The Place of Experience in Hiring Decisions

Sometimes someone in a group email discussion says something so well, you have to wonder why they haven’t been blogging about it.  Mark Talaba, blogger at Talabesian-Coordinates had this to contribute on the issue of experience as an indicator in hiring decisions:

“Some people – in the process of acquiring experience – have made lot of other people miserable, and have caused teams to underperform.  Such persons may yet have a ‘history of success’ – but as success can arise from many factors, not the least of which is a team’s ability to perform despite handicaps, even successful exploits are not a reliable indicator.

“One real tragedy of making “experience” a primary indicator in hiring decisions is that, during the past 20 years, there has been such fluidity in the job market that some really bad team players have had the opportunity to turn a series of short-term jobs (which used to be a red flag) into an enticing story of “broad-based experience.”  (A good topic for some investigative reporting!)

“As the concept of Coherent Human Infrastructure takes root, and as organizations come to realize that Coherence and Role are the ‘missing pieces’ of the Quality-of-Hire/Talent Management puzzle, I believe that demand for a pre-hire assessment of ‘teaming characteristics’ will grow exponentially.”

I have to agree.  It’s pretty well known in entrepreneur circles that many of the CEOs who’ve failed in that job a few times are more desirable recruits than the virgins, at least to less Coherent VCs.  In contrast, the interns, collectively, have virtually no experience.  It’s their teaming and their Coherency that make them so amazingly productive.  (Another episode of The Intern Diaries will be here shortly…)

Will That Be One Hump or Two?

Jason Zweig (aka WSJ’s Intelligent Investor) had a great article in the weekend Wall Street Journal.  After giving examples of bad group decision making (as they say on Law & Order, ‘ripped from the headlines’) he concludes that the ‘wisdom of crowds’ is an illusion, that it depends on the competency of the group.

I’d like to add here that what he’s talking about is entirely measurable.

Ineffective groups (aka committees) start out designing a horse and give you a camel.  Let’s just refer to that as being two humps off.  (This measure, of course, assumes they have designed a bactrian rather than a dromedary.)  You can quantify that in pounds of weight the horse would find burdensome, or the extra expense of feeding the resultant lumpy-backed horse or the lessened productivity caused by the extra weight.

It’s all entrely preventable if you select members of the group for their teaming characteristics and leave off those who are either rigid or diffuse.  It also helps to have Role diversity to avoid the tendency to jump in with agreement too early.

Moral of the story: If you always see things my way, you probably aren’t needed on my team.

Learning From Interns

It’s like having a learning lab.  Not for them, for us. They apply online, take their Role-Based Assessment and we know where they’ll fit.  Then the surprises start.

Take Lauren, the Action Mover/Communicator.  Could there be anyone more suited to talking to customers and getting them what’s good for them?  So I figured she must be majoring in marketing or communications.  Was I ever wrong!  Some well meaning counselor convinced her that she should stay in accounting after she expressed her doubts.  No matter that she didn’t really like the work, though of course she is smart enough to do well in any course.  She’d already invested time, and her parents’ money, in the accounting track and it was the prudent thing to advise her to continue with it.

I knew she would be fantastic at any task involving connecting with people in a meaningful way and quickly getting what was needed.  And I have not been disappointed.  In a few months I’ve seen her do all manner of amazing things.  Even though I knew it was in her DNA – that she would inevitably do these things and do them well – it was like watching a bud bloom.

Now her internship is coming to an end and I wish I could get her and the counselor in the same room and remind them that real life is not always like in books.

Now that I think of it, this internship thing is just like speed parenting.

I Love You Just the Way You Are

The Wizard on our portal (www.RightFitToolkit.com) got another email from someone wanting to “confront my shortcomings” by taking a Role-Based Assessment and then “making strategic changes.”  Sweet, so why am I cringing?

I don’t know this guy personally so I’m just going to speak generally here.

YOU ARE FINE THE WAY YOU ARE.

Sorry for shouting.

You are probably in the wrong job.  You might even be in the wrong career.

There’s even a good chance that you are reporting to, at best, someone who is a misfit for their job or, at worst, is just a bully.

And, worst of all, if you want to eat, you probably don’t have much choice.  It’s the economy, dammit.

It’s affecting all of us, but I’m working on it.  Not the economy, just our product for people like you.

So if you’re really miserable in your job and you suspect it just doesn’t fit you, well, I’ve been there.

Many times. And I might be able to help you.

Write me – 25 words or less – why you need help and why you deserve it.

Arrogance, Greediness, Fear – Oh My!

If the economy isn’t improving, neither is the stuff of the headlines.  Downsizings are bad enough: some can’t be helped and some are probably long overdue if the company is to achieve adequate productivity.  It’s the ones where the golden parachutes are opening and nothing’s trickling down the food chain that sadden me.  And of course there’s always Bernie Madoff.  And Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.  And the suicides – German billionaire speculator Adolf Merckle  the latest. Gordon Gekko must be chortling in his celluloid grave.

Arrogance, greediness, fear – oh my!  The lions and tigers and bears that threaten to bring our world to collapse are on the prowl.

They are a cycle because they are cut of the same cloth: the greedy denial of reality, the arrogant illusion that you are the only one of importance in the world.  You can’t have the infantile arrogance and greediness without the fear that leads to worse and worse decisions.  And the evidence says it’s rampant in what e think of as our leaders.

Arrogance, greediness, fear: it’s always a down cycle when these rule.  The things that go bump in the night reside inside.  Time to out them.

Quality v Time – is there a question here?

According to a recent Aberdeen report, quality of hire is the top metric for 63% of non-HR execs while only 49% of HR execs agree. The HR execs rate time to fill at the top of their list while a mere 17% of non-HR execs care about it.

Add to that, Aberdeen’s survey of 400 organizations worldwide which found that the ones that equate competency with behavior are 35% more likely to improve revenue per employee than those that equate it with knowledge or skill. Is there any question that hiring for the right fit – the right behaviors – is the only metric that really counts?

Our CTO said to me years ago, “you can have it cheap, fast or good – pick two.” Good was my top choice. I knew I didn’t have a prayer of getting fast (is anything you want ever fast enough?), though if I wasn’t too cheap I could outbid the competitor for time and attention and probably get things a little faster. So I went for the only kind of competency that counts in the end: delivering high quality when it’s ready. Best of all, it wasn’t only a good bottom line decision, it was a good lesson for me in the virtue of patience!

Is HR looking for a seat at the wrong table?

We’re on a quick road-trip vacation so I’m rereading Clayton Christensen’s classic The Innovator’s Dilemma while Barry drives and thinking about how it applies to the business of HR.  Mostly I’m wondering why HR is so enamored of competency models.

Competency models focus on what the company needs to satisfy existing customers, not what’s needed to defend against disruptive innovations.   Companies that haven’t figured it out are probably offering HR a seat at the competency table.  What are the companies who are planning for their own disruptive innovations doing, I wonder?

Dan Pink, who described our future as a Free Agent Nation, has talked about the employee of the future in terms that don’t include traditional competencies.  He predicts that many of the competencies of today will be offshored to India as their population ramps up to meet our corporate needs.

I wonder, will HR’s seat be offshored too?