10 Classic Hiring Manager Bloopers and Blunders Revisited
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Consider the enormous personal cost
for hiring managers who make these blunders. At the most obvious level, it's
hiring competent people who are either unmotivated, or need too much direction
to obtain average results. At the less obvious level, these types of hiring
mistakes demotivate every other person in the department. At the least obvious
level, they prevent the hiring manager from getting ahead. While eliminating
them is not easy, not trying is foolhardy.
10 Classic Hiring Manager
Interviewing and Recruiting Blunders
1) Many managers are unable, or
unwilling, to attract and hire people who are stronger than themselves.
The
best people want to work for leaders who can help them grow and develop. Hiring
managers can minimize this problem by openly discussing the issue, and then
making sure their candidates meet some of the manager’s best current and former
team members.
2) Conservative managers demand
an arbitrary set of skills and experiences before even seeing candidates.
Skills don’t predict performance. The best people accomplish more with less.
That’s why they’re the best. Using performance-based
job descriptions to
define the work, rather than
traditional skills-infested job descriptions, can help avoid this blunder.
3) Most technical hiring managers
overvalue technical brilliance.
Getting stuff done on time and on budget,
with limited direction and limited resources, is often far more important than
being technically smart. Hiring managers need to look at all of their
“brilliant” hires to see if there is a tendency to hire people who over think,
but under deliver.
4) Many senior hiring managers
over trust their intuition or their gut.
To justify this, they point out
the great people they’ve hired, but never consider the better people they
didn’t hire as part of their hiring mistakes.
5) Most hiring managers give too
much credence to people who are assertive, affable, attractive and articulate.
These
are the “four A seduction factors.” Unless the job fit is right, the cultural
fit is right, and the fit with the manager’s style is right, none of these
factors predict on-the-job performance. For proof, consider all of the people
hired who make great first impressions, but underperform, as part of the
blunder pool.
6) Some managers actually say,
“I’ll know the person when I see him or her.”
This is a cop-out. It means
they don’t know what they're looking for. Since great people want to know what
they’ll be working on before taking the job, hiring managers who don’t define
the job ahead of time won’t be seeing or hiring any great people.
7) Too many managers naively
think they can charm or oversell a hot prospect.
Hyperbole and BS is a
recipe for overpaying for underperformance. Good recruiting is about getting a
candidate who is not looking, or has multiple opportunities, to see the job as
a career move, not a compensation
one. This can’t happen unless the hiring manager has clarified
expectations upfront
and has conducted an in-depth Performance-based Interview.
8) Many
managers have a tendency to hire people who are competent, but lack motivation
or need too much direction.
This happens when the emphasis of the interview
is on skills and competency rather than motivation to do the actual work
required. Despite the fact that clarifying expectations up-front has
been shown to be the primary source of job satisfaction and self-motivation, most managers fight the
obvious. If you know anyone who was surprised or disappointed by the work they
had been assigned when first hired, you've experienced the problem first hand.
9) Managers
rarely consider their personality or management style when selecting team
members.
For the new hire, the hiring manager’s style represents more of
the company culture than any other factor. Managerial
fit is
rarely considered during the interview, yet it’s one of the prime contributors
to underperformance.
10)
They ignore or misjudge “soft skills.”
Soft
skills should be considered everything that’s non-technical. This includes getting
work done on time, persevering, overcoming setbacks, organizing and
prioritizing work, influencing others, taking the initiative, being committed,
and coaching others, to name just a few. People don’t underperform due to lack
of technical skills, they underperform due to a lack of soft skills.
Hiring
great people on a consistent basis requires great recruiters and fully-engaged
hiring managers. Hiring great people who are also highly motivated to do the
work needed to be done requires much more. It starts by avoiding these classic
blunders.
Lou
Adler https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20131007002245-15454-10-classic-hiring-manager-bloopers-and-blunders-revisited
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