HIRING FOR SUCCESS: BACK TO BASICS

by Bruce McGraw, Vice President Cognitive Technologies, Inc. and Herb Rubenstein, Founder and President, Herb Rubenstein Consulting

Introduction

The new buzz word in hiring is competencies. Companies and non-profits are now advised by HR consultants to revise job descriptions to include a large array of competencies required for the job. Interviews have become a "can you check this box" exercise where the person who has the highest number of "relevant" competencies becomes the highest rated applicant. In fact, one airline has automated the initial job interview to such an extent that the entire interview consists of a series of recorded questions on the phone and the applicants pushing numbers on the phone to record their answers. This approach is logical and analytically based, yet often yields disastrous results.

This article provides a concise, but comprehensive approach that will yield more consistent "positive hires." The stakes are high since a bad hire costs an organization a minimum of $10,000 and can easily cost an organization in excess of $100,000.

The Back-to-Basics Approach

While there are certain specific skills and knowledge that are required for any position, we would offer that there are some basic qualities or abilities that differentiate a top performer from the rest. There are four elemental qualities to look for in the hiring process. These represent the outward, observable manifestation of many supportive qualities. It is beyond the scope of this short article to articulate all of the supportive qualities that form the basis of the four essential qualities to look for in the hiring process. Focusing on these four main qualities is an excellent start in improving the hiring process immediately.

The four qualities are:

1. Continuous desire to learn
2. Ability to communicate
3. Commitment to quality
4. Practical aptitude (or common sense)

1. Continuous Desire to Learn

Today's marketing challenges, organizational problems, systems complexities and implementation issues cannot be solved with yesterday's knowledge. Increasing competition, new sales channels, more rapid dissemination of information, knowledge acquisition by ETI (electronic transfer of information) and the need for more "bet the company" decisions, all combine to force employees and management to tackle challenges they have never faced before. The learning curve is steeper today than ever before and all the knowledge management systems in the world cannot satisfy the growing demand to create and disseminate new knowledge, processes and skills and to figure out a way to put a workforce together that can make the right decisions 99% of the time when the answers are not in the training books and the situation is one never faced before by the organization or the decision maker or decision making team.

Learning and the continuous desire to learn, therefore, becomes the first basic quality to look for in the human capital that an organization considers hiring. When employees have a "life long learning" mindset, they do not experience new tools or processes as barriers, but rather as opportunities to create new human capital capabilities to add to their portfolios of skills, knowledge and experience.

2. Ability to Communicate

The days when management told labor exactly what to do and how to do it are over. While Total Quality Management (TQM), where workers formed quality circles and gave management constant suggestions on how to improve production and operations, may be out of fashion today, it started an irreversible social process. All workers must now be able to listen carefully, observe their surroundings attentively and articulate clearly their thoughts and ideas about how to improve the organization, solve problems and create efficiencies. Today's "high stakes" actions require that everyone in the organization speak and write clearly, successfully and quickly. Workers who communicate well will help to propel an organization toward achieving its goals.

Organizations spend thousands of dollars on electronic and automated ways to improve communications. However, the basic ability of an individual to communicate in written and verbal form is the key to any of these methods. Underlying a person's strong ability to communicate must be a strong ability to listen and understand. How many times has a simple request or requirement been mis-communicated or misunderstood, costing many lost hours or dollars?

The ability to communicate is one of the most powerful qualities an organization must demand of new hires and of current employees. This quality is not easily ascertainable merely from a resume or simple first job interview. Since this quality is essential, organizations must invest the time necessary to determine if an applicant possesses this strong ability to communicate.

3. Commitment to Quality

The phrase "it's good enough for government work" popular from 1950-1990 has passed from our everyday usage. To win, or even survive in business, the Japanese taught us that we need to produce consistent, high quality results. Toyota's cost advantage over Mercedes used to come from the fact that Toyota/Lexus built their cars once without flaws. Mercedes used to build its cars, then check them via their rigorous quality control system, then basically "rebuild" them to get the flaws out. To the customer both types of cars were high quality cars, yet one car company (Toyota/Lexus) could build in the same high quality much more economically. The commitment to quality sought in job applicants must be a commitment that is strong, but balanced. A time will come in every person's job where a deadline, a tight budget or an unforeseen challenge requires a company or organization to ship a product or perform a service that is acceptable in the marketplace but of a lesser quality than could have been produced given more time, budget, and resources.

Good job applicants must be able to demonstrate that they are not satisfied with producing a product or service of "minimum acceptable quality." Workers must be able to juggle the competing pressures between perfect quality and staying on schedule. One element related to quality, is "integrity." One cannot produce consistent high quality without a high level of integrity. In sum, job applicants must have a strong passion for quality in order to meet the needs of successful companies and organizations in the future.

4. Practical Aptitude (Rigorous Common Sense)

The fourth key quality to look for in job applicants is the ability to deal successfully with daily challenges as they "get the job done." This quality is can be described as "practical aptitude," "business judgment," or "rigorous common sense." This quality is comprised of many attributes including: problem solving, organizational creativity, ability to think clearly, perform under pressure, and common sense. The best way to assess this quality is to give the job applicant in the interview various scenarios that put the applicant into "real world" situations that call for solutions not found in textbooks, handbooks or traditional schooling. This form of practical wisdom or aptitude was exactly what was missing in the four workers on duty that made a series of mistakes that caused the Three Mile Island disaster and the Microsoft programmers who left open the security vulnerabilities in Windows that led to the recent virus problems that have plagued Microsoft users.

Conclusion

The four qualities discussed in this article cannot guarantee a successful hire. However, these four qualities will yield powerful indicators of long term success on the job. Hiring has become a high risk area and merely checking the boxes corresponding to narrowly defined competencies is no longer a sufficient screening tool for these high stakes, rapid hiring decisions. Using this back-to-basics approach will yield one additional dividend - "long term relationships." Focusing on these quality areas will result in hiring people your company or organization would want to work with for decades. This hiring process could turn a Jim Collins idea, "Built to Last" into a practical HR idea we call "Hire to Last."

Biographical Information

Bruce McGraw is senior program manager and Vice President for Cognitive Technologies, and specializes in managing large project teams. Mr. McGraw has over 23 years of experience in many industries as both technical leader and manager for large hundred person organizations. Mr. McGraw is currently serving as the Project Officer for ACS on the Georgia Medicaid program, a large 600 person program. He was formerly a Director for Cap Gemini Ernst & Young (CGEY). Mr. McGraw has a Masters Degree in Technology Management from the University of Maryland and is also a certified Project Management Professional (PMP). He is an author and speaker for many topics on management, projects, and technology. He is also known for this work in managing virtual teams. Bruce can be reached in Atlanta, Georgia by email: bamcgraw@cognitive-technologies.com or phone: 770-977-5204.

Herb Rubenstein is an attorney and the CEO of Herb Rubenstein Consulting, a leadership and management consulting firm. He is co-author of Breakthrough, Inc. – High Growth Strategies for Entrepreneurial Organizations (Prentice Hall/Financial Times, 1999). His email address is herb@herbrubenstein.com and he can be reached at (301) 718-4200 in Bethesda, Maryland or (202) 236-7626 in Washington, D.C.

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