Interviews are 80% Performance Art

Imagine you are hiring for a key position.

A good looking, well dressed candidate confidently walks in on time, smiles, looks you in the eye and warmly shakes your hand. You exchange pleasantries for a few moments and you can feel yourself beginning to relax.

You think “Oh good, they seem like a great candidate!” So you might be tempted to begin talking more. You know, to get them interested in the job.

Except, of course, you don’t know a thing about them yet.

Interviewing is full of traps like these.

• We’re drawn to good looking resumes that fit our mental picture of what the resume should look like (regardless of who actually wrote that resume, or whether people from other backgrounds might be more qualified).
• We’re seduced by appearances in the interview (regardless of the fact that interviewing ability does not predict anything about the candidate’s ability to do the job).
• We’re most comfortable with people who are “like us” even though teams are strengthened by diversity.

Traditional interviews are 80% theatrics (performance art) and 20% substance–your instincts will routinely fail you unless you methodically guard against your unconscious biases. Don’t wing it.

Skilled researchers pored through 85 years of scientific literature to identify which employee selection methods were the best predictors of job performance, and they distilled it down to a few things anyone can do.

They Can Wait a Week, Right?

Client says to me,  ”Hey I like Bill and want to make him a job offer but it’s going to take some time to pull it together. He knows we’re busy and he’s working now, so he won’t mind waiting a week, right?”

No, Bill won’t mind a bit. He’ll just have a week longer to get a promotion in his current job, or to get another offer from one of your competitors. So as long as you don’t mind losing him, take all the time you need….

And hey, when you do get around to making Bill that job offer, you won’t mind waiting around for a week or so until he gets back to you, right? (Hmmm, suddenly that week feels like quite a long time doesn’t it?)

Time passes very quickly when you are in control and someone else is waiting for you. A week passes and it feels like a day. But when you are not in control, and you are waiting for someone else, every day feels like a week.

Remember, at job offer time, every day they wait is pure agony for your new hire.

Your Obligation to Hire the Most Qualified Person

You are a good person. You are tolerant of many viewpoints and you want a diverse team that is reflective of your clients and the community you work within. You know it only makes your team stronger.

But when you are hiring, your senior obligation is not to round out your team, it is to hire the most qualified person you can find, regardless of their background. You may have the desire to add someone with a certain kind of background or credential to your team (“we need an MBA around here”). Or perhaps your organization has too many men, or women or whatever. Of course your candidate sourcing and recruiting efforts should make every effort to draw from a diverse candidate pool–anything less is stupid and short-sighted. But when it comes time to interview, after you’ve done your level-best to recruit wisely, your obligation is to consider every single qualified person.

It’s a mistake to allow hiring managers to cherry-pick resumes, only interviewing the people who meet certain criteria unrelated to job performance. Too many hiring managers forget the real priority in hiring. It’s hard enough to hire great people, and when you artificially limit your candidate pool (to consider only people with an MBA for example), you’ve done your organization a real disservice.

You owe it to all your other employees to hire the most qualified person–everyone’s livelihood depends on it. Before you make a hiring decision, take a few hours to be sure you have interviewed all the best candidates. By doing this, you will understand exactly what you are giving up when you insist on any hiring criteria that is unrelated to job performance.

What High Performing Organizations Do Differently

Imagine a problem has just occurred that will cause your company to lose $15,000 per month in revenue, and might soon cause a string of similar problems. Which solution to the problem would you choose?

Solution A) This solution has no upfront costs, but it diverts your internal resources away from their current work, takes 4 months to implement (costing $60,000 in revenue) and is projected to lose an additional $24,000 during year one, with the likelihood of continuing losses of $36,000 per year thereafter. This solution has a 50% chance of failing completely and if it does fail, it might trigger a cascade of similar problems.

Solution B) This solution has an upfront cost of $15,000 (which was not in your budget). It requires no diversion of internal resources, and takes 2 months to implement (2 months faster than Solution A). By the end of year one, Solution B will recoup the $30,000 revenue lost during its two month implementation, and is likely to generate an additional $36,000 in annual revenue thereafter. Solution B has a performance guarantee, and significantly reduces your risk of this problem cascading into other areas.

If Solution B seems like the obvious choice, let’s review what happened the last time a vital person with hard-to-find skills resigned from your firm.  Did you consider using a search firm to fill the job?  If so, did the conversation sound like this? “I hoped our HR department might be able to find someone to fill this job. We thought if we could handle the search internally, we might save money on search fees. And if HR failed, we could always hire a search firm later.” Or, perhaps your internal deliberations sounded like this? “We did not budget for any search fees, so we had to do it on our own.” Both conversations probably sound familiar, and on the surface they might even sound reasonable. But when you look carefully, you realize that that both conversations make the same four assumptions. They assume:

1. There is no cost to leaving a position vacant. There is zero cost to the lost productivity of both the employee and the team.
2. There is no risk to leaving a position vacant. Under-staffing and over-working the current team will not result in any turnover risk. Zero.
3. Any hiring process that results in a hire is just as good as any other. A hiring decision will be just as good whether you have only one candidate to consider, or a full slate of 6 qualified people.
4. Any person hired in this job will deliver equivalent results. There is no difference in productivity or performance between an “A player” and a “C player.” Zero difference.

So if all four assumptions are laughably wrong, how did you ignore them in your decision making? Research shows exactly why it happens. Recruiting costs are very easy to calculate, but it is far harder to calculate the cost of not hiring, and harder still to calculate the cost of hiring badly. When faced with that kind of complexity, busy executives look at what they do understand (recruiting costs), and ignore what they don’t understand (the cost of hiring slowly and badly). The snap decision becomes: “We can’t afford to pay a search fee.”

High performing organizations are different. Because they have specific performance targets to meet for every position, the cost of not hiring (or hiring badly) is far more obvious. So they have an easier time balancing their recruiting costs against the return on investment of making a good hire quickly.

This is exactly what our Solution A and Solution B example did for you above. With good information, the trade-offs were easy to make. It was the gathering of the information that was complex. (Which is precisely why so many people will skip the next section of this post and just read the conclusion).

Dealing with a Work Avalanche

Are you feeling overworked and understaffed right now? You’re not alone. Under-staffing is common during this stage of the business cycle. Some people think it is a long-term trend–calling it the “Job Squeeze.” Perhaps it is. I do know that work pressure has been building quietly for years in many organizations–like snow falling on mountaintops. And when something small triggers it, you are suddenly faced with a “work avalanche.”

Here is how work avalanches are created: When confidence is low, your organization responds to good news differently. You try to grow without corresponding staff growth. Headcount starts to trail revenue growth, and then falls further and further behind. Good news for the organization actually becomes bad news for the team. They were overworked before, and “good news” just makes it worse. Every new contract, new client, and new project just makes it harder to keep up.

How do you know you waited too long to add staff? Your best people are getting sick more often. You are seeing more preventable mistakes being made. Small issues cause tempers to flare, people are less tolerant of each other. They take things personally. Work just seems less fun. And eventually your best people burn out, give up, or quit–triggering an avalanche of work on the remaining team members.

Here’s the thing. Often, when you force your team to “do more with less” they are not doing more. They are making trades. They are trading long-term thinking for short term thinking. They trade planning time for reaction time. They stop making deposits into the relationship bank, and start making withdrawals–using up the goodwill they’ve built over many years. And the cost of that short term focus builds up… like snow building up on a mountain. Eventually the bill comes due in a work avalanche.

Here is what to do about it: When your hiring fails to keep pace with your growth, you can no longer afford to drag out the hiring process. But when confidence is low, that is exactly what happens. “Let’s try it first on our own, before we put it out to a search firm.”  Three months later the team is exhausted, frustrated, and at wit’s end. In your cautious desire to save money, you not only lost time and focus, you created even more risk–from people quitting.

Newsflash: When you are chronically understaffed, nobody on your team has the time or energy to do hiring on their own. When you are running from a work avalanche, you don’t want to make your backpack heavier.

If your business strategy requires you to keep staffing levels lean, you must be prepared to hire very quickly when you get good news. Either beef up your internal recruiting capabilities, have qualified contract workers on speed dial, or be ready to call in search firms the instant you know you need help.

Because standing still is not a good strategy when an avalanche  is bearing down on you.

“The Rare Find” is a Must Read for Hiring Managers

If you want to lock in a long-term competitive advantage for your organization, be among the first to read and apply the lessons of George Anders new book “The Rare Find:  Spotting Exceptional Talent Before Everyone Else.”

Drawing on vivid examples from the U.S. Army Special Forces, Teach for America, Facebook, Hollywood, and professional sports, he shows how you can see what everyone else is missing in their hiring.

This is no vanity book. He’s not pitching his hiring system, or trying to sell you consulting services. Even better, he is not advocating that you “just do your hiring like we did at GE in the 1980′s.”

No, this book is the real deal.  Space does not permit me to cover all my favorite quotes, but here are a few:

“American social norms call for job candidates to tell a story of uninterrupted success. Previous experiences are burnished until they all sound like triumphs. Traditional resumes are set up so that resilience becomes invisible. That’s a horribly unfortunate distortion. At some point fate slams all of us to the ground. What happens next determines who we become. Some people are so bitter or dispirited they never fully recover. Others do whatever it takes to bounce back. The more you can learn about how people handle adversity, the more astutely you can judge them.”

or:

“…we’re in the midst of an enormous economic and technological upheaval that is redefining what it means to be enduringly successful. Long track records my be irrelevant or impossible to find in fields that are taking shape so fast the everyone is a newcomer. Competence is not enough anymore. The difference between growth and stagnation comes down to finding people with bold, fresh approaches, who can create opportunities that no one else saw before. That’s true not just in Silicon Valley, Hollywood or Wall Street; it’s the new norm in almost every field.”

From how to define what kind of person you are looking for, to how you should interview candidates, this book covers the landscape of talent spotting. I found no evidence of vague, sloppy platitudes or lazy thinking. For example:

“Take something as universal … as ‘work ethic.’ That’s a cherished value at almost any top tier organization (but) everyone’s definition of ‘work ethic’ calls for slightly different virtues. Some jobs call for people who can summon up extraordinary stamina and ingenuity in a crisis. Others require orderly souls who are totally comfortable with the tireless preparation for a challenge that may be months or years away. The work ethics of a great doctor and a great football player are not the same. Solving the talent puzzle means looking for exactly the right ethos that’s vital for a particular job–rather than trying to match candidates to a along list of universal virtues that might or might not be especially relevant.”

How Can You Judge Someone’s Expertise?

We’re often asked how to judge the expertise of someone else. Here are three simple rules to help you quickly winnow the field.

• Experts don’t talk jargon, pretenders do. Experts can explain it in English. If they don’t tell SHORT stories/analogies/examples that explain complex concepts, they are a hack.

• Conversely, If they tell LONG stories about past glories they are a hack. Talking is not good. Asking you questions is good. If their questions don’t make you think, they are a hack.

• If they don’t focus like a laser on the BUSINESS IMPACT of what you want to have done, they are a hack.

They Are All New Jobs Now

When a client engages us for a search, we always ask “Is this a new position or a replacement?” And this used to be a meaningful distinction. We would learn how much of the position was being invented on the fly, and how much was set in stone. But that distinction is less relevant now–they are ALL “new” jobs now.

Almost every job now requires the ability to adapt to changing circumstances. Knowledge workers must become “insight workers” as Megan Erickson observed in BigThink. She makes some excellent points:

Where the knowledge worker knows how to manage an office, an insight worker understands how and why the business works. While a knowledge worker networks, an insight worker builds authentic relationships with his or her coworkers and clients.

Anyone can be a brain. What takes real talent is being able to create meaningful solutions and uplift people. It is grace under fire, not competitiveness, that will win every time in the chaotic workplaces of the future. Insight workers are ”not just accountable for accumulating knowledge, but for real problem solving, for the ability to work laterally across boundaries, either alone or in collaboration with others.”

This change has already happened. The only question is how soon your recruiting process will adapt to it.

Hiring Sales Reps

I turned down 3 new searches recently and my team cheered each time. That’s 3 new clients for us. That’s good honest work for my team. So why did we turn them away?  

They were small firms looking for sales reps.

Hey, we’re not lazy and we’re not afraid of challenge–we’ve successfully completed hundreds of executive searches in every functional area, and at every career level up to COO.

But we won’t handle sales searches.

Finding and evaluating sales reps is no harder than any other kind of search. So why didn’t we accept these searches? 

Because sales reps in small companies fail at an astonishing rate. When a founder steps back from selling, and turns it over to someone else, it is almost always a disaster.

And now, in just 500 words Doug Davidoff explains precisely why hiring your first salesperson is such a challenge.  If you run a small firm–and ever want to hire a sales rep–read this post.

Is Recruiting About Being Exciting … or Being Safe?

People often think of recruiting in terms of old-school sales. You know the drill… pitch the candidate on an exciting opportunity, talk the client into interviewing them, negotiate the salary, and close the deal. But the Recruiting-Is-Selling philosophy is increasingly out of step with the times we’re in right now.

Sales excitement just sounds like more noise. To have an intelligent conversation about considering a new career opportunity, candidates first need to feel safe–which means talking to someone without a sales agenda. To make an intelligent hiring decision, managers also need to feel safe–which means talking to an experienced tour guide who can help them better understand the job market, think through their options and weigh the pros and cons of different choices.

Amping up the excitement, or introducing a sales agenda (which always makes people defensive) is just the wrong solution for our disturbing and turbulent times. Economist Arnold Kling explains the current employment uncertainty in five short sentences (courtesy of The Atlantic): 

The paradox is this. A job seeker is looking for a well-defined job. But the trend seems to be that if a job can be defined, it can be automated or outsourced . . . The marginal product of people who need well-defined jobs is declining. The marginal product of people who can thrive in less structured environments is increasing.

Top performers have always delivered more results (marginal product) than average performers, but that gap is widening fast in the current economy. Meanwhile, uncertainty is increasing for everyone.

Now I’m not arguing that being dull is the solution–excitement does have its place. Top performers want exciting jobs where they can make an impact … but to even begin to consider taking a new job, people first need a safe place to have a conversation about it.

The latest recruiting technology will always gather the headlines, but the reality is that your recruiting results will increasingly depend on your ability to create an environment where both hiring managers and candidates can have a safe, intelligent conversation, free from any sales agenda.

What Kind of Recruiting Problem Do You Have?

Not all recruiting problems are created equal. Sometimes you can just run ads and hire good people. Other times you might engage a search firm to call everyone in their database. Few hiring managers venture beyond those two stark choices: either tell HR to run an ad, or tell a headhunter to go sell your job to people in their Rolodex. But of course, these two fine solutions don’t resolve most recruiting problems. Which explains why very few hiring managers have a team full of top performers (even after they engage search firms). 

Perhaps if you could better clarify your exact recruiting problem, you could solve it more decisively. And, after gathering data from hundreds of our completed executive searches, that’s exactly what we did. Now, before we accept any new search, we carefully assess how much intensity it will require in 4 common problem areas: Definition, Sourcing, Selection, and Decision Support

Although each of these problem areas require very different skills and levels of intensive effort, I notice that nobody ever asks me about three of them.  Instead, new clients only ask me about our candidate sourcing (recruiting) capabilities. I’m while I am happy to answer that we have superb sourcing capabilities, I also know that sourcing is only part of the solution. So let’s get into all four of the most common kinds of recruiting problems, and what you can do about them.

Definition intensity:  The owner of a small company needed more sales. He could not figure out how to get them, despite having worked in his industry for many years. His solution? Hire some salespeople to beat the streets, and let them figure it out. (He spent an hour trying to convince me what a great opportunity it was for a salesperson to come work for him). Like a medieval alchemist, he was trying to turn his sales problem into a recruiting problem. Except recruiting can’t solve a problem you cannot define.  This is true for any newly created role, or for the leader of any new initiative, but it is epidemic in sales hiring (just read this).

The intensity of defining job requirements might be as quick and easy as “Find me another person with attributes like Sally” or might be as complex and intensive as asking ”Are we looking for someone to execute a strategy that already works, or are we looking for someone to discover a strategy that works?”  If you are hiring a search firm for their great Rolodex, but what you really have is a definition problem, all their sourcing cannot help you figure out who will be successful in the job.

Sourcing intensity:  One of the most grueling searches we ever conducted was for a nonprofit manager who decided that the only way she could meet her business objectives within her budget was to create a job that combined two fairly common skills that are almost never found together in nature. Kind of like looking for someone who is both a supermodel and a construction worker – theoretically possible, but highly unlikely. (Yes, I still kick myself for accepting this search). The problem was clearly defined, the skills desired were crystal clear, but the candidate sourcing intensity it required was off the charts. Not even 1% of the qualified people we contacted had any interest in the job as it was defined.  

Sourcing intensity comes in two forms: it is either hard to find people with the skills you desire, or else the people you seek are plentiful, but just not that receptive to your job. Just because you can define what you want, and find people who can do it, there is no guarantee anyone actually wants your job. When you don’t have a compelling story to tell, you will lay flame to a lot of sourcing time. Is your location terrible, pay low, or job unappealing in some way? Are you looking for a left-handed, bi-lingual, Russian nuclear physicist? Does your ideal candidate receive more than 2 calls a week from search firms? Then your level of sourcing intensity will be equal to 10 other searches. And remember, if you hire a search firm to flatter, cajole, and sweet talk these rare, elusive, or high-maintenance people into your firm – you better know what was promised to accomplish that … and you will need an equally intensive plan to retain them. 

Selection intensity: Once you have people interested in talking with you, how hard is it to decide who to spend your precious time with? In lower level positions, you need to know how to quickly winnow down hundreds of resumes without overlooking the “diamonds in the rough,” but in executive searches, you need a skilled interviewer to hone in on cultural fit, and to assess skills and strategic thinking. Very different skills.

To present a slate of 6 qualified candidates, sometimes we have to talk to 30 people.  Sometimes it’s just 12 people – but the conversations might last an hour and half each. We’ve found that the interviewing skill required and the interview time needed varies widely from search to search.

Here is a test of selection intensity: How keenly does your recruiter listen to you? Do they really understand what you are trying to achieve by making this hire? If your recruiter is better at talking than listening, or lacks business acumen, then this aspect of your search is probably being done only superficially. In fact, your search might be just a mindless hunt for the perfect resume. Without the proper selection intensity, you will almost certainly overlook great “out of the box” candidates and instead waste time talking with people who have a nice resume but are not a good fit. 

Decision Support intensity: Searches often fail right at the finish line. Once you have a good candidate sitting in front of you for the interview, how hard will it be to forge a consensus among all the decision makers? Do you have a dysfunctional board or executive team? Is everyone rowing in the same direction, or are there stark differences in approach between key executives? Do you have a hiring manager who is so risk averse that they find almost any excuse not to hire?

If you cannot make a hiring decision in a timely manner, all of your other efforts might be in vain. Good candidates are repelled by internal political battles, and they certainly don’t wait around for indecisive managers. They (correctly) ask “If being hired is this haphazard and slow, am I really a good fit? And “If I am a good fit but decision-making is this slow, how excruciating will it be to work for them?”

So once you have a better definition of your recruiting problem what do you do next?

• If your challenge is Definition, be sure you are working with someone who is thorough in understanding the job before they begin recruiting. You are at risk if all you had was a 15 minute phone call with the recruiter, or if they never “pushed back” or challenged your thinking.
• If your challenge is Sourcing, be sure you understand how compelling your job will be to candidates.  Most hiring managers overrate how attractive their job is relative to other opportunities in the market.
• If your challenge is Selection, be sure you have confidence in the person who is pre-screening candidates for you.  Challenge their thinking to be sure they are looking at candidates the same way you will.
• If your challenge is Decision Support, be sure you are working with someone who has a process to resolve those differences.  Winging it and hoping for the best is not a strategy.

To Hire Lucky People, Look for These 3 Traits

Why are some of your employees luckier than others?  Why do some people consistently find solutions to problems, while others just find problems?  Why are some people engaging and fun to work with – moving from success to success - while similarly qualified people seem overwhelmed with problems, and are always seem to be teetering on the edge of defeat? 

Anthony Tjan wrote a post for the Harvard Business Review blog on “Why Some People Have All the Luck.”  He neatly ties together 3 attributes that “lucky” people often have: 

The basic equation of developing the right lucky attitude … is quite simple. It starts with having the humility to be self- aware, followed by the intellectual curiosity to ask the right questions, and concluding with the belief and courage that something better is always possible (optimism).

Take a minute and go read the full post.  I’m convinced he’s right on the money with this.  I have long held a deep appreciation for the 3 attributes Tjan mentions, but I never really thought about how powerful they are in combination. In previous posts about what attributes to look for in an interview, I’ve often mentioned curiosity and having the courage to take risks.  I’m also a firm believer in resilience – humbly accepting your role in a failure, and then having enough optimism to get back in the game.

If you find it hard to accept ”being lucky” as a hiring requirement, then consider this:  Seth Godin recently observed that fewer and fewer people will be successful at work simply by working hard - ”more people now have jobs that require them to confront the risk of appearing stupid on a regular basis.”   So what attributes would help you thrive in a work environment that requires you to risk occasionally appearing stupid?  I would suggest you are looking for humility, curiosity and optimism – the exact same attributes that lead to a lucky attitude. 

So whether you say you are hiring people who are lucky, or say you are hiring people who can risk appearing stupid – you are still looking for the same three traits.

People Skills Test for Would-Be Doctors

My wife took a friend to a doctors appointment yesterday.  Although the medical care seemed competent, the office staff was impersonal, and the doctor stared at the chart the whole time, never making eye contact with the patient.  Obviously time to change doctors right?

But it’s more significant than just bad service. 

Studies show that a significant number of preventable deaths are caused by poor communication between doctors, patients and nurses.   As a result, medical schools are learning what the business world already knows: social skills matter as much, if not more, than technical skills.  An increasing number of med schools are now using social skills as a factor in student selection.   And as a recruiter, I think the process they are using is fascinating.

The New York Times, in an article by Gardiner Harris, reports that at Virginia Tech Carilion, the nation’s newest medical school, administrators decided against relying solely on grades, test scores and hour-long interviews to determine who got admitted. “Instead, the school invited candidates to the admissions equivalent of speed-dating: nine brief interviews that forced candidates to show they had excellent communication and social skills.

The new process is called the multiple mini interview, or M.M.I., and its use is spreading. At least eight medical schools in the United States — including those at Stanford, the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Cincinnati — and 13 in Canada are using it. Here’s how the process works:

At Virginia Tech Carilion, 26 candidates showed up on a Saturday in March and stood with their backs to the doors of 26 small rooms. When a bell sounded, the applicants spun around and read a sheet of paper taped to the door that described an ethical conundrum. Two minutes later, the bell sounded again and the applicants charged into the small rooms and found an interviewer waiting.  The candidates had eight minutes to discuss that room’s situation. Then they moved to the next room, the next surprise conundrum and the next interviewer, who scored each applicant with a number and sometimes a brief note.

Virginia Tech Carilion administrators said they created questions that assessed how well candidates think on their feet and their willingness to work in teams.

The most important part of the interviews are often not candidates’ initial responses — there are no right or wrong answers — but how well they respond when someone disagrees with them, something that happens when working in teams.

A pleasant bedside manner and an attentive ear have always been desirable traits in doctors, of course, but two trends have led school administrators to make social skills a priority, writes Harris:

1)    A growing number of studies pin the blame for an appalling share of preventable deaths on poor communication among doctors, patients and nurses that often results because some doctors, while technically competent, are socially inept.

2)    Medicine is evolving from an individual to a team sport. Solo medical practices are disappearing. In their place, large health systems are creating teams to provide care coordinated across disciplines. The strength of such teams often has more to do with communication than the technical competence of any one member.

The M.M.I. system grew out of research that found that situational interviews were more revealing of character flaws than personal interviews, and that 5 minutes was enough time to make the assessment.   In fact, candidate scores on the mini interviews are highly predictive of scores on medical licensing exams three to five years later that test doctors’ decision-making, patient interactions and cultural competency. 

Not bad for 5 minutes.

How Accurate is Your Hiring Radar?

Seth Godin wrote a post “Are you WOW blind?”   He was asking if ideas had some sort of universal “WOW” factor.   The same could be asked about candidates for a job.   Is everyone WOWed by the same factors?  Many people are WOWed by the same things, but I can tell you with certainty that the elements that wow most people are superficial, and not relevant to predicting job performance.  

Godin references the superb Michael Lews book Money Ball: 

“In his book Money Ball, Michael Lewis wrote about how virtually every single scout and manager in baseball was wrong about what makes a great baseball player. They had the wrong radar, the wrong wow. When statistics taught a few teams what the real wow was, the balance of power shifted.”

Kris Dunn also referenced Money Ball last week, saying; 

“Why is Moneyball required reading?  Because it’s about thinking differently related to valuing talent.  It’s a compensation, culture and recruiting story with a limited sports backdrop.”

If your hiring radar is not informed by looking rigorously at the actual performance results of all of your hires (even the ones who quit) over at least 3 years, you are being guided by intuition and biases, not ”radar” and not facts.

Blinded by the Superficial

Are you hiring?  What is your ideal candidate profile?   On the resume, did they go to a good school?  Did they show a steady job progression steadily being promoted at the right kinds of organizations?  In the interview, did they dress appropriately, have a firm handshake, smile and confidently look you in the eye?  Were they good looking, personable and well spoken?   In the reference checks, did their references speak in glowing terms about their work?   Sounds great so far, right? Except none of these factors predict much about whether your candidate will become a great employee. 

Give me a kid who worked their way thru community college,  gained experience and developed business acumen working in a variety of industries, took responsibility for their results and outworked everyone else on their team.   If they were the hard working results-getter and not the smooth talker, they might be perfect for my open job.   They might appreciate the job more, and they might even stay in it longer.  In short, the best person for the job just might not fit my mental picture.

Now let’s consider the ”rules of thumb” we all use.  I’ve heard you can judge people by:

• Their shoes – are they spit polished and new, or ratty and worn out?
• How clean is their car.  Is it dirty and disorganized or immaculate?
• Their hair – is it tidy or unkempt?

This is also total rubbish.

I was so busy with work this month that I did not maintain appearances very well.  Despite (because of?) having a series of important meetings, I was not keeping up with my normal errands. 

Just in the past week I’ve finally taken my car to the car wash, finally gotten a long overdue haircut and found someone who does a fantastic shoe shine.     But what if I had a job interview last week?  Would I have been a materially better candidate if I neglected my client responsibilities in order to maintain appearances?  Obvously not.  An interview is just a snapshot in time devoid of context.  Threfore these “rules of thumb” are not valid predictors of anything. 

Remember – if you don’t force yourself to look at what really matters in hiring, you can easily be blinded by all this superficial nonsense.  (By the way, the typical interview is only the 9th best way to predict job performance – seriously, check out that link).

If you are tired of being misled by the superficial, and want to to get better results, you will need to consider more substantive factors in your hiring.  I suggest you read a brief collection of our best articles on hiring.