Who: The A Method for Hiring

by Geoff Smart

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. “John 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.

Next, ask what they thought it was like working with John Smith.

Now ask, “What will Mr. Smith say were your biggest strengths and areas for improvement?” Be sure to say will, not would.

That same reciprocity applies to TORC. The candidate has just spent two minutes telling you about John Smith with perfect clarity. Now he owes you two minutes on what Mr. Smith will say about him. The human brain wants to balance out the equation, so the adjectives that describe the strengths and weaknesses will spill out of your candidate’s mouth as he steps into Mr. Smith’s shoes.

“What is your best guess for what he will say?”

“What kind of feedback did he give you on your reviews?”

“What about informally? What did he tell you in passing?”

“Well, what do you think he told others when he talked about you behind your back in his office, maybe to the board?”

The second part of the fourth question—“How would you rate the team you inherited?”—is applicable to managers. The focus here is on how candidates approach building a strong team. Do they accept the hand they have been dealt when they inherit a new team, or do they make changes to get a better hand? What changes do they make? How long does it take? As a bonus, use the TORC framework on their team. You can ask, “When we speak with members of your team, what will they say were your biggest strengths and weaknesses as a manager?”

Why did you leave that job?

The final question of this vital Who Interview can be one of the most insight-producing questions you ask. Were the candidates for your position promoted, recruited, or fired from each job along their career progression? Were they taking the next step in their career or running from s...

Don’t accept vague answers like “My boss and I didn’t connect.” That’s a non-answer. Get curious. Find out why, and stick with it until you have clear picture of what actually happened.

“I had a philosophical disagreement with my boss.”

“What happened?”

CONDUCTING AN EFFECTIVE WHO INTERVIEW

To put the Who Interview into practice, divide a person’s career “story” into the equivalent of “chapters.” Each chapter could be a single job, or a group of jobs that span three to five years.

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.

The Who Interview takes three hours on average to conduct. It might take five hours for CEOs of multibillion-dollar companies, or ninety minutes for entry-level positions.

The length of the interview will help you in two ways initially. First, it will encourage you to get really good at the screening interview so you are able to spend most of your time with the best candidates. Second, it will enable you to reduce your hiring failure rate by such a wide margin that you will never hire another person again without using this methodology.

we also recommend that you conduct the Who Interview with a colleague—perhaps someone from HR, another manager or member of your team, or simply someone who wants to learn the method by observing you. This tandem approach makes it easier to run the interview. One person can ask the questions while the other takes notes, or you can both do a little of each. Either way, two heads are always better than one.

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. Eighty percent of the process is in this room, but if we mutually decide to continue, we will conduct reference calls to complete the process. Finally, while this sounds like a lengthy interview, it will go remarkably fast. I want to make sure you have the opportunity to share your full story, so it is my job to guide the pace of the discussion. Sometimes, we’ll go into more depth in a period of your career. Other times, I will ask that we move on to the next topic. I’ll try to make sure we leave plenty of time to cover your most recent, and frankly, most relevant jobs. Do you have any questions about the process?

Master Tactic #1: Interrupting 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.

The good way to interrupt somebody is to smile broadly, match their enthusiasm level, and use reflective listening to get them to stop talking without demoralizing them. You say, “Wow! It sounds like that pig farm next to the corporate office smelled horrible!” The candidate nods and says “Yes!” and appreciates your empathy and respect. Then you immediately say, “You were just telling me about launching that direct mail campaign. I’d love to hear what was that like? How well did it go?”

It is through maintaining very high rapport that you get the most valuable data, and polite interrupting can build that rapport.

Master Tactic #2: The Three P’s

The three P’s are questions you can use to clarify how valuable an accomplishment was in any context. The questions are: 1. How did your performance compare to the previous year’s performance? (For example, this person achieved sales of $2 million and the previous year’s sales were only $150,000.) 2. How did your performance compare to the plan? (For example, this person sold $2 million and the plan was $1.2 million.) 3. How did your performance compare to that of peers? (For example, this person sold $2 million and was ranked first among thirty peers; the next-best performer sold only $750,000.)

Master Tactic #3: Push Versus Pull

People who perform well are generally pulled to greater opportunities. People who perform poorly are often pushed out of their jobs. Do not hire anybody who has been pushed out of 20 percent or more of their jobs. From our experience, those folks have a three times higher chance of being a chronic B or C Player.

Here is how to go about judging this. After you ask, “Why did you leave that job?” you will hear one of two answers: 1. Push. “It was mutual.” “It was time for me to leave.” “My boss and I were not getting along.” “Judy got promoted and I did not.” “My role shrank.” “I missed my number and was told I was on thin ice.” “I slapped the CEO so hard that I lost my $3 million severance package.” 2. Pull. “My biggest client hired me.” “My old boss recruited me to a bigg...

Master Tactic #4: Painting a Picture

“empathic imagination.” Empathic imagination helps you move away from generic answers that don’t mean anything and toward specific details that give you real insight.

Master Tactic #5: Stopping at the Stop Signs

to tell when people are lying. The biggest indicator, as it turns out, is when you see or hear inconsistencies. If someone says, “We did great in that role,” while shifting in his chair, looking down, and covering his mouth, that is a stop sign. When you see that, slam on the brakes, get curious, and see just how “great” he actually did.

Think of yourself instead as a biographer interviewing a subject. You want both the details and the broad pattern, the facts and texture.

THE FOCUSED INTERVIEW: GETTING TO KNOW MORE

The focused interview is similar to the commonly used behavioral interview with one major difference: it is focused on the outcomes and competencies of the scorecard,

As with all of the interviews we present in this book, get curious after every answer by using the “What? How? Tell me more” framework, and keep asking until you understand what the person did and how he or she did it.

For example, let’s say you are hiring a VP of sales. The scorecard you created has four outcomes on it: 1. Grow domestic sales from $500 million to $600 million by December 31, and continue growing them by 20 percent per year for the next five years. 2. Maintain at least a 45 percent gross margin across the portfolio of products annually. 3. Who the sales organization, ensuring 90 percent or more of all new hires are A Players as defined by the sales scorecards. Achieve a 90 percent or better ratio of A Players across the team within three years through hiring and coaching. Remove all chronic C Players within ninety days of identification. 4. Create a sales strategy that the CEO approves during the annual planning cycle. In addition, let’s say you have identified six competencies that define success in the job: 1. Aggressive 2. Persistent 3. Hires A Players 4. Holds people accountable 5. Follows through on commitments 6. Open to criticism and feedback Try assigning three members of your team to perform focused interviews based on this scorecard. The first interviewer takes the first two outcomes and the first two competencies because they all have to do with growing sales and managing costs, and the behaviors that support both. The second interviewer has responsibility for the outcome related to Who and the two competencies having to do with how the candidate builds the team. That leaves everything else for the third interviewer. Each interview should take forty-five minut...

Focused interviews also give you a final gauge on the cultural fit that so many of our CEOs and other business leaders cited as critical to the hiring process. Just be sure to include competencies and outcomes that go beyond the specifics of the job to embrace the larger values of your company.

TYPICAL INTERVIEW DAY

THE REFERENCE INTERVIEW: TESTING WHAT YOU LEARNED

In fact, 64 percent of the business moguls we interviewed conduct reference calls for every hire, not just the ones at the top. Unfortunately, far fewer general managers follow suit.

First, pick the right references. Review your notes from the Who Interview and pick the bosses, peers, and subordinates with whom you would like to speak. Don’t just use the reference list the candidate gives you.

Second, ask the candidate to contact the references to set up the calls. Some companies have a policy that prevents employees from serving as references. You may hit that brick wall if you call a reference directly, but we have found that you will have twice the chance of actually getting to talk to a reference if you ask the candidate to set up the interview—whether

Third, conduct the right number of reference interviews. We recommend that you personally do about four and ask your colleagues to do three, for a total of seven reference interviews. Interview three past bosses, two peers or customers, and two subordinates.

People aren’t mutual funds. Past performance really is an indicator of future performance.

have actually found instances where we have called people for references and have gotten excellent recommendations. Then I call someone I know very closely who knows and has worked with the person, and I’ve gotten a totally different and negative reference.”

Why such false positives? The culprit is basic human behavior. People don’t like to give a negative reference. They want to help their former colleagues, not hurt them.