After the Merry-Go-Round Stops
This final chapter brings in a few other considerations that work in concert with your Models. Compensation always seems like a super-big deal because…well, it is…so I’m going to talk a little about compensation and not inconsequentially how you go about paying for the higher cost employee that a Model often represents. You certainly don’t want to go through all this effort, train an exceptional employee and then lose him or her to competition over a dollar an hour. The second mini-section of this chapter is a real brief discussion of the interview, taking notes and what not. And, I’m also going to talk about something I alluded to in my discussion of my Teller Model: the next most difficult question.
A Note Regarding Pay
The big question: “Does pay matter?”
The big answer: “Heck yes it matters.”
Survey after survey of employees list “pay” as the reason someone is “dissatisfied with their current work” or the reason someone “leaves a job” in the fourth, fifth or lower position. The number one is always and easily “the supervision,” often followed by a “lack of autonomy in decision making,” followed by “environment,” or “opportunity,” or something like that–in other words we could easily conclude “pay simply ain’t it. Sorry. It’s not.”
If we come to this conclusion, based off consolidated survey data, we’d be wrong.
Pay matters. I find ridiculous our apparent acceptance of training our employees and then losing them to competition over a few hundred dollars a year. For crying out loud, we spent thousands of dollars hiring them, who knows how much training them and making them productive and then we treat $0.50 an hour as though this were a big decision. If you hire an exceptional employee, and you’ll know this fairly quickly, please pay this person appropriately and be proactive about it–don’t wait until she comes to you saying “Well, ACME First Federal Credit is going to pay me a dollar more an hour.” We should try and insure that if we do lose one of these great employees to ACME, ACME pays a premium. To do otherwise is to shirk our responsibility as leaders in our organization.
To underpay these folks, too, is a slap in their face. The question I’ve been asked is “well, if you are willing to pay me that much now, why have I been making this much for the last three years.” And then they leave more upset than they were when they first started looking (and if you believe the line “I wasn’t looking; they called me,” I have some ocean front property in Montana I’ve been trying to unload for a very long time. Call me. I’ll make you a deal).
And, that said, you need to insure you’re advocating either a higher rate of pay or a significant increase for only an exceptional performer and not just someone holding a hot hand during their first few months, or someone doing the least most mediocre job.
“But I don’t have in my budget the ability to pay someone substantially more than all the rest. How do we pay for this additional expense?”
Good question. Glad you asked. Please suspend judgment for a few minutes until you get through the following paragraphs. Revolutionary change also requires radical thinking. Get ready for this ride right now.
I speak with supervisors, as well as with the employees, they designate as their “super performer.” You’ll notice, too, I didn’t say “top performer.” Even in a pool of mediocrity, you’ll have a bell-shaped curve and someone who is the least mediocre will stand head and shoulders above the others. That’s why I’m not advocating hiring “the most qualified.” The “most qualified” in a pool of mediocrity may simply be the least most mediocre person of the bunch. Try not to fall into this trap. Repost, re-recruit, re-start this process. Don’t settle for the least most mediocre. The pain of the least most mediocre far outweighs the pain of reposting and finding the right person.
Every single one of the supervisors who I talked with said something like the following regarding their exceptional employee: “I don’t have to supervise her.” “He works circles around everyone else.” “He produces three times as much as my other employees.” (NOTE: as you’ve read, that number went up to seven as in “She produces I bet seven times as much as my other employees.”) “I can’t live without her.”
Since I first wrote this manuscript I’ve run across articles and one of those was talking about these super performers and stated “this sort of performer will produce 1500% more than a lower performer.” I kept the article for the longest time, meant to include it as a fancy reference to intelligent people and simply misplaced or lost it over the years. 1500% is jaw dropping, but even if the number 250% that’s still pretty darned good and worth waiting for.
I imagine very few people reading this are probably in banking I can use some real numbers (that may not make a lot of sense to those outside of banking), which I’ve rounded and made manageable, so they have a little “pretend” in them. And markets are different. What works in rural West Texas may not be the number in Houston (in fact I know it’s not), but follow my logic for a minute and then I’ll sum it all up. And those of you outside banking, if you hang in there for a few minutes, I think you can see the concept and formulas are most applicable to your business. If you can’t get there, contact me and I’ll try to help.
I’m going to show you how, but please understand the following numbers may or may not work based primarily on your technology. Our Tellers after our acquisition and with the introduction of antique technology would struggle to produce 2,500 transactions per month (our former standard).
I’m also using a base of $22,000 for a Teller and in Atlanta maybe this number is $28,000 and in New York maybe the number is $37,500 and in Duluth maybe the number is $26,000. Just increase or decrease the base to fit your market and realize the formula I share with you in the following will work for any position; you just may have to reset the base.
Let’s say you manage a bank branch. You know, because “Corporate” has told you, that an average Teller (cashing checks, doing a money order, analyzing an overdraft) can process 83.33 transactions a day, 10.42 per hour. You also know, as it’s in your P&L report that your 8 Tellers make an average of $22,000 a year, $10.58 an hour. And in another report you’ve found that benefits (time off, health, dental, 401[k]) are adding another 30%, $6,600, to that base of $22,000. So each Teller you have at your branch is costing you an average of $28,600 per year. Your lowest paid Teller makes $9.75 an hour; your highest makes $12.17 an hour. The spread between your highest paid Teller and your lowest is $2.42 an hour or $5,034 per year. You’re looking at all that data and thinking “that’s pretty good.”
Problem is, Bob, your lowest paid Teller, you would just as soon get rid of. He’s been with you for 16 months, but his transaction volume is 41, less than half what an average Teller can do in a normal day. Gail, your highest paid Teller averages 85 transactions a day, not setting the world on fire, but she’s been around since dirt and although her attitude is something just above “The Grinch before he met the little Who,” most days she’s here on time and doesn’t bother you very much.
Your branch is averaging 861 transactions per day, just under 108 transactions per Teller. You know that fairly non-aggressive average from Corporate per Teller is 83.33 per day. You have 8 Tellers. Your branch should be able to easily accommodate 667 transactions (8 Tellers X 83.33 transactions) per day and yet your branch is doing 853 (give or take) transactions in a day. How are you doing that? You look at the transaction report and see everyone, except Bob, is around the average (83.33). Except for Bob whose below and except for Mary who is…who is…who is…is that a misprint?
Mary falls about in the middle of the compensation range for your 8 Tellers. She makes $10.15 an hour. But, based on Mary’s transaction volume, Mary just runs circles around everyone else. You wish you had more like her. You don’t even consider yourself having to supervise her. She’s the one who always has a smile on her face and she’s the one customers line up to see. You’ve always thought of Mary as being able to produce several times as much as everyone else. Today you look at the transactions for the year and the averages for each Teller and the report confirms this assumption. You smile because you knew it before the report showed you. Mary’s closest competitor does 93 transactions per day. Mary does, and here’s the number you were questioning as a misprint, 312 transactions per day. You don’t know what you would do if you lost Mary. Some customers would undoubtedly follow her. Your current group obviously couldn’t handle the volume. You wish you could pay her more, but you have a budget and…
Here’s the solution. You don’t need 8 Tellers. You need three Tellers just like Mary because Mary is the definition of an exceptional employee, a person who works at three or four times the rate of everyone else, you don’t need to supervise, is almost always in a good mood–your Model tells you all this.
Getting from where you are to where you need to be is easy to accomplish, although the numbers make the calculation a little cumbersome. Hang with me. Excluding benefits, you’re paying your 8 Teller group $176,000 per year. Give Mary a $7.00 per hour raise ($17.10 an hour, $35,672 per year) and hire two more just like her (you’ll be slightly over-staffed, based on your current volume [861] transactions per day, but why not [861 transactions divided by 312, Mary’s volume equals 2.75 Tellers with Mary’s capacity]). You don’t have to start them at $35,672. Start them at $32,000. Your total Teller payroll will now be $99,672; the bank saves $76,338 and you have 3 Marys, people you don’t have to supervise, people who work circles around the rest of the bank, people who aren’t going anywhere, people who are happy and cheerful.
“But I have all these other Tellers.” You have to manage this process correctly. You have to be able to run over-staffed for just a little bit because you can’t have your other 7 Tellers walk out the door. This will be the sales job you have to promote and get senior management buy-in to.
Immediately, hire another Mary and then interview and have another Mary sitting in the wings, waiting for the opportunity. He or she will wait. They’re making $7 or $8 per hour less than what you’re offering. You can also use this third Mary position as a “just in case” someone on the staff steps up. And if you’re thinking “how do I know if I’m talking to a Mary,” ask them for their transaction volume and how it’s calculated.
Next, after insuring you’ve hired another Mary, announce to the group that Mary is doing about four times the number of transactions of the next closest person. Because of this you’ve made the decision to give her a $7.00 an hour raise because her results demonstrate she’s worth it. And, you’ve hired Randi and you’ve hired her at slightly below Mary because she has all the attributes to perform at that level and that’s your expectation that she will. And, you’re agreeable to paying anyone else in your group that can perform at Mary’s level, but this offer is only good for the first person to reach that level of performance and only to the person who can bring an attitude very much similar to Mary’s and Randi’s to the group. Anyone who cannot achieve these new goals before you hire someone who can achieve these results will be offered the bank’s standard severance package unless their performance goes down or fails to improve and then you’ll offer the standard severance package sooner. Immediately following this very public meeting offer the severance package to Bob and send him out the door.
And, a quick aside. You may be reading this and thinking I’m suggesting taking your top performer and declaring him or her your “Exceptional Employee” and giving him or her a 35% to 60% increase. If you’re thinking this you are wrong. You may not have an Exceptional Employee in your work group; chances are you do not. If you do, you know exactly who I am talking about. If you’ve had one in the past, you’re thinking about him or her in your head right now. These people are exceptional. They set your world on fire in a good way. When they announce their husband has been transferred, their impending departure takes your breath away. When they tell you they’re going back to school to be a nurse, you support them on the outside, but hope they’re grades won’t allow them to get in. When they come and tell you their wife has gotten a promotion and your exceptional performer has decided to home school the kids, you want to print out articles of all the fathers who have tried this and gone stark raving mad. These are your Exceptional Employees.
And you’re going to get pushback on this plan from everyone from your supervisor to HR. However, a couple of things. You’re simply changing the rules in your workplace. This is something companies do constantly. There’s nothing illegal, immoral or unethical about it. It’s called “good business.” And, this process, although very difficult on individuals and very personal to them, is simply a reduction in force, so HR should have limited problem with it, although they’ll probably jump up and down about it for a bit because, by and large, that’s what most HR Departments usually do. It’s their job and they’re darned good at it.
HR has a problem. Well, at least one. We almost always work to insure people are happy. We should be working to insure people are productive. The way to get a happy workforce is to hire happy people and avoid grumps like the plague. When someone says “oh, she’s always happy” it’s not because there’s this constant stream of joy from HR; it’s because happy people are happy that’s why we term them “happy.”
There’s nothing illegal, immoral or unethical about this concept I’m sharing and your decision to implement. Less fair is the workplace where you have a Mary outperforming everyone by leaps and bounds and working her tail off and getting the standard 3% increase while Bob, the slug is sliming the place up and so we give him “only” 2.5%.
The criteria for staying in your workgroup is based exclusively on performance and anyone who can perform can stay. Bob can’t because he’s already demonstrated he can’t even perform at the bare minimum now. You should be able to show your supervisor on a piece of paper how you’re going to break even on the budget in 12 months and be ahead of budget by the personnel cost savings within 18 months. You can show her all the softer dollars too, your time to do more productive junk, like generate more business, being the big one.
A caveat. As mentioned you have to know if your technology can support the increased volume. When our bank sold a decision was made to move our Tellers backward to an archaic Teller platform, what they use to process transactions. This archaic Teller platform was the one used by the dominant bank. Using this antiquated system our exceptional Tellers couldn’t reach 2,500 transactions a month with an assistant and four more hours in everyone’s day. This is true of all industries. The speed of any system, any system, is dependent on the speed of its slowest component.
Computers and the internet are classic examples. Many do not remember the 300 BAUD (300 BAUD simply being the speed of the connection) modem, but it’s where some of us started (if not slower). We used to be amazed in the computer lab to watch each letter appear as though someone behind the screen were typing it and in four or five or ten minutes a half page of text would be displayed on this little green screen and we’d all smile at this magic. Think of the difference today where you can often have almost instantaneous access to a webpage. Hook up all the fastest equipment you can possibly find with the fastest Ethernet, optics, whatever. Use all the super-whiz-bang devices to connect to the Internet and have mind-stunningly fast webpage access. Then somehow, at the frontend of that chain of Ethernet, computer, Internet, hook up a 300 BAUD modem and see how fast your super-fast system runs. It’ll run at 300 BAUD, provided of course you can get it to run at all with this albatross. The speed of any system, any system, is dependent on the speed of its slowest component.
In regard to making the transition from your current workgroup to an exceptional performance workgroup, the only question remains “can you do it?” The safe bet in my experience is to answer that question “no,” but I follow that with “but I think you can.”
The process may take a bit longer than I describe in the preceding. You may need to hire your next Mary and then insure you’ve hired a Mary and not a Bob, but as soon as you know that you have, you need to execute the plan.
You’re biggest pushback is going to be Senior Management and whoever oversees “the budget.” You may have to put your neck on the line, so make sure you’re up to being a hero and not just up to being heroic.
Once started, you can’t go back. You can’t stop the plan’s execution. You’re being watched. Closely. Long-term career growth for yourself will not happen if you end up running a mediocre, over-staffed work group with the highest payroll expense by far in the company. Don’t go into this thing halfway; you have to jump in with everything. This process takes someone whose not averse to extreme risk and there’s always this fine line between risk and stupidity. You have to decide if you can withstand the withering pressure because for more time than is comfortable you’re going to be looked on as being on the wrong side of that risk/stupidity line.
My advice in this regard would be to get as many senior managers to buy into the concept as you possibly can and experiment, understanding two things: first, the more people you include in the initial discussions the further public the intent of your actions become and your workgroup will find out from one of those “knights on a white horses” we have to deal with who are “fixing things,” and second, the buck stops with you. Always.
There may be a concern of “well, what happens if all the other Tellers start performing at Mary’s level.” Here’s the deal. None will. That said, excluding Bob because he needs to be gone, you’re going to be processing 2,184 transactions per day, if all 7 tellers are performing at Mary’s level. You’re either not going to have the business to justify 7 Tellers who can process this many transactions, at which point you offer severance to the lowest performers, or you’re going to have the folks from Corporate in to see what the heck you’re doing because they want to replicate whatever it is.
But dimes to donuts not a single existing employee will step up and the longer term employees will be the most difficult to get to move. Why? Because we are who we are. I’ve used the old adage, “The best predictor of future performance is past performance” and you’ve probably read it about a zillion times outside of my work. Well, on the zillion and one time believe it as it’s true. The performance of your work group is the performance of each individual within that work group plus any synergy you’ve created. You can spend a fortune on training and consultants, but the needle isn’t going to move a great, great deal, probably. My advice is to get your severance packages ready and start passing them out on day one. “Bye, Bob. Take care.”
You have to pay your exceptional performers to keep them. You have to pay them a lot more than the employees way down on the performance ladder. The only way you can do that is to increase your income or reduce your expenses. Increasing your income is going to be very difficult because you’re existing Teller group is only going to process so much and generate only so much income. That’s true of every single work group in any industry anywhere. So you have to work on the expense side of the balance sheet. Although I disagree with the concept that employees are an expense, they are if they’re not producing what you need, and this expense needs to be eliminated.
You’ll be producing more and spending less. You’re branch will be brighter, happier, faster, more efficient. You’ll have eliminated your turnover, which I won’t go into the statistics, but is costing you a bundle. You won’t be spending your days supervising/babysitting your staff and so you’ll be out selling or procuring loans, or setting up business accounts, or…
The downside to this process is you’ll have to have one difficult meeting, manage a difficult few weeks and have some difficult conversations with folks you’ve known for a bit when you eliminate their positions.
There’s always some pain associated with a radically different approach. This is the “some pain,” and it’s admittedly substantial pain, of this approach.
I know, too, there’ll be those who will plan to accomplish what I’m suggesting through natural attrition. The problem with this scenario besides the fact it won’t work is several-fold. First, each and every year when you’re doing annual increases you’re going to have the painful conversations with all the other staff because you cannot pay them more for sitting there for another year. Second, you’re not going to be able to pay Mary the $7 an hour more and she’s going to leave on you because some other company will pay her significantly more and $0.50 or $0.75 an hour more isn’t going to hold her. Third, why are any of your existing folks going to leave? They’re obviously comfortable doing what they’re doing and now they can sit around and grumble and make your life even less enjoyable, and, yes, someone somewhere may offer them a little bit more, but, then, there’s nothing “leadership” about hanging around and waiting for events to overtake you. Fourth, if you have a plan and execute the plan, you can staff your organization appropriately. If you do not, then you’re at the mercy of others making the decisions for you. Fifth, the company isn’t sitting still. They’re wanting more and more from you each year. How do you intend to get there with staff that can’t take you there? Who gets the severance package then? Sixth, how the hell do we justify Mary’s performance and pay to her or to ourselves? It’s outrageously unfair. Sixth…Seventh…Eighth…
I like to ask myself a question when I’m looking at systems: “Is what we’re doing sustainable?” For example, we know there are not enough people in Generation X and Generation Y to cover the vacancies that will be created by those of us in the Baby Boomer generation. It’s mathematically impossible. Add to that that the Xers and Yers have other interests and expertise and there’s a huge misfit. The vacancies we will have to fill are mathematically impossible to fill with the population of Americans we have to choose from. So what? The system is not sustainable. That’s the sort of question to ask yourself about everything we’re doing. Is what we’re doing sustainable?
Not to repeat myself, but
The downside to this process is you’ll have to have one difficult meeting, manage a difficult few weeks and have some difficult conversations with folks you’ve known for a bit when you eliminate their positions.
There’s always some pain associated with a radically different approach. This is the “some pain,” and it’s admittedly substantial pain, of this approach.
You can more than offset the additional compensation in two areas: (1) increased production and (2) decrease headcount necessary to perform the same job.
Get out a sheet of paper and list the downside to the preceding.
I am concerned, but not overly concerned, about what “our existing” employees will say or think. If they’re of this “exceptional” caliber they should be compensated accordingly as well, and, if they’re not, they shouldn’t be. We should be able to demonstrate to existing employees what we require to get to this next level and then we should be able to measure if and when they get there.
I’ve held these sorts of conversations with staff and I’ve experienced the incredible turnover briefly, so in the words of President Bill Clinton, “I feel your pain.” The other side of this however is that the new workplace is definitely worth the pain and the productivity is definitely worth the pain.
As I mentioned earlier, scientifically validated studies indicate an “exceptional performer” has the capacity to produce up to 2,500% (yes, 2,500) above an “average performer.” I do not have an idea of how “they” (the researchers) arrive at that 2,500% number. A scientific study to me, where as many variables as are reasonable are eliminated, carries with it some pretty significant validity. And, even if the number is 250%, I think that sort of productivity is worth supporting. 2,500% percent, of the 83 transactions per day average, in my example in the preceding, is 1,667 transactions per day. In the preceding example your branch is only doing 861 transactions per day. To cover this volume, you need to hire one of these exceptional employees and have them work part-time.
In this regard, we should be willing to reward this sort of effort and reward this effort handsomely. And, we should be willing then to look at our staffing as a legitimate way to pay for this new system. If we are unwilling to look at our staffing levels in the context of our employee group’s productivity, then we should be unwilling to look at increasing our rewards to our Exceptional Employees. One does not fly without the other.
And, if we cannot consider the preceding, we should live with what we have as, unless the organization is willing to absorb some significantly higher compensation costs, we cannot move forward with the plan I propose. But the preceding takes leadership. Any leaders out there?
And the system we currently have, where we lose someone and hire someone, is mathematically unsustainable. The first organizations that recognize this and actually have a plan in place will win. What will happen to the rest is they will end up paying progressively higher wages to have access to a progressively dwindling population until even the mediocrity they’re hiring is demanding some exceptionally high wages.
“I thought you were in human resources?” I get that comment a lot. I get that comment because I tell my peers to quit trying to make people happy and make them productive. I get that comment a lot because I propose solutions like the preceding, which seems to make a lot of business sense, but man we have to fire some long-term employees. I get that a lot because I try to find ways to create ROI (Return on Investment) and not simply spend money on our people because we’ve planned this party since last year. This endeavor we’re involved in, this business, isn’t a game–it’s a deadly serious enterprise that if managed properly will allow us to be successful as well and if managed poorly will be driven out of the marketplace and into bankruptcy or closure. We are well past the time when human resources should be the driver behind results associated with our human resources.
On Interviewing and Taking Notes
When you sit to perform an interview please consider having another manager or senior employee with you. This person can either be another note taker or can be a questioner and note taker. The more copious your note taking, in the right way, the better your ending evaluation will be. Tell the candidate that you are going to be scribbling notes and you’re not ignoring him or her or attempting to be discourteous, but you want to make sure you have sufficient information to make a good decision. (I usually bring a laptop and take notes on this, but, then, if I don’t I often can’t read most of my scribbling and my hand gets real tired, so, without a laptop, I quit taking real good notes about half way through an interview, which is not a desired outcome.).
Immediately following the interview, take 10–15 minutes to read over your notes and add and delete as you see a need (you should not be discussing the candidate at this point with the other note taker, but he or she probably should be involved in the same exercise of rereading their notes). Remember, too, you’re looking for notes that will aid you in evaluating the candidate against your Model, so you may want to read over your Model real quickly before sitting down to this task. Even if you’ve used your Model document as your foundation and simply jotted notes in the margins, read over it again and then read over your notes.
And, if you didn’t find the candidate worth the interview, don’t spend any more time on this process. I’m a firm believer in stopping the process when you know there’s not a fit. There are some legal liabilities associated with this, like if all the black candidates get short interviews, or the person in the wheelchair hardly gets past the first question. But you should have a very legitimate reason for stopping the interview. “I was tired” won’t work. “We needed a relationship builder and John could only share with us relationships he’d mangled and we gave him multiple opportunities, but he didn’t come up with any positive examples.” There’s a legitimate reason to cut an interview short.
What we’ve seemed to have done in the past few years is build all our processes, policies and procedures to avoid the boogeyman of litigation. I’d like to propose we be careful, but refocus on our businesses and there’s nothing quite as critical as finding the right people to do the right job. We may have difficulty successfully exercising this goal if we can’t exorcise the boogeyman of litigation from our every thought process. And here’s an idea, if you have an HR person who simply uses the “we’ll get sued” excuse every time someone brings up anything even minimally controversial, it’s time for a new HR person. With some pretty minimal effort the chances of a company being involved in employment litigation are pretty small (this may change, and I’m not saying it should or shouldn’t, with a change in Presidents and parties) and if an HR person cannot give you legitimate reasons behind his “because we’ll get sued” he’s the wrong person for this vital role.
Asking behavioral questions will seem awkward at first. “Describe for me…” or “Tell me about…” is not the most natural way we usually ask questions. Most these sorts of queries don’t even end with question marks. You’ll find candidates really struggle sometimes with what you’re asking for. You really need to consider taking a few minutes and sitting down with your Model and your questions and attempting to insure you know before the interview what answers would most meet your requirements. If you keep using this process, it will pay huge dividends, but you cannot expect to be proficient at anything by using it a couple of times.
With this process, based on a Model, you’re probably going to do a much better job of hiring a better candidate right off the bat than you’ve been doing with a traditional interview, but just guessing, even with my work, you’re probably six or eight or ten hiring decisions away from having that light bulb come on in your head and experiencing an “ah ha!” moment and selecting an exceptional performer.
Don’t give up on the process. After each hiring decision take just a few minutes and think about things you’ll do differently next time. Try keeping a “legal pad,” iPad or whatever of these “jotted suggestions to self.” In the military they call this an After Action Review (AAR) and they’re invaluable. You’ll like the outcome of your personal AARs in just a little bit of time.
Generally, start to finish, you spend 75–90 minutes, maybe a couple of hours for a really long one, in the interview and reviewing and editing your notes. This may seem like a lot of time, but in the overall scheme of an exceptional employee’s career, finding a better expenditure of your time would be difficult. Think of a poor hiring decision you, or someone you know has made; how much time did he or she spend dealing with the nonsense? As Charles “Red” Scott of Pier One Imports said “You can never pay the right person enough, and you always pay the wrong person too much–no matter what the number.” This process is designed to select the right person. It will require an investment, however.
At the end of the interview your goal is very simple. You must be able to compare a candidate’s responses to your Model. If you’re able to do this, you will have a much higher degree of success in predicting whether the person you’re considering hiring will potentially be an exceptional performer. The closer someone aligns with your Model, the closer you are to hiring that elusive superstar performer.
And I think if I see one mistake more than any other in this deal it is in the taking of copious notes. Your goal, again, is not to jot down everything coming out of someone’s mouth. Your goal is to align what the person is saying to your Model. This can be as easy as underlining the critical elements of your Model, “great relationship builder,” and jotting a “YES!!!” in the margins. I wouldn’t advocate simply jotting a “YES!!!” as it really doesn’t say much and you do want to be able to rebuild the interview from your notes in case you are ever asked, but you can jot “YES!!! See explanation on notes #3” where your “notes #3” is a legal pad or a laptop and #3 gives a more detailed description of what brought you to “YES!!!” Remember, this is your interview. If you have to take a few minutes to jot some notes, the interviewee will gladly wait. And sometimes the extra silence pays dividends.
After the interviews are done, you’re going to be left with a stack of notes on each candidate. You’re going to be able to eliminate several very quickly. They’re going to have a few of the skills, attributes and behaviors you’re looking for, but they’re also going to be lacking in a couple of areas (and, remember, these are the areas you defined as part of the exceptional performer’s package). Someone missing a skill or talent in a normal interview may not be cause for enormous worry. Someone missing the same skill or especially talent (as a skill is generally trainable and a talent not so much) here probably excludes themselves. And then you’ll just have to decide how closely you need the person sitting in front of you to align with your Model. I’d recommend “pretty darn close” as a little difference makes a lot of difference, but “pretty darn close” is something you’ll have to decide on and it will become more clear as you get into The Model, the interviews and note taking.
The Next Most Difficult Question
Let me explain a problem with this whole Model thing and a potential problem with the preceding plan regarding compensation. Let me put this as the very last thing in this manuscript because it is the most important concept I think I came up with and it’s pretty simple: The next most difficult question.
As you traverse the Model I built specifically for Tellers, but one where many of the queries can be used for any customer-facing positions, so long as they answer questions related to the picture your Model has drawn for you, you’ll notice me saying things like “ask the next most difficult question,” or recommending a “follow-up.”
Let me try to explain what I mean. I have numerous follow-up suggestions in my Model questions that I’ve shared with managers and have given you here as examples, but follow-ups are very tricky. I’m not going to be sitting in the room (probably) during the conversation you have with your candidate and I can’t whisper “ask this question.” So, you can read my work, use it to develop your Model, use it to put together a host of incredible questions, but then you’re on your own. That’s sort of the way this process works. Sooner or later momma bird is going to kick you out of the nest and you’re going to have to fly. Now seems about as good a time as any, although I’m using “momma bird” only as an analogy as I can’t be a momma and I don’t think of anyone reading this book as a baby.
I’d advocate that you think deeply about what you’re asking and what answer you’re seeking. This will lead you to the next most difficult question, the follow-up when the candidate invariably goes off on a bunny trail and you’re no closer to the answer you needed than when you started.
Let me also let you know something sort of depressing right here. I advocated earlier you have another person in the room. For the first few years I was messing with this “behavioral” stuff I’d explain to the candidate that the other person who was in the room would be asking the questions and I would be typing furiously on my laptop to try and collect as much information as I possibly could and to please simply ignore my flying hands and ignore the fact that I wasn’t going to be interacting and ignore the fact that sometimes I’d be typing like a possessed maniac and other times I’d appear to be completely disengaged. My job in this process was listening intently and recording accurately everything the interviewee was saying.
I did this for several years because I’m not that bright.
It took me that long, and again as I explained in the interviewing section in the preceding, to realize what is wrong with behavior-based interviewing. Behavior-based interviewing is better than the usual fly by the seat of your pants interview where someone asks a bunch of irrelevant, and/or inane questions and then everyone shakes hands and this interviewer repeats this process and then usually hires the last one interviewed because the interviewer can’t really remember the others all that well and is tired and ready to be done. Behavior-based interviewing is a lot better than this sort of process, but the problem with behavior-based interviewing is when you get done you have an absolutely accurate record of the interview. Lawyers, generally, love this process because of its attention to detail and I’m not saying all this detail is wrong. It simply isn’t always what you need.
When you go back to your copious notes, you find you’ve recorded a sterile description of the interview that just took place, but you’re probably no closer to a legitimate decision than you were before you started. And maybe there’s a matrix HR has developed associated with your behavioral interview and you’ve checked “meets criteria” more often than you’ve checked “hasn’t the foggiest idea what I’m talking about.” And you add up all those checks for each candidate and one person has six positives, and one has nine and one has eleven and one has ten and one has seven and another has nine and you hire the one with eleven and the one with seven was actually the person you liked the best, but you can’t put your finger on why.
But the process said “eleven.”
You have scientifically, mechanically selected the person your process has told you most meets the criteria you defined on your job description and laid out neatly on the matrix and all the lawyers in the room are happier than Betty getting a date with Archie over Veronica. I’ve always wondered what was the big deal with Archie, but that’s probably a topic for another time.
And the preceding process is much, much, much better than the process you have used in the past and you still didn’t hire who it is you needed to hire. Probably.
To some degree the process of our Model fixes this, but to some degree it does not. I can almost guarantee you that you’re going to do your first interviews using your Model and when you get done you’re going to wonder what you have and it will turn out you don’t have what you need, but you have very copious notes. You may even develop a post-interview matrix and go back to your notes and try to complete the matrix.
Your Model isn’t the problem. It’s so far superior to a job description as to be comparing an ox-drawn cart to a flying car (if one existed).
You may follow this copious note process, however, for a couple of years, if you have that kind of persistence and then a little bell will ding in your head, a light bulb will click on, or some other appropriate analogy will appear and you’ll get it.
What you’ll get is an understanding that simply taking copious notes, recording your conversations with a candidate isn’t ever going to yield you more than you were given during the interview. You’re not actively listening; you’re actively recording. This isn’t the worst thing you could do, but it doesn’t get you to your Model.
A simple example. One of sort of a second tier attribute I found when I built my Model for an exceptional Teller was that this group of employees tended to smile a lot.
I could go through an entire interview process with multiple candidates and write down every single word each and everyone said and when I got done I would be no closer to knowing whether this group of candidates had this primary, albeit second tier, attribute I was looking for. I wouldn’t know this unless I knew exactly what I was looking for and I wrote in my notes “this person appears to smile a lot,” and/or “this person smiles frequently and with relative ease. Very comfortable person.” Or, I could go overboard and have a “Smile Scorecard” and every time the person smiled I could check a box and at the end of the process add up the smiles and hire the “eleven,” but this “Smile Scorecard” is not what I’m trying to accomplish with this process. I want to observe a relaxed, engaged, dare I say happy person and check marks and copious notes don’t get me to that definition.
My brain, with the help of my gut, does.
There are several keys to understanding the difference and I know most are looking at the preceding and thinking “well, duh,” but it’s a deeper understanding than “well, duh.”
You have to know your Model you build inside and out, what you’re looking for. Job descriptions give you specific tasks and you go through and ask someone “can you pick up a wrench, crawl under the sink, fiddle around under there all the while showing the appropriate level of butt crack?” The question may not be that straightforward and the answer certainly will not be, but there’s a list of tasks that someone has to be able to perform to align with the details on the job description.
You’re functioning with a job description in a single dimension.
Your Model is a composite picture of the person who could best perform the job. You’re functioning, now, in multi-dimensions. Going into the interview you have to have that picture burned in your head and as the candidate talks you’re not writing down verbatim everything he or she says, you’re jotting notes about how he or she aligns to your Model–How he or she aligns to your Model.
Please stop, go back and reread that last sentence in that last paragraph again.
Okay, now reread that last line about seventeen times right now and then reread it again about twenty times before each interview. If you take copious notes during an interview and the interview lasts for an hour, you will have six or seven typed, single-spaced pages of notes. If you follow the preceding advice–related to aligning your interview to your Model–you might get to a single page or maybe a couple of pages of notes. The difference is your single page of notes will give you a comparison to your Model, but the six or seven typed, single-spaced pages of notes may not. The difference, too, is you’ll be a lot less tired with one page of notes, but that’s not really a good reason for doing anything.
As I’ve alluded to you can print your Model on a sheet of paper in front of you and have enough room in the margins and draw little arrows to the attributes you’re looking for and say things like “Yep, her story about the customer who was irate because she purchased a puppy that wets on the rug demonstrated she understands the steps of problem solving. Think she might fit in here, if she can get rid of the dog she took off the customer’s hands.”
However, getting to the point where you can make that note isn’t as easy as simply flipping to some of the questions I have throughout the preceding Model chapter and saying “this one looks close enough.” Instead you have to continue to dig until you get to the answer. I call the process of drilling down, digging for the answer, the next most difficult question.
I’ll use a simple example. Usually you can glean from an application whether someone has the requisite experience in terms of education and/or computer-type experience. However, I’m kind of a computer buff and really like what the software can do and really honor someone who has this skill set. Plus these folks can get a heck-uv-a-lot more done, generally speaking, using technology than can some who do not understand this tool. The following is an actual conversation I had with someone interviewing for a benefits position.
Me: Tell me about the most involved spreadsheet you ever built and how you went about building this and any obstacles you had to overcome.
Him: We had this project where we needed to track when people would change into a new five-year age bracket. This was for life-insurance purposes and so we needed to know when someone would move from say the 30-plus age group to the 35-plus age group because as you know this negatively impacts someone in terms of how much he or she has to pay for the same amount of coverage. So that’s what this spreadsheet did. We simply keyed in the new rates at the beginning of the year and the spreadsheet would calculate the amount of benefit and the cost to the user based on their age and the coverages he or she selected. The sheet had multiple files that it would pull relevant table information from, so after we completed it, all we had to do was to periodically go in and update these tables. We had several technical problems that we had to work through and our manager was pretty much on us in terms of getting this thing completed, so those are the obstacles we had to overcome to get this thing done. When all was said and done, however, this deal was way cool and really fun to work with.
If you know Excel, you know the preceding is a fairly complex pseudo-database type problem that probably uses “V” or “H” look-up tables or more probably uses a pivot table. All of these things are a few steps above the level of understanding necessary to do things like add a column of numbers. So, there was definitely some advanced understanding of Excel indicated, but did he answer my query: “Tell me about the most involved spreadsheet you ever built and how you went about building this and any obstacles you had to overcome?”
Think about this “did he answer my question” for a second because this is real critical to understanding this idea of a Model and the next most difficult question. My Model called for someone with some pretty decent understanding of Excel and the ability to work within this rather amazing software to make some interesting things happen. Did this candidate’s response answer this question for me?
Asked another way “Did this candidate build this spreadsheet?”
By his response I couldn’t tell. This is the value of this process and thinking about the answer and not simply recording a response. I know what I’m looking for and he may not, although I’m not averse to sharing a Model and my queries with the candidate and in fact doing this poses some interesting advantages. I’m still the one who is going to be analyzing what is said and comparing this person to my work group and culture and although the person could probably glean things like “smiles a lot” and try to improve in these sorts of categories, I haven’t found anyone yet who has “fooled my Model,” or the process, or they’ve fooled me so well that I can’t tell the difference.
However, after all the long response in which the candidate is thinking “I’ve answered the question,” I have to be willing to ask the next most difficult question. I refer to the next most difficult question by this title because as we probe further into the person’s answers we’re basically having to say “no, that didn’t answer my question,” or “okay, that was a nice snow job; let’s go after the truth this time.”
Here’s how the conversation progressed.
Me: Wow, that sounds like an incredible spreadsheet.
Him: It was real complicated, but once finished, worked like a champ.
Me: Tell me how you got the software to analyze the correlation between age and policy to the extent that you were able to simply type in the new rates and the software then would calculate the premium.
Him: What?
Me: [I repeated the query], but I knew the snow wasn’t falling quite as hard in my office at the moment as the snow machine looked a bit befuddled.
Him: Well, I’d simply type in the new rates in a table and then open the primary source document and look for any of the appropriately aged employees we had who had transgressed into a new age category and where the row and column intersected the new premium rate would be displayed broken down by bi-weekly payroll, weekly, monthly and then on an annualized basis.
When the words start getting bigger and the sentences start getting more convoluted and verbs suddenly become nominalizations (the use of a verb, an adjective, or an adverb as the head of a noun phrase) you should dial your “nonsense” meter to “HIGH” and start seeking the answer behind the snow. If you read his preceding response out loud, it’s almost laughable. What it says is he’s typing in numbers in a table and then Excel is calculating new amounts. This is basic data entry.
Me: Okay, that gives me some good information, but what formulas did you use to get the sheet to calculate the amounts displayed where the row and the column intersected.
Him: There were numerous formulas that we used to get to that calculation. We had multiple spreadsheets and numerous tables and each was tied to one another. If you opened a spreadsheet and it was tied to another Excel always asked “do you want to update such and such sheet” and you’d always have to respond and click the “OK” button.
I won’t belabor this conversation further, but the point is if I had been simply recording the answers he was giving me I probably would have stopped with the first query and said “good enough.” And maybe checked the box on the matrix under “Excel knowledge” “meets criteria.” But I had my Model in front of me and the picture I was trying to see was someone who had some pretty good knowledge of Excel. What I also hadn’t heard yet was “I.” I kept getting “We.” By using “we” he wasn’t lying to me, but he wasn’t being completely honest either. I eventually had to ask the following and I received the following reply:
Me: Okay, no more “we.” I want you to start the next answer with “I” as in “I did” and then complete the thought. Tell me specifically using a specific example of a formula you built that became part of this spreadsheet.
Him: Well, as I said, I’d open the spreadshe…”
Me: Start with “I” as in “I did,” or “I wrote,” or “I built.”
There was a dead space. He sat there and I sat there. It was uncomfortably quiet.
It was uncomfortably quiet for what seemed like a long time.
Him: What I did was open the spreadsheet and type in the new rates and the spreadsheet gave me the numbers.
He did data entry. The snow was no longer falling. Spring had sprung, not in his world, but in mine. That was the extent of his knowledge of Excel. Without the next most difficult question, without continuous follow-up, I wouldn’t have gotten to that level of understanding.
Did I call him a “liar.” Was he? I didn’t care. I had gotten to where I needed to get to and I didn’t hire a person to do a job he was not qualified to do.
And here’s the other thing unique to this process. This understanding of Excel was one of my core requirements of this Model. It was a skill set the person coming in had to have. If he or she did not, I was prepared to keep looking. This candidate did not have this skill and I thanked him for his time and the interview ended ten or fifteen minutes after it had begun. We never got past the first query and that was fine.
Some may view the preceding as sort of mean, kind of unfriendly, not very nice, too tough. My future and the company’s future is dependent on the people I hire. Call it “lying,” or “coloring the truth,” or “embellishing,” or “misspeaking,” but I only ask the questions and ask for an honest response. When I don’t get it, I owe it to myself and to the company to keep digging until I have the answer I need be that a negative consequence or a positive one.
The person I eventually hired, after reposting the position…twice… had the prerequisite skill, so there was no liability in not hiring the person without the prerequisite skill. Imagine sitting after five or six or more interviews and looking through page after page of notes trying to discern who did and who did not meet my basic requirements. I possibly would have never chosen the Exceptional Performer.
I give you all this detail, all this information so that you don’t have to beat your head against my wall. I spent the first two or three years of my career trying to figure out interviewing and then ran into behavior-based interviewing. I spent the next two or three years trying to figure that process out and wondering why I couldn’t make better hiring decision using this technique, although in retrospect I was at the advertised 55%, which made the process very frustrating because I don’t think 55% is much of a result. I spent the next couple of years messing around with all sorts of progressively more complicated scoring matrices, jotting notes and experimenting.
Then I started focusing on building the composite sketch of someone really performing a job at a phenomenal level–the best of the best of the best. And I messed around with matrices and questions and note taking techniques and I finally ended up with my one or two page Model sitting on the table in front of me, my list of ten or maybe fifteen questions and a pen. That’s all you need:
- An absolutely well-defined Model;
- A great understanding of that Model;
- A printed copy of your Model with plenty of room in the margins or an additional blank sheet(s) of paper;
- A pen;
- Some really good listening skills;
- The guts to ask and continue to ask the next most difficult question.
Since, I’ve perfected my Model, I have made exceptional hiring decisions (knock on wood). Before then, I struggled to make a good one. And that brings me to my final two points.
The process of hiring usually functions as a process of exclusion rather than inclusion. In the traditional setting and using a traditional hiring process we look at a stack of applications and resumes and we begin picking through them anxious to whittle the stack down to a manageable number. To do this we’re looking for reasons to exclude people: sloppy, gaps in employment, incomplete history, no 10-key skills, not a high school graduate, misspellings and poor grammar, not signed, no date, just doesn’t look like someone I’m interested in, etc., etc., etc.
Then we move on to the interviews. We may have gleaned from a stack of 30 or 60 or 90 or 120, two or three or four or five folks we want to interview. We sit down and we ask them a series of questions all the while trying to figure out ways to get from five to one. And maybe we’re looking to replace a salesperson and so when quiet and reserved Angela sits down in front of us we know immediately she isn’t it, but to appease that “darned human resources department” we go ahead and go through all the questions and surprisingly she does pretty good, but she’s just too “mousey” and we go on to the next person and he’s got a tattoo on the back of his hand and “who puts a tattoo on the back of their hand” and “how can you meet the public with such a thing” and so again to appease that “darned HR group” we go through the questions, but he was eliminated at the handshake. And so the process continues with us looking for reasons to not hire someone.
When we get done with our five interviews we have the five bloody corpses laying in front of us and “is this really the best we can do?” and then we see one of the corpses sort of flinch and we think “hey, that’s impressive. She survived this grueling process. She has spunk. Salespeople need spunk. Salespeople need to be survivors.” And so we make our decision and maybe it works out and even if she’s not exactly going great guns, we’re not paying her that much and she’s on commission anyway and “okay, she sort of goes overboard on the perfume, but that’s not a reason to fire someone” and we build our team.
The process used by many is one of exclusion rather than inclusion.
With our Model we’re on a quest and it’s a noble quest. We’re looking for someone who is absolutely going to blow everyone away and make our lives dramatically easier. We’re looking to include as many folks as is necessary to find not the “most qualified,” but the person who absolutely, positively fits our Model, or comes awful gosh-darned close…with potential. The whole paradigm of our Model is different than the usual hiring process.
So please understand your Model is a process of inclusion not exclusion. Also, please understand even those of us who have spent almost two decades building this process and worked with it across multiple industries sometimes make really bad decisions. Nothing is perfect. Here’s an example of my last imperfection, which really drove me to reanalyze what I consider to be my life’s work and to perfect this whole hiring thing. And please note, I’ve changed a whole bunch of information regarding the following, including taking some liberties and using a composite, somewhat of a caricature of the people I’ve dealt with throughout their years, so there’s really no way to figure out who it is I’m talking about. The essence of the following, however, is true and it was the catalyst for me to try and come up with a method to insure I didn’t make decisions like the following ever again. And, so far, knock on wood again, I have not.
I established a great behavior-based interviewing process, complete with a matrix and a questionnaire. The benefits position I was hiring for was in an area that was geographically removed and so having someone who could supervise himself or herself was paramount. I had a seven page job description that boiled everything down to the very most basic tasks.
I posted the position and recruited heavily. I took my time, using a matrix to analyze resumes and applications. I didn’t find anyone that jumped off the page, but I ended up with five folks to interview. I put a team together and for two days we went through each candidate. I had them all answer my questionnaire, which was benefits-related questions that a seasoned benefits person would know.
When we were done with the interviews my basic impression was “well, a couple were ‘okay,’” but I didn’t feel like I’d found the right person. The three managers I had asked to sit in on the interviews agreed and, although the position had now been open for 60 days and I was getting very tired, I reposted it at a higher compensation and waited. I had made the decision to interview candidates as they came in. The managers I had selected to help went back to their real jobs and so I’d interview the candidates alone. I also eliminated the questionnaire as I felt their application and resume should sufficiently answer the questions with the exception of the writing sample.
Bernie sent in his application and as I looked at it he seemed, and I hoped, he had the skills I needed. I set up an interview and it went okay. I asked another of the managers to talk with him for a moment and this manager said “he’s okay; I don’t think he’s going to make anyone real happy, but he’s better than the others.” I agreed. I extended an offer and we messed around for a few days with little nonsensical things. Finally, Bernie said yes, with the caveat “but I have to have some time to close out all I have going on at the hospital as I just can’t leave them hanging.” I agreed and extended the start date out 30 days.
Bernie came on board and I was just happy to have a warm body in a chair. Bernie wanted to work on his master’s degree and chose one of those ridiculously expensive and fairly worthless programs that dot the Internet. I was fine with all of it. The company assisted where we could. Bernie kept asking me to look at the tuition reimbursement program and increase it. I kept saying “after you’re done” would be a more appropriate time for HR to make this change since making the change now would positively impact one of our own and I felt would be perceived as favoritism and that’s sort of the death knell for HR. He was none too happy and next started advocating for progressively greater salary increases.
When he finished his degree he told me he wanted substantially more money. I told him the position paid what it paid and I had told him on the front-end of his tenure. His behavior went from odd to bizarre and I finally received a call from his assistant he had demanded I hire. As I listened to him explain the circumstances and the increasingly bizarre behavior, I knew I had a bad apple, who was very dishonest, and knew I had to do something.
The end came when I made a surprise late week visit to Bernie’s office, found it a wreck and found he hadn’t even been to the office that week, answering emails remotely from home. He was out because of “stress,” but he was so stressed out he hadn’t bothered even to call. I sort of figured he was stressed because he wasn’t doing anything, but not being a doctor I couldn’t offer this diagnosis.
I fired Bernie and he filed unemployment. We initially won, but I didn’t bother to fight the next level of unemployment as he had filed an EEOC complaint and I didn’t want to give him ammunition or insight into our response to the EEO. We of course won the EEO as well as Bernie had no legitimate complaint, but Bernie received the usual and customary “Right to Sue” letter. And he did. We proceeded to mediation and settled for maybe a third of what I would have been willing to pay just to get rid of him. Unfortunately this system is also fairly screwed up. There’s no liability or cost for the ex-employee and when you’re dealing with a habitual liar like Bernie his case can be a bit of a mine field.
I have a habit of after a hire going back and analyzing what I did right and what I did wrong. With Bernie, who turned out to be a world class liar of the habitual type, I’d made several mistakes. First, I’d gotten way too tired doing Bernie’s job and doing mine and got progressively more desperate.
Second, as the negotiations for his services stretched into the mundane, the little voice of discomfort I had from the outset started growing louder and louder and louder. I couldn’t turn it off, but I also didn’t listen to it. My gut was trying to warn me of impending trouble; my brain wouldn’t listen. Bad decision.
Third, I made an error that I harp on with my managers not to make. I failed to check references. If I had I might have found that Bernie was on leave from the hospital. I don’t know how much information I would have found out from the hospital, but if I could have gotten even a small sense that he wasn’t there to go back and “finish up important things,” I might have started listening to my gut. I failed to perform this basic step and I have made a point never, ever, never to do that again.
Fourth, early in his tenure there was trouble and I failed to address it adequately. Managers were perpetually upset with his response time and I was constantly having to referee. I manage my people a lot better now, but as soon as you know you’ve made a poor hiring decision, you need to step in and end it. The person that replaced Bernie turned out to be real, real regimented, which in benefits is fine, but she turned out to be real, real mean as well. I found out about this in the first month of employment and let her go. You cannot react too fast to a disastrous hiring decision. Remember, these first few months should be the best performance and behavior the person has to offer. I should have taken the opportunity early with Bernie and gotten him out of the organization.
Fifth, I didn’t want to address Bernie’s failings thinking a warm body was better than no body. I gave him decent performance appraisals and an annual increase. I would kick myself to this day if I believed in dwelling on past errors. I do not and I’ve not made that mistake again with anyone. My people get legitimate performance appraisals.
I should’a, could’a, would’a, but all we can do is learn from these pitiful wastes of resources and I learned plenty from Bernie, besides the fact he is lying scum that I would never wish on a future employer. For that what I ended up paying him, which was about what I offered him to quietly go away in the first place (less his attorney fees), was more than worth the experience and the learning experience. It taught me so much, but most importantly it taught me to really get this hiring junk down to a science, which is exactly what I did. Here’s what I learned:
- Build and follow a Model;
- Ask behavioral questions;
- Ask the next most difficult questions;
- Take the right notes;
- Make sure you do extensive, extensive background checks. Talk with everyone you can possibly find to talk with (once you get two or three references [hopefully someone not on your candidate’s list] saying the same thing, you have what you need to make a decision);
- Check everything you possibly can: google.com is a great starting point, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, YouTube, any of the other social networking sites are great. Do not stop until every single concern is allied;
- Then, if the person you hired is not the person who comes to work, offer them a decent (a few weeks) going away package and get rid of them. If they don’t accept the going away package or want to argue it, point out that this decision and package is not a negotiation.
You must be willing, too, to ask the next most difficult question. If someone fails to respond in a way where you can make an informed decision based on your Model, follow-up with a more pointed (not meaner, but more on point) question. This is probably the most difficult skill to develop in behavioral interviewing and definitely is key to getting your Model to work for you.
You will notice in the explanation and answers sections (the preceding chapter) of this document that I will say something like “this question may be incredibly difficult to answer.” Use these questions as kind of the “separate the men (or women) from the boys (or girls).” If you have two candidates with similar qualifications, you may be able to discriminate one from the other based on their response to one of these “super-tough” questions.
As you ask your questions, you may find you get an answer that covers one or two or more of your other questions. Reading the question to yourself and then simply telling the candidate, “I’m going to go ahead and skip this question because you seem to have answered it earlier” is most appropriate. Sometimes you can skip a single question without explanation, but if you end up in an interview and four of your ten questions are answered right off the bat, the length of the interview may shrink dramatically and require some explanation.
That’s about all the advice I can give in this deal. Stick with your Model and I can guarantee you results. Keep tweaking what you’re doing, constantly questioning your decisions, always looking for things that work and don’t work.
I was asked by a really good friend one day, as he was starting his own business, “Rex, if you could give me one piece of over-arching HR advice, what would that be?” Here it is and I’d live by it:
Hire really smart, really happy people and pay them really well.
I know that doesn’t exactly fit into this work on hiring, especially not just sort of stuck here, but that’s the magic. You follow that single guideline and your workgroup will thrive. If your workgroup thrives, your business should grow.
Finally, I used as my title Selecting The Brass Ring. When you ride one of the old merry-go-rounds, you reach out on your way past and try to snag the brass ring. You sort of lurch for it as your horse either is on an uptick or a downward slide. Sometimes you luck out and get the science right and you snatch the brass ring. You’re not on a merry-go-round with your Model. You’re sitting there looking at five, six or seven rings in front of you and when you get done with your interview, you’re hopefully looking at one or two real shiny brass ones and if you’re not, you make a decision whether to select five more and try again, or to pick one of the ones that maybe isn’t as bright as you desire, but you can work on. There’s nothing merry-go-round about this process and your hiring decisions shouldn’t make you dizzy. If they do, go back to your Model and find where the problem lies. Good luck.
Please holler if I can help.
hrhiring 