Brad Smart, the author of Topgrading, wrote a very thoughtful reply to my recent post called “What Exactly is a Top Performer?” I was pretty hard on Topgrading in my post and Brad intelligently rebutted my arguments in several areas, suggesting I read his free 50 page e-book “Avoiding Costly Mis-Hires.”
I did read the e-book, and I will get to that, but first I have to say… this is great! We’re having a conversation about my favorite topic, in a public forum, with a renowned expert on hiring. And when I say “we” – that includes you – so post a comment, send me an email if you are shy, share your experiences!
- First a bit of context. I consult with, and write this blog for, small to midsize employers.
- Brad Smart consults with employers of all sizes. He is best known for his work with GE and the global 100, but he has plenty of raving fans among smaller employers. One big fan is the very well-respected Verne Harnish - founder of Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) – who calls Topgrading the “Best Approach to Interviewing.” Verne also says Topgrading is “not for amateurs” and warns that it takes time and focus to make sure you are getting it right.
And there is the rub.
I read Brad’s free 50 page e-book (pdf). It does indeed make a strong case for Topgrading, with lots of links to other resources. (One link that grabbed my attention was ”Most Personality Tests are Shams“). Naturally you cannot learn Topgrading in 50 pages, because, as Verne notes, it’s not easy to learn.
The e-book’s primary objective is apparently to rebut the (common?) argument that Topgrading is hard to learn, by proving that it’s worth it. He makes the case well, and I really enjoyed reading it, and loved seeing my favorite quotes from Jim Collins and Peter Drucker about the competitive advantage of hiring great people – Brad and I definitely agree that hiring high performers makes a huge impact on your ability to get results.
But in reading it, I found nothing that would help my clients make better hires, short of implementing a massive, formal, top heavy initiative to learn how to conduct a Topgrading interview. And that is simply not practical when you are hiring only one or two of each kind of person, and not 50 or 100 like they do at GE. Smaller organizations need to think hard, move fast, and make the best decisions possible with imperfect information – jobs are not static, they change rapidly. You can’t look back at the last 50 people hired in a job or look forward to tracking their results a year from now, because you hired ONE. As someone who runs a search firm, I am also cognizant of the candidate perspective, which is generally not favorable toward Topgrading.
So I’m sorry Brad, I sincerely appreciate your comments, but I still think Topgrading is too top heavy for 99% of small and midsize companies – and I just don’t think it’s necessary – there are better ways to achieve the same results. Maybe Verne will prove me wrong, but I just can’t recommend it. We’ll continue putting all our energy into developing faster, less expensive, less cumbersome ways to help our clients consistently hire people who will drive business results.
Now, that said, here is where I absolutely, positively agree with Mr. Smart:
- In a job description you need to nail down exactly what you are looking for.
- Fear of being able to hire better people hobbles the effectiveness of managers. You can’t manage performance effectively if you don’t have certainty that you can hire someone better.
- The book’s research on hiring results is fascinating, and they make a compelling case for the return on investment of making better hiring decisions.
- I really do like the chronological interview, but it does take time to learn, and frankly, I am not as rigid about asking 15 questions about every job.
- Thorough reference checking is a must.
- Hiring seems to be the last area in business where mistakes are not systematically identified and rooted out – and the cost of that omission is massive.
So, what are your thoughts? Have you considered Top Grading? Care to share some success stories? Have you taken another approach you are happy with? I welcome your viewpoint, no matter what your perspective.
Mr Smart makes some great points at the end, which I agree with. Figuring out what you want up front saves HOURS of time later, instead of you getting lots of what you don’t want. You wouldn’t walk into a car dealership to buy a car, and tell them “well, i want a car, but not sure what kind or what my price range is.” (If you would, I would like to sell you a 2006 Honda for $86,000 and I’ll throw in the trunk net.)
Secondly, people are terrified to hire someone potentially smarter, more qualified, or generally better than what they are looking for. They tend to hide behind the mask of “well we just can’t afford them”, yet what it really comes down to is insecurity. The inherent problem with this, is that they are hindering their own growth career-wise. They should be hiring to hire the person who will eventually be so good, they will move up – which means said manager moves up. Instead, they hire mediocre performers who won’t threaten their job safety.
What I disagree with is that Topgrading is a universal tool for all companies. Small and mid-size firms (as Bob points out) are too fast and fluid for this type of rigid implementation. Usually this would cause “culture shock” in such an environment. to the people who work for small companies because of low bureaucracy, this screams “process, process, process”.
However, all that said, I think that Topgrading assumes one thing too blindly. That people can actually interview and assess talent. Many people, too many, hire and judge the outcome of an interview based on “feel” or “gut”, and that is about as scientific as laying down money on Red or Black at a Roulette table. Many smaller or mid size companies cant devote the training time needed, or have people too resistant to it, in order to get the ground level training needed to assess better.
I think that before we can assess top talent, we need to “assess how we assess”.
I also work exclusively with smaller companies and understand your criticism that Topgrading is a lot of work and has a steep learning curve. On top of that, the Topgrading book is over 400 pages long, and not something that most business owners will wade through. My job is to take things off of my client’s to-do lists, not add more things on them, and Topgrading takes a lot of work.
That said, I have used the Topgrading interview format with a number of clients and they have universally seen significant improvement in hiring success.
As you have said above, there are some key things that I think we can all agree will make better hires.
1. Decide THROUGHLY in advance what you are looking for.
2. Recruit a LARGE pool of candidates.
3. Methodically screen those candidates based on their PAST PERFORMANCE.
4. Conduct Phone screens and interviews consistently (this means using an interview guide).
5. Ask about every job, and all the behavioral questions that you can think of. [This is key. The longer interview really helps clients to get all the info they need.]
6. Great reference calls, with people who are willing to talk with you frankly about the candidate’s performance.
I really think there is a lot to learn from Brad Smart and his process that will improve the hires at nearly every small business. Do we need to follow Topgrading chapter and verse, well I think that most small business hiring practices are so far from these basic principals that any movement in that direction is worth while. And if business owners were more confident that they would be able to hire good people, they would be less likely to tolerate mediocre performers.
Embrace what is good there, and there is a lot of it. Try out some of his methods; then make a judgment. It might be different from what you think.
Brad Farris
Anchor Advisors, Ltd.
http://www.anchoradvisors.com
fascinating stuff but I didn’t quite catch your name (the author of this post)
I wonder if you participated in Brad Smart’s training or if you simply read the promo material such as the 50 page overview and then jumped to your conclusion?
The reason I ask is that the link you decided to use above (to not recommend Brad Smart) points to a category of your own posts on recruiting blunders rather than articles that intelligently discuss the merits and shortfalls of TopGrading based on your experience and as they pertain to SMEs – that was a rather disappointing waste of time FWIS.
I have launched 4 startups in the past 2 decades and after reviewing the topgrading material during the past 3 weeks can honestly say that I wish I had heard about it long ago. Please understand that my definition of startup is a process to go from 4 to 500 employees within a defined period of time.
I also found it interesting to note that finding a number 2 in any small business is one of the prime areas where TopGrading could add real value to even the smallest of businesses. You may not know this coming from the recruiting side of the fence, but investors tend not to put their money down on a small startup without a strong and reliable number two. And landing a best fit number two is not an easy task with or without TopGrading.
Sure TopGrading takes more time… but I can agree with Brad Smart, it is time well spent during the hiring process rather than the cleanup work that ensues after hiring the wrong person. Sure, it means more work for the recruiter as well but as I have seen, few if any recruiters publish their hiring success rates… your business is more about shortening cycle times rather than improving quality of new hires… in fact, I would imagine that you don’t need to be the best in the business to succeed, you simply have to take the burden off your Client’s shoulders so that s/he is not bothered with the hiring process too much or worse, blamed for the mis-hires.
Lastly, on one of your posts you actually stated that you preferred working with managers that actually did the job of the person they were looking to hire.
Seriously, What is YOUR hiring success rate?
Dr. B,
Thanks for your comment.
I am a huge advocate of creating an effective hiring process – sharing best practices is the point of this blog. One driver for continuous improvement is monitoring your hiring success rates. So naturally we do keep score. In fact I published our results recently here:
http://thestaffingadvisor.wordpress.com/2009/12/02/why-you-need-to-keep-score/
Yes, as you pointed out, we do work very quickly (something our clients appreciate) but I’m happy to compare our hiring success rates to those of any search firm, using any process. We have many client testimonials on our website listing our clients by name and I have yet to lose one of them to a firm with a better process or better hiring track record.
I don’t deny that Topgrading has many enthusiastic advocates around the world.
I don’t deny that Topgrading has worked quite well for many organizations (I would imagine for a business process consultancy like your own it would be a natural fit).
I stand by my concern that Topgrading is simply too hard to implement in smaller organizations, and consequently it is often partially implemented, or talked about and not fully followed. I have seen far too many examples of executives in the C suite talking about Topgrading, and hiring managers in the trenches making up their own variation of it. No Topgrading advocate would recommend that. If you are going to invest in Topgrading, plan to go “all in” or do not attempt it.
I think there are many effective alternatives to Topgrading for smaller organizations, and I’ll continue to present them here.
[...] for this blog post to get some notoriety that it didn’t deserve. After reading Mr. Corlett’s rebuttal I simply can’t stay [...]
I am an HR consultant who remains unconvinced that the TopGrading system is helpful to ANY company, including large ones. I have yet to see a TopGrading company with leading or innovative products. (No one rushes out to buy a GE appliance.) In fact, it appears that companies that use TopGrading actually stagnate and move down the road to fraud and disaster (e.g., Wachovia, Enron, Tyco, and Goldman Sachs.)
To explain away the multitudes of job applicants who are disgusted by the TopGrading philosophy and avoid companies that use it, TopGrading advocates argue that those are “C-players” who “self-select out.” What a cop out! I am a top 10% performer, an A-player. I would never work or interview for a TopGrading company, and I don’t know any leading performer who would. I firmly believe that only a C-player would put up with the TopGrading nonsense in their workplace, and it’s the A and B-players who stay away in droves.
Just a small note to say that I learned about TopGrading recently, and as a very small company (myself plus 1) we’re aiming to expand rapidly. I do trust that I may very well have a better hiring success rate following these processes, and have been taking notes wherever I can find out more.
My other comment is that the price tag is extremely expensive for a small company – hence for now I’ll just be sticking to the free PDFs and guides around!
Claire,
you just don’t get it do you?
the free PDFs spell out the secret formula in black and white…
it costs more to hire B and C players than it costs to
a) buy the course
b) learn the material
c) put it into practice
I fully respect those that say it is a giant investment in time to implement TG because it is true – our latest startup grew from a staff of 2 to 23 using TG methods and there is no turning back!
if you can grow rapidly and then sell your company… then you won’t have to deal with the messy and emotional mess you created… the clean up challenge is not to be under-estimated.
good luck with your project
Dr. Box,
In March of this year (in your comment above) you mentioned you had only recently discovered TG, yet in September your comments says your startup grew from 2 to 23 employees using “TG methods.” So are you referring to your own firm? Because your website says that it took 11 years, so presumably you did the first 10 years of growing using “TG principles” but not the exact process. If so, I applaud your success, because I agree with many of the TG principles, just not all of the process surrounding it.
Your own blog does not reference TG, and only has a few posts that even mention hiring. So are you seriously suggesting that TG is the only conceivable hiring process that works? That a one-size-fits-all solution was developed over a decade ago and nobody should even attempt to improve upon it?
Your own experience would seem to indicate otherwise.
good eye Bob…
to clarify: we start startups
so, no… I was not referring to BoxOnline
BoxOnline has not had the benefit of the TG method until recently
but many of the start ups in our portfolio of Clients have used it religiously.
We promote strategies that work.. proven processes that are… well,… proven via some form of track record and thus far, TG has demonstrated its effectiveness far beyond expectations. Thus far we have sanitized several firms and brought them from the brink of bankruptcy to profitability using such processes… one of these that we now know and trust is TG… yes, ONE of them is TG…
Bob, in your post above you mentioned:
“many effective alternatives to Topgrading for smaller organizations, and I’ll continue to present them here.” would you mind sharing? We are curious too.