Chapter 3
Elephant: Your Hiring Process Is Too Fast
“We need this position filled sometime, but there’s no rush. Take your time and be sure you find someone who’s the perfect fit.”
Does that sound familiar? Of course not!
When there’s a talent gap in your company, you want it filled pronto, especially if you’ve just lost one of your unicorns. You have objectives to meet, projects to implement, and new products to launch. These require all hands on deck collaborating, innovating, and putting in long hours. When a valuable team member leaves for a new opportunity, it can be devastating for team and company morale, as well as the bottom line.
So what happens when you have a role you need filled yesterday? Traditionally, the process looks like this: The CEO consults with the hiring manager, who contacts recruiters. Everyone is stressed. The CEO and hiring manager want the position filled quickly. The recruiter wants to get paid. Speed is prioritized—how quickly can the recruiter come up with a warm body to fill the chair? That’s a little overstated, but let’s face it—finding a warm body is often the basic strategy when it comes to attracting talent.
Hiring managers and recruiters will deny this. But with pressure coming from the top (it always starts at the top), stress is transferred to the hiring manager and then to the recruiter. And people who are stressed do not make good decisions.
The result is that undesirable characteristics in candidates are overlooked. The hiring chain does not take the time for thoughtful consideration. Instead, they are ruled by their impulses and biases. A candidate is rushed through the process as quickly as possible. In the off chance that it works out—great! No need to read further. You may pat yourself on the back and thank your lucky stars that you happened to chance upon a unicorn.
But that’s not real life, is it? Unicorns aren’t found by accident. In the real world, rushed hiring decisions have drastic consequences. According to Capital One CEO Richard Fairbank, “Companies that spend 2 percent of their time recruiting and 75 percent of their time managing their recruiting mistakes don’t have the right people.” Thinking only for the short term creates serious long-term consequences.
When discussing hiring tips, Richard Branson coined the phrase, “It’s better to have a hole in your team than an asshole in your team.” “Hire slow, fire fast.” These phrases have been trotted out so much that they’re almost clichés. But in the face of looming deadlines and mounting pressures, it’s hard to know what to do.
In this chapter, we’ll examine resources you can use to ensure you are doing your due diligence when it comes to hiring. You’ll learn how to make fewer recruiting mistakes so you can focus on attracting the best people and nurturing them so they can do their best work. First things first: Start by managing your stress so it doesn’t affect your team.
If you want to avoid a costly hiring mistake, you first need to be aware of your own stress level. Stress leaks. I say that a lot because it’s so important. People leaders need to be aware of how their own stress is affecting their decision-making abilities and in turn affecting those around them. A conscious people leader with strong stress management skills (the fifth component of emotional intelligence) can identify when and how stress is impacting his ability to see things clearly. When he has practices in place that allow him to step away from his daily tasks and clear his mind, he can come back to work with renewed energy and fresh insights (more on that in Chapter 13).
Second, don’t try to handle the hiring process alone. No matter how much you trust your gut and believe yourself to be a good judge of character, you need many people to weigh in on important hiring decisions. Other people can see where you have blind spots and act as a check on any biases you may have. Ask for the input of hiring managers and the candidate’s future team whenever possible. When that input differs from your own opinion, resist the temptation to push the candidate through anyway. Sincerely thank your team members and take their concerns seriously. Many a hiring mistake has been avoided thanks to a brave employee who dared to challenge the higher-ups on a toxic but convincing candidate who interviewed like a superstar.
Use a Pre-Interview Checklist
To alleviate some of the stress of the hiring process and make sure your team is well-supported, take stock of the people and process involved in the decision. Before interviewing for a key hire, all invested parties need to be 100-percent onboard. Forging ahead without the full participation of stakeholders will tank morale and hurt your bottom line. Following is a checklist for you to consider before you begin the hiring process. Don’t move forward until you can answer each question.
1. Who can be in your board of interviewers to help make the right hiring decision?
2. What’s the process?
3. Is everyone on board?
4. Is everyone aware of the hiring and onboarding timeline?
5. What happens if you don’t meet the hiring deadline?
6. Have you discussed your Plan B with the board of interviewers and stakeholders?
Remember: the more communication, the better. If a stakeholder is fuzzy on one or more of the checklist questions, go slower. Losing time in the hiring process will be worth it if you can find a unicorn. You may hear team members say, “We need to move fast to get this person.” That may or may not be true. If the prospective employee has a number of offers on the table, then you really do need to move fast. But if she’s currently employed, she will leave her job with the same diligence as you are performing in hiring her.
Just remember that the match made in heaven works both ways. If the person you want to hire feels as passionately as you do about your organization, she’ll express it. You’ll know you’re her priority because she believes in the team and the organization. And that means you’ve got the right person for the role.
Why “Go with Your Gut” Isn’t Good Enough
“Go with your gut” has serious limitations. We know how our intuitions and first impressions can be informed by our biases. However, you can’t ignore your gut completely—it’s your early warning system. Pay attention if your gut is telling you that something is “off” about a candidate. For instance, does he sustain eye contact for longer than is normal or appropriate, making you uncomfortable in what you suspect is an attempt to be domineering? That’s a red flag. In the reception area, does the candidate seem so absorbed with herself—looking at her phone, checking her appearance, etc.—that she has little awareness for others sharing the space, or does she speak rudely to employees? That’s a red flag. Does the candidate put down or subtly undermine former team members or bosses during the interview? Major red flag.
No matter how stellar a candidate’s resume or track record, you must listen to your early warning system. Any interviewer worth his salt will tell you that. First impressions are crucially important. If your gut is sending “danger” signals about a candidate, there’s likely no need to pursue her further.
But what about the people you’re unsure about? Here’s where the sales saying, “The fortune’s in the follow-up,” applies. Don’t simply rely on your own impressions; follow up with as many people as possible. Have the candidate’s potential team members spend some time with him—they can go out to lunch, for instance, and see how he behaves away from the boss. Follow up with past supervisors. (Incidentally, did the candidate only give the names of friends or peer colleagues as references and no higher-ups? That’s another red flag.) If you have people in your network who know the candidate, however informally, ask for their opinions, too. Someone with the greatest distance from the hiring situation may have the sharpest insights to offer on your potential superstar’s character.
Use an Interview Toolkit: Questions and Processing
While you should trust your gut instinct, you need more data to help guide the hiring process. The following questions in Figure 3.1 on page 22 are a resource for you to use both in the interview and afterward. The first set are for the interviewee. They’re designed to offer insight into how the candidate prefers to work, what kind of company culture he hopes to find, and what team health looks like to him.
The second set of questions in Figure 3.2 on page 22 are for you to consider, along with your key stakeholders, after the interview. They are a safeguard against simply going with your gut. The person leading the hiring process may create a document in which the board of interviewers all have input. For each question, have the interviewers list positives and negatives.
Aim for honest, collaborative discussion and consensus. All parties should feel comfortable moving forward with the candidate before the hiring manager calls with the offer.
FIGURE 3.1—Interview Questions for Candidate
FIGURE 3.2—Post-Interview Questions with Stakeholders
Ask References the Hard Questions, Then Listen (Really Listen)
Let’s say the candidate, “Jim,” aces the interview. When you call his references, you want to ask questions that will give you a sense of Jim’s character. That means you can’t rush the phone call: You must give the person on the other end time to carefully consider his response and express himself fully.
Be alert to any long pauses. Most people are polite and don’t want to bad-mouth even the worst former employees. Also be wary if you ask about Jim’s ability to work well with others and get an answer like, “It depends on the people.” Such a response could be covering a myriad of sins—bullying, sexual harassment, etc. Obviously, if a reference says something that directly contradicts what your candidate said in the interview, that’s a serious problem. Below is a reference check toolkit you can use to guide you through even the toughest conversations.
Reference Check Toolkit
Below are the questions I use when calling references. In these conversations, I strive to be exceedingly professional: pleasant, to-the-point, and courteous. I write down exact quotes and do not paraphrase. Then I share what I’ve written with the reference to give them the chance to correct any misunderstandings. Ask these ten questions:
1. What is your name, title, and current role?
2. What was your relationship with the candidate, e.g., manager, peer, co-worker? When did you last work together? How long did you work together?
3. What are the top three strengths the candidate possesses for this role?
4. Can you describe their leadership and management style?
5. Can you describe their decision-making style?
6. Can you tell me about a time they had to handle extreme pressure?
7. Can you recall the top areas in which the candidate needed to continue developing?
8. If you were in a position to work with this candidate again, would you?
9. What are the most interesting things to know about working with the candidate over time that would not come out during an interview process?
10. Is there anything else you would like to share?
You can learn so much more from a phone conversation than you ever could from a written reference. Listen for pauses, careful word choice, changing the subject, answering a question other than the one that was asked, etc. If a reference is totally glowing, push for more information about areas in which the candidate may continue to grow. If you then decide to hire Jim, you’re in an even better position to help accelerate his growth.
The Emotional Intelligence Factor
Let’s examine this situation in light of emotional intelligence. The need to hire quickly strains the fourth component of emotional intelligence: decision making. If you’re stressed, you’re less able to problem solve (the first subcategory of decision making). Your reality testing is also compromised—rather than seeing a potentially problematic candidate for what she really is, you look through rose-colored glasses and try to shoehorn her into a role that’s not a good fit. Impulse control is also weakened; instead of taking the time you need to thoroughly reflect on and vet the candidate, you’re ruled by the need to act now. Or, on the other side of the spectrum, you might overcomplicate the problem, which leads to analysis paralysis.
All CEOs and hiring managers could likely point to experiences in which they’ve made grievous hiring mistakes, either by rushing the choice or by being paralyzed from making a decision. It happens; we’re all human. You’re likely familiar with the world of problems caused by hiring the wrong candidate. On a bottom-line level, there’s the high cost of employee turnover. There are hundreds of studies about the dollars and cents of this. A 2012 study by the Center for American Progress, for example, showed that it cost a business about 20 percent of an employee’s salary to replace him.
There’s also the stress that a bad hire places on your teams. That new hire you hoped would save your product, department, or company may have just had an inflated ego and ability to talk with confidence—but the real problem is that he is riding on the accomplishments of those underneath him, a surefire recipe for fomenting frustration and resentment. Maybe that candidate you dismissed as “a little brash” when she spoke rudely to your receptionist is simply a jerk. Now the entire team has to endure her rudeness. Perhaps you were dazzled by a candidate’s Ivy League education and impressive resume, yet he has little expertise or ability to do the job for which he was hired.
Now you’ve taken an already stressful situation and created more tension. Your teams, first tasked with meeting KPIs without their departed team member, now have to deliver in spite of the new hire. You’ve placed yourself in the difficult position of having to fire someone because of your own bad judgment, and you’ve lost credibility along the way. It’s a supremely uncomfortable situation for you, distressing for your teams, and unfair to the person you’ve brought onboard.
Remember, hiring people who can deliver on your company’s goals and vision is your most important job. If people are your most valuable asset, it’s worth it to put in the time to make sure you’ve got the right ones on your teams. Failing to do this will sink your ship faster than anything else.
Don’t let the elephant of feeling pressured to hire too quickly get in your way. If you keep moving down the path—even if you feel like you’re moving too slowly!—you’ll get to the true unicorns sooner or later.
Hiring the right person (hopefully a unicorn!) takes time. While you may experience great pressure from leadership to fill an empty chair with a new hire, put on the brakes and make sure you and your team are doing your due diligence before making an offer. Ask yourself:
▶ Have I thoroughly vetted the top candidates?
▶ What is my process for connecting with references? Does it work for us?
▶ Do we need to ask more in-depth questions that speak to a candidate’s way of working, as opposed to basic level of experience?
▶ How do I use my gut instinct? Have I been burned before? What can we learn from that?
▶ Do we have enough recruitment team members assisting with our hiring process? Does this create a less stressful environment for our team?
