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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
It does not matter whether a person is being hired as a call-center worker or the CEO of a $50-billion financial services institution. 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
Decide to make better who decisions, and you will enjoy your career more, make more money, and have more time for the relationships that matter most.
“Look, I hired your resume. But unfortunately, what I got was you!”
“Otherwise smart people struggle to hire strangers. People unfamiliar with great hiring methods consider the process a mysterious black art.”
managers cling to their favorite methods even when evidence suggests they don’t work.
top ten voodoo hiring methods:
1. The Art Critic.
2. The Sponge. A common approach among busy managers is to let everybody interview a candidate.
3. The Prosecutor. Many managers act like the prosecutors they see on TV. They aggressively question candidates, attempting to trip them up with trick questions and logic problems.
4. The Suitor.
They spend all of their time in an interview talking and virtually no time listening.
5. The Trickster.
the interviewers who use gimmicks to test for certain behaviors.
6. The Animal Lover.
Many managers hold on stubbornly to their favorite pet questions—questions
7. The Chatterbox.
8. The Psychological and Personality Tester. The
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.
What is an A Player? For one thing, he or she is not just a superstar. 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. 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.
You can think of each line in the letter A and the underline as four steps that build the whole method. The four steps are:
Scorecard. The scorecard is a document that describes exactly what you want a person to accomplish in a role. It is not a job description, but rather a set of outcomes and competencies that define a job done well. By defining A performance for a role, the scorecard gives you a clear picture of what the person you seek needs to be able to accomplish.
Source. Finding great people is getting harder, but it is not impossible. Systematic sourcing before you have slots to fill ensures you have high-qual...
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Select. 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 scorecard and make an informed hiring decision. T...
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Sell. Once you identify people you want on your team through selection, you need to persuade them to join. Selling the right way ensures you avoid the biggest pitfalls that cause the very people you want the most to take their talents elsewhere. It also protects you from the bi...
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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. You wouldn’t think of having someone build you a house without an architect’s blueprint in hand.
The first failure point of hiring is not being crystal clear about what you really want the person you hire to accomplish.
You may have some vague notion of what you want. Others on your team are likely to have their own equally vague notions of what you want and need. But chances are high that your vague notions do not match theirs. Enter the scorecard,
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.
The mission for the VP of sales clearly captures why the role exists: to grow revenue through direct contacts with industrial customers. That’s it. It
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.
People don’t want to fail, and they don’t want to go through the dislocation of moving to another company, or possibly another city or country, if they know their chances of success are minimal. Set the outcomes high enough—but still within reason—and you’ll scare off B and C Players even as you pull in the kind of A Players who thrive on big challenges that fit their skills.
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?
Ironically, all that specificity frees new hires to give the job their best shot. They know what they’ll be judged on. They know what the company and the boss think is important in their position. Instead of guessing how to do well and careening among a dozen different fronts, they have the game plan right in front of them.
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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In addition, you might want to consider some of the following competencies. These are in unprioritized order:
The larger point, though, is that Bill Johnson’s list captures what he values most for people who report to him, regardless of role. Make sure yours does the same.
“Part of successful hiring means having the discipline to pass on talented people who are not a fit,”
Scorecards are the guardians of your culture.
At a keynote speech at a Fortune magazine conference a couple of years ago, we asked the two hundred CEOs in the room, “How many of you have in place written objectives for all of your direct reports?” Only 10 percent raised their hands. One in ten!
“The thing we valued at EMC was the willingness to go one more step than the next guy, to go one more step to service the customer,” Marino told us. “Sometimes people feel that they have such a good widget that they leave the customer by the wayside. That has become prevalent in all industries, not just high-tech. One reason we did so well at EMC was that we serviced our customers a lot better than the competitors. To accomplish that, we specifically hired people who had an unusually high customer service attitude.”
The crux comes down to active scorecard management—that is, linking our business plan to people’s jobs.
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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