by LouAdlerArticles | Aug 28, 2017 | Current Articles
I remember a story from long ago about two cowboys who bet on who had the slowest horse. The race stopped before it started as both horse and cowboy stood motionless – neither cowboy wanted to lose the bet. Then the saloon owner told the cowboys to switch horses and race to the end of the street. It was clear by the end of the race which was the slowest horse. This was a unique way of removing bias from the process and getting at the truth. It’s called forcing a change in point of view. I call it good horse sense.
Something similar happened early in my business career.
My boss asked me to interview a candidate for a corporate financial analyst position. At the debriefing session that afternoon I described only why the person was unqualified in no uncertain terms. Others thought he was quite strong and gave their equally forcefully stated positive reasons. To remove bias, my boss asked me to only mention the candidate’s strong points and those who liked him to give evidence of why he wasn’t qualified. The truth soon emerged. This is another example of good horse sense.
Proving your initial opinion is wrong eventually became one of my 12 interview bias removal techniques. While I suggest it should always be applied when interviewing candidates, the same “disprove your opinion” horse sense approach has merit whenever you’re trying to uncover the truth about anything. During the interviewing process I suggest that when you like someone too soon look for evidence the person is incompetent. Otherwise you’ll unconsciously seek evidence to confirm your first impression reaction. If the person’s first impression is negative, go out of your way to prove the person is competent. Changing your point of view this way allows the truth to emerge.
Now back to earlier this month. I was listening to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson describe how he was transforming the U.S. State Department to be more diverse. While most companies advocate this approach, few have implemented a strategy to achieve it. Instead they just fine-tune existing hiring processes, urge compliance and hope it works. It never does, but it lets people feel good that they’re working on the problem. Without the right strategy and a tactical plan to achieve it is how activity masks itself for progress. This is another example of horse sense.
Tillerson’s approach was driven by the right strategy implemented with a host of new tactics. Here were his big points:
1. The mix matters. Tillerson argued that the State Department workforce at all levels will and must match the diversity of the population it serves.
2. Starting early is essential. By “early” Tillerson meant early in a person’s career. This means their recruiting programs must be more diverse in their new hire and their intern programs. As part of this he wanted to recruit from those universities that already had a diverse population, not just the elite ones. He contended there are as many budding stars there as anywhere else.
3. The metrics matter. Every department will be measured on their success. No more excuses.
4. We’ll train and push people. Intern and leadership programs will become as diverse as the U.S. population.
5. We’ll provide early exposure to the right leaders. Getting ahead requires senior level sponsorship and mentoring. The front row must be diverse.
6. Think long term. This program will be embedded in our culture and live beyond this administration.
This seems like a pretty good strategic blueprint for any company that’s serious about diversity. Since the ‘80s companies have been talking about expanding their diversity hiring effort, but few have been successful across the board and over extended periods of time. From what I’ve seen, most companies are too reactive. When a problem is noticed there’s a rush to implement a bunch of tactical programs to solve some short-term compliance problems. Unfortunately the wrong strategy is used based on short-term thinking to get short-term relief. Once the pressure is gone things revert back to the old ways of doing business.
Tillerson’s program could transform not only the State Department but also every company in the U.S. that implemented a similar diversity initiative. Of course, the media pundits had a different take. First, they missed the big picture and thought he was just grandstanding. Their biggest proof was that the State Department was starting to implement layoffs that would shrink the workforce, so his point was just a cover for the reduction in force.
Yelling at the screen, I suggested they all switch horses. But no one was listening.
by LouAdlerArticles | May 16, 2017 | Current Articles
The first requirement for an exemplary user experience (UX) is to meet the exact needs of the customer, without fuss or bother.
This seems like a pretty good definition of UX to me. And while many companies embrace this concept, they think the "U" in UX are the candidates they're not going to hire. I suggest the "U" should be those whom they are going to hire. In this case I'd define these people as those who are competent and motivated to do the work you want done. Everyone else is either not competent or not motivated. This simple concept is represented in the graphic, “How Hiring Process Impacts Performance.”
To determine if you have the right UX driving your hiring process, take a small sample of the people you’ve recently hired and assign them into one of the four groups in the table. If you don’t have enough in the Tier 1 group you'll need to rethink your entire hire process to figure out why. The following ideas will help get you started. (Note: Every month we host a monthly public webcast to discuss this UX-inspired hiring process design.)
Tier 1: How did you hire the good people you’ve already hired?
While all Tier 1 people are both very competent and highly motivated to do the work you want done, there are ranges of performance within the tier. Some of them are solid people who love what they do and take great pride in doing it well, others are newbies who want to learn all they can and some are high achievers who want to progress rapidly. Regardless of their level within Tier 1, they’re all considered outstanding people because they produce high quality work on a consistent basis.
When it comes to a UX focus, it’s important to understand that people like this are typically hired when the job represents a true career move coupled with a fair compensation package. In this case a career move needs to offer a minimum 30% non-monetary increase. This 30% is the collective sum of a bigger job combined with more satisfying work, more impactful work and faster growth. While it takes extra time to prove this, few recruiters and fewer hiring managers are willing to make the investment in time necessary despite the obvious advantages. This results in hiring many top people who quickly become Tier 2 hires when the career move was not fully validated.
Tier 2: Could have been a great hire, if only.
While these people are fully competent they’re not consistently motivated to do the required work for one reason or another. As a result their work quality suffers or they need extra pushing to meet minimum requirements.
Hiring good people who underperform is a very common problem. Not only is it totally predictable; it’s also totally avoidable. Two problems are the typical cause. One is an emphasis on short-term non-job related criteria (like discussing the compensation before the person knows about the job) or the process was rushed. The other is a lack of fit in some way with either the job, the manager or the culture.
On the “bad fit” side it could be that the person is not motivated to do the work since it wasn’t fully clarified upfront or the person was misled. Regardless of the cause, lack of fit is usually the problem when otherwise talented people fall short of expectations.
The solution starts by clarifying job expectations upfront, fully understanding what motivates these people to perform at peak levels and making sure the fit factors are considered before an offer is considered.
Tier 3: Why did we hire this person?
There is no question that people who are neither competent nor motivated are bad hires. The cause is obvious: Usually the process was rushed and the assessment was based on a very narrow set of skill-based criteria. In many cases the people hired under these hectic conditions are those who make the best presentations, not the people who are the best performers. The problem is worsened since the candidate accepted the offer for short-term reasons based on compensation or which company could move the fastest.
Tier 4: The big mistakes.
Whenever a superficial assessment process is mixed with a need to hire quickly, big mistakes can be made. The biggest one is hiring people who just don’t fit on multiple dimensions. Worse, they’re often so assertive they make the problem worse and demotivate everyone else around them. This is far worse if they're managers.
Any structured interview process including reference checking and testing will help minimize Tier 3 and Tier 4 hiring errors, but as far as I’m concerned all this does is move the people who are hired into the Tier 2 group. The strategic win is moving everyone into the Tier 1 category. This requires a major shift in your company’s talent strategy and embracing the UX design concept.
But the most important part of all of the UX redesign effort is first figuring out who’s the “U.”
by LouAdlerArticles | May 9, 2017 | Current Articles
Sometimes things are easier than they seem. Predicting job performance is one of those things. The 2X2 matrix shown below is proof. In just 50 words, it describes exactly what you need to do to make better hiring decisions and what you need to do to avoid the bad ones.
The understanding starts by looking at how people who are very competent and highly motivated to do the work actually get hired. This is the Top-Tier group 1 in the upper left grid of the matrix.
Tier 1: Great hires.
These are people who are both very competent and highly motivated. They are considered outstanding because they produce more high quality work on a more consistent basis.
People like these are hired when they see the job as a true career move combined with an equitable compensation package. In this case a career move needs to offer a minimum 30% non-monetary increase. This is the difference between the person’s current career trajectory and the potential one offered by the new job. This 30% is the collective sum of a bigger job combined with more satisfying work, more impactful work and faster growth. While it takes extra time to prove this, few hiring managers are willing to make the investment in time despite the obvious advantages.
Tier 2: Could have been a great hire, if only.
While these people are fully competent they’re not consistently motivated to do the required work for one reason or another. As a result their work quality suffers or they need extra pushing to meet minimum requirements.
Hiring good people who underperform is a very common problem. Not only is it totally predictable; it’s also totally avoidable. Two problems are the typical cause. One is an emphasis on short-term non-job related criteria when the offer was made or a rushed process. The other is a lack of fit in some way with either the job or the manager.
When the hiring process is rushed or the emphasis is on what a person gets on the day he/she starts (title, compensation, and location) serious problems are likely to occur. In many cases the best people are filtered out too soon on this criteria or sometimes these factors drive the negotiation process.
On the “bad fit” side it could be that the person is not motivated to do the work since it wasn’t fully clarified upfront or it’s not very inspiring work. Sometimes good people don’t get along with their manager and this friction causes dissatisfaction and turnover. Sometimes these people don’t fit with the culture or the team. Regardless of the cause, lack of fit is usually the problem when otherwise talented people fall short of expectations.
The solution starts by clarifying job expectations upfront, fully understanding what motivates these people to perform at peak levels and making sure the fit factors are considered before an offer is considered. When this is combined with a recruiting and negotiating process that balances long-term growth with short-term needs it’s relatively easy to shift every potential Tier 2 average hire into a Tier 1 top performer.
Tier 3: Why did we hire this person?
There is no question that people who are neither competent nor motivated are bad hires. The cause is obvious: Usually the process was rushed and the assessment was based on a very narrow set of skill-based criteria. In many cases the people hired under these hectic conditions are those who make the best presentations, not the people who are the best performers. The problem is worsened since the candidate accepted the offer for short-term reasons based on compensation and which company could move the fastest.
If Tier 3 type candidates represent over a third of the workforce or the problem is isolated to a department or region, major changes are essential. Often these involve a major shift in talent strategy combined with a rethinking of the entire hiring process.
Tier 4: Not competent but highly motivated.
Highly motivated incompetent people are the worst of all hires. These are the people who mess up things so quickly you don’t have the chance to recover. Avoid these hires at all costs! Typically these people are hired when the manager is desperate and the people chosen have lots of enthusiasm and make great presentations. This is a sure recipe for making bad hiring decisions.
Hiring Tier 1 top performing people on a consistent basis is pretty straightforward. It starts by understanding this simple truth: Whether you’re the hiring manager, recruiter or prospect, don’t make long-term decisions using short-term information. While implementing this simple truth is not simple, it is the truth and too many recruiters, hiring managers and candidates consistently ignore it.
by LouAdlerArticles | Apr 11, 2017 | Current Articles
The case for using SI (smart intelligence) instead of AI (artificial intelligence) is demonstrated in the chart. It summarizes how people get jobs. The first thing that’s clear is that not many people who apply directly to job postings get hired – far less than 1%. The second point that’s less clear, but as important, is that acquaintances get hired more frequently than strangers if they're reasonably strong, even if they don't have all the skills required, because there's less risk and it's more convenient.
Here are some of the big reasons acquaintances get the better deal:
- They're seen more often if referred by a trusted person and get to the top of the resume list when referred by anyone in the company.
- They're hired more frequently. One survey from Lever ATS indicated that once a referred candidate is interviewed the chance the person will be hired is 20% vs. only 10% for a stranger. This double-whammy increases the chance a referred person will be hired from one in 125 to one in 12!
- Their on-the-job performance is more predictable. This doesn't mean the person is a better candidate though. They’re generally good candidates but frequently there are better candidates who applied but there too many other risk factors – temperament, style, attitude, fit and the like – preventing these other people from being hired.
- It’s a lot faster to hire referrals and acquaintances. For one thing they’re often contacted before the job requisition is formally approved. Getting someone on board more quickly is a huge advantage.
Over the years in numerous books, a new Lynda.com course, blog posts and presentations to business groups I have made the point that we should hire strangers the same way we hire acquaintances. I developed Performance-based Hiring with this idea in mind. The problem I noticed throughout my executive search career was that top people I personally knew were typically assessed improperly by people who didn’t know them at all. As a result some remarkable people were judged as incompetent and some decent people were judged as remarkable.
Here are some ideas on how to bridge the gap and evaluate strangers and acquaintances exactly the same way:
First, define the job as a series of 5-6 performance objectives. I refer to this as a performance-based job description. A typical performance objective describes the task, the action required and a measurable result. For example, it’s better to say, “Collaborate with the engineering team to develop the product specs for the XYZ product within 60 days,” rather than, “Be responsible for product marketing” or ”Must have 6-8 years of experience, an MBA in marketing and an undergraduate engineering degree”.
Second, eliminate resumes as a prerequisite to engage in a conversation. Instead have interested candidates submit a two paragraph write-up of something they’ve done that’s comparable. Let them throw a video or a sample into the mix. Only those who are qualified will actually do this extra work. This is the key to converting to a SI commonsense system from one based on AI.
Third, eliminate pre-interview screening tests. DISC and PI-like personality tests are not predictive. For one thing they only assess preferences not competencies. While they are somewhat confirming if used too early in the process they screen out passive candidates and all superior candidates who want to explore a situation before getting serious. This puts a lid on quality of hire.
Fourth, proactively control interviewer bias. Lack of job knowledge opens the door to bias, perceptions, bad judgement and intuition to become the deciding factor when interviewing candidates. One of 12 ways to reduce bias is to script the first 30 minutes of the interview. Another way is to use a well-organized panel interview with 2-3 people.
Fourth, assess accomplishments, not skills. Ask all candidates – strangers and acquaintances – to describe in detail an accomplishment that best compares to each of the performance objectives in the performance-based job description. This post (now read by over 1.5 million LinkedIn members) describes this technique.
Fifth, organize the interview and debriefing session. Here’s a simple form you can use to organize the interview around the factors that best predict on-the-job performance. By having each interviewer justify his or her ranking using evidence for each factor you’ll eliminate yes/no gladiator voting which inadvertently glorifies bias and intuition.
AI was introduced into the hiring process to solve a problem that was self-created: Letting people apply to jobs they’re not qualified to handle. Rather than eliminating the problem at the source companies have invested unnecessary resources to weed out the unqualified rather than figure out better ways to attract and assess the most qualified whether they’re strangers or acquaintances. Regardless, the above five steps are a useful short-term workaround to a problem that doesn’t even need to exist.
by LouAdlerArticles | Mar 29, 2017 | Current Articles
I was in Europe this past week and two major companies asked what I thought was the next big thing to impact the future of hiring.
I didn’t answer the question.
Instead I said since the birth of the Internet and job boards in the early 1990s there have been 8-10 next big things. There have been another 8-10 since then, with LinkedIn probably the biggest. Yet when I ask companies around the world if they’ve won the war for talent only a very very few say yes, but timidly. And even for these companies it’s a constant battle. For most companies it’s an endless war.
This rather caustic summary prompted a few more questions. The biggest one always relates to what’s wrong and why. What’s wrong relates to the big gorilla in the room – the hiring manager. Recruiters, talent leaders, sourcing experts and HR gather at hundreds of events each year and talk to each other about the next big thing. I’ve been to hundreds of these over the past 15 years. Rarely are there any line managers in the room. But all of the so-called HR and recruiting experts don’t make the yes/no hiring decision. Hiring managers do.
And until hiring managers have the primary voice on how to design the next big thing there won’t be one.
There is also a mathematical problem involved with designing the “next big thing.”
Everyone can’t attract and hire the top 25%. Once the next big thing gets developed the early adopters get first user advantage. The latecomers get the leftovers. The shelf life of most new recruiting and hiring ideas is about 3-4 years. This is when diminishing returns sets in and everyone then gets average results. LinkedIn Version 1.0-2.0 blew the lid off this at about six years. If you’ve had it that long you can track your email response rates to see when the drop off accelerated.
So even if recruiting technology companies start relying on hiring managers to spec and design their products there will never be the next big thing for more than a few years. While these can be very impactful, the long-term winners will be those companies who do the best job of using these tools more creatively and more effectively.
Now back to the U.S. and a program I’m doing for a small high-technology company doing exotic work in the area of material science. The CEO has a brilliant idea. She wants every one of their employees to refer enough extremely talented people to ensure each employee is responsible for one new hire per year. Their growth restraint is people and by doubling their technical team in size every year it will drive their revenue growth at the same rate.
Here’s what I’m advising. It starts with this assumption: It takes 10 great referrals of passive candidates who aren’t looking to hire one of them and it takes about 2-3 months to make it happen. Starting before you need to hire these people is part of the solution.
The Next Big Thing: Hiring Manager Do-It-Yourself Hiring
- Start a proactive outreach program. Have each employee connect with every previous outstanding coworker from previous companies. This is where LinkedIn becomes a great tool. Mention that your company is growing rapidly and you want to keep these people apprised of future opportunities.
- Create a future vision. One of the European companies I’m now working with came up with an unusual corporate branding program focusing on empowering their diverse customers to think differently. This was developed in concert with the talent team and resulted in an awesome five-minute video. Hiring managers will need to have something similar to send to their network to get everyone excited.
- Expand the network with weak connections. When you send the vision message ask for the names of other people you could contact who your connection would highly recommend for related positions. Pester these people to get at least one or two additional names every 3-6 months!
- Establish contact. Connect with these second degree connections mentioning the referrer’s name. Highlight the fact that your company is growing and you’re building a self-driven career network. Make them first degree connections.
- Nurture the network. Engage and meet with these new connections regularly. Keep them apprised of your company’s vision, where you fit in and where future opportunities might exist.
- Repeat the cycle again and again. As you meet these people explain some of your upcoming roles and how they fit with the company’s bigger vision. Try to get a few names every year of other remarkable people. Keep it going and pretty soon you’ll have some great names of people who are ready to move when an opportunity presents itself.
Diminishing returns are less likely if the jobs are remarkable and the network is deep, talented and constantly expanding. Most important you’ll have eliminated the wasted effort focused on weeding out people you’ll never hire and instead be spending it on attracting top people.
This is the next big hiring thing: Giving hiring managers the responsibility for hiring top talent, giving them the tools to do it and measuring and rewarding their success.
