Hiring the Right Talent is Hard

Hiring really good people has always been hard. Not only is there serious competition for talent in many industries, but there’s also a number of limitations that you may experience, through no fault of your own: your geographical footprint,your industry, and the public perception of your brand can all play a part in who you’re able to attract.

But, even when you do get the right people to turn up at your front door, there are factors at play that may prevent you from achieving the best outcome. Some of the most common problems that plague hiring managers are things like:

1. Hiring for skills, and not understanding team and culture fit;
2. Hiring in your own image (people who most resemble your own experiences, values, and behaviors);
3. Allowing optimism bias to cloud your judgment;
4. Failing to represent the opportunity of the role accurately and honestly;
5. Not doing your due diligence; and
6. Not understanding the 7s hire 5s principle.

This last one is particularly common. It’s an expression that Jeffrey J Fox popularized in his superb book, How To Become a Great Boss. 

You shouldn’t let weak leaders anywhere near a hiring decision, because they just make your capability problem worse. A weak leader is someone who rates 7/10 or less. They’re weak in terms of their results, attitude, capability, confidence, and motivation.

7s hire 5s… why? Because 5s aren’t threatening; they’re cheap and plentiful; 7s are frightened of 9s and 10s, because they instinctively fear competence; 7s hire 5s… and 5s hire 3s… and guess who 3s hire? There goes your capability!

In contrast, 9s and 10s only hire 10s; they only want to work with other A players; they don’t fear competence – they fear mediocrity! Don’t let poor-performing leaders replicate themselves, and weaken the gene pool. Keep them as far away from hiring decisions as you can!

So, let’s assume you’re getting the right candidates in front of competent hiring managers. Now what?!

The process of hiring for any role within your company (but particularly a leadership role) has to be conducted with the same diligence, patience, and sophistication that you would use for your most important strategic or financial problems. Take it seriously! 

There are a number of different tools that you can use to calibrate and confirm what you think you’ve seen at interview. At more senior levels, everyone talks a good game, so it’s really important to approach every data point with a healthy level of skepticism. You’ve got to sort out the dogs from the fleas!

So, yes, go through the usual process of résumé filtering and interviews. But pay particular attention to resumes that demonstrate a series of very short stints… anything less than a year in one organization can be a red flag, despite an individual’s carefully-constructed cover story.

Then again, a series of promotions inside the same organization can be an incredibly positive sign. Management was moving them up quickly, so they could have greater impact.

Be really diligent around reference checking, if possible using a wide array of formal and informal checks. Look as hard as you can to find someone who’ll tell you the truth about your potential hire’s performance, especially any show stoppers they might be hiding.

I also  used a series of psychometric and aptitude testing. It’s not the be-all-end-all, but it’s another data point that helps you calibrate the overall picture. With senior roles, I’d pay particular attention to critical thinking and abstract reasoning skills. These are the best indicators of a person’s ability to handle complex problems, logically and effectively.

Hiring is tough, and you live with the outcomes for many years, so it should be a core competence and focus for any leader who’s trying to build a high performing team.