How to Avoid an Expensive Mistake with Your Next C-suite Hire

In the Health/Medical space there can be a lot at stake when looking for c-suite talent. 

The time, energy, and resources spent looking for an MD or CEO can prove incredibly costly. In fact, many believe the cost of a hire to be roughly 33% of the employee’s salary, not to mention all of the logistical, time, and productivity costs that are associated with it too. 

 So getting it right the first time should be elementary, right? 

Well, the scary truth is that over 85% of HR decision-makers admit that their organisation has made a bad hire according to the REC. And bad hires are where the costs can quickly turn from painful, to deadly.

 Paying for that extra 33% is only the tip of the iceberg. 

When we consider lost productivity, bringing in part-time contractors, or increasing the current staff’s workload it’s easy to see how the costs of hiring any team member can quickly get out of control, yet alone when it comes to hiring a CEO or MD.

So how can you make sure to get it right the first time? 

How do you or your hiring team effectively work out who is a bad hire? How can we get a glimpse into the future performance of a potential new senior leader BEFORE offering them the job?

Quick spoiler; it’s not through reading over CVs and conducting traditional interviews.

Recently, more and more organisations have looked to the field of psychology to predict the future behaviour of their candidates. 

This process is called behavioural assessment and is especially important when it comes to hiring at C-level, especially in the ever changing medical field. 

Let me explain why.

C-level qualities

Although technical experience is necessary for c-suite hires, now we are seeing organisations move to more advanced ways of assessing behaviour in order to determine if their candidates have the necessary soft skills. This is true in every industry but in the medical and healthcare provider space, it seems even more so.

A report from InveniasPartners highlighted leadership assessment as the first step in finding and developing the right c-suite and board talent for companies in this industry. Here is how they put it:

Health systems continue to evolve from cultures based on hierarchy, fragmentation, expert-centeredness, to cultures rooted in integration, collaboration, teaming, matrix structure and patient family centeredness. These changes demand leaders who think strategically, embrace change, learn quickly, move with agility and manage horizontally.  

With this in mind, medical or healthcare companies looking for someone in senior leadership need to be sure that their next hire has these traits in abundance. 

So how can you ensure your candidates do have these soft skills BEFORE you hire them?

Understand EVERYTHING about your potential hire

This is where behaviour and psychological tests come into play. 

For example, two candidates with similar skill sets may have completed their objectives, but one may have used far more positive behaviours, or ones better suited to your culture to get there. 

Which one would you rather hire?

By just looking at a CV and conducting standard interview questions, you may never know which was better suited to your company’s culture until it’s too late.

One excellent way to use a behavioural assessment is to build an avatar of your ideal candidate and take into account the technical skills and behaviours that are deemed important in your company. 

Have the whole team, stakeholders, and managers contribute to the profile, so you have a pinpoint focus on what you are looking for. Try it out and see how much easier the hiring process becomes!

If you want to avoid a costly bad hire it’s crucial you understand your candidates on a much deeper level, and this helps the applicant too. A well-conducted behavioural assessment will tell your ideal candidate that you have taken the time to understand EVERYTHING about them. 

This is fantastic for building trust and will give your new hire confidence in your company and their role within it, which will make them far less likely to leave due to a bad culture fit.

So behavioural assessments are great for highlighting those crucial traits that are fundamental for C-level hires.

Let’s move on to another great benefit of behavioural assessments.

A little white lie - sniffing out the truth

According to a report from monster.com, around 78% of applicants lie on their CVs. Crazy right?

Here is a breakdown of the most common little white lies told:

• 60% said they had mastery in skills they had basic knowledge of
• >50% said they worked at some jobs longer in order to omit an employer
• 45% gave a false reason for leaving a job
• 42.25% made up relevant experiences
• 41.25% used a director title when the actual title was a manager

These are some scary figures. And it’s worse when you know that lying on a CV counts for 37% of all bad hires. 

But surely C-level candidates wouldn’t do this, especially not in the medical sector. 

There’s too much at stake, right?

Well, just ask Peter Knight, chief information and digital officer at Oxford University Hospitals NHS. Peter was convicted of fraud for lying on his CV to get the senior-level job. 

He now faces two years in prison!

If that teaches us anything, it’s that anyone can bend the truth on their resume. Now of course there are basic competency tests you can do and tests to check technical skills, but how do we test leadership? Ambition? Strategic problem-solving?

Behavioural Interviewing

Typically, it’s during an interview where you would attempt to uncover the truth. However, most of the time, interviews are unstructured and not detailed enough to gauge whether the candidate is telling porky pies.  

Again, this is where behavioural assessment comes to the rescue. Using behavioural event interviewing rather than unstructured questioning will provide you with far more in-depth answers about a candidate’s behaviour and limit their ability to stretch the truth.

Here are some excellent behavioural interview questions you can ask next time you interview for a role, it won't be easy for someone to embellish these answers.

• Describe a time when you had a conflict with another C-Suite colleague or board member? How did you resolve it?
• Tell me about a time when you had to adapt to a new change you didn't agree with.
• Explain a situation where you had to use sound judgement and logic to overcome a specific problem.
• Tell me about a time a company's culture clashed with your beliefs.

By digging deeper into the details provided by your applicants, you will be able to understand their behaviours and their overall competency on a much higher level. It may take a little longer, but the results will be well worth it when you can avoid a bad hire.

This is the reason why I use behavioural assessments EVERY time I make a hire. I’m pleased to say it's one of the reasons I can keep a 96% retention rate with my clients even after two years!

I go into much more detail in my ebook “How the Medical Industry Can Protect Its Cash Flow Post-Pandemic” which you can download for free here.

I hope this has been useful, and if you have any comments i’d love to hear from you, drop a comment in the box below!

PS- If you have suffered from a bad hire or want to discover how they can be costing you hundreds of thousands of pounds a year – download by ebook “How the Medical Industry Can Protect Its Cash Flow Post-Pandemic” now.