Category: Adapt, Innovate, Win

Different companies emphasize different qualities when making a hire.  Many companies have job descriptions to serve as a template for the experiences, skills, and education.

There are seven decisions that go into the best hires.

Does the applicant have the talent, skills, knowledge, personality, experience, potential for long-term success, and the personal goals  to fit the job?

TALENT

One evening I was having dinner with the general manager of the Wine Spectrum of Coca-Cola.  In giving me direction on what he sought when hiring account managers, he commented, “I will take talent over experience any day.”

A super talented program developer sees a line of code and mentally runs that line of code into a complete application.  A super creative marketing person sees a product and intuitively connects the product to consumer needs and with equal intuition creates a campaign that puts a sense of urgency in the consumer’s mind to buy that product.  A super talented financial manager sees total costs of  manpower, material, shipping, and marketing requirements against budget and company direction and creates a five-year plan for all the needs within the organizational projections of growth amidst shifting roles with shifting technology and competition.

The best hiring managers assess talent relative to position in every hire they make.  If a person has too much talent for the role, the person is a potential rapid-turn hire.  If the person has too little talent in a developmental role, the person becomes a plug in the pipeline.

The Seven Decisions in Making a Great Hire: Personality

Because of the importance of relationships within a company as well as the relationships companies have with their suppliers and their customers, personality is important in making a hiring decision.  Any interviewing training program instructs applicants to stand tall, show enthusiasm and interest, and give a pleasant smile and a firm handshake.  I have even heard hiring managers say that they have made up their mind in the first five minutes of an interview and spend the rest of the time assessing their instant impression.

I have heard the advice that applicants should be themselves but bring their Friday personality, the energized version that takes over the workforce as the hours to the weekend approach.

Through preparation for the interview, applicants can bring on the energy, enhance their communications skills, and show a higher level of focus, perhaps even appear far more intelligent.

Hiring companies make hiring decisions on these personality traits just as the companies make hiring decisions based on talent, skills, and knowledge.

Hiring companies project personalities also.  When I left the Navy as a junior military officer, I was fortunate to be looking for opportunities during a good time in the economy, and I interviewed with many companies and accepted a position with Procter & Gamble.  The Procter & Gamble regional recruiter and the Procter & Gamble district manager who interviewed me were charisma personified.

During the process of interviewing with Procter & Gamble, I went interviewed with a bank, an insurance company, a raw materials company, a large technology company, and some other companies through a staffing firm.

The tech company I remember more vividly than most interviews. The human resources manager was also a former junior military officer.  The company had military people throughout its organization and there was a good match between my background and the background of the people who had been successful at this company.

I am not certain whether the technology company would have ever made me an offer. In all the meetings I have ever had in business, including job interviews and sales calls, this meeting is the only one I have ever interrupted and left in the middle.

The human resources person may have been through military training, but he had never been through the training that the military gives its recruiters.  Military recruiters are the only people I have ever known who can sell young adults on the idea that going to work for low wages to work incredible hours, live in miserable and dangerous places, and trust that they are turning their lives over to people they can trust and whose company they can enjoy.

In the case of the technology company recruiter, either he had a critical edge to him that eventually made me believe that he was testing my resolve to get the job or was just a member of a team I did not care to join.  Either way, I knew that I was in the wrong room and speaking with the wrong person. That realization was so strong that I stood up, thank the man for his time and left. I remember that his office had glass walls. I looked back at him as I left the building and his eyes followed me out the door.

People with great personalities can make for some of the worst hires.  Two decades ago, I made possibly the worst placement I have ever made.  I did not spot the problems with the applicant and the hiring company did not spot the mistakes until the person showed up for work.  Nor did the feedback from four reference checks reveal the problems with this applicant.

He came to the first interview in a terrific Navy blue suit, white shirt, tie, shined shoes.  He was pleasant, persuasive, appeared intelligent, and looked and behaved like the perfect hire.  If personality is the way a person makes people feel when they associate that person, this person made people like him, who had a great personality.

In doing reference checks, the hiring company and I spoke with the applicant’s clients, and these clients loved him.  The reason for the focus on the clients was that the hiring company was a start-up company and wanted to hire people who could bring business with them.

This company is a place where I have put perhaps two dozen people to work, and nearly every one of those people made terrific hires.  To my recollection, four or more of them stayed for over ten years and became key executives.  One of those people is still at that same company after twenty-five years.

Three months after this hiring company brought the applicant on board, the hiring manager called me with the most unusual feedback I have ever received on a candidate.  The person looked bad, even smelled bad, and though his attendance was excellent, his presence was useless.  Similar to the movie “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” this person was the good on the interviews, and became the bad and perhaps the smelly when reporting for work.

The beautiful Navy blue suit that he wore to the interviews was the only suit he owned and he wore it every day.  The clients who had given him such strong references had never actually bought anything from the person.  They just thought he was a terrific person, and as far as personality goes, he was a terrific person.

Even though the new hire was very persuasive in his interviews, he apparently could not write a sales presentation.  The feedback that I got from the hiring company is that he had put sales presentations together, but that these presentations were so terrible the company would not allow him to present them

To an extent, the hiring company may have been making a case to get my support in replacing the new hire.  However, in the interview and reference checking process, the hiring company and I took care to do things differently on future hires.

For all companies, hiring the person with the right personality for the job is important, both from the standpoint of how the person will fit into the company and from the standpoint about how the person will represent them company.  To use the experience from this one disastrous hire, the hiring company and employed the following techniques.

First, we had future applicants illustrate how they actually work.  They brought in samples of work completed, performed tasks as demonstration, spent time in the office to respond to activities around the office.

Second, we did reference checks of three types:  peers, supervisors, clients.

Third, we looked more closely at where the applicant had worked before.  This particular person had sales experience, but he had never worked at a company that provided sales training.

Over the course of this series of articles, I plan to cover seven decisions in making a great hire:  talent, skills, knowledge, personality, experience, the potential for the long-term success, and the personal goals  to fit the job.

This article on personality was fun for me.  I did a lot of reflection and opened up with some examples of mistakes I have made.  I look forward to continuing the series and hope you will follow along.

Knowledgeable retail buyers are gauging how much to buy based on the quantity that will sell through to the consumer and still keep the pipeline flowing with more products as well as enable the retailer to pay for the shipment with the money collected from retail sales on each order before the payment comes due to the supplier.

Knowledgeable hiring managers are gauging which person to hire based on the match of talent, skills, knowledge, personality, experience, potential, long-term success, and personal goals between the person and the job.

Sometimes an applicant’s knowledge can make an applicant the wrong person hire.  In most states, companies can take the measure of having new hires sign contracts in which the new hire agrees not to go to work for a competitor.  I am not an attorney and I am not offering legal advice.  What I have seen is litigation against people who have violated these “non-compete” contracts.

The types of contracts have different legal basis depending on the state.  In California, non-compete contracts are not binding.  (See “noncompetenews” article on Marissa Mayer’s move from Google to Yahoo.com).

In Texas, the non-compete contract is now limited to those cases where trade secrets would be involved in a person’s going to work for a competitor.  (See “faircompetivelaw.com.”)

In some cases, companies have pursued the company that hired an employee away. One of the more famous international cases involved a General Motors’ lawsuit against Volkswagen, who hired one of the GM executives. See Newsweek.

In a bit of a tangent, I recall that one of the most famously guarded pieces of knowledge is the recipe for Coca-Cola soft drink.  Time, Inc. ran an article on a possible revelation of that trade secret.  Coca Cola’s success and efforts in protecting this recipe has become part of marketing legend beyond the importance of the secrecy of the recipe.

So in the category of hiring for knowledge, the best hires will be based on industry knowledge, general knowledge, task-related knowledge, but not the knowledge of a competitor’s daily activities, plans, patents, and trade- or customer-specific activity.

In some cases, companies steer away from employees who have the exact set of job knowledge for the position for which the company is hiring.  They prefer to hire someone who has terrific business knowledge and industry knowledge, but prefer not to hire people who come to their company with the knowledge of how to perform the exact duties of the position.  These companies do not want to “untrain” new hires and then retrain them to perform the duties for which the person is being hired.

So knowledge for the hiring manager is a critical aspect in interviewing and deciding on a new hire, and talent, skills, and knowledge are just three elements on the check off list for making a great hire.

Personality!  The next decision for discussion is personality.  The next article will look beyond charm school personality to job-fit personality.

Here is to making great hires, for the hiring company and the new hires!

The Seven Decisions in Making a Great Hire: Personal Goals

Once a hiring manager extends an offer, an applicant may know on the spot whether to accept.  On the other hand, if during the recruiting process, neither the hiring manager nor the applicant has considered the personal goals of the applicant, matters can get sticky.  At the point of the offer, the hiring manager should be certain of the talent, skills, knowledge, personality, experience, and potential for long-term success of the person receiving the offer.  The hiring manager and the applicant should have established openly at the beginning of the interview process the goals of the applicant and evaluated these goals against the opportunities of the available positions as the process proceeded.

People accept jobs for three reasons:  money, responsibility, and location.  Money, responsibility, and location are the personal goals of the applicant.

The more emphasis a person puts on one of these three areas, the greater the person may find it necessary to reduce the emphasis on the other two areas.

If a person will only live in a specific city, that person may find it necessary to accept the income and the type of positions that are available in that city.

If a person insists on holding a particular responsibility among the areas of responsibility this person is capable of holding, the person may find it necessary to relocate to a place that has those types of jobs.

Oil roughnecks find jobs on oils rigs.  Zookeepers find jobs at zoos.
The connection between money and jobs and job and locations and locations and money can make one factor rise as another factor falls in value or preference.

Understanding the three reasons people change jobs helps employers select applicants based who fit.

Hiring managers who help applicants understand these personal goals during the interview process make better hires. These managers can also be better at assisting applicants who may not understand until deeper into the interview process, perhaps even after several interviews and an offer, that the position available is not one that the applicant is going to want once the applicant receives the offer.  These applicants can be expensive to the recruiting process, especially if these applicants have to discover from an exit interview at their current employer that they already have the job that is the best fit for their personal goals.

For some hiring managers, the interview process is intuitive.  For other hiring managers the interview process is a matter of method.  I find that I am most successful in any business matter when I start the day with methods and follow those methods every day.  The intuition seems to guide me better after I gain focus from the method.

To follow a method process in hiring, a manager examines the applicant for the match between the requirements of the position and the talent, skills, knowledge, personality, experience, potential for long-term success, and personal goals of the person receiving the offer.  If the match exists in these areas, making an offer is the logical final step in the Seven Decisions in making a hire.

On the surface, it would appear that a person who has tremendous talent, skills, knowledge, and personality, and has everything to ensure long-term success.

These factors are all very important in how well a person will do long-term.  Equally important to long-term success are punctuality, attendance, conduct, trustworthiness, self-confidence, demeanor, personal appearance, loyalty, determination and flexibility, independence and team skills, and possibly other traits that appear on school report cards, military evaluations, and can be assessed through observation and question and answers in interviews.

Also, ask about these traits when conducting reference checks.

I had a secretary who worked for me for fifteen years.  I rarely looked inside her desk drawer.  When I needed something from her desk, I ask for it.  After she had gone home one evening, I needed a paper clip or piece of tape or something, and went to her desk, because whatever it was that I needed, I did not have it at my desk.  When I opened her desk drawer, I saw a note to herself that no one on earth would likely have ever seen except for this secretary.  The note read, “I owe Jay two stamps.”  She was not only honest; she took steps to ensure that she repaid what she owed.  She was very trustworthy, always punctual, consistently at work.  She had the self-confidence to greet people who came to the office.  She had a personal appearance appropriate for the office.  She had enough determination to finish the job and yet had the flexibility to let go of the job when asked to switch to new assignments.  She worked when I was away as though I was in the office, and she had a loyalty that kept her at my office as an employee for fifteen years.  When I hired her, she had the potential for long-term success for the role for which I had hired her.

Does the applicant have the talent, skills, knowledge, personality, experience, potential for long-term success, and the personal goals  to fit the job?  In the next discussion, I will look at personal goals.

The greatest hazard in the multitasking world today is the risk of not getting to the the actual tasks you have set for yourself.

Computers Invite Us to Multitask.

I have always had multiple tools on my desktop.  At one time my desktop was covered with a legal pad, a canister of pens, reference books, a phone book, trade journals, blank file cards, boxes of completed file cards, a hand-written spreadsheet, Roll-a-Dex, a company form for tracking activity, an in-box/out-box, and a phone.

Today, my desktop has a keyboard/mouse, computer screen where I have replaced the physical tools with a word processor, a database, a browser, a mail client, and I still have a phone.  The options of tasks has not been increased.  The browser though does provide the temptation for switch from one task to another and from works task to Internet play.

Obviously, dangerous multitasking is  something like driving a car, or better yet, using a chainsaw while you are trying to do something else.  Impossible multitasking is doing two things in two places at the same time.  For example, juggling six balls is one thing.  Juggling three balls in two places is quite another. Multitasking can be much like juggling three balls in two places.  A person will certainly drop a lot of balls when trying to do two or three or four complex jobs on a computer at the same time.  In the workplace you, just as you may wreck your car by trying to comb your hair, change the settings on your air conditioning, and driving at the same time, you may wreck your business and medical findings suggest that you may wreck your health.

Even before the transition to a computer, I found that prioritizing and staying on task was the important for me.  It was easy to step down the hall for a chat, pull a trade journal out of the in-box, open a reference book just out of curiosity to look up financial information on a company, call someone for social chat, and other things that took me off task.

To stay focused, I have always found it helpful to make  a list of the things I need to get done each day and do those things.  The days for me are less effective when I sit down with an idea of what I need to do and start working as  things come to mind.  I find myself more easily succumbing to distractions when I do not check items off the list as I go through my day.

So multitasking is not a matter of how many balls I am juggling, but staying on task.  If the task is juggling, I focus on juggling.  When I have finished my juggling task, I can start my next task.  When I find that I am flying from one task to another, what I really need is a break.  I clear my mind and return to my list of things to do.  Multitasking?  Give me a break!