The #1 Predictor of On-the-Job Success

by LouAdlerArticles | Jan 25, 2017 | Current Articles

In a recent post I referred to an article by Michael Simmons that described research indicating that those in an open network are more likely to be successful than those in a closed network. Open meaning broad, big, growing and multi-functional. Closed meaning stagnant, insular and populated by a few like-minded people.

I contended that the conclusions from the research might be incorrect and there might be a cause and effect problem not considered. In my opinion the root cause – based on my assessment of more than 5,000 candidates – is that team skills are more likely the driver of success. A lack of them causes people to stay within a closed network and possessing them is the reason people get assigned to open networks.

If team skills are in fact this significant, the solution to career success is straightforward for anyone who wants to get ahead: Force yourself into situations in which you need to engage with a variety of people and the more cross-functional the better.

Understanding the teams people have worked on and their roles is at the core of the Performance-based Interview I advocate. A streamlined version of this process is now available on Lynda.com.

The process starts by asking candidates to describe the people on the teams and projects they worked on and how successful the teams were. Learning how and why they were assigned to these projects and the roles played is an indication of their strengths. This is especially true if these team projects and managerial roles continue to grow at different companies with different leaders.

For example, techies won’t be assigned to work on important product marketing teams if they don’t understand the design issues from the perspective of the end user. And vice versa, no product marketing person is going to be assigned to negotiate product requirements on very technical products without the ability to communicate persuasively with super-techie designers.

Two real examples will help clarify this concept.

The first example is from a search assignment I worked on many years ago for a COO role for a multi-plant manufacturing company. At the time my candidate was a VP operations for a company in a different industry but using comparable technology. My interview focused on how he grew one plant in Asia with 100 people to a multi-facility operation spanning four countries and 3,000 people over four years. The biggest issues he faced had as much to do with manufacturing and distribution as they did with complex tax and pricing issues and supporting a state-of-the-art product design group.

He was initially rejected for the role because he didn’t have direct industry experience despite the fact that the new company was smaller and less complex. About six weeks after the first interview the company was reluctantly forced to hire him when their first candidate, whom they knew personally, rejected their offer at the last minute. I wasn’t surprised when my candidate was promoted to CEO 18 months later. I actually predicted it based on my team growth focused interview with him.

More recently I recruited a director of accounting from a large media company for a controller role in a smaller company but with a far greater span of responsibility. So when I found a young woman with only six years of experience currently in a director position with a well-known company and with a CPA from a Big 4 accounting firm, I knew I had to contact her right away.

Here’s what I discovered during the interview. In her first year in public accounting she was assigned to work on a few tier-one firms working directly with their senior financial executives. By her second year she was leading an international cross-functional team on addressing a major compliance and reporting issue. As important, she was dealing with the U.S. and international CFOs of two different companies and the senior partner of the CPA firm. When she left public accounting one of the CFOs hired her and she was promoted twice in the next two years. This is how stars are born. How they're discovered is by focusing on the team growth rather than the depth of their technical skills, IQ or generic behaviors.

Unfortunately she didn’t get the job since the CEO wanted someone who was more hands-on. Despite this minor setback, this very talented young woman continues to prosper (I just looked her up on LinkedIn) and now has a major business role with a fast-growing media start-up.

So if you’re on the side of the desk interviewing candidates, spend most of your time digging deep into the person’s team projects and growth over time. Done properly and without bias, you’ll discover everything you need to know to determine if the person should be hired or not.

More importantly, for everyone who wants to accelerate their career growth it’s important to push yourself onto important cross-functional teams. It’s great if you’re naturally assigned to them, however, it might be even better if you volunteer for some, especially those that no one else wants. You never know what you’ll learn and the invaluable stories you’ll be able to share with a recruiter, business leader or hiring manager some day in the future.

The Single Best Predictor of On-the-Job Success

by LouAdlerArticles | Jan 17, 2017 | Current Articles

The Best Interview Question to Predict On-the-Job Success © Suprijono Suharjoto | Dreamstime.com

As a recruiter for the past 40+ years I’ve met many talented people. Some were my clients, some my candidates and many more who I wished were either my clients or my candidates.

So when I came across this article by Michael Simmons, The No. 1 Predictor Of Career Success According To Network Science, I was forced to drop everything and read it. It’s fascinating.

Here’s the tweet-like summary: People who are in open networks are far more successful than those in closed networks.

My lay interpretation of a rather scientific article is that more diverse exposure a person has in terms of experiences and interactions allows them to bring a different perspective to any business situation. More important, this diversity of thinking allows them to influence these groups more effectively than those with a more narrow or insular point of view. As a result they get assigned to more important projects and lead more important groups long before their peers.

My interest in this has to do with how this complex factor is assessed during the interview. As part of our two-question performance-based interview I was wondering if we missed something. My concerns had to do with the fact that over the years we’ve proven that our interview and assessment process is not only more accurate than DDI, BEI and Who in predicting on-the-job performance but also more effective in improving quality of hire. Despite this, if we could make it better we’d incorporate these new ideas.

One key aspect of our performance-based interview process is digging into a candidate’s major accomplishments over time to observe the person’s overall trend of growth. This concept is shown in the graph. As you’ll see there are two trend lines shown, one for individual accomplishments and one for team accomplishments. I believe the growth rate of the trend lines correlate highly with the open vs. closed networking concept – especially how we develop the team trend line.

During the interview we ask candidates to describe their team accomplishments in detail focusing on the size of the team, the person’s role, the purpose of the team and how the person got assigned to the team. A key aspect of this line of questioning involves the candidate drawing a 360° work chart. This chart describes all of the people on the team including peers, subordinates, superiors and people inside and outside the company.

What’s fascinating about this approach is understanding how people progress in their careers especially highly skilled individual contributors or technical people who start interfacing with people in other functions including executives. As interesting is finding people who start working with more senior executives in the company earlier in their careers. Asking how the person got assigned to the team is as revealing. Often it’s because the person is a recognized subject matter expert and the person’s manager wants to give him/her more exposure or the person is very ambitious and volunteered for the position.

If the person leverages this into even larger and more influential teams, it’s clear the person was successful working with all types of people. If the same trend is observed at multiple companies you can rest assured the person has exceptional team and leadership skills. This is true even if the person is quiet, nervous in the interview, not eloquent or introverted.

Equally interesting, are people who over the course of 5-10 years continue to work with the same types of people in the same types of functions on the same types of projects. To me this is representative of the classic “closed network” described in Simpson’s article.

So while the idea that a person with an open network is more likely to be successful in general, I’m not sure it’s a great predictor of success in relationship to a particular job and specific team. In this case I’d suggest that during the definition of the job it’s made clear what types of teams the person is likely to work on. Then compare this to the types of teams the person has already worked on and how successful the teams were in achieving their objectives. If these are comparable and the candidate has an upward trend in growth in team size and scope it’s likely the person will be successful in the new role at least on this dimension of performance.

While this is a critical piece of the hiring puzzle, it’s not the only piece. The other pieces are explained in this post describing the Hiring Formula for Success. Simply stated, on-the-job performance and motivation to excel are functions of the ability to do the work in relationship to fit with the job, fit with the team, fit with the hiring manager and fit with the company culture.

So despite the openness of the person’s network these other factors are equally as important and it could very well be that a person in a big and growing multi-functional closed network might wind up being the better candidate.