Amy Gallo, Harvard Business Review; How to Prevent Hiring Disasters:
"Hiring someone can be a time-consuming and nerve-wracking task. In an ideal situation, you find the perfect person for the position — someone who hits the ground running, increases your unit's performance, and eases your workload. In the worst-case scenario, your seemingly perfect hire turns out to be far from it and you spend months dealing with the aftermath, including finding a replacement. Either way, it can feel like a referendum on your judgment. So how can you be sure your experience is more like the former than the latter? If you outline and adhere to a disciplined process, you can greatly improve your chances.
What the Experts Say
Claudio Fernández-Aráoz, a senior adviser at Egon Zehnder International and the author of Great People Decisions and "The Definitive Guide to Recruiting in Good Times and Bad," argues that hiring decisions are pressure-filled for a reason. "It is crucial to get hiring right not only for the hiring entity, but also, and very importantly, for the person being hired," he says. A new hire isn't to blame for a bad hiring decision, but will shoulder much of the burden when a role doesn't fit.
A carefully crafted hiring process can help avoid most mishaps. Adele Lynn, founder and owner of The Adele Lynn Leadership Group and author of The EQ Interview, urges that companies regard hiring as more of a science than an art, or worse a leap of faith.
Prevention is the best medicine
You can greatly reduce your chances of getting hiring decisions wrong by following a clear and consistent approach that includes knowing the traits valued across the organization (such as humility or an entrepreneurial spirit); conducting fair, structured interviews that include multiple people from the organization; and agreeing on a standard ranking system to evaluate candidates.
Getting the right person for the job requires time and discipline. Be careful of the time trap, warns Lynn. "Often, companies are desperate to fill a position, so the interview process includes some generic questions and some information about the position," she says. Needing to fill the role yesterday is not an excuse for shortchanging the process.
Know the specific competencies you're looking for
Fernández-Aráoz says we are hardwired to hire people who are like us or make us comfortable — but that does not always yield the best candidate. In fact, you need to be aware of what he calls the "typical unconscious psychological traps" that lead one to make inferior people decisions (e.g. overrating capability or making snap judgments). Outline the specific competencies — above and beyond the traits you look for in all new hires — that the ideal candidate needs. What skills are required? How much does experience matter? What behaviors does he need to exhibit in the role? For example, this is a role requiring 7 years of computer programming experience but also an ability to work collaboratively with team members on high-pressure projects.
Screening for the right soft skills is critical. Seasoned hiring managers will tell you that it's much harder to coach behavioral issues than it is to teach someone the technical aspects of the job.
"And people who fail in a new job mostly do so because of their inability to develop proper relationships not only with their boss but also with their peers and subordinates," says Fernández-Aráoz. To assess relational skills and emotional intelligence, "the interview should include behavior-based questions and motive and reflection questions," says Lynn. For example, "Tell me about a time you had a conflict with a co-worker and explain how you resolved it." The aim is to uncover the candidate's true colors. Does he blame others for his mistakes? Does he rationalize his behavior? Or does he accept responsibility? "You get a much more thorough understanding of how a person will behave in the future," says Lynn.
On-board with care
When a new hire seems to be struggling, on-boarding can also be to blame. "Most companies let their new hires sink or swim, and as a result many sink. Some form of integration support reduces the chances of failure, accelerates learning, and increases the contribution of any new hire," says Fernández-Aráoz. The right onboarding approach can help you get immediate value from your new hire and position her for success. But perhaps the most important element is expectation-setting. "Especially with knowledge workers and younger workers, there is a strong need to communicate both expectations of performance and behavior," explains Lynn.
When it happens anyway...
Sometimes even when you follow all the rules, you may still end up with the wrong person in the job. When you suspect a poor fit, proceed carefully. Start by asking others to corroborate your opinion. Don't start a witch hunt, but discreetly ask if they see the situation in the same way. Then, once you've identified where the mismatch is, ask yourself if the problem is coachable "People are ineffective for many reasons and some of those reasons are definitely correctable," says Lynn.
"Unless it's an egregious breach of values, generally coaching and reiterating behaviors and performance expectations should be the first step." Provide feedback to the new hire early on and lay out a plan for getting her up to speed in the problem areas. If the issues persist, consider finding a more appropriate role for her in your organization.
In the worst cases, termination may be your only option, particularly if you find that the problem is not coachable, if you are unwilling to further invest in coaching, or if the error or behavior is intolerable. It should be your last resort, however. "Most likely as the hiring manager you have a large share of responsibility for the mistake, and thus should never fire a person without thoughtful consideration," says Fernández-Aráoz. If you have to let someone go, take a hard look at the hiring process you used and figure out how to change it next time around.
Principles to Remember
Do:
Identify the competencies an ideal candidate needs
Ask interview questions that uncover the drivers behind the candidate's past and future behavior
Give the new hire early feedback about her performance
Don't:
Prioritize technical skills over relational ones
Assume you've made a bad hire without checking your perception with others
Immediately move to termination, without first considering coaching or transferring"
http://blogs.hbr.org/hmu/2010/05/how-to-prevent-hiring-disaster.html
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