Why You Need to Keep Score

As human beings, we don’t like looking at our failures.  So we tend not to keep score, or create hard metrics for our own performance.  We’d rather not think about our mistakes and prefer to focus our attention on more pleasant things.  

And while not keeping score may be pleasant, it’s also very expensive.  Because hidden in your failures are some positively huge expenses, and some really valuable lessons about how to prevent similar mistakes in the future.

I recently helped a client analyze the cost of their hiring mistakes, and also the cost of their hiring delays.  It took a few weeks to go back and gather some data about hires, terminations, and lag times between various stages of the hiring process.  And it took a day or so to pull it all together and get it into a spreadsheet.  

We found hundreds of thousands of dollars in (preventable) lost profit.   We found more money than the entire annual budget for the HR department.   Much of the lost profit was in places that were not even considered a “problem area” before we rigorously looked at the numbers.   This is in no way unusual, in fact, I have yet to do one of these projects for a professional services organization where we did not find hundreds of thousands of dollars of lost profit.    Now my client knows exactly where to focus their attention to recover all that lost profit – and that’s great news.

Numbers matter.  So as a big fan of rigorous metrics, you’d think I’d be happy to look at my own data.    I’m not,  I prefer to avoid it.  So knowing that, I set up a process where I have to look at it.   Ellen, our Operations Manager, gathers and publishes our statistics regularly.  Everyone in the company can see the data, and when I look at it  I always find a surprise, some area where I can do better.   I always learn something that I would never have learned otherwise.  For me, failure is a great teacher.

So today, Ellen and I reviewed the retention statistics on our placements.  I must tell you, this is much less fun for me than it was before the recession because we count layoffs against our statistics.  (I think performance problems are often buried inside of layoffs, so we count them ‘against’ our numbers).

And although the search industry prefers to look at retention rates for 18 months, we look at them for 3 years - anything less just lets us off the hook too easily.   Our promise is to help our clients hire people who get results, and it’s devilishly hard to measure real results and long term contribution during an executive’s first eighteen months on the job.   So if we only counted retention rates at 6 months or a year, we would not learn much about how our placements actually contributed to our clients getting results.  

So here are the retention stats on our placements:

• 91% are still on the job at 12 months.
• 90% are still on the job at 18 months.
• 85% are still on the job at 3 years.

I must tell you, these numbers were much better last year, so this was painful to look at, but you know what?  I learned something by forcing myself to look at them.   By sharing them with you, I am challenging myself to further improve next year …. and that’s the real reason you can’t afford not to keep score – it’s fuel for improvement.

When is the Best Time to Recruit?

When is the best time to recruit?  Ideally you want to be recruiting when lots of good candidates are available, paying attention and willing to talk to you.  You also want to be recruiting when your competition is NOT actively trying to recruit the same people you are.   So when do you find that ideal combination of events?  

During the December holidays you have fewer employers to compete with, but you also have fewer candidates looking.   That usually makes holidays a ”wash” – you can still recruit, but you have no special advantage.  But there is a time when the odds are definitely in your favor.   

The ”golden recruiting window” is the first three weeks of January. 

On the candidate side:  You have lots of job seekers who took a bit of time off for the holidays.  Perhaps they spent time with family and complained about their job.  Perhaps on a long car trip they reflected on what they really wanted from their careers and concluded their current job did not provide the challenge or stimulation they need.  I’m not exactly sure why it happens, but I do know that every year a huge number of incredibly well qualified people come on the job market in early January.  They make a decision to consider new opportunities.  Some people even make a New Year’s resolution to get a new job.

On the employer side:  Many employers gear up their hiring in January.  Some firms have fresh new annual budget money to spend.  But most managers are swamped in December and put off until January all the nitty gritty tasks like writing a job description, or getting internal approvals signed off.   This administrivia delays the beginning of their recruiting process until late January, and sometimes February. 

That leaves a golden recruiting window in January with lots of motivated candidates who are newly “on the market” - or at least available for a conversation – and very few employers who are talking with them yet. 

So if you want a gorgeous, motivated candidate pool, with relatively little competition from other companies, get your act together in early December, and launch your recruiting initiatives right on January 1.   If you run a fast clean hiring process, you can be making job offers before your competition has even started recruiting.

Your Best People Are Getting Calls

I just spoke with someone we placed last year.  The good news is that she is happy and thriving, likes the direction of her organization and sees a bright future for herself.  (Yeaa hiring process). 

But she also mentioned something you might consider bad news, or even find disturbing.  She said “I don’t know why, but I’m getting all these calls lately for people wanting me to interview for other jobs.” 

I don’t find this remotely disturbing.  And it does not surprise me one bit.  I already know your best people are getting calls from recruiters all the time. 

Your best people are routinely being enticed by your competition  – that’s just the reality of the workplace now.  And the trend is accelerating.  Top performers are always in demand, but sites like LinkedIn have now made it far easier for recruiters to find everyone.  Information just flows more freely now than it did 10 years ago.  

Ignore this shift at your peril.

Your top performers are weary, overworked and may be thinking it’s time for a change.   Some surveys say Gen X is most likely to leave first, many others say high performers are most vulnerable to leaving.  Either way, Fred Crandall, a senior consultant for Watson Wyatt says “There’s going to be a lot of churn” (turnover) as the economy improves.  I would have to agree, more turnover is coming.

So what are you doing to retain your key players?  How are you making them feel valuable?  What kind of performance feedback are you giving?  Studies show that most people want more feedback and many people feel ignored by their manager. 

If you accept this new reality that your best people are constantly being recruited, then you might want to check out what Les McKeown has to say.  He lists 7 Reasons Your Top Performers Are Likely to Leave in 2010, and 3 Things You Must Do Now to Retain Them.

Great Recruiting is Useless …

Many people think the reason to engage a search firm is to get help with recruiting.  Well, maybe that approach works in big companies, but in small firms great recruiting is nearly useless by itself. 

Hiring smart internal recruiters, engaging search firms, and even turning the recruiting process over to a Recruitment Process Outsourcing firm is usually a really bad idea for small organizations.  Recruiting support is absolutely useless to you …  if it is not integrated within a cohesive hiring and performance management process.  (NOTE: By cohesive, I do not mean expensive).

Do you ever wonder why so many companies are frustrated and disappointed by contingency search firms?  It’s because most contingency search firms do not see it as their “place” to suggest how organizations should run their internal hiring process.  So contingent search firms focus their efforts on recruiting.  But great hiring involves a lot more than recruiting.  And you can’t improve the whole until all the parts work together:

• Simply writing up a typical job description is useless … unless you first understand what performance is expected from the new hire and what competencies are necessary to drive that performance.
• Developing an interesting and complete job description and ideal candidate profile is useless … unless you reconcile your target hiring profile with market realities.  (You might find you have champagne tastes on a beer budget and may need to revise your performance expectations to fit the budget).
• Simply posting a job description on job boards is useless … unless you employ additional strategies to recruit less active job seekers.  You can’t make an intelligent hiring decision selecting from only those people who happened to see your ad.  Conversely, you should not avoid ads, they can be a good way to diversify and expand your candidate pool.  If you want great hires, it’s important not to limit your candidate pool to people found using any single recruiting method (including employee referrals).
• Simply recruiting more candidates (or paying an agency to recruit) is useless  … unless your hiring managers know how to interview and how to distinguish top performers from other candidates.  Research shows that most hiring managers do not use the best strategies to select top candidates.
• Simply doing a better job of selecting resumes and interviewing candidates is useless … unless you structure your interview sequence to provide a great experience for the candidates.   You can do more harm than good when your disorganized interview sequence reveals internal organizational conflict and indecision.
• Simply making the occasional good hire is nearly useless  … unless your managers have confidence that your hiring process can reliably produce great people “on demand.”   Until the hiring process is considered reliable, managers will always be reluctant to manage poor performers.  (When managers are confident they can “trade up” then performance management becomes much more effective.)
• Improving your hiring process is a fine start, but you will not be able to keep improving your process … until you follow-up on every hire to ensure that they achieved the business results you expected.   After all, getting business results is the whole point of hiring isn’t it? 

A great hiring process is a “force multiplier” for a great performance management process, and vice versa – both processes support and multiply the effectiveness of the other.  

But recruiting?  Don’t even think about spending money on recruiting until the rest of your hiring process warrants the investment – you will just be pouring fine champagne in a dirty, leaky, plastic cup.

You Put the Wrong Person in Charge of Your Hiring Process

It’s a cruel irony.  As a Hiring Manager, the only time you are forced to think about hiring is when you are too busy to focus on it … because you are understaffed.  But being busy is not really the big problem with hiring.

I can tell you with absolute certainty that hiring efforts do not fail because Hiring Managers are too busy – managers can always find time for their critical priorities.   So why exactly does hiring so often fail in small organizations? 

Hiring efforts fail because the wrong person is in charge.  Most small firms make the Hiring Manager run the hiring process.  If you have 20 managers you have 20 different hiring processes.  Which is a fiasco.

Hiring fails when you bog down the Hiring Manager with all the hiring process decisions.   Hiring fails when the people who know the most about hiring are not creating the hiring process.  The Hiring Manager should be an active participant in a good hiring process, but should almost never be in charge of it.  

Think about it, when you put Hiring Managers in charge of hiring, you take them away from what they are good at (managing their function) and instead force them to make dozens of time consuming decisions they are ill-equipped to make, perform tasks they find unimportant, and take risks they do not fully comprehend.   

To most Hiring Managers, the tasks involved in hiring seem unproductive, uncomfortable, or vaguely legally threatening – like writing a job description, recruiting, selecting people to interview, figuring out what interview questions you can ask, writing up notes from the interview, checking references, and making the job offer.  It feels like one mis-step and BOOM you are in litigation.  (At least that is what the company lawyer said in that mandatory training they slept through took last year).

So managers minimize their effort on the hiring project and instead focus on that other work on their desk that is so much more familiar, that actually interests them and makes them feel competent.    

But don’t most managers get help with hiring?  Of course they do.  Perhaps they enlist the help of a Subject Matter Expert (SME) from HR.  That should help, right?  

Except it does not help – because the “helper” is also in the wrong role.  The (SME) often simply advises, leaving most decisions in the hands of the Hiring Manager – who is still serving as their own hiring project manager.  (The acid test of who is the advisor and who is the hiring project manager is this:  Who reads the resumes, conducts the phone interview and decides who to bring in for a face to face interview.  Whoever makes that decision is your de facto hiring project manager.   In my experience, most Hiring Managers are not well trained to make this choice, often selecting candidates for interview based on the wrong criteria). 

Here’s how it usually plays out when HR plays the supporting role:

• The “helper” ( HR person) makes the manager submit a hiring requisition … with a job description, in accordance with policy.   But the Hiring Manager thinks:  “I can’t write a job description.  I don’t really know what I need.  This is no help at all!”
• Next the “helper” runs an ad or does some recruiting and submits a stack of resumes to the hiring manager.   But the Hiring Manager thinks: “I have no idea if these people are any good, and no time to read all this dull stuff.  I can’t decide who to interview.  This is no help at all!” 
• Next, the busy Hiring Manager looks at their jammed calendar and determines they only have time to see 3 people, fitting them in over a series of weeks.    The “helper” has no earthly idea why only 3 were selected, how the manager selected those 3 people, or why others were not selected, but they are just an advisor and have no voice in the matter.  (Actually, In this case, the manager is actually not upset, these long delays are considered normal hiring practice).
• The manager does not have time to prepare for each interview, does not know what questions to ask, and after the interview can’t quite remember the strengths and weaknesses of any of the prior candidates because the “helper” provided no guidance about what questions to ask or what competencies to look for.   (Again, nobody is upset, this is considered normal hiring practice).
• After weeks elapse unproductively, the Hiring Manager is not impressed by any of the candidates. So they tell the “helper” to go get more candidates.    But the “helper” learned nothing about what the Hiring Manager was looking for and now thinks “I have to start all over?  This is ridiculous!”   Meanwhile the Hiring Manager thinks “This hiring is not rocket science, I just want to meet somebody worth interviewing.  Why can’t I get any help around here?”  

So there it is.  The person who (theoretically) knows how hiring should work (the HR Professional) is not running the hiring project.  And the person with valuable subject matter expertise (the Hiring Manager) is not being debriefed appropriately as an advisor, but is instead bogged down making hiring process decisions without the appropriate training or experience. 

 If you want your hiring to work, reverse the roles.  Have your hiring expert run all the hiring projects, and put your Hiring Managers in the role of   SME, or “end user” – providing valuable input, but not running the hiring project.  

The hiring project manager should thoroughly debrief the Hiring Manager about who they need to hire, what skills the person needs, how to evaluate candidates, etc..  Then  the hiring project manager should provide the structure and run the hiring project front to back using best practices.  In this role reversal, the Hiring Manager does not manage the hiring schedule and spends only the minimum time necessary to interview people and make hiring decisions - no more writing job descriptions, reviewing resumes, scheduling interviews, or any administrivia involved with the hiring process – that is left to the experts.  (If your Hiring Managers only make a few hires per year, it’s simply not practical to try to train them all to become hiring process experts). 

If your HR team does not have the time or capability to do this,  you should look at the how much bad hiring is costing you, or how much slow hiring is costing you, and then rethink your HR budget.  If you are using search firms or outside vendors to who are not managing your search efforts this way, call me, we need to talk.

If you make this simple change, your Hiring Managers will be thrilled, their productivity will rise, your hiring decisions will improve, and your positions will be filled far faster.

Don’t Require a College Degree When You Don’t Need One

In a tough job market like this one, most employers want to raise their expectations about who to hire.  That’s smart.  This is a great time to raise your standards. 

But one of the worst ways to raise your standards is by demanding a college degree for jobs that simply do not require a degree.   That actually does the opposite, it actually lowers the caliber of candidate you can hire. 

The unemployment rate among college grads is far lower than the unemployment rate among people without a degree.  The difference is astonishing.   Check out this interactive graph by the New York Times – “The Jobless Rate for People Like You“.   Our national unemployment rate varies from 3.7% to 48.5%  depending on your race, age, and level of education.   (Bear in mind, that’s the national rate, the DC Metropolitan Area enjoys much lower numbers).  

I should probably note that I do not think that employed candidates are better than unemployed candidates (I’ve addressed that myth before).  

And no,  I’m not debating the value of a college degree, I’ve already discussed that as well).

My point is this:  when you require a college degree, you jump from a candidate pool with relatively high unemployment (high school grads) to a candidate pool with half their rate of unemployment.  Therefore you are competing with many other employers for a candidate pool that simply enjoys more career opportunities.  By insisting on a degree, you simply have more competition, and therefore fewer good people to choose from.

I should note that extensive research shows that years of education do not accurately predict performance on the job … any job. 

So when you require a degree for jobs, you have used a criteria that does not predict success on the job (years of education)  in order to (arbitrarily) narrow the pool of candidates you are considering, and in doing that, you have eliminated some of your best potential candidates.  

So, while demanding a degree may make screening resumes easier, but it will probably make your hiring decision worse.

What You Need to Know About Hiring

Hiring people in any economy is a roll of the dice.  Hiring people right now is even less certain of success.  But there are strategies you can use to improve your odds.  We’ve researched hundreds of articles and compiled the best research and thinking into our November 2009 newsletter.  Check it out.

Here’s Why I Don’t Call You …

If you are not yet a client of Staffing Advisors, do you ever wonder why I don’t call you?  You obviously read this blog, maybe you read our newsletters, maybe you heard me speak somewhere or we met at a networking event, or maybe you just know someone who knows me. 

I could find your contact information (DUH, I’m a headhunter) and it’s likely that you would take my call if I called you, and yet I don’t.  It’s not that I don’t want to talk to you …  far from it.  

So why don’t I call you when it appears that everyone else in the search business calls you regularly?  And further, how exactly do we remain busy, without cold calling, while so many other staffing firms are struggling?  

Because the world changed.  People want communication, conversation and engagement on their terms, not cold calls.   So we’re here on your terms, and as you can see, we put all our energy into researching and sharing how to solve your staffing problems … not pestering you for work.

What’s probably not obvious is just how many people call us.  Friends, casual acquaintances, people who have never spoken to us, people who have no budget to engage our services this year, people who might never be in a position to engage us for a search … all kinds of people call.  All the time.

This blog has been a great way for me to start a conversation with you, without interrupting your day.  You can continue that conversation by posting a comment on this blog, connecting with me on Twitter, sending me an email, but really, most people just call me.  So what do people call me about?  Well last week it looked like this: 

• “We have someone retiring and need some help to rethink the position.” 
• “I need to prove a point to my executive team, can you send me some articles or research on … ?”
• “We’re too busy to even come up with a job description, but need help in our … department, can you help?” 
• “I’m trying to find good candidates for an open position and have no idea where to find them, any suggestions?” 
• “Can you look at this job ad and suggest where to post it?”
• “We have someone who is just not working out and we need to replace them, what should we do?”
• “We simply must develop a pipeline of candidates for this role, these hiring delays are costing us a fortune, and our managers are afraid to fire anyone because they are so hard to replace.”

Sometimes people engage us to solve the problem, sometimes we just have a nice conversation and share a few ideas.  No matter.  

People feel comfortable calling me because the cash register does not have to ring every time someone calls. The financial stuff always works out in the long run.  I’m an inquisitive guy and love hearing what’s going on in your world.   It’s all a fine education for me, so you are never wasting my time by calling, and I never expect anything in return.  (That’s how things work in social media, it’s a “pay it forward” mentality, full of small acts of kindness).

But just don’t expect me to call you.  I already know you are overworked, understaffed, doing more with less … you’re swamped.  I have no intention of being that rude guy who interrupts you.  So call me when you have a question, okay?  

Oh, and every time some other search firm cold calls you?  Please just consider that a gentle reminder to call me with your question, because I’m right here, researching your answer, not on the phone - interrupting other people.

Interviews Are the 3rd (Really 9th) Best Way to Select People

Skilled researchers pored through 85 years of scientific literature to identify which employee selection methods were the best predictors of job performance.    85 years of research, distilled down into one set of findings. 

So of the 19 methods studied, which ones were the best?

• Structured interviews came in 3rd. 
• The far more common unstructured interviews came in a dismal 9th – see:  “So You Think You Can Interview?”
• Reference checks came in 13th. 
• Years of job experience came in 14th. 
• Years of education came in 16th.

So … correct me if I’m wrong here, but that list covers just about all the methods most employers use when making a hiring decision. 

OK, so this research goes a long way toward explaining why there are so many hiring mistakes, but I bet it leaves you wondering just what those researchers found to be the best predictors of job performance…  

The best predictors of job performance were being smart, (General Mental Ability – such as IQ) and doing well on work sample tests (see: ”Talking About Work vs. Doing Work In the Interview.”)    Actually employers who used a combination of two good methods improved their hiring accuracy even further.

So, in 85 years of research, one finding is crystal clear: 

Most traditional methods of selecting employees are terrible at predicting job performance.  

But the fun really begins when you evaluate the entire recruiting and hiring cycle in light of these findings:

• You reduce your chances of making a good hiring decision when you emphasize (the nearly irrelevant) years of experience in your job description, and employment advertising.  That (arbitrarily) limits who you will even consider in your pool of candidates.  
• Then, when you dip into that already limited pool of candidates to select people for an interview, you further reduce your chances of making a good hiring decision when you rely on the resumes alone in selecting who to interview.   Just what, exactly, can you learn from a resume beyond education and years of work experience?  Less than you think, yet surveys show that years of experience is one of the most common factors executives use in evaluating candidates.
• So, before you have even had your first interview, before you have spoken one word to your potential future employee - your entire recruiting and hiring sequence conspired against you by using two of the least reliable indicators of actual job performance to select who you will speak with.  And then of course, most managers compound the error by “winging it” with an unstructured interview.   Hey, if that’s the combination of hiring methods you are using, maybe you should save the trouble and just rely on handwriting analysis instead (it was ranked 18th). 

So what exactly can you do to improve the accuracy of your hiring decisions?  Well, I don’t know what you can do in your company culture, but I can share the approach we have taken on hundreds of searches for dozens of clients.  No, we don’t use IQ tests and no we’re not perfect, but 90% of our placements are thriving on the job after 18 months.   (When you get a lot of repeat business and offer a really long performance guarantee you tend to track these things very carefully).

Our Results-Based Hiring Process^®  does not emphasize education or job experience during the outreach, recruiting and selection process.  We purposefully cast a wide net with telephone interviews to avoid any hint of resume bias - we intentionally want to talk with ”out of the box” candidates.   After we winnow the candidate pool based on the behaviors and competencies that will actually drive business results, we then provide hiring managers with several useful kinds of structure.  We develop targeted behavioral interview questions and detailed candidate evaluation forms for each position.  We help our clients manage who should be involved in the interview sequence, and suggest how it should best be structured, and we encourage our clients to integrate rigorous work sample tests into the interview process. 

And yes, we still check references -  because even if reference checking is only 13th on that list, it still has some correlation to job performance, and I just flat refuse to use handwriting analysis.

Job Descriptions No Longer Describe Jobs

The most accurate part of many job descriptions is “other duties as assigned.”  The rest of it is just a dull list of responsibilities and qualifications lacking all context.  I read them all the time and can rarely understand what the job is really all about.

Any perceived relevance of the job description rarely survives contact with actual work – they are outdated the moment they are written. Rarely do they define the work to be accomplished, and they almost never define the goals to be achieved.  They are, quite simply, a relic of the industrial age.  In the Brand for Talent blog, Libby Sartain asks what’s next if the job description is no longer relevant?  She says:

“The changes of the past decade point to a different environment in which business must search for people. Instead of measuring talent needs by the number of jobs, the forward-thinking business thinks in terms of work—the incremental activities that it must successfully complete for the business to meet its obligations. The measurement of effort as work instead of jobs enables business to focus on output rather than on the input of people in specific roles.”

Hmmmm, measuring the outputs (results), instead of the inputs (activity) – that sounds like a Results-Only-Work Environment (ROWE) to me.  Are we finally moving from industrial age, activity-based time and motion studies and into the future of work –  managing for results?  I sure hope so.

We take this results-based approach in our consulting work with small to midsize enterprises.  At the start of each search engagement we ask the hiring manager what success looks like a year from today.  What will need to be accomplished in the next 12 months for the new hire to be considered a success?  What talents and abilities must someone have to drive those results?  What values fit well within the company culture?   We write it all up in a document we call a Hiring Blueprint.  But really, we could call it a “Results Description” – it’s what a job description could be (if it actually wanted to be relevant).  So how do we know our documents are actually relevant?  Because people refer to them frequently in performance management conversations.

In fact, one of the great joys in our consulting work is following up on the placements we’ve made.  During the first year, we check in with the hiring manager about every 3 months, asking not just ”How is Frank working out?” but ”What have you achieved together?”   We call and ask the candidate not just “How do you like the job?” but ”How does the job differ from your expectations going in to it?”   We judge our own performance by the accuracy of the performance expectations we set and the corresponding results that were achieved. 

Yes, we have an enviable track record of success on our placements, but this is not a “set it and forget it” approach – Results Descriptions change year to year.   Jobs change, unforeseen challenges emerge.  Growing businesses outgrow people, technology and market forces change the nature of the work, and eventually people outgrow jobs.  Work is not static, and job descriptions should not be static either.

If you agree with the following statements, it’s no wonder that very few firms hire effectively:

• The typical job description is useless in defining performance expectations.
• The typical resume is useless in predicting the job performance of the candidate.  

If the Job Description is no longer viable, let’s at least consider replacing it with the Results Description.  As to the resume, I have no idea what to replace it with… 

 (By the way, if you want to see a sample of our Results Descriptions, just take a look at our current searches).

How to Give a Really Bad First Impression of Your Company

You know the drill.  You post a job ad and 300 people apply.  You know, at best,  there are five qualified people in that stack of resumes, so what’s the fastest way to find them?   Some employers ask job seekers to jump through a hoop before committing any time to them.   The hoop  might involve a pre-employment test, performing a work-related task like writing something, or even asking something really time consuming like developing a business plan in order to apply for a job. 

Except here is the problem.

It’s rude.  

And it drives away many of the most talented people you really want to talk to. 

By asking for something before you have committed anything you convey that your time is worth more than theirs … that they are just one of thousands and you are too busy to talk to them.   Except top performers don’t see themselves as mindless drones, as one of thousands.  And remember, there were, at most, only five of them in that big stack of resumes -  but in your haste to save time, you just gave those five the same bad experience you gave everyone else. 

Think about how you feel when a company treats you that way.   I went to Home Depot this weekend, only because my local hardware store was already closed.  I detest going to any retailer who is not staffed and managed appropriately to deliver actual customer service.  Heck, even the self-checkout process was poorly designed.  Sure, they got my money, but it was frustrating and dehumanizing … just like the first impression you are making on everyone who answered your ad.  

Don’t misunderstand me.  It is smart to ask for extra information, it’s even a great idea to test people, but please mind your manners and do those things only AFTER you have first spoken with them.   After you have spoken with someone, you are welcome to ask for something else.  To save time, I think a phone interview makes a lot of sense.

OK, so if  my “mind your manners” rant was not compelling enough for you … Steve Boese wrote a great post on your real first impression with job seekers.  No, it’s not your offices – it’s your web presence and what people say about you.  It’s what happens long before they apply to your ad.   Google is your first impression, followed by your website, corporate job site, and then what other people who interviewed with you reported about their experience.  (InsideJob on Facebook for example). 

If your hiring process feels like shopping at Home Depot, these experiences will surely make their way into the online conversation about your company.  Then your first impression on Google will be working against you, and your recruiting problems will grow ever larger. 

Oh, and forget about those 5 good people, they all dropped out long before you got around to interviewing.

You Got All That From Reading the Resume? Really?

A few months ago I was talking to a CEO about one of his senior managers.  This manager believes he can read a lot into a resume, so he summarily rejects quite a few resumes when he is hiring.  The CEO decided to test this manager’s selection skills by forwarding his own resume using a different name.  The CEO was, of course, rejected as unworthy of an interview. 

Later, I read an article in Forbes and the lead-in to the story immediately grabbed me:

“The current job market reminds me of a story about a church committee assigned to hire a new pastor. Numerous well-qualified candidates applied, but none seemed to meet the committee’s requirements. Frustrated with this perfectionism, one of the committee’s members submitted an anonymous résumé with the accomplishments of a certain priest who had lived and preached in Galilee 2,000 years before. The committee reviewed the résumé and rejected it. Even Jesus Christ wasn’t good enough.”

Let me be clear.  I am not advocating for lowering your hiring standards.  Heaven forbid – after all, I am the guy who wrote “In Recruiting, ‘WOW’ is the New Normal” just a few months ago.  Managers should be raising their hiring standards now.

 No, I’m just saying that too many managers spend too much time trying to interpret nuance from a resume, when they should be paying more attention to how they define the job specifications and thinking harder about how they actually interview real people.   Trust me on this one, you learn far less from a resume than you think you do.

Why the Right People Are Still Hard to Find

Have you tried to fill a position lately?  Were you disappointed by how few good people applied?  Many people are surprised that good candidates are not lining up around the block to apply. 

In a recent article in Human Resource Executive Online, Wharton Professor Peter Cappelli offers some insights into why it’s still difficult to find qualified workers for many positions.  He says:

“There is no shortage of people with the appropriate education credentials for any jobs I’ve seen. The skills that are in short supply are work-based skills, the kind that are only learned on the job: Experience with these vendors, knowledge of these work practices, an understanding of this industry.

A generation ago, these jobs would have always been filled from within, typically as the result of formal development programs. Now employers want to hire these people on the open market, in other words, from their competitors.

But when everyone wants to do this — poof! — such candidates are hard to find.”

I’ve mentioned before that we don’t have one big national economy, but rather 366 metropolitan economies – and the DC metro area is pretty healthy.   In fact hiring in the DC area remains stubbornly difficult for many firms,  particularly now,  when HR staff is spread thin and budgets for recruiting are so limited.

There are solutions to your hiring challenges, but it won’t be easy, and what you did to recruit people five years ago is less and less likely to work today.

Executive Search Hiring Mistakes

Hiring is expensive.  Mis-hires are even more expensive, as we recently discussed in the staggering cost of an executive mis-hire.   We all know hiring mistakes happen occasionally, but just exactly how often is acceptable?

In a recent interview with Financial Times, Kevin Kelly, the CEO of global executive search powerhouse Heidrick & Struggles, revealed the results of an internal study of  20,000 executive searches performed by his firm:

“We’ve found that 40 per cent of executives hired at the senior level are pushed out, fail or quit within 18 months”

Astonishing.   He’s describing a 40% failure rate by one of the most trusted and reputable brands in the executive search business.  (If that statistic is true, I’m glad they didn’t build my house or service the brakes on my car).

Mr. Kelly concluded from this research that more follow-up was called for.  The article noted that Heidrick ”now offers companies everything from initial training and early feedback for their new recruits to regular assessments of current executives and succession planning and staff development programs.”

I applaud Mr. Kelly’s candor - he had no obligation to share this internal information.  I presume he did so as part of his ongoing effort to spur much needed change and innovation within the executive search industry. 

Hey, I did not see the details of his research, so perhaps his conclusion is correct.  But a 40% failure rate?   I’m not sure what that says to you, but to me, it screams “perhaps we have a problem in our process.”   Surely some of those mis-hires could be avoided by using a better hiring process.  As quality guru W. Edwards Deming famously observed  ”If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.”

So, if you want to outperform those elite search professionals and keep your executive hire failure rate below 40%, here are a few aspects of your hiring process you might want to improve: 

• The most common hiring mistakes small companies make
• How to talk candidly about the job during the interview
• How to write better jobs ads
• What to look for in resumes
• Who should interview candidates  
• How to best assess skills
• How to determine cultural fit 
• How to check references
• How to determine a fair salary
• How to make the job offer

Who Should Interview New Hires?

It’s always good to get the input from several people when making a hiring decision, right?  Except some opinions are more valuable than others.  I recently spoke to a CEO who had to call and apologize to a candidate after one of their less experienced interviewers took things in the wrong direction.  That kind of embarrassment you can live without.

As search professionals we always ask who will be involved in the interview sequence.  From experience, I can tell you that very few organizations think hard about who to include in the interview sequence until it’s already underway.  OK, well, that’s one way to do it.  Here’s another… 

When you are the hiring manager, figure out who else to include in the interview sequence by separating your additional interviewers into two categories:

Veto Voters:  There are “veto vote” people who can derail any hire.  These are critical people who must work with your new employee on a regular basis.  Veto voters could include peer level colleagues, or sometimes even a Board member.  When someone with veto power says no, that person does not get hired.  Their opinion really matters in the hiring decision.  Ideally, they understand the job, understand the competencies required to succeed in the job, and have a proven track record of making good hiring decisions.  (If they are missing any of those 3 factors, they may have input in the hiring decision, but I would not recommend a 1 on 1 interview or give them veto power). 

Courtesy Interviewers:   These people occasionally have something important to contribute, but should not significantly affect the hiring decision.  These interviewers will probably be working closely with the new hires, but either have no detailed knowledge of the job, or are not seasoned interviewers with a proven hiring track record.  While they may wish to exert influence on the hiring decision, I find they often add more noise than light to the hiring process.  The more obnoxious people in this category will loudly share their (poorly formed) opinion about the hiring decision, and can often derail a productive conversation about candidate’s actual ability to do the job. In the final evaluation, “I did not like his handshake” should not be considered equally with “He has an excellent track record managing projects like this.”  

The key to managing courtesy interviewers is to learn from their input, but to not become too distracted by their opinion.  Their opinion should not be given equal weight to a veto-voter, unless they have objective facts to share.   Yes, you probably need to “keep them happy” but you can control their effect simply by how you structure the interview sequence.  By scheduling these less skilled interviewers into a panel interview, you can still involve them, but you are also respecting the candidate’s time, and diminishing any adverse impact they may have on both the hiring decision and the candidate’s perception of your company.  To develop the interview skills of a courtesy interviewer, be sure to have them methodically record their interview feedback, put it in a drawer, and take it out and look at it 6 months or a year later.