The Three Best Predictors of On-the-Job Success

I’ve been interviewing candidates for 30+ years and tracking their subsequent performance for just as long.

I’ve found that ability to do the work, fit with the actual situation, and motivation to do the actual work to be the best predictors of subsequent success.

However, unless you define the actual work you can’t measure any of these factors accurately. For example, consider a top-notch person who is highly motivated to work 24/7 on tough technical problems for a supportive manager in an even-paced, mature organization. Change any factor – the manager, the type or number of problems, the company culture, the pressure to perform, or the level of support – and it’s problematic if this same person will as successful or motivated.

It seems obvious that if you don’t define the work ahead of time, the assessment will be flawed. Yet somehow the obvious is lost on those doing the assessing. Here’s a quick solution whether you’re interviewing or being interviewed:

1. Define the work first as a series of 5-6 performance objectives (more). It’s better to say “upgrade the customer billing and reporting system” rather than have a BS in Accounting, 2-3 years Accounts Receivable (AR) experience with in-depth exposure to Great Plains billing software.” (If you’re a candidate ask the interviewer to describe the critical performance objectives for the job. Don’t be surprised if most interviewers don’t know these, including the hiring manager, but this is a great way to demonstrate your insight and switch the conversation to performance and potential rather than skills and experience.)
2. Define the situational fit factors. These include the manager’s leadership style, the company culture, and any unusual aspects of the job including the pace, the need for flexibility, resource limitations, and the quality of the team. For example, for the Accounts Receivable position it would be important to note if the manager is a control freak or totally uninvolved, or if the project is six months behind schedule, or if the department is understaffed. All of these will affect performance. (Job-seekers should always ask about these situational fit factors during the interview since they could be a setup for failure.)
3. Conduct a Performance-based Interview (more). Assessing ability and fit involves having candidates describe their most significant comparable accomplishment (MSA) for each of the 5-6 critical performance objectives defining the work. This is the Most Important Interview Question of All Time I’ve written about previously. Done properly, this one question uncovers talent, fit and motivation. (Candidates need to answer this by describing a major equivalent accomplishment providing lots of specific details. To get ready for the interview, prepare a half-page write-up for each of your top 5-6 accomplishments with every detail you can remember.)
4. Peel the onion for each MSA question looking for patterns of success. To uncover the underlying drivers motivating the candidate to excel, ask about the manager’s style, the environment, the resources, the team, how projects were organized and how challenges were overcome. Even if you correctly assess talent, few people excel in all situations, that’s why measuring fit is so important. After 3-4 MSA questions patterns of consistent behavior will emerge. These factors tend to involve the quality of the manager, the types of work the candidate finds motivating, the degree of job structure, and the types of people the candidate works with. (Job-seekers should know this about themselves as they compare opportunities. In the long run, they’re far more important than the money and the location.)
5. Find the source of motivation, not just the level of it. The three drivers of success, ability, fit and motivation are interdependent, unfortunately most interviewers measure them individually, or not at all. For each accomplishment ask the candidate to provide three examples of initiative or going the extra mile. Most people can come up with one or two. Only the truly self-motivated can describe three. Soon you’ll have multiple examples of initiative in different situations. Collectively they’ll reveal the underlying source of the candidate’s drive. Make sure your job is comparable on this score, since the difference between a talented person and an all-star is motivation.

Predicting hiring success involves assessing a candidate’s ability to do the work, his or her fit with the actual circumstances of the job, and the person’s underlying motivation to do the actual work required. Few would dispute this. Yet most managers over emphasize raw talent or generic motivation, without proper consideration for the actual job and situation. This seems foolhardy, since the manager will be clarifying expectations once the new hire is on the job, so doing it before the person is hired takes no additional effort. Even better, the manager might discover that the best candidate is not the one who makes the best first impression, but the one who is actually the best performer.

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Lou Adler (@LouA) is the Amazon best-selling author of Hire With Your Head (Wiley, 2007) and the award-winning Nightingale-Conant audio program, Talent Rules! His latest book, The Essential Guide for Hiring & Getting Hired, is now available as an Amazon Kindle eBook. You might want to join Lou's new LinkedIn group to discuss hiring related issues.