In one way or another, I’ve been involved in staffing for more than 30 years; first as a recruiter, then as a coach and mentor.

I’ve worked with companies from earliest startups to Fortune 500; with bosses ranging from CEOs and other executives to first-line supervisors and team leaders.

The best and smartest companies/bosses never have an opening and almost never lay people off — the ‘almost’ being directly connected to the the bosses’ level of control within the company.

How they accomplish this is often a mystery to outsiders, but it’s simply the result of specific MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™).

I’ve listen to many bosses tell me why this approach wasn’t feasible, often using their industry as the reason.

Most of the ‘reasons’ fall apart when you consider Intuitive Research & Technology, which has never laid off an employee.

That’s impressive for any company, but it’s especially notable for a 16-year-old aerospace engineering and analytics firm that’s a contractor for the federal government.

Intuitive also never has job openings.

Harold Brewer, Intuitive’s co-founder, chairman, and president, says the company has avoided reductions by taking a unique approach to hiring. “We don’t really have job openings,” he says. Instead, the company operates like a talent agency—always scouting for skilled employees. (…)  Brewer calls it a “speculation hire.”

His mantra is simple, “If it’s good for employees, it’s good for business,” so the company supports training, advanced education (unlimited tuition reimbursement) and pays substantial bonuses.

It’s what I’ve always said, hire great talent, instead of filling openings, cherish them, so they stay and watch your organization prosper.

Flickr image credit: Serena

I often say that I’m successful now because I’ve made every mistake in the book. The key is I’ve learned from those mistakes and it’s rare — if ever — that I make the same one twice. –Robert Herjavec

Herjavec wrote a good post on hiring that covers many bases, but ignores two critically important factors.

1. The most common reason for a bad hire is charm and the best way to guard against it is preparation.
2. The most common interviewing  error to avoid can be summed up this way: don’t lead the candidate and don’t follow where the candidate leads.

In fact, if you do nothing other than what is described in 1 and 2 your hires will improve significantly.

Flickr image credit: qthomasbower

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

Whose responsibility or fault, if you’re feeling judgmental, is it if a hire goes south?

No matter the circumstances, that dubious honor lies with the hiring manager.

In the decades I’ve worked with hiring managers I’ve heard every conceivable (and inconceivable) reason, but none shifted the de facto responsibility (blame, if you prefer).

Most of the time managers’ claim some variation of ‘the candidate lied…’

Of course, that’s what reference checks are for.

Often it’s the manager who doesn’t

• sufficiently think through the job;
• consider the current team’s competencies;
• accurately share the culture; or
• was even consciously aware of the culture;
• consider the candidate’s career interests;
• etc., etc.

The main thing to remember is what good hiring actually means:

Hiring the right person into the right position at the right time and for the right reasons.

Change any “right” in this sentence to “wrong” and you’ll end up with a bad hire, but a bad hire does not mean a bad person.

Bad hires have four basic ingredients—

• charm,
• bad reqs,
• poor hiring skills, and
• homophily

all of which are a function of the hiring manager’s MAP and can be overcome.

Founders, like many managers in larger companies, frequently claim they are too busy to take time to lay the groundwork for solid hires and then wonder why they make hiring blunders.

Poor hiring leads to high turnover.

High turnover shrinks your candidate pool because it wrecks your street rep and street reps are forever—good, bad or indifferent—nothing fades away in this digital age.

Image credit: HikingArtist

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

Entrepreneurs love hiring so-called stars; they work hard to steal them from a rival and brag about what their newest hire did previously.

Which, unfortunately, has little to do with how they will do in the future—think Ron Johnson and JCPenney.

Yet, no matter how often they are disappointed, bosses of every kind continue to hire based on history, with no consideration of contributing factors.

“Across all our studies, the results suggest that experts take high performance as evidence of high ability and do not sufficiently discount it by the ease with which that performance was achieved,” the paper reports.

Passion can take your company a long way, but if it isn’t backed up by good hiring you’ll be in big trouble, because the wrong hire can quickly derail success.

This isn’t new info, nor is it rocket science; people do not perform in a vacuum and common sense should tell you that environment and colleagues are an integral part of any individual success—but it doesn’t.

… not only were the studies’ subjects [business executives and admissions officers] unable to counteract this correspondence bias, they remained susceptible to it even when warned explicitly of its dangers. (…) …seasoned professionals discount information about the candidate’s situation, attributing behavior to innate ability.

The outcome is one of which you should be hyper aware.

“One of the consequences is that you end up admitting people who should not be admitted, and rejecting people who should not be rejected.”

It takes hard work to beat an innate prejudice, but it can be done

Take a moment to download The 12 Ingredients of a Fillable Req, CheatSheet for InterviewERS™, and CheatSheet for InterviewEEs^™; implement them and you will be well on your way to better hiring.

Image credit: HikingArtist

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

Wally Bock, who provides some of the best and most pragmatic content available on being a boss, shared the story of Ron.

I’ve known many Ron-s in my time, both male and female, and the managers who hired them—hired them even when they knew better.

They ignored the red flags and rationalized away any information or signals that contradicted their desire to have the Ron on their team

Often the Ron came in as a star; the person who could save the project/product or bailout the team.

But stars can turn into shooting stars, since their reputation and achievements are often a product of their skill at managing up.

How many Ron’s have you hired?

Image credit: HikingArtist

The Young Entrepreneur Council identified Ten startup hiring challenges with different entrepreneurs suggesting solutions.

The funny part is that when you read through them you’ll see that most are a function of poor candidate fit.

Successful hiring has a lot in common with good cooking, i.e., most of the work is in the prep and paying attention to details.

Poor candidate fit is generally the result a lack of preparation addressing three specific actions that should precede all interviews,

• creating a comprehensive position description;
• competent interviewing skills; and
• skilled reference checking.

It all starts with whether you have a req or a wreck (which is a wish-list of skills and experience).

One of the great benefits of a well thought-out req is that it also protects you from the number one hiring error (charm).

To help you along I’ve added a link in the right-hand column to the complete 12 Ingredients of a Fillable Req.

Take the time to think through each step in the order listed (as opposed to the typical order it’s done) and you’ll eliminate better than half of your hiring errors.

For help interviewing I’ve already posted both the InterviewER and InterviewEE CheatSheets; study the former and send the latter to your candidates.

We’ll talk more about reference checking next Thursday.

One more thing; if you don’t believe you have time to do the prep, don’t complain when your hires don’t work out.

Flickr image credit: anoldent

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

I’ve always believed that the difference between success and failure is opportunity.

Entrepreneurs love to talk about opportunity; I think it’s one of their favorite words—except when it comes to people.

Many entrepreneurs have no interest in anyone who hasn’t done [whatever], not necessarily through formal education, but immediate experience.

Which I find amusing, because what is current today will be outmoded or re-imagined—possibly before they even get their product to market.

Last July I worked (mostly argued) with “Tom” to develop the req for his top marketing person; an obviously critical position.

At the time, I warned him that he was creating a wish list wreck, not a req, but he “knew what he wanted.”

And what Tom wanted in his VP was someone well-versed in Facebook, Twitter, SEO and all things Internet; he said any marketing experience that predated Internet marketing was irrelevant.

When I asked about experience building a team, hiring, developing strategy, competitive pricing, etc. he said none were that difficult and as long as candidates knew the rest they could pick up the details on the fly.

Additionally, candidates had to be currently working; anybody not working no matter the reason was bad news and he wasn’t going to hire someone else’s mistake.

Plus, anybody smart enough to satisfy him would quit her current job in a heartbeat in order to jump on this opportunity.

Last week Tom called to say that he still hadn’t hired a marketing vp and his investors were pressuring him; did I have any other suggestions or ideas on filling the req?

I said not really, I had given him all my ideas when the wreck was being written and nothing new came to mind.

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The world today is one of nitch marketing and personalized mass consumer products.

The marketing folks are using customization/value-add/service/quality to sell to the individual and to capitalize on tiny segments of the market. The result is a surge in the ‘my way’ mentality of consumers, i.e., people.

OK, so what does all this have to do with your ability to do your job as a manager?

A lot, fortunately or not, depending on you and your MAP.

The mentality described above is the same mentality that you need to appeal to when hiring and with so few openings it’s more critical than ever to hire the right person at the right time and for the right reasons.

In spite of the economy and the abundance of candidates, to get the person you want you’ll need to sell—the job, your company, yourself, your team, corporate culture, everything—to candidates, just as they’re selling themselves to you.

You can make your staffing life easier by doing two things.

First, be sure to write a really complete req, not, as I’m fond of saying, a wreck.

Next, determine your position’s niche and identify the characteristics of that market. Here’s an example of what I mean; match the following programming jobs

1. upgrades
2. advanced development
3. maintenance

with the correct mentality

1. bleeding edge
2. tinkerer
3. improvement

Once this is done you can make sure that both the req and ad target the correct candidates, saving yourself time, energy, money, and nerves—not to mention looking like a hero.

Answer: 1-3; 2-1; 3-2

Image credit: flickr