When you consider that the top 25% is a definition of outstanding performance rather than a statistic, it’s possible for everyone to meet this threshold of performance:
The "Win-Win" Performance-based Hiring Articles, Insights and Podcasts
Hiring for Success – Part 7
With AI, there’s a new math for hiring. It turns out everyone can now be in the top half of the top half. To get there candidates and hiring managers both need to be more discriminating and make wiser decisions. Getting to the top 10% takes a little more effort. For some it’s worth it.
Using AI, Everyone Can Now Be in the Top Third
According to ChatGPT everyone can now be in the top third despite the mathematical absurdity. These are people who are more motivated, more satisfied, more productive, stronger team players and more flexible. Here’s all you need to do to get started.
The New Metrics for Assessing Hiring Effectiveness
I uploaded this PDF describing the 12 factors in our Hiring Effectiveness Index (HEI) into ChatGPT. I then asked if the scoring system would help a company identify potential problems in its current hiring processes.
Hiring Success Starts by Ensuring Your Tactics Match Your Strategy
If your tactics, techniques, and technologies don’t support your talent strategy, you won’t be seeing or hiring too many good people.
Use ChatGPT to Convert Jobs into Career Moves
Long ago a CEO for a mid-sized company asked me how much experience a person needed to have to be the VP Operations for his company. My glib response then was, “Enough to do the job. It’s what people do with what they have, not what they have that matters. Some people need more experience to do the same job and others need less.”
Let’s Not Squander the Huge Potential of ChatGPT for Hiring
In my mind, being more efficient hiring the same people you’re now hiring is a trivial use of ChatGPT.
Leadership Lessons from the 1970s
I was a guest on Simon Fagg’s excellent After Dinner Leadership podcast last week. Simon brings an oldie with a newbie to discuss how business ideas of the past might still be useful today. Simon’s first question to me was to highlight some early leadership lessons that I felt were still relevant. Here’s what I came up with from the early 1970s.
Soft Skills are Too Important to Be Called Soft
The Hiring Formula for Success shown in the image above defines all of the factors that best predict on-the-job success. Soft skills top the list.
The Best Interview Technique of All Time
I think too many people including those in HR, OD experts, hiring managers and recruiters, believe being a good interviewer requires some remarkable insight into human behavior. I think they’re mistaken. There is an alternate path: being a good detective.
Everyone Can Be in the Top 25%
It turns out hiring people who will be in the top half is pretty easy. You just have to stop making hiring mistakes.
The Only Two Questions You Need to Ask to Assess Ability AND Potential
The other day a candidate asked me how to figure out if he was qualified for a new role given 15 years of experience with the same company.
Without an EVP a Job Is Just a Job
If you want to hire a great person, you need to offer a great job, not a laundry-list of skills, experiences and competencies that at best is no more than an ill-defined lateral transfer surrounded by some generic boilerplate. This is even more important today with candidates leaving within 90 days after starting if the new job turns out to be more promise than substance (Fortune, May 2022).
Leverage Your LinkedIn Network to Hire More Leaders
Leverage: Getting more output with less input.
Leaders are force multipliers who get more done with and through people using some type of magical leverage.
Hiring Leaders Requires New Thinking
As you’ve discovered if you’d tried to hire any senior level person, the process for hiring leaders for these critical spots is much different than hiring everyone else for this one simple reason:
Don’t Make Strategic Career Decisions Using Tactical Information
In a post earlier this year I claimed that too many people change jobs for all the wrong reasons. Most often it’s for the stuff at the bottom of the “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Hiring Needs” graphic above, rather than the stuff at the top. Unless they’re (very) lucky, the result is always disappointment, dissatisfaction and regret.
HR’s Misreading of the Labor Law is #1 Cause of Hiring Bias
In my semi-retired state, I’ve decided to give away my best secrets for recruiting and hiring the top 25% with a new type of training program. Many of them are highlighted in the infographic above. You’ll be able to learn and apply them all just by reading Hire with Your Head (4th ed, Wiley. September 2021) and becoming a participating member of our virtual book club.
The Traditional Interview is a Terrible Predictor of Performance
One of Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is “Begin with the end in mind.” This is great advice whenever implementing any type of process improvement program especially changing how hiring is done at your company. “Think win-win” is another one of Covey’s seven habits. When it comes to hiring, this habit is doubly important. It means ensuring the new hire and the hiring manager both recognize the importance of making the right decision and both have all of the information needed to make the right one. Due to its importance this habit has been adopted as the overriding goal and theme of the new edition of Hire with Your Head and rightly called “Win-Win Hiring.” It means hiring for the anniversary date rather than the start date.
Performance-based Hiring is Win-Win Hiring
As part of the fourth edition of Hire with Your Head (Wiley, September 2021) we’re starting a unique book club for those who pre-order the book. Over the next several weeks I’ll be highlighting different themes from the book. This week focuses on the idea of hiring for the long-term rather than the start date in order to achieve consistent Win-Win Hiring outcomes.
5 Steps to Eliminate First Impression Bias and Hire the Right Candidate
First impression bias is the primary cause of most hiring mistakes. Why? Because when we feel good about someone right away, we tend to ask easier questions. And when we feel negative right away, we ask more difficult questions. In other words, we look (often subconsciously) to confirm our first impression.