I’ve Now Become an Expert: Interviewing and Hiring, Part Five (The End is just The Beginning)
Principles #6 and #7: Never Hire a ‘Maybe’ and You Will Make Mistakes
YOU NEVER GET A BETTER EMPLOYEE THAN THE ONE YOU MEET IN THE INTERVIEW.
This sounds like an insult, and like all declarations of fact, this one has exceptions. People learn and grow and a good leader will find opportunities to teach and develop. The universally true statement is less concise, so it doesn’t make a good principle: “You never get at a better employee than the one you meet in the interview, until they’ve had time to embrace the culture and the principles of the company and demonstrate their skills in a variety of situations.” You can see why I chose the shorter version.
I started in 1997 at the only company I’ve ever worked for. Unfortunately, I was a great example of who you shouldn’t hire based on an interview. I lucked out. 23-year-old me was a doofus. I got hired as seasonal help on the recommendation of a business partner who eventually became a close friend. It was pure drive and intelligence that earned me an ongoing position and the opportunities that lay ahead. No special amount of drive or intelligence, by the way, just enough to be a good employee.
You simply cannot judge someone accurately by what they say they will do, you can only judge people by their actions. And they don’t work for you yet. Keep that in mind during the interview process. Some percentage of people will outperform the picture they paint in the interview, but it takes time to demonstrate their skill in real world, on-the-clock behaviors.
In fact, the people who are preternaturally honest in an interview are the rare few who are better employees on the job. I take, “Promise less, deliver more” as a serious mantra. I view delivering only what is expected to land on the verge of failure. This is a function of insecurity and an eagerness to please, which I do not recommend. I was an “insecure overachiever,” and people like me are great managers, but struggle with true leadership. Once I found some internal security, I could start my road to leadership.
NEVER HIRE A ‘MAYBE’
My advice is to remove as much guesswork as possible when making your decisions, but tough decisions will always fall toward instinct. If your gut is not saying yes, it is safest to say, thank you for your time, and move on to the next applicant.
The decision not to hire someone can take just a few minutes, so don’t waste your time as soon as you know the answer is “no.” I once set up with an interview and made a decision after one question. I asked three more polite questions, then thanked the candidate for their time and told them I would call the next day with a decision. I called them promptly the following day and told them I wouldn’t be offering them a position. This, by the way, is a preview of an important conversation that I will cover in the post-interview follow-up. Be direct and honest about whether people have a shot at the job, and when they don’t. Not only is it the most respectful way to treat people, but I promise that it will save you headaches in the long run.
Back to “maybes.” There is nothing but frustration when you lower your hiring standards, and justifying a hire is precisely that. If you can’t make a clear and cogent argument for why someone should be hired — then they should not be hired!
Picture the decision to hire as a wedding vow, because you are going to live with your decision for the rest of your life. Oh, there is such a thing as a “conscious uncoupling,” but there are also bitter divorces. I can still tell you about some of the worst hiring decisions I made five or ten years ago. And some of those times I knew I had said “yes” to a “maybe.” Imagine yourself at the altar. I don’t believe in being 100% sure, but if you’re not a solid 85 or above, then you should not say, “I do.” There is no space for a maybe on your team.
TANGENT
If you are lucky enough to be inundated with candidates for a retail position, I recommend a group interview to narrow the field. I used this tool anytime I had more than five viable candidates and it made it much easier to eliminate the “maybes.”
I would gather the candidates all at once (no more than seven at a time), and ask a series of five to seven questions, with each candidate having the chance to go first in answering.
The group interview, especially for retail, helps some of the real-world dynamics play out. They have to be confident and clear around people they don’t know. They have to think quickly, especially when someone has just taken away their brilliant idea for an answer to a question. They have to demonstrate that they can interact in a friendly way with people they are “competing” with. They have to find a way to connect quickly in a less-than-ideal situation. They get a chance to improvise and expand on something that someone else said. They get a chance to be charming even in a group.
This only took about 30–45 minutes, after which I would speak with each of them very briefly, separate from the group. I would talk to the “no thank yous” first, and let them go with the knowledge that the interview proess was over. Then I would talk to the standouts and invite them for a full conversation. This made a step toward the comfortable conversation I sought to create, since they had already found success in the process. On the occasions that I only had one applicant good enough to continue, I would offer them the chance to sit down for the full interview right away.
I recognize that having six or seven candidates all at once is a luxury for many small businesses, but if you have the opportunity, this is a great tool for your belt.
YOU WILL MAKE MISTAKES
I was thinking about how hiring works at most big companies, and realized that I have had a somewhat unique experience. I worked for a company that had 30,000 employees over 350–450 locations at a time that I was responsible for all store-level hiring and responsible for some regional-level interviewing. I thought back about my experiences and how I learned the lessons I share with you now and there were a few very key factors in how I came to define my hiring principles.
1. I am well-suited to it from life experience and genetics. Genetics has delivered a brain that parses language well and obsesses over details. My childhood offered experiences that led to additional abilities. According to a theory provided by my therapists, living a childhood that included abandonment and neglect, meant that I learned to read peoples intentions through subtle verbal and non-verbal cues. It taught me to see through bullshit. I hope you were fortunate enough to not be forced to develop that skill, and have learned it or come by it in safer ways.
2. I was given the opportunity to learn in real-world situations. I was fortunate to be with a company that believed in learning on the job, and found leaders and mentors that provided me with numerous opportunities. I was able to fumble my way through interviews with support behind me on the final decision. I got to learn what worked and what didn’t. I got to learn how to be comfortable creating conversation, and to learn how to communicate a person’s traits to my manager after an interview. If you can learn by doing before hiring for your own business, it would help greatly. Knowing how much it helped, if I felt I needed to build this skill, I would find someone who would let me sit in with them on interviews to learn the process, or find a coach to join me as I did my own interviews.
3. I worked side-by-side with the people I hired, and was directly responsible for their success and failure. Working with people I hired was the greatest lesson of all. Before being promoted to store manager, I had done a hundred or so interviews. Once I had earned the position, I was responsible for final decisions on all applicants from that point on. Recognizing the power of the interview process, I took this responsibility seriously.
Over the course of ten years, I personally signed off on or hired somewhere between 200–300 people at starting pay rates of $9 to $20 per hour. I am proud to say I had a very high success rate. If given the decision a second time, after say, six months, I would have hired more than 90% of them again at the same rate of pay or higher. I think that is good rate of success
Just as importantly, I learned a lot from the other 10%. A handful of those I would still hire, but I overpaid them. They just didn’t perform as I’d hoped in the interview. The majority of the 10% was just pure mistakes. I saw something that wasn’t there, or didn’t see something that was.
I believe a critical part of building my skill was in working with the people I hired. Many large companies have an HR or Recruiting department that handles the bulk of hiring. Or they have a computerized application process that uses and algorithm to make the decision. Most companies that both hire and work with their hires are much smaller and don’t get to cover such a large head count of employees. I was in a fortunate situation that gave me incredible opportunity for experience and knowledge, and I grabbed it with both hands.
If you interview and hire people, you will make mistakes as well. Mistakes are costly and frustrating, so you may as well take some value from them. Learn, learn, learn. Do a post-mortem on your interview notes. Identify exactly what you missed in your interview. What did you overvalue? What did you underestimate? What did you just plain overlook? What questions could you have asked to get to that information? What warning signs did you ignore?
Now that you’ve done the hard work, the really hard work begins.
Hiring well only pays off if you then orient, train, develop, and lead well. Get to work!
