Axiom Ideas

Why?  Because you’ll be spared from having an additional 500 people looking for work and going through interviews like this:

NFL Players Locked Out And Looking For Work

One of the more famous quotes by Louis Pasteur, or if you have kids under 10, Edna Mode from the Pixar film, The Increadibles.   My point is, candidates get a lot of coaching before they ever see you.  Here is an example form Yahoo / Monster: Preparing for your interview

After you look at that link, let me ask you, “If you are sitting across from the person who followed the advice from the Monster article, who is better prepared for the interview?”   Just something to think about.

Peter Falk who was best known for his role as Columbo, the bumbling private detective who always got his man/woman, died this past weekend.  One of his most famous lines was:  Just one more thing…

Just One More Thing

He’d ask all the usual questions and, just when the murderer felt he or she was safe, Columbo would strike with one more question that would cause the alibi to unravel.

My team and I break down audio and video of interviews conducted by HR executives, recruiters, sales managers, presidents, and more, and one of the most common mistakes in all of their interviews is…they don’t probe.     At best, most people conducting interviews run through a list of prepared interview questions going from the first to the last; however, they almost never dive into each response with “just one more thing…”

Let’s pay homage to one of the greatest TV detectives of all times and, in doing so, increase the likelihood that we add a top performer to our team.  Let’s all ask “just one more thing” in our next interview.  Actually, if you really want to get to the meat, you’ll ask three more things.  If your curious about why you should ask three more things, call or email me: Mike Norton, 602-490-0380 or mnorton@axiomone.com.

• I hired this new sales guy for next to nothing!
• We’re not going to pay for relocating that VP.
• Her salary requirements are just outside of the pay grade we’ve established for that role.

I’ve heard versions of the above statements made time and time again and they almost never turn out to be the best way to help you make a hiring decision. Let me offer the following two experiences I’ve had:

1. A few years ago I was counseling an owner of a Manufacturer’s Sales Agency when he was hiring a new outside sales representative. He told me that he was getting a great sales guy for half the price of what he was being paid in his previous role and the owner was proud of that “steal.” I asked him if it concerned him that he apparently hired someone who couldn’t negotiate a great comp package for himself, but the owner didn’t seem concerned and hired him. Jump to a year later, the guy never made his sales quota and had to be fired.  That was some “steal.”

2. An amazing sales leader who I’ve known since I got into this industry many moons ago was recently negotiating a comp package for himself and talked the company into giving him almost 33% more than was originally offered. When the package was presented to the board of directors, they about chocked and put the hire on hold.  And I ask you why? He just demonstrated that he’s one hell of a negotiator and could put that skill into practice when negotiating deals for the company.  That skill may be the difference between $100,000,000 deal and $150,000,000 deal. Or better yet a closed deal when there was a competitor offering a lower price for virtually the same product or service.

In the grand scheme of things paying for relocation, or giving a candidate the extra pay (maybe having it heavily emphasized on an agreed upon bonus structure) is a lot better than getting a bargain who doesn’t perform for you.

The Fed seems to think that unemployment will drop by 2 percentage points in the next couple of years, but my friends who run the Freakonomics blog disagree.  They suspect unemployment will most likely drop by only 1/2 of a percent by 2013.  You can read their article here:  The Fed’s Wishful (and wrong) Thinking About Unemployment.

I’m inclined to believe the less rosy perspective of the economists at Freakonomics, not because they are smarter and not because they have access to better information than the people at the Fed.  Neither are true.  Rather, I believe they’re more accurate only because they don’t have a dog in this fight.  Ben Bernanke and his team at the Fed are motivated to see a better picture, as they are part of the equation that can slow or speed up an economy, which means that they may be more apt to see the cup as half full.

But I digress.  The main point is that the best that we can hope for in the way of unemployment is about an 8% unemployment rate…in 2 years.   Why do I bring this up?  Well, in the book Good to Great, Jim Collins points out that the best companies are able to “face the brutal facts.”  As such, for at least the next 2 years, you can expect the following when you attempt to hire someone:

1. Be prepared for A LOT of resumes when you advertise your open position on job board.
2. A lot of those unemployed people are not top performers or at least have baggage.
3. If your company is like most, hiring managers, operations, and HR teams are running very lean and don’t have a lot of time.

So what have you done to streamline your interview process while increasing the likelihood of effectively identifying the best candidates from the sea of average performers?

Time for a self serving plug: we can help you with that.

…what would you do to get through that problem?

Did you say, “cram them into a school auditorium, give them 15-minutes each to “wow you” and then make your hiring decision.”?

That’s what a Providence, R.I. school district decided to do.  I’m sure it made perfect sense to them when they decided to do it; however, I’m not sold about their resolve to use that approach again after hearing this NPR report:  NPR – Speed Dating Hire

Before you roll your eyes, think about your hiring process.  Are there any places where you could improve the candidate experience and/or increase your odds of hiring the right person?

I say “Bounty Hunter” and what image jumps to mind? Dog and his crazy posse?

Or maybe your favorite Star Wars villain, Boba Fett?

Both are (Dog might deny this) fantasy; however, they do have something in common with real Bounty Hunters in that they almost always get their man.

In a recent blog post by Stephen Dubner about the effectiveness of Bounty Hunters vs. Police at catching felons who skip bail, he observed that Bounty Hunters were about 50% better at catching bail jumpers than the Police.  He concluded that it came down to a simple matter of incentives.  Police get paid whether they catch the bail jumper or not.  Bounty Hunters only get paid when they catch the criminal, and that is why they are astoundingly good at catching the baddies they go after (97% effective).

What can we take away from this?  If you consider internal recruiters vs. contingency recruiters, who starves if he/she doesn’t find your “man”?  And, as such, who has the most incentive to find talent for you?   Life is all about incentives.    If we want to take it a step further, what if that contingency recruiter were paid on the actual success of that hire?  I bet you’d see even more behaviors modified; however, we’ll save this for another conversation.

Life is all about incentives.  If you want your “man,” maybe a contingency search firm is something for you to consider.

In May of last year I challenged (blog post) a Business Week article that claimed CEOs were looking for leaders with “Creativity”.  In short, I countered with the idea that people are poor judges of what they think they want vs. what they truly need.   Today I read an interesting article in Bnet (great site for any business leader to peruse) that said pretty much the same thing.  Of course, they came to that conclusion a year after I did (shameless, self-serving plug).

What they found was that people who were rated at being very creative were not usually rated very strong at being leaders.   So, again, the next time someone is asking you to find them a creative leader, or multi-tasking receptionist, or a hard-charging manager, you might benefit from taking the time to figure out whether or not you are getting a wish list or what is genuinely needed for top performance in that role.

This is the week of the NFL Combine, which is a place where college football players demonstrate their “NFL Readiness” by doing a series of tests (bench press, vertical leap, running cones, intelligence, etc.).  A good result on these tests is supposed to equate to top performance in the NFL.  Scouts from the NFL place a lot of emphasis on the results of these tests and some tests receive more focus than others.  The 40-yard dash is one of those tests.  If you can run a 40 under 5 seconds, you’re good.  If you can run a 40 under 4.3 seconds, you’re lightning fast.  Only  9 players have done this at the combine, which started in 1999.  Here is how their NFL careers panned or are panning out: 3 have been to the pro-bowl, 1 is too early to tell, 2 bounced around the league for a few years and 3 never made it in the league.

So let’s ask the literal million dollar question, is a fast 40 a good predictor of success?  It doesn’t look to good for the test right now.  Maybe we can dive a little more deeply into this question.  For that we’ll need to look at the Oakland Raiders.  If the 40 predicted success then the Oakland Raiders should be a powerhouse in the NFL because they took 4 of those players; however, in the last 11 years they’ve only had 4 winning seasons.  The strength of the 40 is losing more and more steam by the minute; however, teams still put a ton of weight on it.  Hmmmmm.

Now, let’s think about how you hire in your company.  Is there a “40-yard dash” in your hiring system?  Are you collecting a trophy of MBA’s, or “5-7 years of experience,” or “Ivy League degrees” like Al Davis, owner of the Raiders, collected sub-4.3 players?   Maybe it’s time you rethink how you play the game when it comes to hiring the people who will get you to your goals.  If you’re looking at way to rethink your hiring process and you like sports, maybe you should look at another Oakland team, the A’s, and read Moneyball by Michael Lewis.  It’s the perfect metaphor to help you rethink how you hire.  Or you can give us a call and we’ll work with you to get the best people on your team.

I say the word “cyberweapon” and what ideas and images pop into your mind?  If you are an American, Canadian, Brit, Frenchman, or most any other European, here is what popped into your mind:

• Worms and viruses
• Elaborate fishing schemes
• A group of hackers breaking into the computer networks of large institutions and governments
• Crashing entire networks
• Flooding servers with useless information
• Inter-office Fantasy Football Leagues…wait, maybe not this one.

So, when you hear that the U.N. is sponsoring an initiative to eliminate Cyber-warfare, it would seem to be a no brainer that all countries would want to back this initiative and protect their electronic information networks within their boarders.  Do you hear a “yes” coming or a “but” coming?   If you said “but,” then you win a prize.    BUT it’s not that simple.   If I say the word “cyberweapon” and you happen to be in from Russia, Iran, Afghanistan, China, India, Ethiopia, or Viet Nam, then here is what pops into your mind:

• Unfettered access to information that would be construed as “Ideological Aggression”
• Twitter – and American plot to destabilize foreign governments
• Mass psychological brainwashing

Isn’t it amazing how the term “Cyber-warfare” can have such completely different meanings depending upon your geography?  But I don’t need to go as far as looking at international peace relations to find words that have very, very different meanings.  The English language is riddled with them.  For example:

• Ball – are we talking about a large formal dance or object tossed during a game?
• Angle – are we fishing or are we talking about a point where two lines intersect?
• Beef – is that a side of meat or a complaint?
• and much more, just think of: stall, lead, flat, yard, etc.

Unfortunately, these types of nefarious words can find their way into your place of business too.  Think about the last time you hired someone.  It’s quite possible you used a term like “aggressive” when describing what you needed from that new hire.  But did you mean that you wanted someone who thrived on difficult conversations or someone who wouldn’t end the day until he/she had contact with 25 potential new customers each day?   Here’s an exercise for you to try in your office.  Send an email to your leadership team and ask them the following:

Without going to Merriam Webster’s website or accessing the Oxford English Dictionary in your Kindle, give me your brief definition for: Aggressive.

Let me know how many different definitions you get. I welcome the email from you.  More importantly, the next time you sit down to talk with a recruiter, your HR department, or your team to discuss competencies needed for someone to be your next new colleague, be sure you are very clear; otherwise, you may end up with a team member who argues with everyone, but doesn’t generate near the level of activity that you so desired.