Best Practices - 1 #Startups #SMEs

It was in early 2000s when I started expanding my Division that I kickstarted recruitment of professionals. These professionals were from diverse backgrounds - Engineers or MBAs or both. During my long discussion with GM HR of our company regarding the suitability of a candidate wherein we had divergent views on the same candidate, she gave her final decision on the hiring of the candidate by preaching one mantra in hiring -

"When in Doubt, Candidate is Out !"

While I understood the enormity of this mantra instantly, it took me many years to institutionalise this mantra judiciously while hiring candidates at any level. I went on to hire numerous top performers (who exceeded their KPIs), good performers (who met their KPIs) and non-performers (who never met their KPIs). When I subsequently went back and analysed my recruitment, all of these non-performers were doubtful candidates. There were very rare instances wherein a doubtful candidate ever became a top performer. In my experience, on an average 90% of the doubtful candidates were non-performers, and only 10% of the doubtful candidates were top performers.

Who is a doubtful candidate in the process of hiring ?

A candidate is supposed to be doubtful when we are not sure whether the candidate will be able to be a performer in a defined role in the company. In certain cases, even though the candidate was a performer in his previous companies, we are not sure he will be a stable candidate i.e., he will stay in the company for at least 2 years.

So, let us understand the different situations that lead to hiring of doubtful candidates in a company. A candidate is said to be a doubtful candidate in the following instances :

• Let us experiment with this candidate (someone with no experience in the domain or industry)
• This position is very crucial and time is running out taking into consideration client deadline.
• Our hunch is that the candidate can perform in our company, let us give him a chance since the candidate will be working in a better environment (ours)
• HR says "We cannot get any better candidate than this from the market."
• The headhunter feels the candidate will fit into our culture and will be stable after joining our company.
• Our customer has liked the candidate and on the contrary our findings are different.
• The candidate has come through the reference of a good performer. So he must be good.
• The candidate has been recommended by the Board/CEO. So he must be good.
• The candidate has very valid reasons for non-performance/lack-of-stability in the previous companies.
• The candidate is willing to relocate to a new Region and stay away from the family. Our hunch says he will adjust himself.
• The candidate will be on probation, so we can extend his probation so as to get him to perform.
• If the candidate does not perform, we can consider him for alternative role.
• It is unethical to reject a candidate based on intuition
• The candidate gets the benefit of doubt based on emotional grounds
• Candidate with excellent communication skills and ideal / perfect answers at the interviews, but no verifiable track record.

When we hire a doubtful candidate as a Co-Founder, CXO, Sales Head, HR Head, Customer Manager, or Quality Manager we can be beset with catastrophic situations in the company. The impact of hiring a doubtful candidate can be as follows :

• Loss of good Performers
• Loss of Time & Efforts
• Loss of Customers
• Loss of Revenue
• Loss of Margin
• Loss of Morale in the company
• Degradation of Culture in the company

How do we minimise the hiring of doubtful candidates ?

I would recommend that to minimise the doubt factor, companies should use psychometric test, functional test and interview (by 2 senior managers - with a track record of hiring). If there is even a small element of doubt regarding the candidate's ability to perform successfully or with regard to his stability, the candidate should be outrightly rejected. In my experience of hiring, the success rate of hiring a top performer can be 80% (with just interview) and 90% (with both interview and psychometric test).

Whenever we did not follow this hiring mantra and decided to proceed with a doubtful candidate, we landed up hiring a non-performer or an unstable performer (someone who quit the company within a year). So as an example, let us consider that we are hiring 10 doubtful candidates over a period of one year. In that process, we will have 9 non-performers and one top performer. However, the disadvantages of hiring 9 non-performers will far outweigh the advantage of hiring a top performer.

So from a long term perspective, we should never ever hire doubtful candidates since they can be non performers and can drain the time, energy, resources and profit of the company. I have personally experienced and witnessed the disasters of hiring doubtful candidates across Corporate, Startups and SMEs.

People are the most crucial amongst the Resources of any company. Hiring becomes the most critical amongst the processes in any company. A company can have some doubtful customers, doubtful partners, doubtful technology but we cannot afford to hire doubtful candidates. Never ever compromise on Hiring.

So our mantra in Hiring should be - "When in Doubt, Candidate is Out !"