14 Ideas You Should Know From: The Best Team Wins: Build Your Business Through Predictive Hiring by Adam Robinson

This book explores several ideas on how to improve the hiring process.

The Big Ideas:

• The best hires are looking for more than just a job and a paycheck

• Avoid overreliance on resumes

• What matters: attitude, accountability, past job success, cultural fit

• Attitude

• Locus of Control

• Past Success

• Start by discussing their career plan

• Ask about they are best at and what they like doing

• Ask them what they don’t like doing

• Don’t talk about job experience until you figure out their career plan, what they are good/bad at, and what they like/dislike.

• Ask why they did things, not what they did

• Understand the implications when candidates can’t give specific detail

• Ask candidates to prepare a 30/60/90 day plan

• In the end, reference checks are critical

The best hires are looking for more than just a job and a paycheck

“Everyone wants to work for something that is bigger than themselves,” says Barr. “They don’t want to just punch a clock. You have to find people who don’t just want a job—they want an opportunity.”

Avoid overreliance on resumes

It’s no longer good enough to rely on someone’s resume to determine if they would make a good hire. Resumes are marketing documents. They’re designed to land an interview. Resumes don’t tell you anything about how the candidate performs to expectations or how well they might fit in your culture. And yet, most companies make a candidate’s resume the cornerstone of their hiring process.

What matters: attitude, accountability, past job success, cultural fit

Our research shows that these measurements—attitude, accountability, past related-job success, and cultural fit—are the most significant predictors of job performance, across every type of job…These four measurable elements are so highly predictive that a manager needs to only focus on these four factors to consistently improve their hiring results. We call these factors the Super Elements.

Attitude

Attitude is defined as a person’s disposition toward work. If your candidate has a positive disposition toward the act of working, then they have a “positive attitude.”…There are numerous approaches to measure employee attitude. A quick example might be asking a candidate to describe the most frustrating aspect of their prior job. Ask them what makes it harder for them to do their job.

Locus of Control

The extent to which a person believes they have control over their own outcomes is what industrial psychologists call their locus of control. When good or bad things happen, does the person take accountability for their actions and for their contribution to that result? In psychology parlance, there are two loci—an internal locus of control and an external locus of control…The pronouns they use can be extremely illuminating. If they answer with statements like “I could have done a better job planning this effort,” or “I should have realized that my decision would lead to issues,” they likely have an internal locus of control. On the other hand, if they blame the economy or their manager—“It wasn’t my fault!”—you know they likely have an external locus of control. When a candidate places the blame on external factors, you should see a red flag.

Past Success

A candidate has past related-job success if they have met formal goals in past jobs that are similar to the goals of the job they are applying for. If the context of the person’s past job—activities, goals, and environment—closely matches the context of the job you are hiring them for, a candidate who met or exceeded their goals in the past job is likely to meet or achieve similar goals in the future.

Start by discussing their career plan

Discuss the Candidate’s Career Plan You’ll begin the interview portion of the conversation by discussing the candidate’s career plan. Asking a candidate to talk about their career goals is a nonthreatening way to break the ice and put your interviewee at ease. If you dive right into their resume (as approximately 99 percent of other interviewers do) you’ll get programmed answers that tell you what they think you want to hear. We’re looking for authenticity. Ask them their twenty-year, five-year, and one-year professional goals. You’ll get a good overview of your candidate and a good sense of their vision for themselves.

Ask about they are best at and what they like doing

This is my favorite part of the telephone interview. After discussing the candidate’s career plan, you’re going to ask them two questions. First, ask them what they think they’re best at, professionally speaking, and what type of work they enjoy doing. This begins a career audit trail that shows you the type of work this person excels at.

Ask them what they don’t like doing

Then, you’ll ask the candidate what type of work they don’t like doing. These answers tend to be things that the candidate will be less good at, but we’ll verify that down the road in the personal interview (should the candidate make it to that point). My experience has taught me that people enjoy work that they’re good at and tend to dislike things that they’re not as good at.

Don’t talk about job experience until you figure out their career plan, what they are good/bad at, and what they like/dislike.

Explore the Candidate’s Job History Notice that we don’t start talking about the candidate’s job experience until the midpoint of the interview. Why? If their career plan and what they are best at and don’t like aren’t a good fit for the role that you’re trying to fill, does job history matter? This part of the interview isn’t the typical, “Tell me about your role at XYZ company” approach that you’re probably used to; save those questions for the in-person interview. Instead, ask a few simple questions about each experience listed on their resume, in reverse chronological order: Why did you decide to join XYZ Company? What are/were you accountable for in this role, in specific and measurable terms? How will they rate your performance when we talk with them, and why?

Ask why they did things, not what they did

We don’t spend time asking candidates about what they did at ACME Incorporated; instead we immediately ask them why they decided to work for ACME Incorporated. What we’re looking for is something we call an interview tell.

Understand the implications when candidates can’t give specific detail

“What were you accountable for doing on a day-to-day basis, and what were your major accomplishments during your time there?” If the candidate was a top performer and knows it, then the candidate’s answer will be immediate and full of details. If the candidate says something like, “I can’t recall the details, exactly, it was a long time ago,” it’s a huge red flag.

Ask candidates to prepare a 30/60/90 day plan

My recommendation is to give your finalist(s) a simple, straight-forward assignment called the 30/60/90-day performance plan. This assignment will give you valuable insight into the approaches that your candidate will use to accomplish the necessary goals for their new role.

In the end, reference checks are critical

As much as we’d like to believe everything that candidates tell us, it’s the reference check that tells us whether or not the results that they said they achieved ever actually existed. If you rely solely on the candidate’s word, you’re guaranteed to make hires that result in missed expectations. Until you ask the candidate’s former supervisors a few critical questions, you can’t be sure that you know what you’re getting.

Questions:

“Over the course of your career, what role has quality played in your overall performance?”

“What standards and procedures for delivering work are/were in place in your current/most recent position?”

“What have you done on your last/present position to increase your organization’s top-line revenues?”

“Describe to me the specific things you know and have experience with that enable you to succeed in your job.”

“Tell me about the last professional training or education that you received.”

“Give me an example of how you use current information about the industry to increase performance in your role.”

“How organized are you?”

“I’d like for you to think about the last project or assignment that you worked on where you had tight deadlines and multiple milestones. Describe it to me.”

“What was the last problem that you had to solve on the job?”

“Tell me about a time when you anticipated a problem and prevented it from becoming a problem by taking preemptive action.”

Judgment and Decision Making 1“Describe the last time you had to make a decision between two courses of action and dealt with significant consequences?”

“Have you ever made a decision at work that turned out to be the wrong one?”

“Describe your decision-making process.”

“What was the last mistake that you made?”

“What was the last mistake that you made?”

“How do you stay current with knowledge?”

“Describe the last constructive feedback that you received from your manager.”

“Do you consider yourself a creative person?”

“Describe a time when you created a new way of doing things at work.”

“Have you ever spoken up about something you knew wasn’t working as well as it could?”

“Are you more of a detail-oriented person or a big-picture person?”

Communication 1“Describe your communication style.”

“Describe a time when you’ve had to modify your communication style to get through to someone, either at work or with a customer.”

“Have you ever been on a team where there is open conflict?”

“Are you a ‘people person’?”

“Do you consider yourself to be a natural leader of people?”

“When was the last time you asked for help at work?”

“Describe your previous/current manager.”

“What’s your definition of micromanagement?”

“Who’s the best boss you’ve ever had?”

“Who’s the worst boss you’ve ever had?”

“Tell me about your greatest strength and why it will benefit our company.”

“What one area do you really need to work on in your career to become more effective on a day-to-day basis?”

“What was the best job you ever had?”

“What’s the worst job you’ve ever had?”