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The most important decisions that businesspeople make are not what decisions, but who decisions. —JIM COLLINS, AUTHOR OF GOOD TO GREAT
Who refers to the people you put in place to make the what decisions.
Who mistakes happen when managers: • Are unclear about what is needed in a job • Have a weak flow of candidates • Do not trust their ability to pick out the right candidate from a group of similar-looking candidates • Lose candidates they really want to join their team
the average hiring mistake costs fifteen times an employee’s base salary in hard costs and productivity loss.
The Economist reported that finding the right people is the single biggest problem in business today.*1
basic failures in the hiring process is this: What is a resume? It is a record of a person’s career with all of the accomplishments embellished and all the failures removed.”
top ten voodoo hiring methods:
1. The Art Critic.
2. The Sponge.
3. The Prosecutor.
4. The Suitor.
5. The Trickster.
6. The Animal Lover.
7. The Chatterbox.
8. The Psychological and Personality Tester.
9. The Aptitude Tester.
10. The Fortune-Teller.
one of the painful truths of hiring is this: it is hard to see people for who they really are.
Think of an A Player as the right superstar, a talented person who can do the job you need done, while fitting in with the culture of your company. We define an A Player this way: a candidate who has at least a 90 percent chance of achieving a set of outcomes that only the top 10 percent of possible candidates could achieve.
In business, you are who you hire.
“In our portfolio companies, many of which are multibillion-dollar revenue companies, what matters is having: (1) the right strategy in the right market, (2) an A management team, and (3) financial discipline. The difference between an A and a B CEO produces an order of magnitude difference in the return.”
Scorecard.
The scorecard is a document that describes exactly what you want a person to accomplish in a role.
Source.
Systematic sourcing before you have slots to fill ensures you have high-quality candidates waiting when you need them.
Se...
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Selecting talent in the A Method involves a series of structured interviews that allow you to gather the relevant facts about a person so you can rate your sco...
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Sell.
the fastest way to improve a company’s performance is to improve the talent of the workforce, whether it is the ultimate leader or someone leading a divisional organization.
Scorecards describe the mission for the position, outcomes that must be accomplished, and competencies that fit with both the culture of the company and the role.
The first failure point of hiring is not being crystal clear about what you really want the person you hire to accomplish.
The scorecard is composed of three parts: the job’s mission, outcomes, and competencies. Together, these three pieces describe A performance in the role—what a person must accomplish, and how. They provide a clear linkage between the people you hire and your strategy.
The mission is an executive summary of the job’s core purpose. It boils the job down to its essence so everybody understands why you need to hire someone into the slot.
Don’t Hire the Generalist. Hire the Specialist.
job requirements are rarely general.
you should be looking for narrow but deep competence.
“I think success comes from having the right person in the right job at the right time with the right skill set for the business problem that exists.”
“It was all about having the right people in the right spots at the right time in the case of Intel. Bob Noyce was the inventor and promoter, then Gordon Moore was the technologist, and then Andy Grove was the driver.”
Intel’s succession of “specialists” drove the company’s market capitalization to well over $100 billion and led it to the dominant position in the global semiconductor industry.
Outcomes, the second part of a scorecard, describe what a person needs to accomplish in a role. Most of the jobs for which we hire have three to eight outcomes, ranked by order of importance.
While typical job descriptions break down because they focus on activities, or a list of things a person will be doing (calling on customers, selling), scorecards succeed because they focus on outcomes, or what a person must get done (grow revenue from $25 million to $50 million by the end of year three). Do you see the distinction?
all that specificity frees new hires to give the job their best shot.
COMPETENCIES: ENSURING BEHAVIORAL FIT
Competencies flow directly from the first two elements of the scorecard.
Competencies define how you expect a new hire to operate in the fulfillment of the job and the achievement of the outcomes.
Critical Competencies for A Players
Efficiency.
Honesty/integrity.
Organization and planning.
Aggressiveness.
