A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

You may run a startup, but that doesn’t negate the value of a new study (includes link to the full study) by Unum and Monster.com that says culture is more important than compensation.

Number one on candidates’ list was a company “that truly cares about the well-being of its employees.”

The next three are

1.  A challenging and fulfilling position, which 84 percent of respondents identified as very important.

For the person attracted to the startup world this is a given, but it requires good interviewing skills to ensure that the attraction is real and not a product of media-driven startup fever.

2.  Job security, rated very important by 82 percent.

Many denizens of the startup world will scoff and stop reading at the words “job security,” but there is such a thing in startups. Startup job security is a function of a clear vision backed by knowledge of the target market; good business planning as opposed to shooting from the hip; strong financial controls from the beginning; good hiring practices, instead of “try it and dump if you don’t like it.”

3.  An attractive benefits package, which 74 percent of those surveyed rated very important.

Benefits are different strokes for different folks; for those in the startup world ‘benefits’ translates most frequently to equity, but that doesn’t eliminate the value and need for health insurance; people engage more fully when they aren’t worried about their families.

And salary seems to still be in fifth place just as it was 30 years ago.

• An attractive benefits package and an ethical, transparent culture were more likely to be viewed as very important in attracting and retaining staff than were a high starting salary and job security.
• Being a company that cares about the well-being of its staff was twice as likely to be viewed as very important in attracting and retaining staff as providing a high base salary.

Like it of not, benefits of any kind are concrete proof of caring and how those benefits are distributed is a reflection of an ethical, transparent culture—or not.

Option Sanity™ is integral to an ethical, transparent culture.

Come visit Option Sanity for an easy-to-understand, simple-to-implement stock process.  It’s so easy a CEO can do it.

Warning.
Do not attempt to use Option Sanity™ without a strong commitment to business planning, financial controls, honesty, ethics, and “doing the right thing.” Use only as directed.
Users of Option Sanity may experience sudden increases in team cohesion and worker satisfaction. In cases where team productivity, retention and company success is greater than typical, expect media interest and invitations as keynote speaker.

Image credit: Bun in a Can Productions

“I thought the whole process was more geared toward problem-solving than to me talking about who I was as an applicant and I liked that.” Andrew Snyder, 25

Hiring is in the top three, if not number one, of actions that ensure success, because it is having the right people that builds the strong teams that juice creativity and make it possible for the company to pivot as needed.

Hiring well means interviewing well and while there are many approaches to hiring there is nothing that can take the place of a really good interviewing process and well-trained interviewers.

Teams are old hat in some industries, but in others they are considered radically innovative and startup Virginia Tech Carilion Medical School is in that category.

The year-old startup, more than three years in the planning, received 2,700 applications for 42 openings in each class.

The applicants were first screened by traditional methods (grades, SAT scores, etc.) and 239 were invited to interview—and that is where things changed.

Driven by research, Carilion decided that (1) excellent communication and (2) strong social skills were must haves for any candidate they accepted.

The first is a growing catalog of studies that pin the blame for an appalling share of preventable deaths (98,000 deaths each year) on poor communication among doctors, patients and nurses that often results because some doctors, while technically competent, are socially inept.

The second and related trend is that medicine is evolving from an individual to a team sport.

Rather than rely on an interview with one recruiter, Carilion utilized a different approach called Multiple Mini Interviews (M.M.I.)

The system grew out of research that found that interviewers rarely change their scores after the first five minutes, that using multiple interviewers removes random bias and that situational interviews rather than personal ones are more likely to reveal character flaws, said Dr. Harold Reiter, a professor at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, who developed the system.

Here’s how it works,

…the school invited candidates to the admissions equivalent of speed-dating: nine brief interviews that forced candidates to show they had the social skills to navigate a health care system in which good communication has become critical.

MMI is used by eight other medical schools including Stanford and UCLA.

It’s a great approach, especially for screening out those who believe their vocation or actions confer god-like status—and the ego to go with it. Those types don’t play well with others and are rarely, if ever, strong team players.

I’ve been a fan of team hiring for years and done correctly the speed interviews bump it to the next level; a far smarter approach than Google’s algorithm or the normal one-on-one, with an introduction to a few team members.

Image credit: Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine

In my varied reading I keep seeing articles and blogs talking about the importance of assessing cultural fit, understanding management styles and approaches, etc., and they go on to recommend asking direct questions to obtain the information.

However, no matter which side of the desk you are on, direct questions will rarely achieve your goal.

Here’s why.

Direct questions contain the correct answer. In legal terms it’s referred to as “leading the witness.”

The following are examples from real interviews.

• “We at XYZ believe that teamwork is a major factor in our success and are looking to hire more; are you a team player, Ms. Candidate?” The candidate responded that she believed that being a good team player was of paramount importance for a company’s success.
• “I’m looking for an opportunity that will challenge me and a manager who will coach me so I can move to the next level; will I find that in the job you have open?” The manager responded that there were many opportunities for promotion and that he relished helping his people grow.

Both interviews continued along these lines, each person assuring the other that they fit the profile indicated by the questions.

In both cases the interviews resulted in offers and hires.

Neither one lasted six months.

What happened?

Did the candidate or manager intentionally lie or did they unconsciously say what the other person wanted to hear?

In most of the cases I’ve seen it’s the latter.

Candidates are encouraged to do what it takes to “get the offer,” while managers want to fill the position as quickly as possible and move forward.

People are smart and both go into the interview wanting it to work. The result is that they give the “right” answer, with little thought to the long term outcome.

The take away for you is to make this axiom part of your MAP, so it will guide your responses automatically, whether you are a manager hiring or a candidate interviewing:

Don’t lead the witness and don’t follow where the witness leads.

For guidance on asking non-leading questions click the appropriate link, RampUp’s CheatSheet for InterviewERS or RampUp’s CheatSheet for InterviewEEs™

Image credit: Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia

Last week we talked about the importance of good hiring to insure the success of your organization and I gave you a copy of RampUp’s CheatSheet for InterviewERS.

Tuesday I shared information on how to use your culture to screen candidates.

However, when it comes to the actual interview many managers and candidates view it as an adversarial function, which is, in fact, ridiculous.

Managers and candidates have the same goal—or they should have.

Interviews are occasions to find out if a candidate is right for the hiring manager, the team and the company; just as important is for the candidate to find out if she will be challenged and thrive in that environment.

In other words

• Managers want a person who shares the company’s values, will strengthen the team and can make real contributions to its success.
• Candidates want a place to contribute meaningfully, where the culture is synergistic with their own values and where they will continue to grow.

Same goal, different perspectives.

One part of the problem is that candidates are nervous and today’s economic turmoil increases normal interview jitters.

The other part is that the people doing the interviewing may not be very good at it or, worse, actively dislike doing it.

Here is one thing you do to help your candidates be comfortable enough to openly discuss who they are, what they can do and contribute and why they want to do it in your company.

Share RampUp’s CheatSheet for InterviewEEs before the interview.

Be sure to take the time to explain that you sent it because you want them to have the best interview possible.

You may be surprised at how much your candidates appreciate that attitude.

Plus there’s a hidden bonus, because you’ll know in the interview if they 1) took time to read it or 2) made use of any of the ideas.

Image credit: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1007380

The fastest way to kill your startup is to screw up your hiring.

If you don’t kill the company bad hiring will your culture.

Even if nothing dies poor hiring will make growth far more difficult.

I’m not the only one who thinks so.

Vator.tv asks this question in its investor profiles: What is the #1 mistake entrepreneurs make; samplings of recent responses are telling:

• Rajil Kapoor, managing director of Mayfield – Not hiring people better than themselves
• Tim Chang of Norwest Venture Partners – Not building a world-class team
• Joe Kraus, entrepreneur and investor – Not hiring well and/or hiring too fast (lesson learned as an entrepreneur – hire slowly and hire better than yourself, always.)

A few years ago I wrote You R Who You Hire; that wasn’t the first time I wrote on the topic (there are dozens of posts here on the importance of hiring well and how to do it) and this one won’t be the last.

So in the interest of better hiring, I’m posting RampUp’s CheatSheet for InterviewERS for you to use. It works for any hiring manger, whether in a startup, an enterprise or anything in-between.

Be sure to join me next week for a way to ensure a great interview.

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thetruthabout/4121026060/

I frequently get calls similar to the following. (If I’ve told this story in the past forgive me, but it illustrates my point with great clarity.)

A CEO I know called to rant about having to terminate her marketing VP.

When I asked why she said that in addition to being dissatisfied with his work she’d found out that his degree was in history, not marketing, as he claimed. She said that if she’d known about the degree she would never have hired him.

This was strange, since I know the VP, his resume simply says “BA University of X” and he has over ten years of experience.

When I asked why she did hire him she said that he’d been in marketing his whole career, had a reputation for doing very creative work, knew her industry and market and his references were fantastic. She ended the description by saying that if she’d know his BA was in history, not marketing, she never would have hired him.

When I suggested that maybe something else was going on, she vehemently told me that if he had a marketing degree he would know what he was doing.

Think about it, here’s a guy known for his creativity, with a great reputation in marketing, excellent references, knows the industry and market, but can’t perform because his ten-year-old degree wasn’t in marketing—I don’t think so.

The key change here is one of culture and management—the culture the CEO created and her management of him—not a decade-old college major fudged by omission. And note that she didn’t think it important enough to explore in the interviews.

Managers at all levels often call dismayed that a supposedly top performer isn’t living up to advanced billing and wondering what they should do.

My response is almost always the same, what differs is how I say it based on what I think that person can hear.

Bluntly or subtly I suggest they learn what they can about the environments where the person performed so well and how he was managed, then consult the mirror to find the differences.

Sometimes they even listen.

Flickr image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zedbee/103147140/

Do you pride yourself on your interviewing skills; on your ability to filter out your own prejudices, such as an ugly tie or the fact that you can’t stand blondes? Do you allow outside events to influence your interview evaluations?

If you answered ‘no’ a researcher in Canada has news for you.

Dr. Donald A. Redelmeier examined University of Toronto medical school admission interview reports from 2004 to 2009. After correlating the interview scores with weather archives, he determined that candidates who interviewed on foul-weather days received ratings lower than candidates who visited on sunny days. In many cases, the difference was significant enough to influence acceptance.

Wow. Bad weather just took on a whole new meaning.

These unconscious attitudes impact far more than interviewing; they color all our actions at work, at home and out in the world.

Being human means being vulnerable to unconscious and often illogic actions and reactions, but it also means finding a way to compensate for them.

How? By monitoring research, such as Redelmeier’s, and staying hyper-awareness of the foibles embedded in your MAP.

It doesn’t mean eliminating them, just being aware enough to offset their impact.

Flickr image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zedbee/103147140/

Philip Mydlach wrote a great article saying that to create a better environment, where creativity and success can flourish, the management team should be like a fudgsicle—consistent all the way through.

Your management team’s behavior sets the tone for the entire corporation. So it better be consistent, predictable and true to your core values.

Absolutely true, as is the need for clearly communicating those values and not tolerating managers who don’t support them.

But achieving your fudgsicle is easier if you include a preliminary step that Mydlach doesn’t mention.

That step is using your culture as a filter in all your hiring—especially when hiring management and most importantly the executive team.

10 years ago I wrote and article for MSDN about how to use company culture as a screening tool to avoid hiring turkeys of any kind at all levels.

With the sighting of “economic green shoots” this seems a good time to revisit it (with some updating).

Don’t Hire Turkeys!
Use Your Culture as an Attraction, Screening and Retention Tool
to Turkey-Proof Your Company.

Companies don’t create people—people create companies.

All companies have a culture composed of its core values and beliefs, essentially its corporate MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™), and it’s why people join the company and why they leave.

Generally, people don’t like bureaucracy, politics, backstabbing, etc., but when business stress goes up, or business heats up, cultural focus is often overwhelmed by other priorities.

In startups, it’s easier to hire people who are culturally compatible, because the founders first hire all their friends, and then their friend’s friends.

After that, when new positions have to be filled the only people available are strangers.

So how do you hire strangers and not lose your culture?

Since your culture is a product of your people, hire only people with matching or synergistic attitudes. The trick is to have a turkey sieve that will automatically screen out most of the misfits and turn on the candidates with the right values and attitudes.

Here is how you do it.

• Your sieve is an accurate description of your real culture.
• It must be hard copy (write it out), fully publicized (everyone needs to know and talk about it), and, most important of all, it must be real.
• Email it to every candidate before their interview and be sure that everyone talks about the culture during the interview and sells the company’s commitment to it.
• Everybody interviewing needs to listen carefully to what the candidate is saying and not saying; don’t expect a candidate to openly admit to behaviors that don’t fit the company MAP, since she may be unaware of them, may assume that your culture is more talk than walk or consider it something that won’t apply to her.
• Red flags must be followed up, not ignored because of skills or charm.
• Consider the various environments in which she’s worked; find out if she agreed with how things were done, and, more importantly, how she would have done them if she had been in control.
• Whether or not the candidate is a manager, you want to learn about her management MAP, approaches to managing and work function methods.
• Probing people to understand what their responses, conscious as well as intuitive, are to a variety of situations reveals how they will act, react, and contribute to your company’s culture and its success.

Finally, it is up to the hiring manager to shield the candidate from external decision pressures, e.g., friends already employed by the company, headhunters, etc.

Above all, it is necessary to give all candidates a face-saving way to withdraw their candidacy and say no to the opportunity. If they don’t have a graceful way of exiting the interview process they may pursue, receive, and accept an offer, even though they know deep down it is not a good decision.

A bad match can do major damage to the company, people’s morale, and even the candidate, so a “no” is actually a good thing.

Remember, the goal is to keep your company culture consistent and flexible as you grow. From the time you start this process, you need to consciously identify what you have, decide what you want it to be, publicize it, and use it as a sieve to be sure that everyone who joins, fits.

Use your cultural sieve uniformly at all levels all the time. If someone sneaks through, which is bound to happen occasionally, admit the error quickly and give her the opportunity to change, but if she persists then she has to go.

Do this and watch retention, creativity, productivity and morale surge ever higher.

Stop doing it at your own risk.

Image credit: daveyll on flickr

I have a post today at Leadership Turn that focuses on college student’s grade expectations for “trying really hard.” It’s worth clicking over to read because these are the same people you will be hiring over the next few years. Scary thought.

I said at the end that hiring managers might find it of more value to look at grades a bit differently.

Historically, managers and corporations have considered overall GPAs to be a significant factor when recruiting.

But based on current attitudes towards grade inflation, combined with federal, state and local governments’ focus on funding numbers as opposed to learning, perhaps there is a more useful use of grades.

Let me give you a real world example, I’ll call him Sam.

Sam has a 2.7 GPA, but if you look closer you see a different story.

Sam said that when he started college he not only didn’t bother studying he didn’t really know how. He said his grades in high school were mostly Bs and a few As, but that he never really put out much effort. His first semester was totally in the toilet and he almost flunked out when his GPA hit 1.8.

That was a wake-up call.

Sam buckled down. He started by learning how to study and how to learn and really applied himself.

Third semester his GPA was 2.5; junior year GPA was 3.1; senior year isn’t over.  Additionally, the GPA for his major is a solid 3.5.

Sam isn’t getting a lot of interviews; he believes it’s because of that 2.7 GPA and he’s probably right.

But for a manager with an entry level position, Sam is solid gold.

Think about it,

• he knows that he doesn’t know it all;
• he enjoys learning and understands the value of hard work;
• he knows that showing up every day isn’t enough; and
• he realizes that he needs to perform at a high level to have value.

Sure sounds like a valuable employee to me—and one with a lot of potential loyalty to those who can see past the trappings to the real value.

Are you smart enough and confident enough of our interviewing skills to find the Sam hiding in that stack of resumes?

Image credit: flickr