Hiring Without Firing

Summary:

In today's world of new organizational forms such as joint ventures and strategic alliances and with the growing presence of teams, free agents and networking, finding the right person to fill a job has become more complex. Nowadays, the CEOs of two companies of the exact same industry may need entirely different skills and personal styles. Even though interviews, reference checks, and sometimes even personality tests infuse some logic and predictability into the hiring process, 30-50% of all executive level appointments end in firing or resignation. The point is explained with the help of a case where Franco Bernabe, who had earlier successfully transformed world's largest telecom company ENI, was hired to run Telecom Italia. The management considered Bernabe's skills so appropriate and even the stock price rose by 5% on his appointment. Only six months down the lane, Bernabe's efforts could not distract a takeover bid by Olivetti and he stepped down. Another case used explains a similar case where the board appointed a veteran to run a more-than-a-start-up joint venture. Less than a year, the decision ended in disaster and a series of events including resignations, frustrations of employees made sure the company went close to bankruptcy. When companies move a slow pace, mistakes could be absorbed. But, today, global competition, capital markets and news media make a senior executive's performance a high-profile affair.

There are ten deadly traps in hiring:

1. The reactive approach: After firing or resignation of an old employee, companies look for a similar person to fill in the shoes. The problem with such reactive approach is that it focuses its search on the familiar personality and effective competencies of the predecessor rather than the job's requirement.

2. Unrealistic specifications: The long and detailed job descriptions are usually compiled without considering the critical priorities of the new manager, thereby, making less people match the description.

3. Evaluating people at absolute terms: Praise and criticism are doled out in absolute terms. In interviews managers are asked some absolute questions to which opinions are rendered in a vacuum which evaluate people in absolute terms.

4. Accepting people at face value: Candidates are taken at face value and they are only seen putting the best effort to gain the job and their failures and negatives never get highlighted in an interview.

5. Believing references: References care far more about their relationship with the candidate than helping the interviewer who they have never met.

6. The 'Just like me' bias: More than biases such as race, gender, nationality and halo effect, an interviewer is biased in rating a person who he feels is similar to him.

7. Delegation gaffes: Most recruiters delegate jobs like creating job description and also sometimes, the first round of interviews. This can lead to losing a promising candidate.

8. Unstructured interview: Most interviews are loose talks that are more like a friendly chat. A highly qualified candidate who does not excel at chitchat could get rejected.

9. Ignoring emotional intelligence: Most companies look for hard data like education, IQ, job history and rarely look at the soft data like emotional intelligence. It has been researched that unsuccessful managers had their largest deficiencies in emotional intelligence. Companies also need to choose emotional and social competencies.

10. Political pressures: People are likely to hire their friends, people who superiors recommend so that they get an ally at work. They are sometimes tempted to hire weak people to save their chances of getting ahead in the organization. Politics in hiring acts like a quicksand and makes recruiters to make mistakes.

Executives must not fall into these pitfalls and need to follow a systematic process of problem definition and need to do some homework. A series of carefully planned steps can put the key to 'hiring right' within reach. In the problem definition phase, the team should do the following things -

* Define requirements that will be driven by the company's strategy

* Collect competency requirements from the current employees

* Specify minimum qualifications required for the job

* Describe competency requirements clearly in behavioral terms

* Consider emotional intelligence in the job description

* Achieve consensus with all those involved