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These who mistakes are prevalent as well. Peter Drucker and other management gurus have long estimated that the hiring success rate of managers is a dismal 50 percent. Just think of the lost time and energy that represents, not only for you but all through the organization. What most managers do not know is that who problems are also preventable.
The purpose of this book is to give you a solution to your number-one problem—to help you make better who decisions.
When we met with Buckley, he got straight to the point: “One of the hardest challenges is to hire people from outside the company. One of the 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.”
The good news is that a clear and tested path leads the way out of all this hiring mess. Finding A Players begins with setting the bar higher. Unless you’re looking to finish in the bottom half of the standings, you would never assemble a team composed largely of B or C Players. Why, then, use hiring methods that are almost certain to bring second-stringers and backups crowding through the front door?
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.
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. Take
As Nick Chabraja, the CEO of General Dynamics, puts it, “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.”
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?
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. Able to produce significant output with minimal wasted effort. • Honesty/integrity. Does not cut corners ethically. Earns trust and maintains confidences. Does what is right, not just what is politically expedient. Speaks plainly and truthfully. • Organization and planning. Plans, organizes, schedules, and budgets in an efficient, productive manner. Focuses on key priorities. • Aggressiveness. Moves quickly and takes a forceful stand without being overly abrasive. • Follow-through on commitments. Lives up to verbal and written agreements,
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We use the competencies section of our scorecards as a checklist during the interview process, but we encourage clients to personalize it to fit their individual needs. Many, we’ve found, have already done that, formally or informally. Bill Johnson, the CEO of Heinz since 1998, is one of them. “Chemistry is always important for both the individual and the company,” Johnson said. “If I don’t have good chemistry with you, and you don’t have good chemistry with me, then skip it. Connecting with them personally is important. That becomes obvious in my initial conversations with a candidate.
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Try gathering your leadership team in a room and asking this simple question: “What adjectives would you use to describe our culture?” Jot down their responses on a flip chart or whiteboard.
HOW TO CREATE A SCORECARD 1. MISSION. Develop a short statement of one to five sentences that describes why a role exists. For example, “The mission for the customer service representative is to help customers resolve their questions and complaints with the highest level of courtesy possible.” 2. OUTCOMES. Develop three to eight specific, objective outcomes that a person must accomplish to achieve an A performance. For example, “Improve customer satisfaction on a ten-point scale from 7.1 to 9.0 by December 31.” 3. COMPETENCIES. Identify as many role-based competencies as you think appropriate
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Of all the ways to source candidates, the number one method is to ask for referrals from your personal and professional networks.
HOW TO SOURCE 1. REFERRALS FROM YOUR PROFESSIONAL AND PERSONAL NETWORKS. Create a list of the ten most talented people you know and commit to speaking with at least one of them per week for the next ten weeks. At the end of each conversation, ask, “Who are the most talented people you know?” Continue to build your list and continue to talk with at least one person per week. 2. REFERRALS FROM YOUR EMPLOYEES. Add sourcing as an outcome on every scorecard for your team. For example, “Source five A Players per year who pass our phone screen.” Encourage your employees to ask people in their
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There are literally thousands of additional questions you could ask. Rather than create a screening guide that tries to cover all the possibilities, we use a simple process called “getting curious.” Here’s how it works. After a candidate answers one of the primary questions above, get curious about the answer by asking a follow-up question that begins with “What,” “How,” or “Tell me more.” Keep using this framework until you are clear about what the person is really saying.
If the pattern is there of extracting success out of the jaws of defeat, that makes you want to hire somebody.”
Ideally, candidates will tell you about accomplishments that match the job outcomes they just described to you. Even better, those accomplishments will match the scorecard for the position you are trying to fill.
A Players tend to talk about outcomes linked to expectations. B and C Players talk generally about events, people they met, or aspects of the job they liked without ever getting into results.
Thank you for taking the time to visit us today. As we have already discussed, we are going to do a chronological interview to walk through each job you have held. For each job I am going to ask you five core questions: What were you hired to do? What accomplishments are you most proud of? What were some low points during that job? Who were the people you worked with? Why did you leave that job? At the end of the interview we will discuss your career goals and aspirations, and you will have a chance to ask me questions.
Wayne Huizenga, the only person in America responsible for listing six companies on the New York Stock Exchange and founding three Fortune 500 companies, put it this way: “You always try to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. What happened in the last job?
The five areas, which we call the five F’s of selling, are: fit, family, freedom, fortune, and fun.
Fit ties together the company’s vision, needs, and culture with the candidate’s goals, strengths, and values. “Here is where we are going as a company. Here is how you fit in.” • Family takes into account the broader trauma of changing jobs. “What can we do to make this change as easy as possible for your family?” • Freedom is the autonomy the candidate will have to make his or her own decisions. “I will give you ample freedom to make decisions, and I will not micromanage you.” • Fortune reflects the stability of your company and the overall financial upside. “If you accomplish your
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“They need to feel they will be productive. They want to know what their responsibilities are going to be and if they will have enough opportunities to show what they can do. Managing these people can be a real challenge because you have to create enough space for them to show what they can do.”
A seasoned executive once asked us what we thought was the single most important aspect to selling a candidate on joining a company. We knew from our research that there actually was a one-word answer to that question: persistence. 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.
You have to do ten things if you want to install the A Method for Hiring in your business:
Make people a top priority.
Follow the A Method yourself.
Build support among your executive team or peers.
Cast a clear vision for the organization and reinforce it through every communication with the broader team.
Train your team on best practices.
Remove barriers that impede success.
Implement new policies that support the change.
Recognize and reward those who use the method and achieve results.
Remove managers who are not on board.
Celebrate wins and plan for more change.
Boards and investors have a tendency to invest in CEOs who demonstrate openness to feedback, possess great listening skills, and treat people with respect. These are executives who have mastered the soft skills. We call them “Lambs” because these CEOs tend to graze in circles, feeding on the feedback and direction of others. Boards love Lambs because they are so easy to work with, and in fact, in our study Lambs were successful 57 percent of the time. That is not a bad success rate. A batter who hit .570 over a career could walk backward into the Hall of Fame.
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. We call these CEOs “Cheetahs” because they are fast and focused. Cheetahs in our study were successful 100 percent of the time. This is not a rounding error. Every single one of them created significant value for their investors.
Emotional intelligence is important, but only when matched with the propensity to get things done.
Should you always want to be a Cheetah, or do you always want to hire a Cheetah? No. But if you have the choice to be or hire somebody who errs on the side of being too fast and focused versus being slow and extremely collaborative, we recommend going with the fast and focused option.
Back when he was CEO of Brunswick, George Buckley was asked at a public meeting, “Hey, George, what is your attitude about people?” “Look, a lot of you today are supervisors,” Buckley answered. “I want you to pause for a moment and think about the very best person you have working for you. Now I want you to think about the second-best person you have working for you. Now I would like you to think about where your organization would be without them. You would be terrified if you lost them. And you would love to have ten more like them. That is how I feel about the importance of hiring,
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To figure out the scorecard for what matters in a job, just think about what success looks like for the role and how you could measure it through metrics or observation.
To source the talent you need, use the tactics we described from some of the most successful managers in the world. Tap into your networks for referrals and get a diverse stream of A Players flowing toward your business. Use recruiters when necessary. Build capabilities within your internal recruiting team.
