Hiring Mistake #6 is Performance Bias, which is the tendency to become enamored with how the candidate “performs” or “presents” during the interview.
Have you ever hired a candidate who said all the right things in the interview, only to realize after they start that the reality of their skills, knowledge, and capability does not live up to what you heard in the interview. I’m not even talking about outright lies, embellishment, and exaggeration. Sometimes, when you look back at those interviews where we “fell in love” with the candidates, you realize with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight that the candidate didn’t lie, embellish, and exaggerate their capability – you just didn’t probe, ask specific questions, and validate whether they could do the job.
FALLING IN LOVE WITH INTERVIEW PERFORMANCE
You fall in love with the candidate because they interviewed so well. You extrapolate the dominance, assertiveness, rapport, personal warmth, intensity, energy, and enthusiasm demonstrated in the interview onto your fantasy of a perfect candidate. Who wouldn’t want to hire this person?
You must first ask yourself – what mode are most candidate in when they interview for a job? If you answered “sales mode” you can start to see why the interview process is flawed. You’re not seeing real style or behavior – you’re witnessing interview performance or an actor on the stage.
Do you believe that the style someone exhibits in the interview is the same style they will show on the job? Raise your hand if you think there is a direct correlation between interviewing well and on-the-job performance. I ask this question in every workshop I conduct and NO ONE raises their hand. So, if we don’t believe there is a direct correlation, why do we get so hung up on focusing on the interview “presentation” or “performance”?
POOR CORRELATION OF INTERVIEWING
Brad and I have been working together in our executive search practice for over 25 years. We’ve done over 1,000 executive searches and interviewed well over 250,000 candidates. We cannot find ONE single shred of evidence linking how someone interviews with their on-the-job performance – as interviewing is conducted in most companies. This holds true even for roles in which “performing” or “presenting” is critical, such as sales, business development, or marketing roles. Is that a scary statistic? What does it say for how most interviews are conducted at your company?
To the best actor goes the job. Let’s STOP hiring outstanding actors and start hiring great employees. Let’s STOP making Hiring Mistake Number 6 – Having a Performance Bias – giving too much credit to the way in which the candidate presents or performs in the interview. Let’s STOP making the mistake of assuming the “presentation” or “interview performance” the candidate makes is indicative of their on the job success. I frequently ask the CEOs and Key Executives in my workshops, seminars, and webinars – what are you hiring:
A candidate who presents/performs well in the interview
OR
An employee who can deliver the results you need with a set of behaviors and style that is consistent with your culture and values?
STOP HIRING MISTAKE #6: PERFORMANCE BIAS
In order to make a fair, rational, and objective decision, the emotions of the hiring manager must remain in check. Ask questions and uncover details that deal with the candidate’s ability to do the job, not the personality and communication styles he or she prefers.
Many hiring managers pride themselves on being able to tell as soon as someone enters the room if they are qualified for the position or not. Fundamental hiring mistakes can happen when the hiring manager sees, prefers, and hires in his or her own image. This is terribly unfair to the candidate, and unwise from a business perspective.
You could pass right over the perfect person with assumptions and judgments such as these. In fact, our research indicates that most hiring managers make mistakes on at least 2/3 of the candidates they meet in the hiring process – mistakes which are spread among all the TOP TEN HIRING MISTAKES. Performance Bias contributes to many of those mistakes.
Do not let your own agenda, biases, or preferences enter into this process; they have no place. It does not matter if you “click” with the person in the first interview. What does matter is his or her ability to do the job and what talents and abilities the individual can add to your organization. One of the most important elements of effective interviewing is to stay objective and rational, not letting your propensity to become seduced by an enthusiastic presentation ruin a hiring decision.
Here are some tips to help you remain as objective as possible:
- Reject first impressions. They are often misleading and based on emotions, stereotyping, biases, style, or chemistry.
- Avoid making decisions too soon. You require time to find out all of the details you need to know. The more you dig for information, the more data you have to support your decision. The more data you have about a candidate’s past performance, the more likely you are to make informed hiring decisions. You are also less likely to base your decisions on subjective elements.
- Realize that some of the negative traits you might be witnessing could be directly related to nervousness. Most people loosen up and feel less nervous as the interview progresses. Do not automatically interpret such traits as slow responses, no eye contact, lack of warmth or confidence negatively. It could very well just be stage fright.
- Ask a pre-determined set of questions that focus on achievement, accomplishments, and comparability of previous outcomes to your desired results. We call this a 5 Core Question Interview.
- Be sure to follow your pre-determined questions. This will eliminate the tendency to judge the candidate on anything other than the work and his or her capability to execute it. We call this the Magnifying Glass Approach to conducting an effective interview – peeling the layers of the onion to get to the truth.
- Listen more than you talk. You will collect more evidence of past performance if you tune in and listen to every word. The candidate should speak about 85 percent of the time you have together.
- Be the devil’s advocate. If all you are hearing and perceiving are things that appear only positive, or vice versa, reserve judgment at all costs. There has to be a flip side—your job is to find it!
Download a FREE copy of our book to learn how to overcome each one of the Top Ten Mistakes In Hiring. Learn how to overcome Hiring Mistake #6 – Performance Bias by conducting a rational and objective interview. Click the button below to get a copy of our FREE Book – You’re NOT the Person I Hired.
We’ve prepared an audio program, roughly 12 minutes in length, on our Top Ten Hiring Mistakes. We recognize that some CEOs, executives, or managers might prefer to listen to this program during their commute rather than watch a video or read a blog post.
Podcast (hiring-audio-hot-tips): Play in new window
The Top Ten Hiring Mistakes and the steps to overcome each mistake was based on research we conducted with over 100 companies, over 200 executive hires, conversations with over 20,000 CEOs and senior executives extending over a 20 year period, and a review of the academic research on hiring and interviewing over the last 40 years.
The result of all this research and the identification of the most common hiring mistakes and errors led us to write our popular and best-selling book, “You’re NOT the Person I Hired.” You can download a copy of our book on the steps to overcome the typical hiring mistakes that most managers executives not only make once – but tend to compound their hiring errors by making multiple hiring mistakes with each candidate.
We discovered through our research – both original and secondary – that the failure rate of executive and managerial hiring was above 50% – in our study it came out to be 56% – which is a staggering number.
That’s 56% of all hires do not live up to the original expectations of performance. One of the questions we’re fond of asking in our workshops and seminars goes like this:
Of all the hires you’ve made in your career, what percentage lived up to or exceeded your expectations in their first year of employment with you?
The vast majority of CEOs, executives, and managers honestly admit that if they were batting .300, they would be doing a great job – rarely do we hear that someone is batting better than .500 – is there any process in your business where you will accept that level of random variability? How about the payroll checks you write? How about the invoices you send to customers?
Absolutely NOT!
If you will not accept it anywhere else in your business, why do you accept it when it comes to making hiring decisions?
We believe most executives accept random results because:
- They don’t what mistakes are being made
- They don’t the steps to overcome the most common hiring mistakes
Listen to this audio program and let us in the comments to this blog post if you’ve ever made these mistakes. Perhaps, you’ll share your most recent hiring failure with our fellow readers that was a result of making one or more of these mistakes.
Barry Deutsch
Most have heard that hiring is a PR event. You should make sure that, whether you hire the person or not, they leave your company wishing they got the job. That way, they will speak highly of your company to others that might want to work there. This is especially true in small industries and communities where everybody knows everybody else.
The last thing you want is people telling future potential employees how bad the company or hiring manager was when they interviewed and that they would never work for that hiring manager or company.
Not good PR if you plan on attracting top talent to your company. In fact, a great way to ensure top talent will work for your competitors.
I don’t think some (not all) companies or managers recognize the same principles apply when laying people off or even firing them.
Well they do, and I can demonstrate this, because I recently encountered bad PR. Twice.
First example
I was recruiting for a Regional Director of Sales in the upper northeast. Because of the weather, it isn’t easy to relocate people there. The company was in a very niche industry, and because it was a senior level sales job, industry experience was important.
It didn’t take long before trouble set in. Did I mention the reason for the opening was that the previous person was fired? Apparently, the manner in which the person’s boss fired him was at best inappropriate and at worst down right wrong and disrespectful.
The fired employee had spread the word about his treatment all around, stating what a jerk this person was to work for and how he badly he treated people. He also took the time to go into great detail about how he was fired. Now, what I heard when I tried to recruit people was, “I’m open to talking as long as it isn’t for X company working for X?” WOW, what a way to start a search in a small industry in a small geographical area.
This all happened because the VP didn’t see firing as a PR event. The best way to fire someone is to make them think you are doing them a favor, not by degrading them, surprising them, or throwing them out of the building. This VP took a bad situation (firing someone) and made it worse by the manner in which he did it. If the VP had done it correctly, he would have still reached his goal of letting the person go, but he also could have set himself up as a person that cares and people want to work for.
Second example
I live in Orange County, California. Most people think it is part of Los Angeles. It isn’t. For such a large area, it is actually its own community. Large enough to get lost, but small enough that people get to know people. There are so many networking groups that it is literally hard to plan an event because the first thing that comes up is, you know XYZ networking group meets then. At almost any time day and night, every day of the week, some group is getting together. Some groups have attendance in the hundreds and some have less. Regardless, there are a lot and this is how people get to know people in Orange County, California.
At a recent event I noticed a lot of people were saying, “Did you hear about ABC Company and how they did the RIF?” RIF stands for reduction in force, or in plain English laid people off. This was the buzz while people were standing around talking before the meeting started. Apparently, some of the people that got laid off were at the meeting and telling horror stories about how the company treated the employees they let go. Many of whom had been with the company for some time.
How many other meetings do you think these people attended in the next week and started telling the same stories? Not to mention all the people at the first meeting perpetuating the stories to their network, colleagues, friends and family. We used to say, this is how rumors start. Now we say this story is going viral. It won’t be long before this company’s reputation precedes them. When the economy shifts, and they need to hire people, it will not be easy.
All because they didn’t think of letting people go as a PR event. An event that impacts the company’s reputation and how it is viewed in its industry and community.
If you found this helpful, please forward it on to others so they will be helped. You can email it to your team, forward it to your network, post on Linkedin or company Web site. Let’s help everyone build teams of top talent.
Join the other 10,000 CEOs, key executives and HR professionals and download a FREE copy of our best-selling book, “You’re NOT The Person I Hired.” Just CLICK HERE and under the FREE Hiring Resources section you can download our free eBook.
Retaining your best talent is always the best thing any company can do. Download our FREE Non-Monetary Rewards and Recognitions Matrix. It will help you retain your best people without additional compensation. CLICK HERE to download under the Free Resources section.
I welcome your thoughts and comments.
Brad Remillard
We created a video describing the Top Ten Hiring Mistakes and how you can use the 5 simple steps of our Success Factor Methodology to overcome these common hiring mistakes and errors.
Top Ten Hiring Mistakes Video
Discover the Top Ten Hiring Mistakes and the steps to overcome them
FREE e-Book How to Improve Hiring Top Talent
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How often do you make the same mistakes in hiring? How many subordinates and peers make these mistakes over and over?
When is the right time to improve your hiring process? Should it be when you have to hire 2 more people or 22? Should it be when you want to grow your monthly revenue by $300,000 or $30 million over the next three years?
Barry Deutsch
One of my favorite books, is Three Signs of a Miserable Job, by Patrick Lencioni.
Have you read this book yet? Every CEO should make it required reading for their management team.
Here’s an excellent YouTube Video with Lencioni talking about the book:
Here’s my homework assignment for you: Take an excel spreadsheet, list every employee in your company, and categorize them into one of the three main categories for a miserable job that Lencioni refers to in his book.
- Anonymity: People need to be understood and appreciated by someone in a position of authority
- Irrelevance: Everyone needs to know their job matters to someone
- Immeasurement: Employees need to be able to gauge their progress and level of contribution for themselves
That’s the easy part, the next part is then put action plans together to overcome these miserable elements of jobs in your company. Are you to this challenge?
You might say to me:
‘I don’t have a need to go through this with my employees. Our productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness is good enough. We don’t have to go through this time-consuming, painful process, to figure out what’s wrong with our jobs. If any of our employees don’t like their jobs, their welcome not to let the door hit them on the way out.
Should Employees Be Engaged and Satisfied?
I’m curious how many CEOs really believe that statement. Oh, no one raised their hands. Here’s the irony: The vast majority of CEOs don’t perceive a problem. Then why are the vast majority of your employees turned off, dissatisfied, disengaged, and are ready to look for a new job? Almost every study over the last few years indicates employee satisfaction has dropped to historical lows compared to the Great Depression.
What’s the risk of having employees feel like their job is miserable? What’s the risk of having disengaged, unhappy, dissatisfied, unmotivated employees?
The risk is a tolerance for “it’s not my job”, errors, customer dissatisfaction, turnover, poor performance and execution, below industry average levels of productivity, and a dysfunctional culture that permeates every element of your business. Wow – I depressed myself just making that list.
Create An Engaged Workforce of Happy Employees
When should you start to care about how your employees feel about their jobs? Should it be when you want to grow your business by $250,000 next year, or $22 million over the next 3 years?
If your approach to business is “it’s good enough”, then take no action.
If your approach to business is along the thoughts of Jim Collins in Good to Great, I challenge you that this could be one of the greatest areas for operational performance in your business over the next few years.
What are your thoughts? What’s your experience in implementing actions to overcome the 3 primary elements of a miserable job?
Barry Deutsch
PS – Take our FREE Culture Survey to get a quick grasp on how your employees might perceive your company and whether there is a risk of them being miserable. Click here to download the Culture Survey. This was one of the key chapters in our award-winning and best-selling book, titled “You’re NOT the Person I Hired.”
If you would like to discover how to hire and retain top talent, we’ve made You’re NOT the Person I Hired, available for FREE in an electronic version. To download your free copy of the book You’re NOT the Person I Hired, click this link, or click the button below:
What’s your bias regarding unemployed candidates? Do they have a stink or have a stigma attached to them?
I’ve been doing executive search for 25 years and the bias of the vast majority of hiring managers/executives is to consider a candidate who has been out of work (especially one with long-term unemployment) to be “damaged goods”. Something must be wrong with them if they’ve been out of work for so long. Do you subscribe to this theory? Many of my clients who have been out of work for an extended period of time apply a different standard to the potential members of their team.
Why do we have this bias?
I’ll admit I have a pretty powerful biased and judgmental approach to candidates who have been out of work – even during a recession. Historically, I’ve always felt that a top caliber candidate should have an extraordinary network in place, and bring the same passion, initiative, and energy to their job search that they bring to work everyday. The last 3 plus years of this recession have rocked that assumption a little – and I’m trying to reconcile it (but I’m not being very successful changing my historical bias).
I’m always willing to make an exception to the rule. I try to be open and not run my search business on a series of “absolute” rules. Unfortunately, my bias toward out of work candidates – perhaps based on some tribal myth – is hard to overcome. For example, I recently placed a VP of Sales and Marketing with one of my clients where the specification for the job was so narrow, the very best candidate had been out of work for a year (by the way, I cannot remember the last time I placed a candidate that was not currently working). The big issue was if he can’t put the energy into finding a job, how can we expect him to bring a high level of energy to this role.
I spent an excessive amount of time validating the candidate’s energy, passion, focus, and initiative. He was clearly the best candidate for the job. However, I still have this nagging sensation at the back of my neck as to why he had been out of work for a year. When I dug really deep with him, I discovered that he conducted a terrible job search as if it was 1970 – which unfortunately is the strategy most executives apply when they’ve been forced to look for a job for the first time in 15-20 years. Is that an appropriate excuse or rationalization for conducting a terrible and ineffective job search?
That raised a number of other questions for me about the candidate. If he didn’t know how to conduct a job search, shouldn’t he have done research to discover current best practices, methods, tips, and techniques in this “new normal” of job searching in a digital age with tools like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter? 90% of this information is free on the internet on blogs (like the one we write for executive job search candidates), and wide range of other sites, such as jobsearch.about.com. I believe Steven Covey called this being “unconsciously incompetent.” We don’t know what we don’t know. Should my candidate have realized he was unconsciously incompetent in conducting a job search, and focused on learning everything he could about an effective executive job search?
The answer is YES!
Just attending a few networking meetings with other people who are up to speed on an effective job search should have given him a clue that he was not conducting a job search that would generate an abundance of leads and opportunities. Most executives and managers spend the vast majority of their job search applying to open positions advertised on job boards. This is the same technique as reading the want ads in the paper 30-40 years ago. The result is pretty much the same now as it was back then.
The vast majority of jobs are not advertised. They are buried in the hidden job market. Studies show that the hidden job market is probably 80% or more of all open managerial and executive roles. If that’s true, shouldn’t a job search candidate at this level conduct a search focused on the hidden job market and uncovering those opportunities vs. the passive approach of answering ads?
What does this say about my candidate? Can we extrapolate that he’s passive? Would a top caliber candidate bring a different level of energy and initiative to their job search vs. their on the job performance?
What do you think? I’d love to see your thoughts in the comments to this blog and the experiences if you’ve had being unemployed, and your experiences of interviewing or hiring candidates that were unemployed.
Barry Deutsch
P.S. Download a FREE version of our famous e-book You’re NOT the Person I Hired if you would like to learn how to improve your hiring accuracy and success.
I was recently interviewing a candidate with the CEO of the company I’m doing a search for. As the candidate is answering a question the CEO stops him and says, “I hate it when people use the words we and they in their answers. I’m hiring you, not we or they, so I want to know what you did. I would prefer it if you used ‘I’ instead.” I thought WOW that is a pretty strong statement and it clearly signaled to the candidate how to better answer his questions. So what do you think was the next word out of the candidate’s mouth? If you answered “I” you would be wrong. It was “we.”
It wasn’t that the candidate didn’t want to answer the question. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to follow the CEO’s suggestion. He was in the habit of saying “we.” Like most candidates, he has been trained to respond this way. Every book, coach, recruiter and outplacement firm seems to stress the need to use the word “we.” The fact is, there is a need to use the word “we” during an interview, but not all the time. As the interviewer you should help the candidate navigate these waters.
It isn’t the candidate’s fault for using “we and they.” I believe managers have to take some of the blame for this. For example, if a candidate uses “I” too often the interviewer often thinks, not a team player, they have a big ego, this person is arrogant, it’s all about them, they couldn’t possibly do all of this, or they like to take all the credit. Have you ever had these thoughts? What honest manager hasn’t? As a result candidates have been trained to to respond with “we” so as to eliminate those thoughts. For the most part, managers are getting the monster they created.
A good interview is a blend of “I” and “we.” Unfortunately, the pendulum has swung too far in one direction and interviewers need to help tame the monster. Just as the CEO did in his interview, consider working with the candidates. They are in an environment where they are not comfortable. It is not the same as when they are working and in their comfort zone. This is a common mistake made by interviewers. Cut the candidates some slack. It’s an interview. Give them the same consideration you would want if you were a candidate out interviewing for a job.
Instead of eliminating the candidate, try coaching the candidate much like the CEO did. Let them know they have your permission to use the word “I.” Reassure them that you will not think they aren’t a team player or have a big ego. It will take some coaching and patience so the candidate gets comfortable using “I” instead of “we.” If you help them just a little you may not lose a good candidate for the wrong reasons.
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I welcome your thoughts and comments.
Brad Remillard
I was recently facilitating our, You’re NOT The Person I Hired, workshop with CEOs and key executives. As is often the case, the subject of reference checking came up. Most in the audience tended to agree that checking references is a waste of time. After all, candidates only give references they are sure will say positive things about them. Don’t you agree?
Then a CFO sitting in the back raised his hand to disagree. He told the story of a controller he was about to hire near the border in Texas. This was a difficult position to fill as there were a lot of specific requirements. Finally, after an arduous search he found his person. She had all of the qualifications and most importantly he really like her. The final step was to conduct a few reference checks. She handed him a list of 30 references. Wow he thought, this person really has a lot of people willing to vouch for her. Then he picked five of them and started calling. The first call was to a former boss. He introduced himself and explained that he was calling to conduct a reference check on Mary. The line went silent. The pause was so long that he thought they were disconnected and asked if the reference was still on the line. The reference replied yes and then stated, “Mary gave me as reference? I can’t believe it. We fired her because she stole from us. She did pay us back but she stole from us.” Now there was silence from him. He didn’t know what to say or how to respond.
This is just one of many examples of what can happen on a reference check and why you should always perform your due diligence. Granted, this may only happen once in your career, but in this case the once may have saved the company thousands if she has stolen again.
I have conducted thousands of reference checks in my 30 year career as an executive recruiter. I have learned that more often than not someone will give me a reference they expect to be positive and it turns negative. It is for this reason that I always check references. Like the CFO in this example, it has saved me from making some big mistakes. It only takes one bad reference to realize that catching that one person was worth all the others.
If you have stories or experiences regarding strange things that have happened when you have conducted a reference check I would love to hear about them and share them with others. Please take a moment to tell others your story.
I conducted a poll on LinkedIn in which 54% replied that they have had people give them a negative reference. This goes to show that even though the person giving the reference expects a positive reference they often don’t get one.
Join the other 10,000 CEOs, key executives and HR professionals and download a FREE copy of our best-selling book, “You’re NOT The Person I Hired.” Just CLICK HERE and under the FREE Hiring Resources section you can download our free eBook.
Retaining your best talent is always the best thing any company can do. Download our FREE Non-Monetary Rewards and Recognitions Matrix. It will help you retain your best people without additional compensation. CLICK HERE to download under the Free Resources section.
I welcome your thoughts and comments.
Brad Remillard
A major mistake occurs in the hiring process when interviewing candidates. There is a tendency to equate, extrapolate, and extend experience to be the same as results. There is an enormous gap between experience and results. Historical experience DOES NOT EQUAL results.
A candidate who has obtained results will have “enough” historical experience; however, the candidate who has lots of historical experience may not have obtained good results.
A high percentage of hiring executives and managers make the mistake of accepting historical experience as proof of obtaining results. This mistaken perception leads to the hiring of candidates who are only “partially competent.” They can’t walk the talk!
Have you ever hired a candidate who had all the boxes checked on the job description for the experiences you listed, but couldn’t get the results you needed in the job? This hiring mistake is Number 5 on our list of the Top Ten Hiring Mistakes – Historical Bias. Many hiring executives and managers have trouble making the leap to measuring and validating a candidate’s past results in the interview (perhaps they never been trained, or read our book, or attended our workshop – You’re NOT the Person I Hired). They fall victim to having an interview bias toward historical experience instead of results.
You might want to view our series on hiring mistakes starting with:
Can You Avoid the Most Common Hiring Mistakes?
Interviewing Candidates Like You Would Pick a Heart Surgeon
Suppose you need emergency heart surgery to open a blocked artery, and you have a choice of two surgeons.
The first surgeon has 20 years’ of experience and has performed more than 1,000 open-heart procedures. The second is only in his third year of practice and has less than 50 procedures under his belt.
At first glance, the more experienced surgeon would seem the obvious choice. But what if you knew this surgeon has only a 50 percent survival rate, while the second has yet to lose a patient?
Think it might change your choice of surgeons?
Experience Does Not Equal Results
As we mentioned earlier, there’s a big difference between experience and results.
Failure to understand this difference, is the primary cause behind Hiring Mistake #5: Historical Bias.
Historical bias occurs when hiring managers base their primary hiring decision on past experience/past history when assessing job candidates. They use past experience rather than past success to guide their hiring decisions.
What’s the difference?
Past experience is being in a certain role, having a certain skill or possessing certain knowledge based on years of collecting it, doing it and using it. Past success is the application of that skill, knowledge and experience.
For example, I may have spent the last 15 years developing my computer skills, which looks great on the resume. But unless you go beyond that experience and look at my actual success in applying those skills on the job during that timeframe, you have no way of knowing whether I can apply those computer skills to produce the specific results you need in your company.
You Make False Assumptions in Measuring Candidate Past Experience
In most cases, historical bias results from false assumptions regarding the candidate’s ability to perform on the job.
Let’s play this out in an example. Suppose you want to hire an sales professional. When you take a historical approach to hiring, you assume that if the candidate has worked in sales in a specific industry for a particular period of time, he should be very effective at selling in that industry, in that channel, and to the people who buy that product.
The problem with this assumption is that it doesn’t measure the candidate’s past success against the results you need in your environment. All you’ve done is check off the fact that the candidate has 12 years of experience in your industry, AND you made the FALSE ASSUMPTION that he’s a good sales rep because he has done it for so long. For all you know, he could be a lousy salesperson with a sales manager who tolerates mediocrity.
Have you ever made this mistake? Stupid question – of course you’ve make this mistake. In over 2,000 presentations over the last two and half decades, and over 1,000 executive search projects, I have yet to meet a hiring executive or manager who will not readily raise their hand on that question. In fact, most hiring executives and managers will admit to making this mistake over and over.
Here’s a more painful question: how many of the managers who work for you keep making this same mistake?
Hiring based on past, historical, and chronological experience has another problem: the lack of objective measurement criteria.
The traditional process of assessing candidates is based on the wrong assumption of “haves.” Do you have “X” amount of this knowledge with this product, or distribution channel? Do you have “Y” years of performing this particular task? Do you have “Z” amount of work in this niche, industry or segment?
These criteria may or may not lead to success. But you’ll never know for sure since you aren’t measuring the candidate’s past success, and you aren’t relating it to what you need on the job.
Eliminate Historical Bias
To avoid Hiring Mistake #5, and the false assumptions of past experience, DO THE FOLLOWING:
- Define the success you’re looking for in the future. Go beyond the traditional hiring criteria of education, credentials and years of experience and define the success factors for the job. These are the quantifiable, measurable results you need for that specific position. (see: Overcoming Hiring Mistake #1: Inadequate Job Descriptions.)
- Validate comparable and similar successes the candidate has achieved. During the interview, ask success-based questions that get the candidate to illustrate how they have produced similar results to the ones you’re looking for. Ask for multiple examples of those results.
- Draw a bridge between the two. Determine whether the candidate’s past successes are good predictors of the future results you need accomplished. If the candidate has produced similar, comparable and like results, he should be able to produce the results you have defined.
Keep in mind that you’ll never find a candidate who has accomplished the same exact success that you’ve defined as a result needed in the job. Instead, look for examples of past successes that are similar in size, scope, effort, time frame, complexity, budget and number of people involved. The more closely the examples match your defined success factors (expected results), the more predictive they will be of future success on the job.”
Does this mean that hiring executives and managers should throw experience, knowledge and credentials out the window?
Of course it doesn’t mean that. Many jobs require a certain credential, professional designation or experience with a particular product. Just don’t base your hiring decision solely on historical and past experience.
Keep in mind that past experience is not a proven predictor of success for your job opening. Past success/results, and how they help predict whether a candidate can succeed in your work environment, will always lead to better hiring decisions.
What’s your action plan to eliminate Hiring Mistake #5: Historical Bias – from the interview tactics used by other executives and managers in your organization? One of our previous posts got to the issue of how you can STOP all your executives and managers from making this hiring mistake and the other 9 from our Top Ten List:
Consider taking our FREE Hiring Assessment to determine if you have an effective hiring process designed to hire top talent. Click here to take the FREE Hiring Assessment.
Barry Deutsch
P.S. You might consider reading our FREE e-book on hiring top talent, a best selling guide in the hands of over 15,000 CEOs and Key Executives worldwide who have dramatically improved their hiring accuracy.
To retain your top talent it is absolutely critical to ensure they are motivated. In difficult times this is often not at the top of the list of the things the hiring manager or CEO is looking to accomplish. Most people are working long hours and doing the job of two people, stress is at an all time high, fear of layoffs is a reality, salaries are frozen, pay cuts have been implemented and forget about any bonus. For many companies this is their current culture.
So how do you motivate your top talent to reach the company’s goals?
How do you keep them from contacting recruiters?
How do you keep them passionate about coming to work?
How do keep them engaged day after day?
The answer to all of these is “culture.” Even in difficult times top talent, by definition, will always rise to the occasion. They will always strive to be the best. If they don’t, they aren’t top talent. However, even top talent can burn out, get frustrated, not see the light at the end of the tunnel or wonder if they are really contributing.
It is the role of all CEOs and hiring managers to ensure these things don’t happen. As an executive recruiter I have recruited thousands of candidates over the last 30 years. There seems to be a consistent theme what great companies do in difficult times to hold on to and even attract top talent.
The following are four areas companies must focus on to ensure they keep their top talent motivated.
1) Companies must have a performance based culture. Even in difficult times there must be clearly defined goals for the company. These goals must cascade down to your top talent. They must have quantifiable objectives that motivate them, so when reached, they feel a sense of accomplishment.
2) Dysfunctional Culture. Probably the biggest reason top talent gets nervous and begins to think outside your company. Do you know your company’s culture? Can you define it? Will your executive staff define it the same way? Will the in-the-trench worker bees define it the same way? If not, this is the time to begin working on it.
3) Non-monetary rewards and recognition. The least expensive and least used method to retain top talent. So many times we’ve heard from candidates,”No matter how much I contributed, how many times I went above and beyond what was expected, or all the times I missed my kids activities, it always seemed just part of the job. Never even a thanks, appreciate the effort, even a small pat on the back.” Consider building a culture of rewards and recognition that makes your top talent feel appreciated. Top talent does not want to be taken for granted.
4) Consistent feedback. Similar to the above but more formal. This includes regular and structured 1-on-1 feedback sessions. Not passing in the hallway. Actually sitting down and focusing on them. Giving them feedback, encouraging them, listening to what their needs are (even if you can’t meet them, just listening), taking an interest in their career and building a shared bond.
Consider these four things as a way to motivate your top talent. There are others and we encourage you to consider anything that will help you attract, hire and retain your top talent.
Join the other 10,000 CEOs, key executives and HR professionals and download a FREE copy of our best-selling book, “You’re NOT The Person I Hired.” Just CLICK HERE and under the FREE Hiring Resources section you can download our free eBook.
Retaining your best talent is always the best thing any company can do. Download our FREE Non-Monetary Rewards and Recognitions Matrix. It will help you retain your best people without additional compensation. CLICK HERE to download under the Free Resources section.
I welcome your thoughts and comments.
Brad Remillard
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