buzzword and focus, as companies attempt to stem the tide of their best people leaving for greener pastures. Unfortunately, most companies are still using outdated hiring processes to find top people in a modern world. Posting boring jobs on a major board is out of date.

This book is about hiring top people. Finding them, interviewing them, and recruiting them to work for you. Many of the techniques presented in this book have been developed by observing people who consistently hire top people. This is a process called benchmarking and much of the material in the book has been developed this way. Some of the concepts were developed through trial and error as part of my search practice and then tested and validated in the field. Benchmarking and modeling the best practices are the cornerstone of the Performance-based Hiring process described in this book.

Modeling your hiring practice after the managers and recruiters who consistently find and hire good people is similar to modeling after the good performers for any type of job. This is pretty simple. Just find out what the most successful people do that makes them successful, and find other people who can do the same things. It turns out you don't need to be a trained psychologist to hire good people. Psychologists look for the underlying traits of high performers. Why bother? Just look for high performers. They'll possess the necessary underlying traits.

As a result of these benchmarking studies, an interesting pattern has been observed: The best hiring decision is not intuitive or based on gut feelings. Instead, it involves a three-step process:

1. Remain objective throughout the interviewing process, fighting the impact of first impressions, biases, intuition, prejudices, and preconceived notions of success. This way, all information collected during the interview is both relevant and unbiased. 2. Collect information across multiple job factors, rather than deciding quickly if the candidate is suitable for the job based on a narrow range of traits, like technical competency, intelligence, or affability. Collecting the right information before deciding yes or no is the key here. 3. Use an evidence-based approach to determine whether the candidate is motivated and competent to meet all job needs. This involves some type of formal decision-making process based on evaluating the evidence rather than using an up/down voting system.

From my observations, it appears that weaker interviewers and those managers who make many mistakes violate one or more of these rules. A large percentage of these mistakes are made by smart people who make quick simplistic judgments largely based on first impressions and personality. Not unexpectedly, their hiring results are random. The overly intuitive interviewer short-circuits the process, superficially assessing only a narrow group of important traits. Every now and then, a star is hired, but more often it's a person who is strong in only a few areas and not broad enough to handle all aspects of the position. If you've ever hired someone who is partially competent, you've fallen into this common trap. The technical interviewers are at the other extreme. These people go overboard on validating technical competency, ignoring other critical core skills like working with others, planning, budgeting, and meeting deadlines. While the result is a solid team, many of them lack the motivation to do the real work required. The key to hiring both competent and highly motivated people is to collect enough of the right facts. Trouble occurs when this balance is broken.

HIRING IS TOO IMPORTANT TO LEAVE TO CHANCE

If you want to hire superior people, use a system designed to hire superior people, not one designed to fill jobs. Even with all of the new available technology, most companies do not take full advantage of it. The emphasis seems to be on reducing costs and filling jobs as rapidly as possible, not hiring stronger people or minimizing hiring mistakes. Hiring the best must drive every aspect of a company's hiring process, especially if you want to redesign the hiring process you now have.

Throughout, I cite some great books on management and hiring, specifically:

* Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan, with Charles Burck. * Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap ... and Others Don't by Jim Collins. * First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman. * Winning by Jack Welch and Suzy Welch. * Jack: Straight from the Gut by Jack Welch, with John A. Byrne.

Each of these books should be read by everyone who is a manager or wants to be one. They set the stage. The one common theme is that hiring top people must be the primary task of all managers, and companies must establish the tools and the resources to do it right. While these books emphasize the importance of hiring top talent, none describe how to actually do it. That's what this book is about.

Hiring the best requires a system designed around the needs of hiring the best people. This is what Performance-based Hiring offers-a simple and scalable business process that can be used by small companies with just a few people or large corporations that employ tens of thousands. Even better, it works whether you're hiring large numbers of entry-level people or one CEO.

Wells Fargo is now rolling out Performance-based Hiring in their retail stores to hire tellers and bankers. American International Group (AIG) is now using Performance-based Hiring to hire managers, insurance sales reps, and customer service reps for their call centers. Broadcom, Cognos, and Quest are using the process to find and hire software development engineers throughout the world. HealthEast Care System in Minneapolis uses it to hire nurses and nurses aides. The YMCA is using Performance-based Hiring to hire area CEOs and branch managers to manage their facilities, as well as thousands of camp counselors every summer. And the list goes on at companies large and small, in the United States and abroad. These companies recognize that hiring top talent is not the same as getting requisitions filled, and they have found that Performance-based Hiring is the solution.

At its core, hiring the best is about understanding how the best people look for new jobs and how they decide to accept one job over the other. It's about why they decide to take, or not take, a counteroffer. It's about why they take one job over another even if the pay is less. Hiring the best is not about setting up an applicant tracking system or posting a traditional job description on some job board. Hiring the best is not about managing data more efficiently, but about managing the right data more efficiently.

Not understanding what motivates recruiters, managers, and the best candidates, and how they make decisions is the reason hiring is more challenging now than it was pre-Internet. Top candidates now have more choices than ever before, and it's easy for these people to find new jobs. The openness of the job market has made it far easier for a top person who is a little frustrated with his or her job to find something better. Unless you take into account this major increase in workforce mobility in your hiring and retention process, you are doomed to forever play catch-up.

The following 11 reasons are some easily correctable problems that prevent companies from attracting enough top people. As you read through the list, consider how many are representative of your company's hiring processes:

1. Hard-to-find job openings: Do you push jobs to candidates or do they still have to hunt to find your openings? With so many choices, the best candidates won't waste their time looking for needles in haystacks. Few companies use standard search-engine techniques to allow top people to quickly find their open positions. We had one client whose ad for 20 call center reps was on page 37 of a 40-page Monster.com listing. More candidates now Google to find possible opportunities, bypassing career boards altogether. What would happen if a potential candidate put a few keywords and skills into Google, the name of your city, and a standard title? It's important that your openings are prominently featured on the first page of your corporate website. 2. Poorly designed career web sites: When candidates click on your company's web site, ensure that they can find all available jobs without using generic, time-consuming, pull-down menu choices. Most career sites make it too difficult for good people with little time to explore career opportunities and check out open jobs. There are many interactive web features available today to attract people and keep them involved. Unfortunately, few HR/recruiting departments have kept pace with technology in this important area. 3. Boring ads: Most posted job descriptions are nothing more than lists of skills, qualifications, and required experiences. These commodity-like jobs certainly aren't written to compel a top person to apply or check them out. In many cases the prospect can't even check them out or explore them further unless he or she formally registers with the site. If it was a marketing site, those interested could send emails or call for more information. Something similar could be offered to the career section. For the call center position noted previously, the ad itself was boring, demeaning, and exclusionary. We rewrote it, made it fun and compelling, got it to the top five on the Monster.com listing, and had 280 people apply in one day.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Hire With Your Headby Lou Adler Copyright © 2007 by Lou Adler. Excerpted by permission.
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