How Do You Hire Better and Smarter?
During the mesh conference last week, it was exciting to be the emcee for 15 Minutes of Fame - where three entrepreneurs each day get five minutes to talk about what their startups are doing and why they’ll be successful.
With only five minutes to present, their focus was spent on the product/service they were developing. If they had more time, I suspect it would they all would have talked about the importance of building good teams and hiring the right people. As Wufoo.com’s Kevin Hale succinctly said during his presentation at meshU, “if you have a bad team, you’ll have a bad product”.
What makes the hiring landscape interesting - particularly in Toronto and perhaps elsewhere - is the strong demand for talent. At mesh, we installed three blank whiteboard with four words on them “Jobs Needed” and “Jobs Wanted”. By the end of mesh, all three whiteboards were full of companies looking for people.
The need for people is just one half of the hiring equation. It’s easy to ask, the more difficult part is making sure you actually hire the right people. This is where it gets challenging and complicated, particularly for start-ups that need to hire the right person at the right time if they want to be successful.
The challenge is how you do it. The most common way is you advertise a position or ask friends and colleagues for referrals. The resumes flow in, you pick the ones that look interesting, and arrange for interviews. Then, you interview candidates maybe once or twice for an hour before you making a hiring decision.
Think about it: you’ve got a key position to fill, and you’ve maybe invested three hours from start to finish. If you’re lucky or have a knack for finding the right people, the person you hire really works out or works out well enough so your company can move forward.
But is there there a better and/or smarter way to hire people? Are there ways that you can improve your chances of hiring the right person? Is it just a matter of doing more interviews so you’re really comfortable before pulling the trigger? Or are there other ways?
A friend of mine, Ben Baldwin, may have another way. He runs a company called Careerious, which recently launched a new online job matching service that uses personality, experience and education to help predict hiring success. It’s a fascinating process that I’ll get into with Ben in the near future but it is definitely worth checking out if you want more than just the same-old, same-old hiring process.
The inspiration for this post is a speech given recently by New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell, who talked about the disconnect in the hiring process. His thesis is that the hiring criteria for many positions is disconnected with the actual skills needed to do a particular job well. He talks about, for example, why policemen are hired because they are big and burly when the skills they really need do not necessarily requirement brute force but negotiating and diplomatic skills.
It’s great food for thought given the importance of making the right hires. While hiring can never become a science with precise and expected results, there are tools and techniques out there to improve the chances of a successful hire - something all companies, especially start-ups, should think more about.
May 30th, 2008 at 8:59 am
The traditional interview process is a flawed method of making the right hiring decisions (as noted in many scientific studies). However, the interview will never go away and the method for improving this flawed process is to focus on issues in the interview process that will lead to improved hiring outcomes…and for this, behaviour interviewing is the most effective.
Using the basic tenant that past performance and behaviour is the best indicator of future performance, focus the interview on modelling expected job performance. Top tier consulting firms do this by asking candidates to solve key strategic case problems and thereby surface the candidate’s analytic ability…which is a key driver of expected job performance. This same approach can be done in many other industries and job environments. But it takes time, effort, and pre-thought. It is much easier for hiring managers to ask the candidate about their strengths, weaknesses, and where they want to be in 5 years…and then they make an uninformed and random job hiring decision…
May 30th, 2008 at 9:03 am
Funny. I was just thinking about this exact topic this morning. I have my own take on this important topic and will post on it shortly. In the meantime, I’m going to give Careerious a test drive
May 30th, 2008 at 9:47 am
E Guy: Other considerations beyond skill set also include whether the person being considered is a good cultural fit, and how their personal work style fits into the scheme of things. All of which makes hiring even more complex.
May 30th, 2008 at 11:55 am
I like to keep candidates in an interview long enough for their “act” to wear out. I try to get them past Q&A into a conversation in which they start to express their passions, frustrations, and preferences. I also get them to spend some time with a few team members just to chat. Anyone can veto the hire based on a gut feeling. I strongly believe in the adage that no hire is better than a bad hire.
To date this has worked pretty well for me although I haven’t had to hire a lot of people fast. I’m sure it’s not a completely scalable approach but it really hasn’t failed me yet (although it can be time consuming).
For technical positions I normally give the candidate a simple exercise (e.g., for programmers: write an algorithm to sort an array). I leave the person alone with a whiteboard to work quietly and he/she can take as much time as needed. And most importantly, I get the candidate to walk me through the solution so I know he/she can decently express technical details.
Careerious looks interesting although I would worry about people answering questions about the employee they want to be, not the worker they really are. It would be very interesting to have references answer questions on behalf of candidates.
May 30th, 2008 at 11:56 am
I find the entire process ridiculous, to be honest. What do the vast majority of companies do when they need to hire someone? They post a job and hope that qualified, talented people see it and apply. That’s probably how about 95% or more companies hire people, and I think it’s a complete crap shoot. Most companies will talk about how important their people are, but when it comes time to find great people to do their jobs, they have to hope for great people to apply. I personally think that even though they’re flawed in many respects, headhunters and job placement agencies can be worthwhile investments.
And that’s just posting a job. Don’t even get me started on the traditional job interview process.
May 30th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
This is a great topic with lots of opininions and not a lot of hard data. No hire is absolutely better than a bad hire complete agreement.
1. It is absolutely critical that you have really thought through EXACTLY what you are looking for. Be thorough and detailed. Skills, experiences, attitudes, values, business culture, etc.
2. Once you have this, networking is important, especially at a senior level. Leveraging your contacts to find someone who knows someone who know the candidate and can give you the real goods on their performance is a great data point to have.
3. Be prepared to spend lots of time with them in different settings. Have an interview, meet them out for drinks, meet them with your team, have others meet them. Spend time to draw out all the character and personality and “fit” pices that are absolutely critical in your ideal candidate.
4. Try to assess “attitude”. A generally positive disposition and approach to work and life spills over within the organization. Negativity can be a cancer.
Like I said lots of differing opinions….these are just mine.
May 30th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
The traditional hiring process, especially at small companies, ignores the fact that a company’s needs will change drastically over time.
I’m an early-stage startup guy; I can do absolutely everything from writing code, to marketing, to sales, but I’m best at it, and only want to work there, for a year or two.
By then the company can ramp up the second phase - a development group, marketing team, and sales team.
Needs change as the company grows and changes. Yet companies fail to realize that and hire the people they think they will want when they are a big company.
So people like me go underutilized.
May 30th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Larry raises an interesting point…and one often overlooked although my take on it is a little different.
In a high growth environment, companies should hire at a capability level that is some multiple higher than the actual job (many say two levels). The rationale being that within 18 months, the person will fit nicely into that job given the growth pattern of the organization. If not, then as the company grows, the person for that role is overwhelmed very quickly and another hire is required or the existing hire needs to be replaced.
In other words, hire for what you think the role will be in 18 months not what is required today.
May 30th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
E Guy, that may be true for a company at a different stage of growth, but I’m talking about early stage companies. The role you need filled today will likely not exist in 18 months, or you will probably want a completely different person in it.
May 30th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
With the exception of the founder, I would argue that if the role does not exist in 18 months or you need a completely different person, then you are not building the company properly. Having been a part of multiple highly successful startups, roles evolve and shift but the fundamentals of the person hired into them remain and one needs to hire for 18 months down the road with the capability to do what is required at the early stage hire timeframe.
June 2nd, 2008 at 7:58 pm
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August 21st, 2008 at 4:47 am
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