Right Attitudes

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Hiring

Books in Brief: The Power of Introverts

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Susan Cain’s bestselling Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking (2012) investigates how our schools and offices have an intrinsic cultural bias towards extroverts—they’re more likely to be social and enjoy being in high-stimulus environments.

At a business meeting, for example, extroverts hog the conversation, while introverts are often quiet. Extroverts think by talking and arguing, whereas introverts think and process internally.

I worry that there are people who are put in positions of authority because they’re good talkers, but they don’t have good ideas. It’s so easy to confuse schmoozing ability with talent. Someone seems like a good presenter, easy to get along with, and those traits are rewarded. Well, why is that? They’re valuable traits, but we put too much of a premium on presenting and not enough on substance and critical thinking.

Idea for Impact: Don’t miss out on introverted excellence.

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Fire Fast—It’s Heartless to Hang on to Bad Employees

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Firing is About an Underlying Commitment to Retaining Great People

The former General Electric leader Jack Welch earned the moniker “Neutron Jack” for sacking some 100,000 employees in the early years of his tenure as chief executive. Welch defended the dismissals by emphasizing that it would have been far more heartless to keep those employees and lay them off later when they had little chance of reinventing their careers. The dismissals were part of his deliberate efforts to establish a corporate culture that emphasized honest feedback and where only the “A players” got to stay.

Many Fired Employees Feel Surprised That the Axe Didn’t Fall Sooner

Managers know that ending a bad fit sooner is better than doing it later. Firing a bad employee is often better for both the employee leaving and the employees remaining.

Then again, many managers hesitate because firing is awfully difficult. No one likes to fire people. Looking an employee straight in the eye and telling he’ll no longer have a job is one of the harshest things a manager will ever have to do.

Besides, some managers are so uncomfortable with conflict that they are unwilling to deal directly and honestly with a problem employee, not to mention of confronting the risk of a wrongful termination claim.

If an Employee is Not Working out for You, Fire Fast

By holding on to a bad employee, you are really doing a disservice to the employee. Forcing a person to be something he’s are not, and giving him the same corrective feedback—week after week and quarter after quarter—is neither sustainable nor considerate. Trying to keep the employee in the wrong role prevents his personal and professional evolution.

  • Give the employee a chance to turn the situation around—people can change.
  • Try to find him an appropriate role within your company. Recall the old Zen poem,

    Faults and delusions
    Are not to be got rid of
    Just blindly.
    Look at the astringent persimmons!
    They turn into the sweet dried ones.

    However, if the employee is a truly bad fit, reassigning him just shifts the problem to a different part of the company.

  • If your efforts to remediate a bad employee haven’t worked out, cut your losses and fire him promptly. Help the employee move on to a job or a company where the fit is much better.

Idea for Impact: It is much worse to retain someone who is not suited for his job than it is to fire him. Help him find a new role quickly and land on his feet.

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How to Hire People Who Are Smarter Than You Are

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Apple’s Steve Jobs frequently pointed to the risk of a “bozo explosion,” which is what happens within a company that makes the mistake of hiring B-grade managers early on. As the company expands, these bozos—Jobs’s label for well-meaning, but less-competent managers—tend to emerge through the ranks and run important divisions of the company.

When bozos hire other people, they prefer to hire bozos. As entrepreneur (and bonafide Steve Jobs’s coattail-rider) Guy Kawasaki explains, “B players hire C players so they can feel superior to them, and C players hire D players.” Lo and behold, entire divisions are soon swarming with hordes of bozos.

How to Prevent a Bozo Explosion

How to Prevent a Bozo Explosion

The heuristic “hire people smarter than you” is obvious enough, but, every so often, smart people can be a terrible fit within your team.

In this Startup School 2013 interview with venture capitalist Paul Graham, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg offers a better heuristic to hiring and keeping smart people who aren’t jerks and can get things done:

What’s the right heuristic for determining if someone is really good? Over time, what I figured out was that the only actual way to let someone analyze whether someone was really good was if they would work for that person. I don’t think that needs to recurse too many levels down in the organization but I basically think that’s a really good heuristic. I believe that. If you look at my management team today if we were in an alternate universe and I hadn’t started the company it would be an honor to work for any of these people. I think if you build a company that has those kind of values, rather than just saying ‘oh I want to hire the best person I can find’ or whatever, if you hold yourself to that standard then I think you’ll build a pretty strong company.

Idea for Impact: Mediocre managers often feel threatened by employees who seem more intelligent than they are, and could potentially pinch their jobs. In contrast, a wise manager knows that she reveals well on her own ability to discover and nurture talent.

  • As with advertising tycoon David Ogilvy’s Russian nesting dolls metaphor for building “a company of giants,” insist that managers hire folks who are better than themselves. For example, a product manager should hire a designer who is better at design than the manager is, not worse.
  • Insist that each interviewer ask themselves of job candidates, “Would I want to work for this person?”
  • Remember, the best don’t come cheap.

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  4. How to Manage Overqualified Employees
  5. Why Hiring Self-Leaders is the Best Strategy

Don’t Use Personality Assessments to Sort the Talented from the Less Talented

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Personality assessments have featured in personality development and career counseling for almost a century. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and other tests form the basis for helping people deal with conflict, understand team interplay, outline career search, sharpen decision-making skills, and cope with stress.

Personality Assessments Cannot Predict Performance

Even as their use has grown significantly over the last two decades, personality assessments—including strengths inventories, and emotional intelligence assessments—have been criticized at length:

  • An individual’s personality cannot be summed up by a personality assessment. Individuality is described best by continuous (not discrete), normally-distributed attributes. For example, the MBTI Step I classification of individuals into 16 categories (or 4 dichotomies from Carl Jung‘s book Psychological Types (1921)) does not encapsulate the full range of personality variance.
  • An individual’s behavior cannot be limited to one side of a dichotomy. For instance, every person can be outgoing and assertive in the external world (extraversion,) while requiring time for some contemplation (introversion).
  • Many academic studies question the tests’ predictive validity and poor reliability. Moreover, personality assessments have poor test-retest consistency. Test takers have been shown to change at least one dichotomy when they take the MBTI Step I survey a second time.
  • Personality assessments can initiate confirmation bias (“Barnum Effect”)—the test scores are self-fulfilling because people tend to behave in ways that are predicted for them. In other words, a person who learns that he or she is “outgoing” according to MBTI may behave that way.
  • Personality tests are decidedly fakeable, especially when used to evaluate future career opportunities. All personality assessments are contingent on a degree of honesty, but MBTI test-takers are often motivated to match up to extraverted, sensing, thinking, and judging (ESTJ) proclivities in the modern organization.
  • Assessments are regularly offered as universally applicable. Not only do they tend to mirror the biases of the test developers, but also they are skewed in preference of the social groups the developer studied.

Personality Assessments are Starting Points for Change, Not a Predictor of the Outcome

Academics have long acknowledged the previously mentioned criticisms of personality assessments. They’ve argued fruitfully that many of the criticisms should be directed to how HR practitioners understand personality tests and use them in the development arena.

MBTI and many other personality assessments were never intended to sort the talented from the less talented. They are designed for the individual who takes the assessment, and not for the HR practitioner. In other words, personality assessments were designed to help individuals discover their underlying preferences regarding learning styles, problem-solving styles, self-awareness, ethical inclinations, emotional intelligence, and stress management.

Intended for Increasing Self-awareness, Not Appraisal

On the contrary, HR practitioners tend to interpret test scores speciously to gauge behavior, rather than as pointers of categorical preferences. Besides, HR practitioners often fail to factor in the test-takers’ past and current environmental influences.

And then there’s the risk of people being pigeonholed or pushed into a particular course regardless of his or her preferences. HR practitioners and career counsellors who put too much emphasis on personality assessments may compartmentalize people into rigid categories. This flies in the face of a central tenet of the MBTI premise—that individuals could choose to act against their preferred type if the occasion demands it. People’s attitudes and behaviors often change over time because of emotional experiences or socialization into specific work and social cultures.

Idea for Impact: Use Personality Assessments to Facilitate Self-Awareness, Not for Categorization or as Predictors of Achievement

If you’re a manager or a HR practitioner, don’t use personality assessments to categorize people or as predictors of achievement. Encourage people to take personality tests, but help them interpret these pieces of data about themselves—only they could make sense of test results in the context of their life history, social environment, and ambitions for career and life.

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On Recruiting from a Competitor

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In response to my statement on prohibiting current employees from disclosing proprietary information from their former employers, blog reader Alberto from Sao Palo, Brazil, questioned me on the ethics of hiring from a competitor.

Competitors are the principal, sometimes inevitable, source for talent with industry-specific skills and relevant experiences. At first sight, the proposition of hiring from a competitor sounds quite rational: the recruit may be well-trained at the competitor; he/she may be able to jump-start a new venture and establish a customer-network readily. However, depending on the position your recruit held at the competitor, this attempt might be fraught with problems–ethical and legal.

In today’s competitive marketplace for talent, an employee has a fair right to seek employment with competitors of his/her current employer. However, the loss of a key employee and the fear that the former employee may reveal trade secrets to a new employer may lead to contention between the new and former employers. A recent example: the bitter dispute between Google and Microsoft when Google recruited a Microsoft executive to lead Google’s research initiatives in China.

Essential Considerations for Recruiting from a Competitor

Here are three important guidelines to consider when recruiting from a competitor.

  • Take into account the costs of hiring and retaining your new recruit. The recruit is likely to command a premium over his/her benefits with the former employer. Further, if your new recruit will leave a competitor to join your organization, he/she could leave your organization in the future and return to the former employer or transfer to a third organization. What will motivate him/her to continue to stay with your organization on the medium- and long-term?
  • During the recruiting process, understand any non-compete or non-disclosure agreements your recruit may have entered with the former employer. Abide by any such commitments—for the duration of the non-compete or non-disclosure agreements, if possible, assign responsibilities that do not conflict with terms of these contracts. Consult legal experts to weigh any potential risks.
  • If the recruit had held a key position in the competitor, he/she likely has access to proprietary information or trade secrets of your competitor. Do not solicit any proprietary information about the former employer—this is unethical and may expose you to liability.

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How to Conduct Reference Checks

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Following a job interview, many managers do not feel comfortable extending an offer to a candidate of choice without talking to the candidate’s references. Conducting reference checks is indispensable to validate perceptions of the candidate from an hour-long interview and to discover minutiae that may not be evident from the candidate’s resume or interview. Hence, talking to references gives the manager a distinct perspective of people who may have observed the candidate at his/her work.

Candidates often list as references only individuals who will present upbeat reviews. Further, many references hesitate to provide precise information on the candidate to minimise legal risk (defamation, privacy, etc.) Consequently, some organisations believe that talking to references hardly ever has value. Despite the bias, however, references frequently drop inferences or provide details that may point to important clues to the candidate’s credentials or personality.

Conducting a Reference Check

Ask the candidate for professional references and obtain his/her permission to contact former employers. Setup a twenty to thirty minute telephone meeting with the reference. At the appointed hour, describe the background of the discussion to the reference, inform that the information he/she will provide is valuable and guarantee confidentiality. Consider questions such as the following.

  • “What was your relationship with the candidate? Did you supervise him/her? How frequently did you interact with him/her?”
  • “What kind of supervision did the candidate expect? Did he/she learn quickly? Was he/she open to feedback and change?”
  • “What were the candidate’s strengths and weaknesses? How would you compare him/her to his/her peers?”
  • “Was he/she good at working with people, negotiating, etc.?” Pick a few important professional traits that you believe are critical for success in the position for which you are considering the candidate.
  • “Would you hire (or rehire) the candidate for a similar position in your company?”

Important Guidelines

  • When the references state general observations such as “Sujay is creative” or “Smitha is a good communicator,” ask for specific examples.
  • Try to read between the lines. Be careful of potential misinterpretations; ask for further details and clarify your understanding of the reference’s information.
  • Check independent references, wherever possible. Talk to a friend or people within your network who may know the candidate.

Obtaining meaningful data from reference checks and interpreting this information in the context of the rest of the interviewing process helps managers make objective decisions on job candidates.

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  2. On Recruiting from a Competitor
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  4. Don’t Use Personality Assessments to Sort the Talented from the Less Talented
  5. Fire Fast—It’s Heartless to Hang on to Bad Employees

Interviewing Candidates: Stale Questions Get Stale Answers

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One of my former lab mates, who has been interviewing for a job, recently remarked that her interviews are typically boring because interviewers tend to ask identical questions.

The main objective of an interview is to discover more about a candidate’s credentials and objectives to see whether the candidate is a good fit for an available position. An interviewer who asks cliché questions or uses tired language typically leads a dull question-and-answer session. He/she loses the attention of the candidate and fails to acquire comprehensive information about the candidate.

Avoid cliché questions

Job seekers have access to a number of books and websites that describe canned ‘best’ responses to the most popular interview questions. One response to the oft-asked “What are your weaknesses?” question is the predictable “I work too hard and ignore my social life.” Avoid old standby questions and ask incisive questions that make the candidate think.

  • Instead of “Do you like your boss?”, ask “What do you think your boss’s weaknesses are? How do you complement her weaknesses and support her responsibilities?”
  • Instead of “Tell me about yourself?”, ask “What aspects of your upbringing have contributed to your success at your current position as the leader of the risk management group?”
  • Instead of “Why does a career in sales interest you?”, ask “Can you name a few salesmen you admire? Over the years, what aspects of their talents have you incorporated in your sales approach?”

Personalize the questions

To whatever extent possible, review a candidate’s résumé ahead of the interview and customize the discussion. Frame your questions to relate to the candidate’s experiences: “In you résumé, you mention that you led a team of technicians that worked during the weekends to meet an important deadline. Why do you think they cooperated with you and agreed to work during the weekends?”

Relate to the responses

Relate to one or two of the candidate’s responses by mentioning your own experiences: “I once had a customer who …”. Resist the temptation to start a conversation, empathize or add value to the candidate’s response. Be brief. Avoid talking too much about yourself.

Use a fresh tone of voice

On occasion, you may be required to interview several candidates in succession, e.g. while filling multiple positions or in a college recruiting session. After talking to a few candidates, your chosen set of questions may start to sound jaded due to repetition. Watch your tone of voice when asking questions; convey enthusiasm for the candidate’s details and engage in a lively conversation.

Maintain good rapport

Interviewers often over-indulge in note-taking by recording minor details of a candidate’s responses and interpretation of these responses. Although the candidate welcomes the occasional respite from visual attention, too much note-taking can have a distancing effect. Record just an outline or use a graphical note-taking technique, e.g. mind mapping. Review this outline immediately after the interview and add details you want to capture for later review or a consensus meeting.

Pair up with a colleague

Conduct a tandem interview if possible; alternate asking questions and taking notes with the colleague. While one person takes notes, the other person can ask follow-up questions and maintain a rapport with the candidate.

Conclusion

The primary challenge for an interviewer is to see beyond the veneer of the candidate’s carefully-crafted résumé, on-the-surface details of past responsibilities and often well-rehearsed responses to interview questions. A lively conversation is essential to elicit thoughtful, candid responses and enable the interviewer to make an educated decision on the candidate.

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  5. Fire Fast—It’s Heartless to Hang on to Bad Employees