Hiring is like dating, always put your best foot forward.
When I started applying this theory of understanding people many years back, the questions came to my mind as to how do we not hire Cs at the first place. During my process of experimentation, I devised my own methods to avoid Cs being hired.
I am still not sure if hiring A is tough or identifying and rejecting C. One of my boss and mentor told me once that rejecting a candidate is an easy decision because both you and candidate move on. However selection and acceptance comes with accountability as you will have to work together for quite some time. However, over years I learnt that both acceptance and rejection is tough. How not to hire a wrong person is as important as how to hire a right person.
Couple of methods that I defined for myself were quite successful for me and I would like to share the same here for everyone to take the benefit. These are simple methods, a lot based on the "Blink" concept than extensive analysis. That's right, a lot based on judgment rather than complex evaluation process.
ATTITUDE I always tell my team to go and hire only and only positive attitude persons. Skill is secondary. A negative attitude person can pull back the whole team. They are acid for a team who only create stink. I check this twice for key people. Once my team will check and then I reassure. After candidates are selected by my team, I do meet key people. I always begin with appreciating the candidates for their skills and potential, but I always ask them not join us if they cannot work as team and have negative attitude. They will find it difficult to survive in this team. The result is that a negative attitude person will either not join and leave the negative attitude at the door while joining(hopefully).
POTENTIAL and not just the skill. It is obvious that skill increases the potential but someone with just skills but no scalability can be good only for a short time and for a specific job, but will be unable to move up when needed. Do not hire for today alone to avoid disappointment later.
CONFIDENCE Most of the time it is not necessary that you need to dig people deep on skills. Ask questions to check the confidence and more often than not you will know the skill level as well. When candidates have fear they will transmit that fear to you as well. I often used this technique. I will tell candidates that they will be put in project straight after joining. Do you think you will be able to perform immediately or need some training. Candidates with good confidence and skill will readily agree for the project and candidates with low confidence will ask for a training in the beginning or would like to know more about the project and will fumble.
Well, one does not have to follow the examples or methods that I use. Everyone has enough examples, stories and anecdotes that they can use and must use.
I have often seen people making a big mistake on hiring people for skills and not attitude. It is attitude that makes people A, B or C and not skill. When I wrote my first blog a lot of people asked me this question as to why I was completely rejecting Cs. Yes, I would reject people with C attitude, I would give growth to As and Bs and not Cs. Until C can change to make itself A or B. C Needs feedback that it is his or her attitude that puts it in untouchable category and not the potential or skill. I will discuss this in a later blog and would like to put emphasis on first thing first. That is, how not to hire Cs. After all we all were taught- Prevention is better than cure.
I was able to use some of the thumb rules and my own observations rather than hard data very effectively, and success rate was good. However the challenge starts coming when your teams starts growing and you have to depend upon others to hire. It becomes practically very difficult to train people on hiring skills. However I believe a simpler ABC theory of hiring can be of help here. To explain this, lets understand the properties of A, B and C to see how they hire and get hired.
A category persons are self confident, can dare to take actions and responsibilities, are able to think on their feet and can think of changing their roles frequently as they cannot be locked and nailed down to one task. However, it is not that they are not possessive about the work that they do or about tracks that they are leaving behind. They are often very possessive but they also know that to nurture what they have left behind must be pursued with same vigor and passion.
B category persons will develop a taste for action slowly. And when they do, they would like it to see the light of day. They can often get attached to the tasks and not the outcome. They will work hard, as that defines their day, and would like to protect their turf as that becomes their comfort zone. Try taking B out of a project, and you will see a lot of reaction. They will prevent such actions and will try steer clear from any such decisions.
The objective of hiring is not only to add more heads and hands to your workforce but to continue to improve the collective competitiveness of the organization. It is sad to see how many organizations count the people and not measure the competitive index. Pick any project, program or initiative, you will find that programs and actions are often completed by very few individuals in the team, and a lot of the other members are just in the marriage party.
Hiring is a superior function and not a task to be completed in hurry.
In the diagram, I have shown who should hire and who hires whom. Following three rules should be applied:
Rule A
Rule A suggests one very critical aspects of hiring. That is, always ask your A category people to hire. A category person will always hire A category person. Go through the properties and behavior of A-person and you will know why I say so. They are passionately possessive about the work they do and how they do the same. They would almost never want to leave it in the hands of B &C.
A does hire B sometimes but only when it is necessary for a type of role. But then they would like to choose someone who is an A within B category of people. The essence is that best chooses best in almost all conditions.
The bold line connecting the two category indicates that it is natural or most preferred style of hiring. A would almost always choose A, however can also choose B at few times when situation warrants it.
Rule B
As per Rule B, when you put a person of B category to hire, they would mostly hire a C category person. While A category person is passionately possessive about the project, B category is possessive to his or her position and task, and not always the outcome. Hence Bs would be very protective of their turf and would not want to get threatened. They do not want to leave their comfort zone and would often protect it by not hiring those who cannot challenge their position. Hiring Cs gives them much needed comfort.
B can also hire B but only sometimes. It is not his/her natural hiring style. It is necessary when B is being put in place to hire, a rigorous review method is applied to assure that good quality people are hired in the organization. A wrong person hired can put you behind on your competitiveness and performance which may take a long time to recover. Please remember, hiring a wrong person is easier but getting rid is tougher as there are not many companies who will choose them.
Rule C
Don't put C on hiring. Never. If you have put C in hiring then please go back and check your own category. Period.
It is good to have disappointing results during interview rather than getting surprises later.
Happy hiring...
