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How to interview and hire A-Players

11-Aug-2011

Before interviewing a candidate for any role in your company, it is vital that you follow the previously described “Hiring A-Players” process in full.  You take shortcuts at your peril - hiring is too important to get wrong!

You filled out a Role Scorecard for the position, and used that as the basis for the job advertisement

You asked each candidate to fill out a Career History Form. I personally never look at resumes.  I use this step to filter out the tire kickers, and get the candidate to tell me exactly what I want to know – and when all candidates fill out this form, I can compare "like with like".

Now, there are 3 types of interviews that need to be conducted:

1. Phone Screening Interview (1 hour)
2. Face to Face Tandem Interview (at least one highly structured 3 hour interview)
3. Reference Check Interviews (with the people you specify)

We don’t have the space to go into the full details of each interviewing step – but here are the key principles:

We dig for the truth.

We want the real truth, and we let the candidate know that we will seek verification for all claims they make.  We ask for tangible evidence of their individual performance. We ask for their permission and assistance to contact previous bosses, colleagues, employees – and we specify the people we want to speak with (hint – it’s not the “friends” they list on their resume).  

If there are any previous “issues” with past jobs we want these to come out as soon as possible, and be discussed openly and honestly.

Past performance is the best predictor of future performance.  

We ask for specific examples of where they exhibited the desired behavioral competencies (as listed on the Role Scorecard) in their past jobs e.g.

• Describe a time in your previous role when you.....(e.g. dealt with a customer who was upset)?
• What was the situation?  
• Who was involved?  
• What exactly did they do?  What did they say?
• What exactly did “YOU” do?  (not what “we” or “the team” did)
• What was the outcome?
• What lessons did you learn from this?

We are most interested in:

• What actions they (as an individual) took in past situations
• What tangible (and verifiable) results they achieved
• What mistakes they made and what they learned from them
• What their bosses, colleagues, employees would say about them

We are NOT interested in:

• What “we” or “the team” did
• What they might do in some hypothetical situation

True A-Player candidates will not be put off by any of this.  They will have verifiable stories where they demonstrated the behavioral competencies you seek.  They provide tangible evidence of results.  They willingly furnish you with the names of bosses, colleagues, employees (that you specify) you would like to speak to.  They have nothing to hide and can back up everything they say.

Are you worthy?

Now you need to take a look in the mirror.  Are you worthy of them?  Ask yourself:

• Can you honestly provide the tools, training, systems, mentoring, and support they will need to perform to an A-Player level in this role?
• Do you provide a fun and challenging environment that allows them to thrive and grow?
• Are you an A-Player manager yourself?  Can you prove it?

Stephen Lynch

Chief Operating Officer - Global Operations - RESULTS.com

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