Hire On Purpose
PART 1: SEVEN GUIDING PRINCIPLES
No matter what business you’re in, you’re in the people business. Cliché, I know, but still true. That means that there are few decisions that you’ll make that are as impactful to your business and the people that it serves as hiring the right people at the right time and in context of the right culture.
I’m sure that you’ve come across a lot of articles about hiring that focus on interviewing job candidates — like “Top 10 Dumbest Interview Questions” or something of that sort. This two-part series is not one of them. Although interviewing technique is important and will be covered, let’s think of this series as a collection of excerpts from the second chapter of a broader-reaching still-to-be-written tome called 360APPROACH’s Field Guide for Cultivating an Effective Organizational Culture. (If you’re wondering, the first chapter would be about “mapping your company’s cultural genome.”) You see, my experiences restructuring distressed companies and building new ones from the ground up have proven to me that an organization’s culture provides both the foundation and the atmosphere upon which its business grows (or dies). So, if your people are the physical embodiment of your organization’s culture, it stands to reason that who you bring into the organization will either cultivate your culture or kill it. That realization inspired me to develop a principled approach to finding the right people to work together on purpose to accomplish meaningful things that they couldn’t otherwise do on their own. We call it the “360APPROACH to Hiring,” but that’s just a cleverly branded way to say that we help companies hire on purpose.
In this article, I’ll share with you the principles that guide our approach to hiring on purpose; and in Part 2, I’ll share some examples of the specific techniques that we have employed to get better-than-average results. If you’re looking to hire talented colleagues, collaborators, and co-conspirators, rather than just “staffing up,” then you need to hire on purpose. And if you’re not in the position to hire someone, you’re probably in the position to be hired by someone. If so, these articles can help you too. Companies that are deliberate about building their teams using the principles and techniques described in these articles are likely to be places that will be more fulfilling to work for. Use this guide to be the next hire of those companies — the ones that will make your work-life somewhat better than survivable.
What Is Hiring On Purpose?
What does it mean to hire on purpose? You’ll have to forgive me for answering that question with another one, “Why do you need to hire people?” I’ve heard a few different answers to that question over the years. A common response of hiring managers or HR professionals has been, “We have an open position that needs to be filled.” Okay, I say, but is the new hire meant to support the growth of the business, or only the company’s organizational structure? It’s critically important that you ensure that any open position in your organization is fully aligned with your business’s customer-focused strategy, the strategic mandate of the team that the position serves, and the organizational culture needed to give life to that strategy.
One of my favorite illustrations of this point is the story of President John F. Kennedy running into a janitor who was cleaning a hallway at NASA during the height of the space race and America’s push to put a man on the moon. As the story goes, Kennedy introduced himself and asked the janitor what he did there. The janitor’s famous reply was that he was working to put a man on the moon. Although the story is most likely apocryphal, it still moves me to think of what it must have been like to work for an organization where each team member — all the way down to the janitorial staff — were so singularly focused on the organization’s mission. Your company’s culture is supported by the lowest common belief that’s shared among its people. Kennedy asked about the janitor’s job even though it was probably obvious. The janitor, in turn, responded by telling Kennedy what gave his job purpose.
Hiring as a Virtuous Circle vs. a Revolving Door
A lot of us think of hiring as starting with the interview and ending with an addition to payroll. If that’s how your organization’s hiring, you need to change that approach today! When hiring is approached as a siloed function or process, the return on investment from the development of even a rock-star hiring process will only be marginal at best, and the risk of hiring team members who are not a good cultural fit will be higher than it could otherwise be. So is the risk of hiring talented team members that struggle to sync-up with the company’s mission because they haven’t been properly onboarded or invested-in through intentional training and professional development. These hires are more likely to wind up out of the door sooner than desired after making the organization slower and less flexible. This is the revolving door effect.
Hiring on purpose actually entails more than just the hiring part. Think of it more ubiquitously as encompassing the disciplines of recruiting, hiring, onboarding, training, and professional development. A hiring discipline that never loses alignment with the company’s strategy and purpose will bring talented “A-players” into the organization. Onboarding those folks properly maintains momentum and focus, allowing them to add greater value sooner. Being generous with opportunities for ongoing training and professional development both keep your team sharp and demonstrate how much you value them. Those fully engaged, fully activated team members now become your most valuable recruitment resource because they want to work with and learn from other impressive people. Impressive people are rare. So, the discipline of recruiting takes an “always-on” approach to identify and track impressive talent regardless of whether you have an identified need. In the end, when recruiting, hiring, onboarding, training, and professional development are approached as cultural disciplines that are both contiguous and continuous, they create a virtuous circle of growth for your business. (I have to admit that I’ve got a thing for circles.)
Increasing Headcount Should Not Be Mistaken for Growth
So, what about startups experiencing pressure to staff-up to support rapid growth? This seems like a good problem to have, and in many ways, it is. However, for fast-paced growth-stage companies to be in the best positions to exploit opportunities and manage risks along the way, they must choose to hire better people rather than just more people. Increasing headcount should not be mistaken for growth. Obviously, increasing headcount is a direct measure of your organization’s growth, but it is not a measure of your business’s growth.
The best reason for hiring someone is that you believe that she can help fulfill the business’s purpose in unique and specific ways. So, the context for every hire should be your business’s purpose (its mandate for existence) and your company’s culture (its genome). These need to be clearly articulated in writing for every job candidate to see. And hopefully, these are not just pithy memes with stirring images of eagles or mountains, but rather a concise and specific map pointing to the place of your company’s destiny. (In Part 2 of this series, I’ll present how we do this with Position Profiles.)
TOP TIP: Although every team member should be an asset to your mission, they are an expense on your books. Hire responsibly.
Don’t Get Married to the Job
Although the words “job” and “position” are commonly used interchangeably, I’m going to make a contextual distinction to illustrate a point. In one of four entries for the word “job,” Merriam-Webster offers this definition: “Something that has to be done: TASK.” I’m going to stretch that a bit to call it “activity from a pre-determined set of tasks.” As for a “position,” let’s think of that as a cell within an organization that is defined by its specific set of responsibilities and given tasks (or jobs) to be performed as part of those responsibilities.
High-performing organizations must hire team members who are expected to shape their jobs (think tasks) within their positions (think area of responsibility) to meet the changing demands of doing their part in fulfilling the business’s strategy in their areas of responsibility. In today’s ultra-fast-paced business environment, strategy and tactical execution need to be dynamic, more decision-making needs to be pushed out to the points of contact, and organizations need to be far more flexible in how they create and manage jobs.
When you hire people on purpose, you expect each team member’s job to change over time. In fact, the best teams allow members to fill gaps in execution anywhere they present themselves because every team member realizes that they’re all in the same boat. These team members can be trusted to make principle-based decisions and don’t rely on title or rank to positively influence those around them. Of course, for this to happen, the organization must hire and train more team members with a leader-leader/mission-oriented mentality than it hires and trains team members with a leader-follower/task-and-delivery mentality. In other words, you need to hire more people with an entrepreneur’s mindset — people who are more opportunity-centric than risk-averse, who can adapt, improvise, and overcome challenges to get stuff done.
Good People Are More Important Than Good Ideas
There’s a question that I commonly ask during interviews. “What’s more important? Good ideas or good people?” Most candidates answer, “Good people,” which is my preferred answer. But what I want to know is why they think so, and when I ask, some can articulate that good people are needed to bring good ideas to life. Good people can also spot bad ideas and will help the business pivot away from them. All true and all very important. But aside from the requisite skills, talents, and experience to perform at a high-level, what else makes a team member “good?” It’s actually quite simple. She’s someone that other people enjoy working with, and who enjoys working with you and for your customers.
Here’s a tip: If you’re spending precious resources on managing people through attempts at motivation, bribery, disciplinary action, re-hiring, etc., you don’t have good people.
I enjoy seeing people operating in their element. Usually, what comes to mind is someone of extraordinary ability who is performing at such a high level that it seems almost unreal — as if their talent has brought them to a state of enlightened fulfillment in their work, which us mere mortals can only experience vicariously. These shooting stars are, no doubt, impressive. But the people who are the most impactful are the ones who can shine brightly while doing mundane and unsexy jobs that are tactically important to fulfilling the company’s mission.
I remember seeing this on a Disney Cruise that my family and I took a few years ago. It was an off-season cruise and our first one. We got off to a rough start due to some problems with our reservation that delayed our boarding. After those issues were sorted, we were shown to our room where we were warming greeted by a member of the housekeeping team — we’ll call him Virgil. Virgil apologized for the room issues that delayed our boarding and promised that he and the rest of the crew (he was speaking for the whole ship) would do whatever it took to make sure that the rest of our cruise was “magical.” His job was to keep our room clean, which he did at a level that would have given Downton Abbey a run for its money. But his purpose was to make our trip magical, and that he did.
During the next four days, Virgil was our sunlight below deck. He was in his element and anticipated our every need. Everyone and everything looked brighter because of Virgil’s attitude, and we looked forward to seeing him. You see, he was not “good” because he was extraordinarily skilled at making our beds. He was good because he truly enjoyed working for us — and he got Disney’s vision. So much so that Virgil, a guy that was on the lower echelons of the organizational chart, felt confident that he could speak for the whole organization in guarantying the brand promise to the customer. And here’s the kicker, everyone on that ship acted that way. The ship was full of Virgils!
So, don’t just hire people who want the job. Hire people that other people want to work with. Hire Virgil.
TOP TIP: The quality of your people is even more important than the quality of your strategy.
First Contact: Impress Candidates With Your Employer Brand
A brand is a lens through which people perceive your company, your products, and even your purpose. The art and science of branding is all about making impressions on those people that, hopefully, increase the value of your reputation. So, who are you trying to impress? Well, customers, of course! You want customers to have a positive brand impression so that they buy your stuff and tell other people to buy your stuff. That’s why you invest heavily in the aspects of your brand that your customers see like marketing and advertising, UI/UX, packaging, design, etc. The part that we sometimes forget is that your employees are behind (and often in front of) every aspect of your company and product brands — including and especially those that the customer feels. Perhaps, then, it makes sense to invest as much into impressing your employees — both present and future — as you do your customers. That side of your brand is called your “employer brand,” and its stock is traded inside your company by current employees, and outside your company by former and future employees.
As I mentioned earlier, truly impressive people are hard to come by. When you hire on purpose, you realize that candidates (both impressive and not) will have made first contact with your employer brand well before the first interview. They may have searched online for postings about the company from current and former employees. Or maybe they talked to an employee or someone who knows one. In the least, if they see a job posting or get a recruiter’s call, there’s an impression being made on them. And if you’re not hiring on purpose, you’re likely to lose the opportunity to work with that A-player if any part of your hiring process doesn’t align with what they’ve come to believe about your brand.
For example, don’t waste the candidates’ time with redundant or irrelevant requests for information, like allowing a candidate to submit their LinkedIn profile instead of completing an internal application form, only to then ask for a resume (which likely has the same information) to boot. Or why ask for a resume, and then have the candidates complete an internal application from scratch with the same information (especially job history)? These kinds of sloppy, misaligned processes give the impression that your organization doesn’t have its [stuff] together. People with that impression are less likely to take risks, and they’re also less likely to bring their A-game. The whole “only getting one chance to make a good first impression” thing applies to the employer too. So, affirm your employer brand by hiring on purpose and being impressive to every candidate before they walk through your door.
TOP TIP: A-players are far more impressed by the aspirations of companies that dare greatly than they are of ping-pong tables and free booze at work.
To learn more about employer branding, check out this great article on LinkedIn.
Rethink How You Determine Qualification
It is challenging to determine if a candidate is qualified for an opportunity. Many organizations get it wrong by overemphasizing things that seem more objective and safer, like specific college degrees or so-called “domain expertise.”
It’s not to say that formal education and expertise don’t contribute to qualification. On the contrary, there are some fields/positions/endeavors (i.e., medicine, accounting, or engineering) wherein a specific type or level of formal education is required to gain the appropriate level of technical competency to perform certain specific tasks. However, even in these fields, neither formal education nor expertise are indicators of creativity, emotional intelligence, leadership strength, cultural fit, or any other key qualifier for success as a professional in the workplace.
Keep in mind that the primary beneficiary of education, in whatever form it comes, is the student, rather than your business. Just because the candidate has xyz degree from xyz university doesn’t mean that they are ready to deliver results in the workplace. In fact, it’s a safe bet that whatever they learned in college is probably outdated now — even if they just graduated. So, when hiring, stay focused on two things: 1) how the candidate intends to utilize their education in a way that helps the business fulfill its strategic purpose, regardless of what form that education took, and 2) whether they put a high value on curiosity and life-long learning.
And don’t be too enamored with expertise. We live in a time of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, and so-called experts can often fail to see material changes in key value drivers because of an unconscious protection bias toward knowledge that may be outdated or situationally specific. (Just ask those political pundits who still say that the outcome of the 2016 US elections shouldn’t have happened.)
TOP TIP: 21st-century companies are likely to find value in candidates from “non-traditional” education and career paths, as these candidates tend to rely more on strengths like grit, adaptability, experience learning from failure, and an emphasis on life-long learning to propel themselves forward.
Hiring on purpose isn’t easy, but I promise that it pays off. Having been in the people business for a little while now, anytime that I’ve looked back on a time that I thought, “I really don’t like what I do,” a little more introspection has usually revealed that the problem wasn’t just in what I was doing. The problem was that I didn’t feel aligned with the company’s strategy, culture, or people. Hiring on purpose puts your business on better footing to avoid that situation. So hopefully, this article has given you some ideas on what it takes to hire better people; and in the least, because hiring is just the first step in a (hopefully) long term relationship, some inspiration to become a better employer.
In the next installment of Hiring on Purpose — Part 2: “Even if I don’t get the job, this was the best interview that I’ve ever been on,” I’ll share some specific techniques that employ the seven principles covered in this article. And until next time, make something great happen for someone today!
