For more than the last eight years, I have been helping businesses transform from mediocrity (or worse) to strongly performing enterprises. While there may be marketing strategy changes or situational upheaval, all the transformations have involved subtracting, adding or changing roles on the management team. Of the businesses I have been most involved in, in the last 24 months, this has and continues to be the toughest task for the senior manager.
Despite significant size differences ranging from quite small, to medium with strong growth and then to the top end of the SME range, all these businesses are struggling with finding and on-boarding the talented leaders they need. Invariably, they have faced hiring mistakes and “start-overs” as they push to get management structure in a place capable of carrying the weight of performance improvement.
So, what can you do?
Firstly, as a senior or THE senior manager, know why you are making the change. Also, what you have to get with a new hire and why (so that you can articulate that need to candidates). Know the answer to the oft-used interview candidate question, “if I was to be judged successful after 12 months in this position, what would I have done?”
One hiring guru has suggested that it takes 130 decent resumes to get one hire. In my experience, it takes at least four (4) filtering interviews to make a successful selection. The same guru postulates that there are 4 “super elements”:
- Attitude
- Accountability
- Past job-related successes
- Cultural Fit
Really on that list, there are only two “super elements” in my opinion.
From experience, tangible past job-related success is the most critical predictor of future success and secondly, attitude (a subjective attribute) which nearly always determines accountability and culture fit.
The first is the more easily gauged as you can probe for both success factors and failures in a candidate’s resume experience. Always ask them to define what they personally did versus a team effort (however important). And be dogged in your follow-up questions for fact-based answers. We all embellish a bit on our resumes so, caveat emptor.
Attitude mostly determines accountability hence the ability to accurately judge a candidate’s overall attitude is really important and, highly subjective. Different interviewers judge attitude by different standards and weigh comments, body language, and facial expressions differently. Usually, I develop a sense of overarching attitude as the interview moves along. Initial impressions can be supplanted by newer evidence from completely different career segments. I have found panel interviews especially good at developing a comprehensive “attitude” profile. While others are doing the questioning one can observe, undistracted by having to listen to each word and gauge a candidate’s response process more completely, with a broader understanding.
Culture fit can be a mixed blessing. How do you describe the current culture? How do you describe the culture you aspire to? Most often in business transition, a significant change of culture is a highly necessary outcome. Behavior, both individual and group, shapes and defines culture thus the hiring task is to determine how a candidate might influence new, more useful behaviors. Again, the attitude profile of a candidate most likely drives her or his behavior and best predict their effect on culture.
“Fit” is a tough cause-and-effect attribute to gauge. Complicating this is that a new employee ideally must only influence the negative behaviours and not subtract from the existing positive behaviors. Does such a perfect candidate exist? Clearly you strike a balance in the candidate’s characteristics, otherwise, you might never make another hire.
The most important factor that I utilize is knowing what you most have to change, ignoring lesser factors and getting a strong leader or technical contributor. Credibility will count quickly as the employee community assesses each newcomer’s skills and confidence.
All this is so critical that truly only senior leadership can carry this task. Unfortunately for this part of enterprise transformation, you cannot delegate decisions to your H.R. staff.
Visit Osborne-group.com for other Principals’ ideas and opinions on a range of topics. The Osborne Group provides interim executive management, consulting and project support across all sectors and over a broad scope of service areas.
