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I’ve been a hiring expert for 21 years. I’ve listened to the frustration and heard the teeth gnashing of countless managers who tell their stories about how hard it is to discern who is the right person to hire and how often sales people “talk a good game” about their capabilities. And how their resumes are filled with what we nowadays might call “fake news”. Similarly, I’ve listened to countless Presidential candidates over the years try to cajole us into thinking they are competent by preying on our personal biases, emotions and stereotypes. As Donald Miller indicated in his book Building A Story Brand, this is a great approach for marketing a product because when a consumer “realizes they have a lot in common with a brand, they fill in all the unknown nuances with trust. Commonality, whether taste in music or shared values, is a powerful marketing tool.” Unfortunately, when it comes to hiring the right person or choosing who to vote for, this can get us in a heap of trouble and throw us off course.
Twenty-three years ago, I was a high-level sales executive, working for a management consulting firm. My boss who was based in Los Angeles at the time, hired me as the Executive VP of Sales to create our presence in Northern California. I was a great sales person with a terrific track record. My first mission was to build up a substantial client base from basically nothing. I parlayed one closed deal into 250 accounts within 12 months. Seriously. That more than tripled the revenue of the LA based firm I was working for and I did it single handedly.
As a result, my boss, the President of the firm, came to me with my next mission which was to go out and hire more sales consultants. I thought “that can’t be so hard”. Ha! So, I rented a larger office space with desks and chairs and file cabinets and phones (no internet back then yet). I started running ads in the San Francisco chronicle and started receiving resumes.
Like so many of our clients before they engage with us, I spent countless hours pouring over resumes, prescreening candidates on the phone and meeting them in face to face interviews. I hired 5 people within the first 6 weeks and fired them all during the same time frame. They looked great, said the right things, and fooled me into thinking they could actually sell. Of course, during those weeks, I spent most of my time trying to train them, went out on presentations with them but they all sucked. After all, we cannot turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse, not matter how hard we try. It was garbage in/ garbage out.
I was on the verge of tearing my hair out when by pure luck I hired one great salesperson. His name was Doug. A great guy and a talented sales person. But sadly, the President of the L.A. firm was abusive in how he communicated with his employees and because of that, this one shining star of a sales person left after six months.
And I left as well, a few months later, and decided to open my own company. In looking back at all the companies that I worked for, none of them knew how to hire right. And that became my company’s mission -- to help corporate America hire right, on purpose, not by accident, and with confidence. But to deliver that promise, I had to do something entirely different… I had to STOP hiring people based on criteria I had used previously, such as:
- Did they look good
- Their handshake
- Good eye contact
- Taking for granted that what their resume said was true
- How extroverted they were in the interview
- If they “spoke my language”
- Buying into what they told me without conducting enough due diligence
In other words, I hired them based on how well they presented themselves, and the “story” they told me which back then, I based my hiring decisions on my gut and intuition alone. I didn’t have much else to go on back then until I discovered the power of pre-employment assessments and learned how to interview from some of the experts in that field. More on that in a moment.
Unfortunately, we elect a President the same way. We have been doing this for many years. The candidate puts on a good show with a good presentation throughout their campaign every 4 years. What’s far worse than this “show” is that…we buy into it! The American electorate is, unfortunately, not trained or apparently not interested to look beyond act 1 of the play. Instead we make our decision based on a superficial analysis using our gut feelings with no deep understanding of whether that candidate has accomplished those things that would make him/her successful or is that person just playing a role.
And that is also how we make hiring decisions. It’s time to stop making these very expensive decisions based primarily on whether the candidate “sounds like me, talks like me, acts like me, is entertaining”. (Walks like a duck, quack like a duck, must be a duck?” We should be asking them instead, “what have you done for me lately that proves you are competent to be elected or hired?”
Unfortunately, I cannot fix or improve the gut reasoning used by the American people when electing a President but I can improve how corporate America hires. Here is just a short list of some of the steps you must take in order to hire on purpose, rather than by accident:
- We must first define what we are looking for in a new hire—what are the key objectives that they must deliver? And what competencies are required?
- Next, write ads based on those key objectives that attract top performers rather than C players—ads that folks who have these accomplishments from a previous job and that have a track record of success respond to.
- Use validated scientifically based predictive sales assessments so that you have more than just your gut and intuition upon which to base your hiring decision. These tools allow us to get past the first act and into the real story about the candidate. Sometimes they might reveal a “Spawn of Satan” or they might reveal a Super Star.
- Uncover their hidden limiting beliefs.
- Interview them to determine a track record of success based on what they must do.
- Interview them on their motivation to DO the work, learn the job, not just get the job.
- Determine how committed they are to do whatever it takes, as long as it is moral and ethical (what a concept), in order to get the job done right.
- Interview them on culture fit, team fit and managerial fit. This plays a major role in retaining top talent.
- Determine their intentions-- career growth or just getting a paycheck?
So, our Presidential elections are around the corner. Would it be important enough to determine if we are about to elect a Spawn of Satan or a Super Star? Your next sales opening may be just around the corner too. Will you be able to discern which type of candidate you are dealing with? You can do something about both choices. But you can’t use your gut alone to accomplish that. Only you can do something to get it right this time. Use your brain, not your gut this time!
