Hiring Mistakes

Hiring Mistakes … And Simple Steps To Avoid Them

“Chiumbo is no longer with us. We had to part company after just 9 months as he simply wasn’t delivering what we needed.  It’s a real shame because he really impressed us during the interview process and he had the strongest CV of the candidates we spoke to. We’ve found a replacement who is getting the job done but we’ve lost well over a year and a lot of money by picking the wrong guy to start with.”

 In 19 years as a head-hunter, I have assisted scores of employers across multiple industry sectors and international geographies with their executive hiring. There have been resounding successes – hires that have delivered well beyond expectations and have thrived at the companies for many years – alongside disappointments like the fictional Chiumbo.  It is fairly common for the blame for bad hires to be laid at the door of the hired executive who “failed to deliver” on the promise of a stellar resumé.  However, in my experience, the blame for a failed hire (and the kudos for a successful one) usually lies with the hiring firm.

Making executive hires is, to put it mildly, challenging.  If you have uttered words similar to those in the quote above, then you are well aware that Today’s bad hire is Tomorrow’s expensive headache. Below begins a series of short articles that might help you identify where you went wrong and help you avoid post-hire headaches in the future.

Before you read on, here’s the Caveat: these articles address executive hires.  The discussions are directed specifically at situations where a firm seeks to hire an individual with a relevant track record to address a specific business challenge. The number of suitable candidates for these roles are often limited to single or low double digits and these candidates are, almost always, gainfully employed elsewhere. While some of the points that follow will apply to graduate, entry-level and other hires where suitable candidates are in abundance, the consequences of these mistakes will be less costly.

The list below contains the common hiring mistakes that I will be addressing.  Do you recognise any of these in some of your previous selections?

1. Forgetting The “Why”
   1. Hiring For The Wrong Reason
   2. Seduced By Beauty
2. Selection By Committee
3. Limited Buy-In
4. Disrespect Candidates
5. Dishonesty: Half-Truths & Blatant Lies
6. Money, Money, Money
7. Failing to Prepare For Smooth On-boarding

Forgetting The “Why”

The most fundamental failing in a hiring process is an absence of clarity with regards to why the hire is necessary in the first place. Every hiring process should begin with one question: “What does the business need this individual to achieve/deliver?” A more intuitive version of this question would be: “After we hire this individual, what will success in the role look like?”

This question encourages the hiring manager, be she a Group CEO or Regional Director, to focus her attention on the most important factor in the hiring decision – the division that needs resuscitating, the new revenue streams that need developing, the cost-savings that need to be found, the clients that need to be won/serviced better etc. In other words, the job that needs doing.

Do NOT start a hiring process without getting a clear and definitive answer to this question.

To be very clear: “I have an open headcount” and “we’ve just lost one of the team” are not answers to this question. Headcount decisions are often made by management teams who are very removed from the day-to-day realities of individual parts of the business. Their decisions are guided by a global target and numbers on a spreadsheet – they are simply not best placed to assess the need for an additional hire. The decision to hire must be made by the individual who manages that team and truly understands the challenges faced and what is required to meet these. If she believes the “Why” merits a new hire, then she should use the open headcount. If not, she should overcome the temptation to “grow her fiefdom” and focus on providing strong leadership to the team already in place.

In 2006, I worked on one of my favourite executive recruitment assignments where the Hiring Manager – a Head of Sales at an investment bank in London – showed remarkable foresight and clear-thinking in assessing the “Why”. The loss of one of his most experienced hedge fund sales people to a rival bank left the business with a €10m+ revenue hole to fill. Rather than get a like-for-like replacement, he took the view that his team should be at the forefront of the market’s evolution so sought a salesperson with a far deeper understanding of corporate balance sheets and complex debt structures than was the industry norm.  By thinking clearly about the “Why”, he made an excellent hire who initially filled the revenue hole before going on to build a separate team selling this more complex range of products and producing multiples of the original €10m in annual revenues.

I repeat: Do NOT start a hiring process without getting a clear and definitive answer to this question.

For an executive hire, a process along the following lines will take place

1. Identify & Define Hiring Need
2. Get Head-count Approval from HR / Management Board
3. Define the Candidate Criteria
4. Advertise the Role / Appoint External Recruiters
5. Review Candidate CVs
6. Conduct Interviews with Shortlisted Candidates
7. Choose Most Suitable Candidate
8. Prepare & Present Offer of Employment to Chosen Candidate
9. Offer Accepted.

When this process goes smoothly and there is a ready availability of qualified candidates, steps 1 – 9 will take two to three months and will require the involvement of at least a handful of individuals within the hiring firm and at least another handful outside – it is very easy to lose sight of the “Why” as time elapses and the hiring process receives additional input from third parties.  For hires where the candidate pool is small, it is not uncommon for this process to take significantly longer, occasionally as long as 12 months.  Thus, even greater risk of forgetting the true “Why” behind the hire.

Without making the concerted up-front effort to clarify the “Why” of the hire, or doing so and subsequently losing sight of it, a Hiring Manager (or Hiring Team) leaves herself susceptible to an expensive mistake by either:

1. Hiring For The Wrong Reason or;
2. Being Seduced by Beauty

I find the modern trend towards lengthy, multi-page job descriptions to be rather unfortunate as these tomes often result in a blurring of lines between the Prime Objective (the “Why”) and other equally admirable though less crucial objectives of a hire. Expressed more crudely, lengthy job descriptions can confuse the “Must Haves” of a job with the “Nice To Haves”. This issue is exacerbated by the fact that most prospective executive hires will be interviewed by peers, superiors and subordinates of the hiring manager – if they are unaware or unappreciative of the “Why”, it is very likely that they will focus their interviews on the wrong areas/issues and thus, provide inaccurate feedback that leads to hiring a candidate for the wrong reason aka making the wrong hire.

Hiring decisions are made by human beings who can be swayed by the same characteristics that human beings have been swayed by for centuries.  By “beauty”, I refer to a wide range of attributes beyond the mere physical attractiveness – facial beauty / stature / impeccable attire / engaging smile / etc. – of a prospective candidate.  In addition to good looks, interviewers are also easily swayed by highly charismatic candidates or by individuals who excel at presenting ideas and recalling past experiences eloquently and with a great degree of panache. Sometimes, we like a candidate because they remind us of ourselves, because they are alums of the same university or perhaps because they share many personality traits of the previous holder of the vacant role. We are easily seduced by Conviviality, Familiarity and even Novelty.  These biases are often unconscious, making the constant reversion to the “Why” extremely important throughout the hiring process. That way, you just might be able to resist the seductive charms of the uber-charismatic Chiumbo for the more prosaic steadfastness of Chausiku, who is more likely to deliver the success you identified at the very start of the process.

During a long, drawn-out hiring process it is very possible that the “Why” changes due to external (market) factors or due to structural, strategic or even personnel changes internally. When this happens, it is important that the Hiring Decision Maker(s) finds the courage to change tack accordingly rather than proceed with a wrong hire “because we’ve already invested so much time in this process”.  Remember that Today’s bad hire is Tomorrow’s expensive headache.

In summary, to give yourself the best chance of making the right hire:

Establish the “why”

Communicate the “why”

Don’t forget the “why”

Next time, I’ll address Selection By Committee