Confessions, cures and the epiphany — the 10 Hiring Strategies I Live By
A tale from The Reformed (and his kind friends).
A thank you note to one of my colleagues, Karen Hawker: I take my hat off to you. You demonstrated belief in our business. I loved your flair in hiring and reshaping the team. I’ll will try not to bugger it up while you are having a baby ☺
Backstory
I meet a lot of passionate smart people when I am interviewing. I hire many of them. Have you hired on these traits, too? Are they the sole ingredients that make a successful fit? Apparently not, and who says you can easily make the right call in an interview anyway? Certainly not me. Successfully hiring the right people for your organisation is not easy. Some people reading this might even say good people can only thrive in good organisations. And they are right. You need both; after all, it’s a marriage of sorts. You do spend more time at work, often, than you do with your spouse.
What I do know from first-hand experience, is that I can quantify the cost of bad hires. If you bother to write a long list of the impacts and dollarise those, you are not even close. Lost time, recruitment fees, rework and brand damage are obvious. Take your number and double it. That’s a closer representation of the cost of bad hires.
My youngest daughter uses the expression “That’s so extra”. I double that price again for my own torment. Looking back at the damage to the team, picking up the pieces, double that again.
Poor hiring choices impact the good people who have to pick up the slack. Add in the disharmony and disillusionment of staff not privy to the rationale for why a staff member left or was asked to leave, and my confession is almost complete.
When I began my career, I asked to start working 6 weeks earlier than the scheduled intake date for cadets at that time. I thought I was lucky. I had a job where I was learning fast. I met some very entrepreneurial people (many of whom are good friends to this day). And they paid me!
Fast forward to 2018, and HR departments are everywhere, but is it getting any easier to hire the right staff? We have minders, finders and grinders. The segmentation of roles would do Toyota proud, unless you look under the hood (sorry, I couldn’t resist).
So, what is the cost of hiring the wrong people? Double, double, double, double cost? Or fix it!!! Glad you are convinced.
Getting started (again)
OK, I admit, I got it wrong. Hiring people, and building culture is an art. But it is also a science. The right process must be followed. The starting point is recognising the role, defining it, and selecting the TEAM that will coordinate the assault. Sun Tzu might pat me on the back for my efforts these days, but it’s not about me.
What have we learned about hiring, people and communication? Internal communication is just as important, perhaps more so, than selling to customers. As the expression goes, ‘Show me a happy employee and I will show you happy customers’.
Creating a sense of job satisfaction engenders loyalty. This is the antidote to the corrosive effects of employee mismatch and inadequate efforts in building a cohesive and unified work environment.
Every change starts with self-awareness. Feedback is a wonderful thing. Imagine if you were an alien landing in Australia, not the USA (where they normally land) and you had to observe and explain how to hire people. Against no background or experience, you couldn’t possibly lay out a procedure, or the dos and don’ts of hiring and inducting staff successfully. Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Outliers, says to really master a skill, you require 10,000 hours. I believe him, but self-awareness and playing to your strengths has worked for me. Self-awareness is the answer to most personal problems.
Confessions
I love helping people, learning new things. I am obsessed with strategy, growth and “doing meaningful work” and “creating meaningful relationships”. Thank you Ray Dalio for writing these beautiful phrases, articulating probably what drives most people. Connecting people and playing a part in their development is truly rewarding.
However, I also like being appreciated, though that shouldn’t be the goal. I have very high standards and a healthy ego. I may be a little too competitive and tend to get involved in things that should be delegated. Guilty as charged. My focus on everything and everyone else made me suck at hiring. In my defence, (only one sentence in the blog), I’m not the first person to say inner resilience or patience has dissipated in (some of) today’s employees. Times are changing, so good old self-awareness is the beginning to an epiphany.
Finally, the short- term cost savings and convenience of outsourcing can actually weaken the organisation’s depth and resilience. Succession planning, training and culture are the victims. In an environment which encourages outsourcing, artificial intelligence (AI) and computer learning, it’s difficult to foster excellence in human thinking. The best businesses of tomorrow will integrate these resources into their environment, while maintaining focus on the importance of the human element.
What I have always known, and tell others, but doesn’t apply to me…lucky for my epiphany.
If you want to attract top talent, especially when you aren’t a shiny company or a brand-new start up that will change the world and has an aura or brand presence, then listen up. Even the best talent managers alone are not the whole solution. Get started with hiring a person who has appropriate skills for hiring. But this superstar must also possess the skills you are looking for. This will be Lethal. ‘It takes one to know one’, #tbt (circa 1978)
The Top 10 Hiring Strategies
Here are my top 10 things to start with, (but it will depend on your organisation). Remember, it’s both an art and a science. For me, surrendering to this process was a game changer that I am happy to share.
1. Assemble the right team to do the hiring. They will possess a mix of the qualities you want to find. Again, it takes one to know one. Don’t dare start this process without the best people on the team.
2. Get your top team members to buy in before the hire. This will improve the quality of the hire. Integration of the candidate with the team becomes seamless from day one after the new candidate is in the seat.
3. Ask the right exploratory questions; don’t sell!!! (hard for me).
4. Listen for insightful questions from the candidate (extra marks for this).
5. Look for personal calibre, aligned goals and ‘been there done that’ in great companies.
6. Try before you buy. Set the candidate a challenge.
7. If you can’t find the right candidate (quickly) you need to decide whether to wait or find a candidate with the absolute essentials and teach them the rest.
8. The wrong hire can be toxic. If a new hire doesn’t look as though they are working out, make the call kindly and quickly. Three months is usually enough time to make the right call on a person and whether or not they are a good fit. Let me be clear, this doesn’t mean not giving people a chance and facilitating the right support.
9. Identify the goals of the role, don’t start with (or better yet burn) job descriptions.
10. Decide how much to explain to your team about why a person hasn’t worked out. In a transparent organisation, everyone knows what they are accountable for, so this shouldn’t be a surprise.
You have to reduce your chances of failure in the lucky dip.
You might say, where are reference checks and induction processes on this list? That is assumed knowledge. Induction and retention will be the topics of a future blog.
Then, apply system thinking. Document the process, let the team have a post mortem of the candidates they liked in the interview, collect their thoughts. And determine whether they have they reached consensus on point 5?
Back their judgement, every time! Rinse and repeat. Build the team, love the team and develop the team. Get out of the way of the people who have mastered the hiring process.
Having secured the right people, apply my “DKAdvisor people meter” weekly. Hit me up for this.
In short, get under their exterior. People are complex, weird and special. Create a culture of generosity with team development. However functions, lunches and birthday cakes (alone) won’t cut it. Keep the focus on stretching people, but regularly checking how you and they are. It’s not that I have become more sensitive, just more focused on internal issues. It’s often said, ‘People don’t leave a company, they leave their managers’. I have nurtured and mentored some amazingly talented people, some of who became Partners of mine, or elsewhere. Some have gone on to amazing careers elsewhere. Those stars whom I cared about enough to help, regularly stay in touch. It was always more than a job, to us both.
It’s a shame I turned my eye away from the basics, a little selfish, I admit. How wrong was I!!
My team was never as good when I had a few amazing, dedicated super stars. They knew I was in their corner. But nurturing should never stall, let alone stop forever. Once they became Partners, they ran their own show. As much as I tried, I couldn’t replicate the excellence and joy in the team and instead worked twice as hard myself.
Love, develop and nourish your team. Resumes are a relic, recruiters are not often (but there are exceptions) on your side. Good people are hard to find; it doesn’t happen by accident.
Go back to the basics, especially when it’s not working. Follow the system, and give of yourself. It’s worked for everyone I have guided, I took my own medicine, I’m back baby! I now even have some time to do other things.
Thank you, my amazing team. You are awesome.
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