Business Management: Hiring for Talent

In a previous Business Management article we outlined five major steps required to plan a successful restructuring event in an organization. Within that article we stated two core beliefs:

• To view restructuring as a positive event, recalibrate the existing business structure to embrace and support a ground-breaking strategic goal.
• Always reorganize in direct support of a strategy, and leave the placement and recruitment of individuals to the final stages. Never Structure before Strategy.

This brings us to this month’s topic: Hiring for Talent. Whether you are working though a broad reorganization plan, or simply have a position unstaffed, always make final hiring decisions based upon an individual’s talents, not strictly upon skill set.

Early in my career as a turnaround specialist I started to recognize that some of my best newly-hired employees were individuals who were fairly new to Canada. Reasonably educated, they had certain eagerness and intuitiveness that I initially assumed was some vague cultural difference from my own Canadian experience. What I recognized immediately was that they required less management support, they achieved goals quicker and that they collaborated broadly within the organization. The ROI on investing in these individuals was significant and seemingly limitless.

Later in my career, I started to wonder if a common trait amongst these employees was the same that encouraged them to move half-way around the world and start a fresh life in Canada. Define it as you like, risk-taker, entrepreneurial, goal-oriented. What I recognized is that these people set a strategic goal, determined a process to achieve it and went ‘all-in’ to achieve the goal.

Whatever that certain “DNA makeup” was, building teams staffed with these individuals yielded strong positive results and dynamic team cultures. I needed to figure out a way to identify this trait in all potential employees.

The key factor I now attempt to measure is the degree by which individuals ‘self-manage’. This is an intuitiveness to grasp the larger concept of what they are expected to achieve, reverse engineer the steps required to deliver on that expectation, and then undertake them without seeking step-by-step permissions by their superiors.

More than Charisma

A significant pitfall that recruiters and employers fall into when hiring is to have an ill-defined process for sifting through the list of resumes that a well-placed ad generates. When particular experience “at level” is required, skill set is paramount. But after the narrow pool of potential candidates who meet the minimum criteria is found, how does an organization determine the “best fit”?

We all respond positively to the gregarious individual or the relationship salesperson loaded with charisma in the interview. But they may not be the best individuals to bring on board. In fact, the practice can become a significant hiring pitfall. We are seduced by personality and have not determined whether these individuals will help achieve your strategic goals.

How to Hire Talent in Practical Terms

Step 1 — Construct a short questionnaire to forward to candidates prior to any face to face contact. Ask open-ended questions that require full explanations both business and personal. Seek out major life projects that they would be proud to “brag” about. Ask how they would generate interest in your products or services. Whether they are a candidate for a sales position or not is irrelevant. What you seek to yield is not the specific answers but the thought process as they lay out their answers. You will gain insight into their actual written style and the quality of work they deliver. Far different than a carefully vetted resume, open-ended questions will generate some surprising and interesting traits.

Step 2 — Subject your short-list candidates to a Personality Assessment Tool, preferably one specific to self-management traits. Ensure the assessment is a “normative” data collection, a tool that allows candidates to respond in a more precise manner by indicating the degree to which they exhibit a given trait. Avoid tools that uses the individual as the frame of reference; thus providing scores that can only be interpreted in relation to other personality traits within the individual. In doing so, between-person comparisons, which are the basis for employee selection, cannot be undertaken.

These approaches help at building a team of individuals that do not require tasking, just a strong leader to show them the goals and vision.

Andrew Wood has held senior positions in manufacturing, supply chain and other industries and sits on TEC, Canada’s Trusted Advisors Council.

andrewjmwood@changeagent.ca.