Hiring Mistakes 2 – Selection By Committee

Hiring Mistakes … Selection By Committee

The second installment in a series of short articles addressing common mistakes in executive hiring.  Click this link: Forgetting The “Why” for part 1.

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

Selection By Committee

Whether at a large corporate or a business with less than 50 employees, it is advisable to build a high degree of consensus around key hires especially amongst the colleagues who will have a direct influence on the new executive’s chances of success in the role. Thus, it makes sense to have these colleagues participate in the interview process ideally in one-on-one sessions with the candidates or, failing that, in panel sessions.  The views of said colleagues are particularly useful in assessing not just a candidate’s ability to deliver on the “Why” but also on his cultural fit into the organisation, his understanding of important organisational matters outside of his immediate purview in the role and on character traits that might warrant closer attention.  Where the hiring process turns up two or more candidates of similar ability to deliver, then making the hire based on a “hiring committee” consensus would be a particularly strong play.

The above paragraph notwithstanding, the actual selection of candidates should NOT be carried out by committee.  This is a task for one individual and one only: the owner of the problem that needs solving.  This individual is usually, though not always, the direct line manager of the executive to be hired.  Be she the owner of the business, chair of the board, CEO, department head or leader of a small team, the individual with the most granular understanding of the problem (the “Why”) is best-placed to identify the most suitable CVs and conduct the first round of interviews.  Once she has identified a small handful of suitable candidates, she can then present these to colleagues to run the rule over and help her choose the most appropriate for the role and the company.

It is often the case that for key strategic hires, a CEO or business owner may feel the imperative to select the candidates to be interviewed herself because such a decision is deemed too important to be left in the hands of the line manager.  While there are certainly situations where such an approach is prudent, I would urge such business leaders to make sure they do this only when strictly necessary. Undermining a key subordinate by making it clear she can’t be trusted to choose members of her own team will have unwelcome repercussions down the line. Why have her in that role if you don’t trust her judgment?  “Why keep a dog and bark yourself?”

 Selection by committee will often result in the recruiting of a high calibre individual who is completely wrong for the role. To use a seemingly glib analogy, it often results in the hiring of a racehorse when the need is for a pack camel (or vice versa).  Both are large, 4-legged, grazing mammals which, when compared to humans, can carry large loads quickly over long distances – on the surface, they might appear perfectly interchangeable. The racehorse is powerful, graceful, very fast over distances of a few kilometres and much more pleasing on the (Western) eye.  However, the less attractive pack camel is built to travel vast distances in hot desert conditions without needing to be fed or watered for as many as three days. A racehorse would not survive such a journey. Bringing this analogy back home, the problem owner (line manager) understands that the solution calls for an animal that has durability as its key feature whereas a committee might take the view that the organisation needs a far “grander” beast to represent the brand and that – if the line manager makes the right adjustments – the racehorse could do almost as good a job while making the firm look good to its clients. This is an unnecessary and counterproductive compromise.

A few years back, I watched helplessly as the hiring committee of a client made this very mistake.  After a three-month long selection process to hire a CEO for the struggling organisation, the final three candidates were asked to present their turnaround strategies to a panel of seven board members. The presentation that most impressed the panel was made by Candidate B who, upon completion of all scorecards, came out as the narrow favourite just ahead of Candidate A.  B would have scored significantly higher but for an underwhelming delivery of a powerful presentation. A, conversely, gave a strong delivery of a presentation which the panel found intriguing though quite far away from their vision. The Chair of the board, concerned about the potential reception of already disgruntled external stakeholders, advocated against Candidate B and urged the panel to choose Candidate A’s greater gravitas.  The Vice Chair – the line manager – advocated for B’s better suitability to the role, arguing that board members could help make up for the superficial shortcomings. The Vice Chair was outvoted, Candidate A was hired and after 6 months of clashes between both, was let go at great expense to the organisation.  It took close to another year to hire and bring a permanent replacement on-board.

This was an example of a hiring team committing the critical hiring mistake of forgetting the “Why” while selecting by committee.  It was also an example of another problem that often occurs where a line manager is overruled in the selection of a candidate: personality clashes.  The accepted norm in modern hiring is that the best hire is one based on purely objective measures with no room for subjectivity. However, total objectivity only exists in textbooks under the ceteris paribus principle beloved of classical economists. In the real world, other things do not remain equal, and subjectivity in decision-making is unavoidable. Hiring an executive (no matter how qualified for the role) who clashes with his immediate superior in the organisation is a recipe for trouble, as I painfully found out many years ago when I was in a similar situation. With the best intentions in the world, such relationships soon become fractious leaving both executives – and often, other colleagues – distracted by unnecessary squabbles and (ultimately) fruitless efforts to achieve détente. The important business at hand is compromised or worse, completely ignored for the duration of hostilities. Eventually, one of these individuals will have to leave for the sake of the business.  In a large organisation, he can be reassigned elsewhere. In a small firm, the only option is a complete exit with the accompanying compensation costs not to mention the lost time.

I accept that there will be times where the luxury of choice is absent and you have to make the hire and “hope” for the best.  In this situation, I would advise that a great deal of forethought is given to how best for two antagonistic individuals to coexist, through the establishment of clear guidelines and/or the installation of a third party as a buffer.  However, when you do have a choice, do not hire a candidate towards whom a line manager’s attitude is no better than lukewarm.

 

In summary, to avoid making a drastically wrong selection by committee:

Don’t muddy the “why”

Do pay attention to a line manager’s preference

 

Next time, I’ll address Limited Buy-In