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“Your success as a manager is simply the result of how good you are at hiring the people around you.”
Remember, it’s the walk that counts, not the talk.
it is hard to see people for who they really are.
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. Hire C Players, and you will always lose to the competition. Hire B Players, and you might do okay, but you will never break out. Hire A Players, and life gets very interesting no matter what you are pursuing.
The first failure point of hiring is not being crystal clear about what you really want the person you hire to accomplish.
You’ll know you have a good mission when candidates, recruiters, and even others from your team understand what you are looking for without having to ask clarifying questions.
The mission should help you find not the generalist who points you to the problem but the very best specialist to help you solve it.
“A scorecard forces the manager to make choices and be consistent with those choices,”
“Scorecard management is hard, but it has great payback. Our hiring success rate has significantly improved, as well as slotting people into assignments that align well with their skills and gifts. The result of both is successful employees and a successful company.”
are the most talented people you know that I should hire?”—can
The A Players you want will be those who have a track record that matches your needs, competencies that align with your culture and the role, and plenty of passion to do the job you envision.
We recommend that you conduct the screening interview by phone and that you take no more than thirty minutes.
Talented people know what they want to do and are not afraid to tell you about it.
You also want to hear the candidate speak with passion and energy about topics that are aligned with the role. A clear misalignment should put you on alert.
Ask them to give you examples that will put their strengths into context. If they say they are decisive, press for an example of a time when this trait served them well, and remember, you are listening for strengths that match the job at hand. If you see a major gap between someone’s strengths and your scorecard, screen that person out.
While you don’t want to waste time with the wrong people, you want to make all the time necessary for the right ones.
You want to have the feeling that you have found the one. If you have any hesitation, or if you find yourself thinking you want to bring candidates in just to test them a little more, then screen them out.
The whole point of the screening interview is to weed people out as quickly as possible.
Too many managers make the costly mistake of lingering with candidates who are a bad match. Some are simply avoiding confrontation.
“Boards make mistakes when they don’t take the time to learn the story of the person. Everybody has strengths and weaknesses. If you want to enhance your predictive capabilities, you have to really understand their story and their patterns.”
Begin by asking candidates for their boss’s name. Ask them to spell it for you, and make a point to show them you are writing it down. “Jane Smith, you say? That is S, M, I, T, H, right?” Forcing candidates to spell the name out no matter how common it might be sends a powerful message: you are going to call, so they should tell the truth.
We can’t stress this enough: the order is important. Don’t start at the most recent job and work backward. Candidates can’t think clearly that way. Instead, walk through the career history chronologically—as the events really happened.
You have to interrupt the candidate. There is no avoiding it. You have to interrupt the candidate. If you don’t, he or she might talk for ten hours straight about things that are not at all relevant.
See the difference in rapport? The shut-you-up approach really deflates the candidate’s willingness to reveal information to you. The I’m-really-excited-to-hear-more-about-such-and-such approach keeps the rapport high, and gives the candidate a new and more relevant topic to tell you about.
In your mind, she already works for you. You may be tempted to skip reference checks and make an offer now. Don’t skip the references!
First, pick the right references.
Second, ask the candidate to contact the references to set up the calls.
Third, conduct the right number of reference interviews.
In truth, we believe, people don’t change that much. People aren’t mutual funds. Past performance really is an indicator of future performance.
“The best way to learn about a CEO is not to talk to their bosses, but to their subordinates. You want to get down two or three levels—to the district sales managers, say—and learn how the person interacts.
“Nobody will come back to you to say that somebody is awful. But if they just confirm dates of employment, that is a bad sign. If somebody really thinks that a person is good, they’re going to do more than that.”
Have you heard the riddle about the five frogs on a log? It goes like this: Five frogs are on a log and one decides to jump off. How many are left? If you answered “five,” you are correct. Deciding to do something and actually doing it are two different things.
“Show that you are as concerned with the fit for them as you are in the fit for you. Ninety-nine percent of your competitors are not doing that. It is a key differentiator.
“The first thing you have to do is talk to them about the company. You have to sell the company and the vision of the company and the potential of the company.
We are multinational, so we need people who can adapt to foreign cultures and our company culture.”
“But the role of the CEO is to inspire people, and you cannot inspire people unless you get to know them and them you.
We spend more than a third of our time, and probably better than half our waking time, at work. We might as well have fun while we are doing it.
Great leaders are persistent. They don’t take the first no for an answer. They keep positive pressure on the A Players they want until they get them. From the first sourcing call to the last sales call, they never let up.
the differentiation is in execution. And execution is determined by people.
leaders don’t wait to find the time to do this. They make the time. They are constantly on the lookout for talented people
Boards and investors have a tendency to invest in CEOs who demonstrate openness to feedback, possess great listening skills, and treat people with respect.
The second dominant profile that emerged from our analysis was of CEOs who move quickly, act aggressively, work hard, demonstrate persistence, and set high standards and hold people accountable to them.
“The new coach organized a very simple strategy to get us to win. He did something I found remarkable. He organized the team to minimize each guy’s individual weaknesses.
