How High is Your Hiring Bar?

How much time does your organization spend in ensuring that it is bringing in the right quality of talent?

Perhaps one of the trickiest job for a people manager is hiring the best-in-class talent from outside. It is tricky because one has to take a decision on hiring or not hiring an individual basis few minutes of interaction, even if it is with multiple interviewers. On the one hand, there is a possibility of hiring the wrong individual and on the other hand, but often lesser known, is the possibility of leaving out the right individual for the job. While it does not usually take a long time to decipher a wrong hire, more often than not, we never come to know if we have left out a right individual for the job.

Even with the best of hiring techniques (eg. Assessment Centers) the probability of a right hire is not more than 0.74 at its best and as we can well imagine, for the more commonly used hiring technique like the interviews, the probability could be as low as 0.5 or thereabouts. This means that almost one out of two hires are likely to be wrong hires for the job! This does show a very alarming situation for any organization which is hiring talent at middle to senior levels because if it gets half its new hire decisions wrong (statistically that is the probability) then it does not augur well for that organization even in short run, let alone the medium and long term.

However critical this process may be, I think this gets much lesser attention than it deserves. The reliance on previous experience and educational background gets a disproportionate importance in the selection process than what it should; and on the contrary the match between the organization culture and role specifications with the candidate is given far less importance than it deserves. Success in a previous organization(s) or role(s) is in no way a guarantee for success in a different organization and in a different role because every organization is different and every role has different requirements, notwithstanding the similarities that may appear on the surface. I am not suggesting that previous experience and performance should be ignored, but it should be seen in the context in which the role holder operated and the weightage given to the same should be much lesser than what happens in several organizations for most roles. Even organizations within the same industry and with apparently similar culture differ quite significantly and culture fit has a non-trivial influence on the performance of individuals.

Second, I would say is having the job specifications right. By that I mean not just the description of the job but also the competencies, skills and the success factors in the role. More often than not, these are very generic and not really specific to the role for which the hiring is being made. While one can argue that an external hire is joining an organization and hence all the competencies that are relevant to the organization would be applicable to the role, but that is rarely the case in practice. In reality every role has certain competencies which are required much more than the others just like every role has certain skills which would be unique to it. Investing time in identifying the same can make a huge difference in the quality of hire because it helps in having a clear understanding of what exactly one is looking for. Else, on several occasions, other than the hiring manager the other interviewers (especially if they are from a different Function or Business Unit) may not be clear on exactly what one should look for in this role. Similarly, for every unique role there are certain factors which determine the difference between outstanding performance and average performance in the role- it could be behavioral in nature or it could be job related skills. It is important to clearly articulate the same before one starts looking at talent for the role. There may well be some specific de-railers for the role and if they are that should be clearly spelt out so that one knows what pitfalls to specifically look for. Here it is super critical to emphasize that the number of competencies and functional skills being checked for should be limited in number. You cannot check for 15 competencies and 12 functional skills! Therefore, narrowing down on the specific competencies and skills especially relevant for a particular role is so very important.

Third, while we all know the content of the interview is critical in the selection process, the focus on the same is much less than desired in several instances. As is empirically proven that behavioral event interviews or competency based interviews are far more accurate in predicting future performance, yet the reliance on the same is still not very widely prevalent. A behavioral based interview/ competency based interview seeks to get interviewees to narrate specific instances in the past when they have demonstrated a particular behavior. It is not based on hypothetical situation on how an individual will act if put in that situation. If conducted well, it actually brings out the situation, the task involved, specifically how the interviewee acted and the results achieved. It also enables the interviewer to understand the resume of the candidate in far greater detail than merely the words mentioned in there. An example of a behavioral event/ competency based interview question could be: “ Give me an instance where you have overcome significant obstacles to achieve a stretched target within tight timelines”. In this example for instance, it would be almost impossible for the candidate to feign an example if she has actually not done anything of this sort. Although the candidate may have mentioned having achieved stretched targets in her resume, this kind of interviewing ensures that the interviewer gets a clear understanding of how this has actually played out in the candidate’s professional life.

Fourth element, related closely to the previous one and one which may appear too trivial to even deserve a mention, is actually taking notes while the interviewee is answering the questions. Most interviewers do not consider it worthwhile to take notes while the interviewer is answering. There are two reasons why this should certainly be done: First, it helps the interviewer focus on the details which may get skipped inadvertently by the interviewee. More often than not while the interviewer is making notes, she is likely to notice some gaps in the responses much more than when she is only listening. Second, is a more subtle but equally critical reason. When one is writing instead of merely listening, unconscious biases tend to impact less since the interviewer is focusing more on the content of the response instead of the interviewee per se. If the interviewer is only listening to the responses on the telephone or in a face to face interview, the various kinds of unconscious biases tend to come to the fore which can impact either ways. Besides, of course, the notes does help in comparing with other interviewers regarding the candidate at a later point in time before the final decision.

Fifth, is being conscious of unconscious biases which impact hiring decisions. It is empirically proven across the world that people tend to hire others who are similar to them and reject people who are not similar. There are enough studies available in public domain which have categorically proven our tendency to hire people similar to us. The single biggest challenge with this is that we would not tend to hire people who are much more successful than us at a comparable age profile or those who we find are more competent than we are. Being oblivious to this kind of a bias can seriously jeopardize an organization’s ability to raise the quality of talent on a sustained basis; it would, in fact, lower the quality of talent over a period of time if every new hire is a notch lower in competency as compared to the existing employees. The only way to overcome this unconscious bias is to constantly remind hiring managers to look for talent who are better than themselves. The other way to negate the same unconscious bias to some extent is to have multiple interviewers do the interviews so that no one individual bias plays an inordinate role.

Sixth one would be identifying the interviewers and the number of interviews to be had. While it is important to have more than one interviewer it is equally pertinent that the number do not become so large that the entire process ends up being too cumbersome. In a hyper competitive space for talent, particularly in emerging markets like India, it would be na?ve to make the external hiring process so cumbersome and time consuming that by the time a hire call is made the candidate already has couple of other offers in hand. Yet, at the same time, more than one interviewer ensures that unconscious biases of any one interviewer is negated by others. If a behavioral or competency based interviewing technique is being used, then it is critical that that there should be an overlap of competencies being checked by at least two interviewers. It is always possible that one interviewer may not be able to gauge the proficiency of a candidate on one competency and if gauged there is a possibility of erroneous judgment. Hence if the same competency is being checked by two interviewers in two separate conversations, the chances are that the assessment is likely to be more accurate. Equally, it creates a greater buy-in for the candidate who is selected. The interviewers who have been involved in the decision making for an external hire are likely to have greater ownership in ensuring integration and success of that hire once the candidate joins. Important to point out here that the advantage of multiple interviews occurs only when those happen concurrently and not sequentially. If each interview round is an elimination round then having multiple rounds does not help much because in every round there is a possibility of rejecting a right candidate. Equally, having more than one interviewer in any round can be detrimental to the process because it does not remain a conversation any more but appears more like an interrogation as it were and can inhibit the interviewee from expressing in a free flowing manner. The best interviews I would recommend is when there are 3 or 4 interviewers doing interviews concurrently one at a time and then doing a debrief to decide on the hire call.

Last but perhaps at the bedrock of setting the right hiring bar in any organization is the investment in educating the existing managers on interviewing skills. There are only a handful of organizations which truly invest a lot of time in ensuring that the business managers are well equipped in conducting interviews and making the right hire calls. It is ultimately not the Human Resources Function but the ability of the Business Managers in making the right hire calls which determine the quality of talent in an organization. The HR Function can source the best-in-class resumes but to ensure that from amongst them the organization makes the right decision, both in selecting and not selecting the appropriate candidates is squarely the responsibility of the business managers. And organizations which understand the importance of this, would tend to invest a lot of time in training the business managers in correct hiring decisions as well as encourage managers to spend adequate time in making the right hire calls.

In emerging markets like India, where there is an intense war for talent, it is incredibly important that organizations which want to win this war invest time and effort in focusing in this area.