Perfect Hire Blueprint

by Dave Clough

  References are either friends or past coworkers who won’t (or can’t) tell you the truth

  Recruiters and headhunters are compensated or incentivized to fill the position regardless of whether the person is the best fit

  The hiring manager goes with his gut, thinking he is a good judge of character.

  Bad hires often occur because the hiring manager goes with his gut. Research shows that people are not as good at judging other people as they think they are. The person who hires by trusting his gut tends to ignore other information, so good hiring is inconsistent at best.

  I’ve worked with many successful entrepreneurs who succeeded even when they had no education in running a business. Some have been tradesman, and others have been professionals like doctors and lawyers.

  While they all have a different number of years of education, the one thing that makes them similar is the lack of formal business training. They all know their area of expertise very well, and that is a big part of their success. But they will typically say that they got to this point by going with their gut. They will also hire based on their gut.

  When your brain recalls an experience from the past, positive or negative, you can get a gut feeling. It may just feel like butterflies, but for intense situations it can be more extreme. Some people may be very much in tune with the intensity of these feelings; others are not.

  Science tells us that this “gut check” is all based upon past experience stored in the brain. The more experiences you’ve had (this tends to coincide with age), the more likely it is that you’ve “seen this before.” We learn from our experiences.

  There are a lot of moving parts in trying to “read” a candidate: manipulation, environmental factors, half-truths, and medication.

  Some people can get away with trusting their gut, and others shouldn’t. Emotional Intelligence (EI), the ability to understand and implement the feelings and emotions of yourself and others, can help in hiring. Some are naturally high in EI. For those who are not, it’s possible to actively work to better understand the feelings and emotions of oneself and others.

  So how can a company build a reliable hiring process around intuition or gut feeling? People who trust their gut tend to ignore data and facts. The gut overrides all other information. If we accept for a moment that the hiring manager can count on his gut, how does he integrate the information from the rest of the interview team? Making decisions on gut feeling is not only unreliable, it’s also not scalable.

  How does a new hiring manager develop the same level of gut feel that works for those with more experience, or make successful hires? For good hiring decisions, there needs to be more data, and in the Perfect Hire Blueprint process, this data comes from Assessments.

  While the in-person interview is critical to hiring the best people, it is only one piece of the puzzle. A research-based Assessment will give much more insight into the candidate. A good unbiased Multi-Measure Assessment, like the one I use (TriMetrix HD), will allow companies to more fully understand if the candidate will be a good fit for the company and the job.

  The graphic below from the Harvard Business Review shows the research behind this information. No one activity has a 100% correlation to job performance, and that is why Multi-Measure Assessments, reference checks, the resume, and the interview are necessary.

  Can’t I Just Hire a Headhunter?

  Some think that headhunters, also known as contract recruiters, are the solution, but I don’t believe that they are.

  If you are as avid a sports fan as I am, you may be aware of Scott Boras. He’s the guy who tends to get the highest priced contracts for star baseball players. These players tend to become mercenaries – moving to the team who will pay the highest price and considering little else.

  If you were a team owner, would you want Scott Boras to represent your players? I don’t think so – mercenaries are not loyal to their current employer once their contract ends.

  My point is that headhunters (high commissioned recruiters) are a lot like Scott Boras: they are incentivized to get the highest salary possible when placing a candidate, and poach that person soon after to place her in another company. If the employee doesn’t leave, she may ask for much more money. This leads to a mercenary mentality rather than one of a loyal, long-term employee.

  As a leader, you can see why this is a poor method for growing a thriving business.

  We recently hired an Engineer for a client using the Perfect Hire Blueprint. With a targeted Job Ad built from the Benchmark Assessment, we were able to narrow the field down to a few GREAT candidates and make a perfect hire in just a few weeks:

  A successful hiring process such as the one I have outlined in this book can be executed by a company of any size to find A-players. Yes, finding the right person takes time, energy, passion and coordination, but the Return on Investment (ROI) is worth it. Your work team can go from good to great by getting the right players on the bus.

  The Right People on the Bus in the Right Seats

  What if every employee you hired was a perfect and productive fit for the job? Managing them would be easier and the group would be more productive, making the company more profitable. Wouldn’t that be great? The Perfect Hire Blueprint can help achieve that.

  I work with companies all the time that don’t have the right person in the position. Maybe it isn’t that they are incompetent or unproductive – it could just be that they are a wrong fit for this particular job. Maybe they are a Swiss Army Knife – they can do lots of different things, but are optimized for none of them.

  Most jobs would be more productive with a specialist, and it is usually much easier to find and train someone for one job than finding many Jacks-of-all-trades who can perform at each job.

  Of course, the more likely case is that you have an employee doing a job and it just isn’t working as expected. It could be that you moved someone into the job to try to make it work, but in most cases the person was hired for the job and it is not working.

  How much time is spent trying to make that work?

  How much money is being spent on this position?

  What is the opportunity cost of not having someone who is qualified in the position – how much is being lost?

  You may think that you are doing someone a favor by putting them in that position, but this isn’t good for you, him, or the company in the long run. FIX IT NOW!

  You agree that you need to hire the right person, but how can you do it? You have a track record of mixed results. The Perfect Hire Blueprint process is the answer. It has been proven by many consultants, recruiters and managers who have hired thousands of people. Why not use something that has a 90+% success rate vs. a typical hiring process that is about 50% successful?

  There are some who have a good track record of hiring that don’t use this kind of process, but even if you have one good hiring manager, the others usually do not see that level of success.

  I was one of those successful hiring managers who hired across multiple groups in one company. I think that was my legacy – more than anything else I contributed to the company. Most of the people I hired for this high-tech company from 1994 until 2003 are still employed there. But with all of my success, I still made one big mistake. I had honed a process and my instincts over the years, but one candidate got through who ended up being a failure at the company, and I’ve never forgotten it.

  I hired someone I knew socially and with whom I played basketball. He was a great point guard. He had great presence, good instincts, and a decent way about him. I was not objective – I was blind to signs that he was not a good fit. The job I hired him to do was in technical support. If you’ve ever worked in customer support, the ideal employee for this position and the ideal solution for the customer is FAST.

  Unfortunately, this candidate valued high quality over speed, and his level of quality took way too much time. He could handle less than half the volume that others did. Within 6 months of his employment, it wa
s clear that this had to change. We had a discussion at this point, and continued to have these discussions at least monthly. Before the first year, he had found another job, which was the best outcome I could have anticipated. I never calculated the full cost of this bad hire, but needless to say, I never took a shortcut in hiring again.

  My primary point is that we all are biased. Our past continues to shape our future. One bad encounter may cause us to shy away from anything that reminds us of the encounter. Conversely, a good outcome can bias us to try to repeat what worked, but each is just a data point; not a trend. Continuously good results are a trend, and an objective process delivers on that.

  Science-based Assessments have been proven to be unbiased and to improve any hiring process. In addition to the biases mentioned above, the Assessments cannot put any class of people at an advantage or disadvantage. The Assessments that I use have been proven to have no bias toward gender, race, age, disability or those with military service (see the TTI adverse impact study at PerfectHireBlueprint.com/Resources).

  Assessments must comply with The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) guidelines and those of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) if the company has government contracts.

  Hiring decisions that are made based on information from the candidate’s interview, experience, background, references, behavior, values, skill set and acumen are the most informed. If you remove any of these, the risk of a bad hire is greatly increased.

  How the Process Evolved

  Over the past 25 years I've hired some fantastic people. The process I started using was that of the company for which I worked, and I have evolved this process over the years. I have made a couple of mistakes in hiring, but I have not made the same mistakes twice. To a great extent, the people I've hired have performed well, and many are still in the same companies and roles today. That kind of retention is a testament to getting the right people in the right seats.

  With that said, I was never satisfied with the process. Looking back, I seemed to have a knack for recognizing the right people, but it was hard to teach that instinct to other managers. I’ve always wanted a system that was repeatable so that the wrong people did not get into the companies for which I worked. This system has continued to evolve as I've added key pieces along the way (including Benchmarking and great Assessments), and has come together to produce the Perfect Hire Blueprint.

  Hiring great people is the lifeblood of a growing company. Employing more people leads to more leverage, which results in higher profit down the road. The better the person fits in the role, the more profitable the company will be, and a company can’t grow if it can’t find good people.

  If the leadership has found a desired niche, the demand for the product or service will warrant more people to build and deliver it. For fortunate companies, the demand requires that they hire because they have outgrown the capabilities of the current staff, and the increased cash flow makes for an easy decision to hire more people.

  Hiring the right people for the right positions will allow your company to grow. If you hire the wrong people, you could lose the momentum that got you here – and you’ll need that momentum to reach your next business goal. There is a lot at stake. Doesn’t it make sense to increase the odds of success with a repeatable process that works?

  Let’s dive into the Perfect Hire Blueprint!

  Chapter 1: Preparing to Hire

  You’ve determined that you want to hire someone. Now let’s double check that it makes sense. This decision should not be taken lightly, yet many companies that I work with can’t reach their goals unless they get more of the right people.

  Questions to Ask Before Hiring

  There are so many things to worry about:

  Is now the right time to hire another person?

  Is there a long-term need for the position?

  Is part-time the right answer?

  Can we afford another person on the payroll?

  Is the needed skill set available?

  Where do I look to find the right person?

  What if the talent we need is too expensive?

  Can I offer a competitive package?

  Will our culture change with new people and growth?

  Can we properly onboard and train this person when we are all so busy?

  How much will it cost to find this person (job posting sites, headhunters, recruiters, temp agencies, paying people to look at hundreds of resumes, paying people to interview candidates, ramp-up time)?

  What interview questions can be asked and what can’t be asked legally?

  How will those who interact with the new employee feel about sharing information and recognition?

  What if we train someone and he leaves for the competition?

  What are the consequences if we don’t hire anyone?

  …no wonder companies procrastinate and don’t look forward to hiring!

  What Are the Costs of Hiring?

  The cost of hiring is more than just the total compensation of the person you hire. There is a real, tangible cost to hiring. Many managers procrastinate on hiring because they and their team are already too busy, and the thought of adding an additional top priority to the already full plate is daunting.

  In addition to the focus that hiring the right person takes, the cost of the hiring process is not insignificant. Here is a list of tangible costs to recruit and hire a candidate (opportunity costs are additional):

  Developing the ad (time/salaries for all involved in drafting the ad)

  Headhunter/recruiter fees (hourly if on-site, or up to 30+% of 1 year of salary if a headhunter – wide range of $5K to $100K, depending on the position.)

  Placing the ad strategically (salary or outsource expense, and cost of postings online and offline – at least a few hundred dollars per month)

  Tracking and filtering the candidates (tracking software, filtering time in data entry, wading through applicant info, and sending filtering email, scheduling calls, phone screening)

  Paying your A-players to interview candidates (time/salaries for your top performers)

  Paying your A-players for the roundtable discussion on candidates (time/salaries for your top performers)

  Travel expenses for candidates (just mileage if local, but airfare, hotel, car, and meals if not)

  Cost of getting the offer approved (typically more than one manager at a bigger company)

  Relocation and sign-on bonus, if applicable (immediate expenses).

  What happens if you find the right candidate, but she does not accept? You still have all the expenses above except for #1 and #2 if using a headhunter. Otherwise these expenses continue to add up.

  Reactive Recruiting vs. Talent Acquisition

  In 2014, a study by Bersin by Deloitte found that organizations at the highest level of talent acquisition maturity spend two times more per hire in less time compared to those with the lowest effectiveness. But that is just the upfront cost. Their return on good hiring and onboarding processes far exceeds that of the reactive hiring companies.

  What is the best way to keep your expenses down yet find the right A-player for your job opening? Fish for the right candidates where they can be found (see chapter 7 on Sourcing), and get the first great candidate to accept. The latter may require spending more than you originally budgeted, but it may be cheaper than looking for another candidate.

  Of course, having a plan B (another A-player as a close second) is the best strategy if you can make that happen. Then it is a value decision: if primary candidate does not take a fair offer, hopefully your backup candidate will. Having two (or more) great candidates can help you stay in budget.

  If you are looking for a purple unicorn (skills that are in short supply), it will cost even more. People who are this much in demand are not looking at job boards, so active recruiting is needed to find the passive talent (more on this in chapter 7: Sourcing).

  To do hiring right, it must be a priority. Speed is
your friend when hiring, so the hiring manager needs to be available when the candidates are available, and that is likely to include nights and weekends for telephone discussions, email exchanges and in-person meetings.

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  To do hiring right, it must be a priority. Speed is your friend when hiring.

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  Hiring the Right People

  Hiring the right people is the one of the biggest business problems today. In an economic expansion cycle like the one we are currently experiencing as of this writing, businesses need more good people: