Diligence in Hiring: Ensuring Your Candidate Thinks, Behaves and Performs like the Leader you Need
I know a manager who made hiring decisions with the salt-test. Here is how: take a candidate out for a meal, if they salt their food without tasting it, they are impulsive. Do not hire. I know an engineer who said of hiring decisions: “I’m good and so I just know who is good.” I also know people who exclusively do interviews and swear by them. Asserting that there is one best method of making hiring decisions is ignores the obvious complexity of work and over a century of science to improve hiring decisions.
Hiring is complex. Today, Leaders must navigate complexity daily and change constantly. Hiring decisions are essentially predicting performance across years of future challenges and are difficult to get right. While we should strive for simplicity, do not oversimplify hiring. The science has become technical – but a couple of points might summarize much of it:
Make sure you specify and investigate capabilities needed for the actual position, goals and context.
Use multiple measures and methods to capture different facets of capabilities or performance.
Be consistent and structured in trying to understand/assess these capabilities.
Being clear on the need is fundamental. You cannot reasonably evaluate candidates unless you know what you are looking for. An obvious point, but many position descriptions don’t include the specifics needed to understand the job. What are the objectives and key results (OKRs), cultural factors, experiences and skills needed for the actual job? It is also helpful to understand context and the “moments of truth” that will make or break the organization.
Because performance requires a mix of capabilities in a complex and changing environment, use multiple tools and methods to understand and predict performance. As my partner Harold Weinstein says, does it look, walk and quack like a duck? Many methods have the power to moderately help decisions. As distinctly different methods are “layered on,” decisions get better. The scientific consensus from the past 100 years provides insight into the strengths of different methods. Consider how the strengths of these different approaches can be leveraged in your situation:
Work samples: Actual performance under pressure provides an opportunity to observe the integration of several skills and abilities. Use a little creativity and you can find ways to sample the “moments of truth” for an executive job. Work samples is a very strong method for hiring decisions, according to meta-analysis research, especially for experienced hires. We work with successful PE and VC firms that ask CEO candidates to present a plan for their first 100 days to shed light on candidate understanding of skills like strategic planning, understanding of pressures, and the ability to influence groups. But watch out for being impressed by style versus substance. Key to making this method effective is having a standardized method of assessing performance during the work-sample.
Intelligence tests: judgement and the ability to process information and come to correct decision sometimes with limited or partial information. A very solid line of research suggests that mental ability tests are the strongest general method of making hiring decisions. We like the Watson Glaser because it uses scenarios that are relevant to executive decision making. Forming an understanding of raw decision-making capabilities is essential. But watch out, it is easy to overestimate the importance of intelligence for experienced leaders. Make sure to temper the interpretation of cognitive tests with further assessment of how, when and under what conditions the candidate makes choices.
Personality testing: work style, resilience, adaptability, and impact on others. Personality is important to leadership, especially conscientiousness, emotional stability, agreeableness and creativity. We like the Hogan Assessments because they investigate positive as well as toxic personal tendencies. We also like the Caliper which provides a highly nuanced assessment of personality and job-fit and includes a cognitive ability test. But watch out, insightful and experienced leaders can manage their challenging natural tendencies. Self- insight helps to overcome imperfections.
Interviews: communication, inspiring, short term relationship building, and examples of optimal performance. Structured behavioral interviews – asking about specific examples of situations that parallel the tasks the new leader will encounter-are proven to be a moderately effective method of making decisions. Unstructured and psychologically oriented interviews do not work as well. But watch—out, leadership candidates are often socially skilled and inspiring, but are they capable of long-term success? Make sure you are rigorously evaluating a breadth of capabilities and experiences.Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.
Making good hires requires focused effort and a reliable process. When considering candidates, use consistent criteria and methods. The research is clear that while structured interviews work, unstructured interviews do not. Hiring decisions will be consistently better if you are reviewing resumes with the same screens, interpreting assessments with the same guidelines and using the same interview questions. It is more work, but it will lead to better outcomes.
The strongest method of hiring employees is multiple methods. Advocates for one method are advocating for limited perspective and ultimately hiring candidates that succeed in one area but perhaps not in all.