How to Prevent Hiring Disasters
A carefully crafted approach can dramatically improve your chances of hiring without regrets or turmoil
By Amy Gallo
Posted on Harvard Business Review: May 27, 2010 11:49 AM
Hiring someone can be a time-consuming and nerve-wracking task. In an ideal situation, you find the perfect person for the position—someone who hits the ground running, increases your unit's performance, and eases your workload. In the worst-case scenario, your seemingly perfect hire turns out to be far from it and you spend months dealing with the aftermath, including finding a replacement. Either way, it can feel like a referendum on your judgment. So how can you be sure your experience is more like the former than the latter? If you outline and adhere to a disciplined process, you can greatly improve your chances.
What the Experts Say
Claudio Fernández-Aráoz, a senior adviser at Egon Zehnder International and the author of Great People Decisions and "The Definitive Guide to Recruiting in Good Times and Bad," argues that hiring decisions are pressure-filled for a reason. "It is crucial to get hiring right not only for the hiring entity, but also, and very importantly, for the person being hired," he says. A new hire isn't to blame for a bad hiring decision, but will shoulder much of the burden when a role doesn't fit.
A carefully crafted hiring process can help avoid most mishaps. Adele Lynn, founder and owner of The Adele Lynn Leadership Group and author of The EQ Interview, urges that companies regard hiring as more of a science than an art, or worse a leap of faith.
Prevention is the best medicine
You can greatly reduce your chances of getting hiring decisions wrong by following a clear and consistent approach that includes knowing the traits valued across the organization (such as humility or an entrepreneurial spirit); conducting fair, structured interviews that include multiple people from the organization; and agreeing on a standard ranking system to evaluate candidates.
Getting the right person for the job requires time and discipline. Be careful of the time trap, warns Lynn. "Often, companies are desperate to fill a position, so the interview process includes some generic questions and some information about the position," she says. Needing to fill the role yesterday is not an excuse for shortchanging the process.
Know the specific competencies you're looking for
Fernández-Aráoz says we are hardwired to hire people who are like us or make us comfortable—but that does not always yield the best candidate. In fact, you need to be aware of what he calls the "typical unconscious psychological traps" that lead one to make inferior people decisions (e.g. overrating capability or making snap judgments). Outline the specific competencies—above and beyond the traits you look for in all new hires—that the ideal candidate needs. What skills are required? How much does experience matter? What behaviors does he need to exhibit in the role? For example, this is a role requiring 7 years of computer programming experience but also an ability to work collaboratively with team members on high-pressure projects.
Screening for the right soft skills is critical. Seasoned hiring managers will tell you that it's much harder to coach behavioral issues than it is to teach someone the technical aspects of the job. "And people who fail in a new job mostly do so because of their inability to develop proper relationships not only with their boss but also with their peers and subordinates," says Fernández-Aráoz. To assess relational skills and emotional intelligence, "the interview should include behavior-based questions and motive and reflection questions," says Lynn.