Hire with your Head: Using Performance-Based Hiring To Build Great Teams (third edition) by Lou Adler

A few years back I was tasked with hiring and training for two different sales teams with some large growth goals. The training part was no problem because I have years of teaching experience and love training new employees to grow. The hiring and recruiting side was my weak point.

I called a good friend, Alan, who has experience hiring hundreds of employees and asked his advice. Here was his response:

“Scotty, at first I was terrible at interviewing and hiring. I picked a lot of people that didn’t work out. Many seemed great on their interviews and then within their first month of employment I knew they weren’t going to be a great fit. Others didn’t interview well but we needed people and we took a chance on them. They turned out to be great! I didn’t have a plan until I read, “Hire With Your Head”. This book gave me the plan and structure I needed to more accurately tell who will do a great job. Get the book, read it and you’ll do well.”

Alan was right.

I bought the book and read it twice. I learned about performance based hiring and how to ask questions that get meaningful information. 

An example of performance based hiring would be this: 

Question: If you wanted to recruit a home run hitter for a baseball team how would you determine who would be the best recruit?

Answer:  The candidate who hit the most home runs last year would be best prediction of how many home runs he would hit this year.

This is performance based hiring in a nutshell. Past success is likely to predict future success. Hitting a lot of home runs in the Major Leagues is best indicator of how you will perform in the Major Leagues. A good Triple A home run streak is less of a predictor but still valid. Double A results are less valid than Triple A and so on. 

You could also scout people from the Japan leagues or from other countries that play by the similar rules. 

Often times when hiring it will be very difficult to find someone who has already done the exact same job before. This is where you can look at cross skills or positive results in a task that is likely to carry over the same skill set. For example: a cricket home run hitter may have the same skills to hit home runs in baseball. A soccer player with a great leg could be a fantastic football kicker. Hockey goalies could be great baseball catchers.

It’s important to look at the skills they have in other areas that will carry over to this position.

There are tons of insight in this book. Here are a few powerful quotes: (highlights are mine)

Quotes from the book:

“Talent is the number one asset in every organization.”

“One really good person is worth a whole pile of mediocre people.”

“Judging people on how well they interview is a terrible way to assess ability.”

“For the average candidate, a new job is a tactical move based on short-term criteria. For the best, it’s a strategic move.”

“Most hiring managers and other members of the selection team aren’t very good at interviewing, yet they all think they are.”

“In this book, we show you how to hire one great person hundreds of times.”

“Dig deeply into a person’s major accomplishments to observe trends of growth and patterns of behaviors. Then compare these to your performance objectives.”

“There is nothing more important—to your personal and company success—than hiring great people. Nothing.”

This is a great book and helped me tremendously. When building a great team to take care of your customers, it is a valuable resource. Anyone involved in recruiting and hiring should read this book and share it with their team. I put this down as a:

MUST READ.

Enjoy your learning and remember to hire with your head!

Scott