Lou Adler Group - Originators of Performance-based HiringCurrent Articles written by the Lou Adler Group.
If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it. – Peter Drucker (Note: the following was written by our new Performance-based Hiring ChatGPT coach. You’re welcome to try it out, but it’s a bit funky. The improvements shown in the infographic above require two things. One is to define work as series of performance, not […]
With AI, there’s a new math for hiring. It turns out everyone can now be in the top half of the top half. To get there candidates and hiring managers both need to be more discriminating and make wiser decisions. Getting to the top 10% takes a little more effort. For some it’s worth it. […]
When creating a talent acquisition strategy it’s important to note that about 20-25% of those in the workforce are always actively looking for another job. This is the group companies need to target to fill open jobs as rapidly as possible. There’s another 20-25% who are always proactively passive. Don’t even attempt to contact these people unless you’ve worked with the person before. Given this, it’s obvious the candidates you’ll want to hire for your most important roles are in the other 50-60%. While this is the ideal talent market, these people won’t respond to your emails or calls unless you become an expert at passive candidate recruiting. This involves a number of critical skills, in particular:
As a recruiter I abhorred the idea that an outstanding candidate for an important job was being judged by a person who wasn’t a very good interviewer. Sadly, after having debriefed over one thousand different interviewers, I estimate that about two-thirds fell short. And too often the assessments of those who were valid were overridden or discredited by those who weren’t.
I’m getting nervous with the proliferation of all of these AI-infused chatbots that will change life and work as we now know it. Some of them are wrong. Really wrong.
The Hiring Formula for Success shown in the image above defines all of the factors that best predict on-the-job success. Soft skills top the list.
I think too many people including those in HR, OD experts, hiring managers and recruiters, believe being a good interviewer requires some remarkable insight into human behavior. I think they’re mistaken. There is an alternate path: being a good detective.
Having tracked the performance of thousands of senior professional staff and managers over the past 50 years it turns out it’s not hard to predict who will be successful. All you need to do is ask candidates to describe their major accomplishments most comparable to the key performance objectives (KPOs) of the open job. As long as you dig deep enough the factors shown below will pop out. Consistency is what matters, though, not one-time occurrences. This preview of the Sherlock Holmes deductive interview describes the probing needed to gather this information.
It turns out hiring people who will be in the top half is pretty easy. You just have to stop making hiring mistakes.
The other day a candidate asked me how to figure out if he was qualified for a new role given 15 years of experience with the same company.
It turns out that anyone can be in the top 25% with the right job, the right company, and the right hiring manager. But this is a rare event despite having spent $400-500 billion in job postings and HR tech in the past 25 years in the hope of matching the perfect job with the perfect candidate.
It turns out that hiring outstanding talent on a consistent basis has little to do with your ATS, which job boards you use or the quality of your competency model. The process shown in the image below (PDF version) will give you consistent great results as long as you do these four things first:
The traditional interview process has been shown to be unreliable in predicting job performance, often due to bias, lack of training and a focus on surface-level characteristics. The Performance-based Interview (PBI) is a natural language approach that seeks to assess an individual’s competency, fit and motivation by asking them to describe their past performance in specific situations. Studies have shown that the PBI is a more accurate predictor of job performance than other interview methods, making it a valuable tool for organizations seeking to hire the best candidates. Moreover, the PBI can be used to assess candidates at all levels of experience, making it an ideal method for career development and succession planning.
If you want to hire a great person, you need to offer a great job, not a laundry-list of skills, experiences and competencies that at best is no more than an ill-defined lateral transfer surrounded by some generic boilerplate. This is even more important today with candidates leaving within 90 days after starting if the new job turns out to be more promise than substance (Fortune, May 2022).
The worst question about career goals is something like, “What’s your major career goal for the next five years?”
While it’s hard to believe that a single hiring mistake could cost a company $400 thousand, it’s not so hard to believe when looking at this table showing the incremental profit contribution of employees at these well-known companies. The idea behind this table is that it shows the full financial and business impact a person has on a company, rather than just considering the person’s compensation package.
Few companies calculate the ROI of the effectiveness of their different sourcing channels but those that do discover referrals are the best with job boards generating more mistakes. And the cost of these mistakes is staggering wiping away the benefits of lower cost and speedier hiring.
The primary purpose of this post is to argue that compensation shouldn’t be the primary measure of pay equity. The secondary purpose is..
Leverage: Getting more output with less input.
Leaders are force multipliers who get more done with and through people using some type of magical leverage.
As you’ve discovered if you’d tried to hire any senior level person, the process for hiring leaders for these critical spots is much different than hiring everyone else for this one simple reason:
Many years ago I worked with LinkedIn on preparing a video highlighting the importance of developing a hiring strategy based on attracting the best rather than one designed to filter out the weak. It turns out that without the right talent strategy it’s not possible to hire more leaders on a consistent basis. Chance, hope, the latest technology or job boards won’t help. While the message in the video is still true today, most people will have some Catch-22 excuse why it won’t work.
In a post earlier this year I claimed that too many people change jobs for all the wrong reasons. Most often it’s for the stuff at the bottom of the “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Hiring Needs” graphic above, rather than the stuff at the top. Unless they’re (very) lucky, the result is always disappointment, dissatisfaction and regret.
LEADERS: The strongest people are easy to spot. They’re leaders. Leaders don’t just do their jobs reasonably well; they improve how they do their jobs. And whether they’re managing a team or not, they also help everyone they work with do their jobs better, too. You can use this Performance-based Interview to determine if your candidates are leaders, or not.
In my semi-retired state, I’ve decided to give away my best secrets for recruiting and hiring the top 25% with a new type of training program. Many of them are highlighted in the infographic above. You’ll be able to learn and apply them all just by reading Hire with Your Head (4th ed, Wiley. September 2021) and becoming a participating member of our virtual book club.
One of Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is “Begin with the end in mind.” This is great advice whenever implementing any type of process improvement program especially changing how hiring is done at your company. “Think win-win” is another one of Covey’s seven habits. When it comes to hiring, this habit is doubly important. It means ensuring the new hire and the hiring manager both recognize the importance of making the right decision and both have all of the information needed to make the right one. Due to its importance this habit has been adopted as the overriding goal and theme of the new edition of Hire with Your Head and rightly called “Win-Win Hiring.” It means hiring for the anniversary date rather than the start date.
As part of the fourth edition of Hire with Your Head (Wiley, September 2021) we’re starting a unique book club for those who pre-order the book. Over the next several weeks I’ll be highlighting different themes from the book. This week focuses on the idea of hiring for the long-term rather than the start date in order to achieve consistent Win-Win Hiring outcomes.
The fourth edition of Hire with Your Head (Wiley, September 2021) will soon be published. As part of the unique book club we’re putting together for those who pre-order the book program, I’ll be selecting different sections of the book to highlight. The opening of the book makes the case that most hiring problems are strategic in nature, so I’ll start there.
On September 22, 2021, the 4th edition of Hire with Your Head will be published by John Wiley & Sons. As part of the totally revised edition, I reviewed some of my favorite posts from the past few years and incorporated them in the new book. The following is a slight rewrite of one that appeared on LinkedIn’s Talent Blog a few years ago.
Make sure you read “15 Ways to Hack-a-Job” if you’re starting to think about changing jobs. Here are 107 other job posts for job seekers that will guide you step-by-step through ensuring you compare offers properly especially how to negotiate compensation. You’ll find the condensed version in The Essential Guide for Hiring & Getting Hired.
At the beginning of a recent corporate recruiter workshop a hiring manager I had worked with previously at LinkedIn, asked if he could tell a Performance-based Hiring interviewing story.