dispatches from the new world of work

Another Travesty

Who book cover The Wall Street Journal (October 29) favorably reviews Who by Geoff Smart and Randy Street. I'm hooked.

In short, if "health care" is a dangerous oxymoron, it is matched, if in a less deadly fashion, by "rigorous interview" in the all-important world of hiring. Mssrs. Smart and Street are said to rip, tear, shred, spindle, mutilate, thrash, and trash the typical prospective employee evaluation process for its shallowness. And the reviewer also reports that the authors provide a ton of solid research and professional experience to support their sorry conclusions. I am disposed to the authors' assessment based on my own, if less extensive, observation—and flawed personal practices.

Smart and Street argue that the hiring process should have the same rigor as the evaluation of a prospective corporate acquisition. "Candidates who appear excellent on a first pass," the reviewer writes, "may fall to pieces on the third or fourth look—others look better and better." If the roster is the heart of team success—then the acquisition thereof could logically be called the most important thing an organization does. Right? (TP opinion: Right.)

LOOK ... THIS IS A BIG BIG BIG DAMN DEAL.

You and I have probably read a dozen, or three dozen, books on "business strategy." (Right?) And perhaps have been to a course or exec course or two or three on the topic.

Have you ever read a full-fledged book on assessing folks for employment?
Have you read a dozen articles on the topic?

My answer to both questions is an embarrassing "no." Worse yet, as best I can remember, I have never written—in 15 books—even a chapter on the topic! Dear God! I can argue that I've "skirted" the topic in many ways—but I'm not sure even that's the whole truth. (I am especially chagrined because I am a graduate of McKinsey & Co, one of the rare "good guys" on the Recruitment Excellence list—it doesn't seem to have rubbed off on my research or writing.)

The reviewer concludes, "In short, hiring is the most important aspect of business and yet remains woefully misunderstood [my italics]."

Ye gads, I think he might well be right.

(If so, what am I going to do about it?)
(If so, what are you going to do about it?)

Tom Peters posted this on 10/30/08.

Comments

Tom,
I'm glad I got hired before you read THIS book!

Posted by cathy mosca at October 30, 2008 3:30 PM

Sounds like a good book and I’m sure Cathy would pass with flying colours. Rationality, processes and analysis have their place in selecting the right person - I believe in that ... and until I read this book I believe more in ‘can I work with this person?’

Posted by Trevor Gay at October 30, 2008 3:40 PM

Let me push back a bit. I'm basing what comes next on the time I got to witness George Hart as Chief of the Oakland California Police Department. During his time as chief, that agency went from being a dangerously unprofessional and racist organization to one of the best police agencies on the continent. Chief Hart believed that if he could achieve excellence in three areas he would create and maintain an excellent department. Hiring was one of them. The other two were training and promotion. I would submit that those other two things are as important as hiring.

Posted by Wally Bock at October 30, 2008 6:07 PM

Yay - another person has come out of the closet and recognized that the traditional hiring system stinks. The Gallup organization says that more than 70% of the workforce is at some level disengaged at work and this is costing our econonmy $billions. Come and meet people who have joined our movement!Meet some others who agree that the taditional hiring system is failing us at www.HiringSmart.ca where Resumes are banned.

Posted by Tim Brennan at October 30, 2008 7:18 PM

Cathy....you can always count on me for a stellar letter of recommendation...which of course you will have to edit. Seems to me I have been hired by tpc twice! So I darn sure don't want anybody around us reading anything like this! Subversive!! :)

Posted by mike neiss at October 30, 2008 7:34 PM

If we had dug deeper in our Cathy interviews, we would have ended up making her COO of the Tom Peters Company--she is anyway.

Posted by tom peters at October 31, 2008 6:36 AM

You bet she is...and a great one.

Posted by mike neiss at October 31, 2008 6:43 AM

"we would have ended up making her COO"

And there was me naively believing Cathy was already far more senior than a mere COO!

Thanks Cathy for your continued excellence - you chose this promising young chap Peters as part of your support staff so you must already be using the right criteria for your recruitment :-)

Posted by Trevor Gay at October 31, 2008 7:02 AM

Tom,

Though I know that Marshall Goldsmith's book "What You Got Here Won't Get You There" is a self-help to success book, whenever I see the title, it makes me think about hiring. Or more specifically about expectations and accountability. Hiring really is done much too casually, and decisions are often made by the wrong people. If the reporting manager is allowed to make the decision (who else knows better what they need?), the company is justified in a greater expectation of accountability. I say, let your managers build their teams.

What is so hard about that? If you have confidence in the abilities of those you've hired, you should let them make their own team choices. I recently hired an assistant. My wonderful SVP told me I needed to be sure of my candidate, because her performance would be a reflection on my judgement. And he's absolutely right. You can't put a price on the ownership I feel in shouldering the responsibility to make my new assistant a positive "value add" for the company. It makes me a contributor to the success of the company. And want to come back tomorrow and the next day. I'm committed.

Sometimes, in other companies, I've looked at people who have been hired for a particular task and thought to myself "what you got here won't get you there." And that is a result of the wrong people participating in the hiring process.

Blue skies,

Lark

Posted by Lark at October 31, 2008 1:15 PM

And this works the other way too! As a job applicant it soon became apparent that if there was "thorough" screening by the Personnel Department then the corporation and the job weren't for me, but if it was my potential boss doing the screening then the job was a hot prospect (regardless of salary, benefits etc.)

Cathy M. did you have to complete long pages of Personnel Department forms and then endure their screening interviews before TP first spoke to you?

Posted by Mike L. at October 31, 2008 7:47 PM

Most of the team managers I have worked with work very very hard to get this right, they are well trained, follow a process plus they use their gut too - Technique isn't always the problem - time is.

The problem often comes from above or finance. When it comes to hiring the mantra from above is not "go find the very best person you can find" it's more often "get someone in before the end of the qtr or we lose the head count" - How dumb is that?!?

This is one of the insane areas of business where the way we allocate resources in business is fundamentally counter productive.

In the last team I recruited for I had the wonderful support of my manager who backed me up in taking time - real time to find the very best people - we rejected dozens of candidates before finding the right people Result - one of the best performing teams in the department (and the nicest bunch of people I have ever worked with!)

If you want to recruit well - get your manager on your side.

Posted by PaulH at November 1, 2008 4:27 AM

One common problem with the hiring process is the specification of required skills and background in ridiculous detail. See hunting the five-pound butterfly:
http://photoncourier.blogspot.com/2005_11_01_photoncourier_archive.html#113250343249994971

Posted by david foster at November 1, 2008 11:08 AM

Tom,
Thank you for the blog post, and thanks to all of those who have commented so far. I have the priviledge of working with hundreds of companies and am constantly amazed at the lack of rigor in the recruiting process. Bad policies such as PaulH's comment on finance stripping budget or David Foster's note on ridiculously complex hiring specs are all all too common. Throw in the reality that managers are too busy to take their time to follow a process and you have a recipe for disaster.

The silver lining is that managers who take their time to do it right really can get the right people on their team, and it seems to make all the differnce in their success. The most rewarding thing about my job is hearing from people who have applied the tools with success. One woman tracked me down at a conference and told me how the method helped her avoid hiring the wrong CFO. Another guy told me "You have saved my life." I am excited for these people, and deeply humbled by their feedback.

Randy Street
Author of Who: The A Method for Hiring
www.thewhomatters.com

Posted by Randy Street at November 27, 2008 7:32 AM