Now Available

My new book “Hiring 3.0 New Rules For The New Economy” is now available.  In this book you learn how to adjust your recruiting and hiring processes to best take advantage of the new economic realities.  New competition and a glut of applicants are just two of the challenges being encountered.  You learn how to integrate all of the Selecting Winners tools and techniques to form a successful staffing process.

I spent a considerable amount of time making this book as readable as possible.  Rather than present a lot of theory, the book gets right to the point with usable strategies, techniques and tools.  It is a quick read with each concept presented in short manageable sections.  However, I did not leave out any of the important information.

Please take a minute and check it out at: http://www.Hirng3.0.com You can read excerpts from the book and see the table of contents.

Thanks for taking the time to check it out!

It doesn’t need to be mystery.

Here are six questions that need to be asked before the process begins to help ensure the right outcome.

1. Are the performance objectives clearly identified?

The reason a salesperson is hired is to satisfy a business need. It may be revenue, it may be margin it may be account management. Whatever the desired result, it needs to be clearly identified. Think about defining success before the person comes on board.

Develop a list of short, medium and long-term results the person needs to deliver to earn the label of success. Knowing the “performance expectations” puts you in a position to clearly define the specific knowledge, skills and abilities the person needs to bring to the job.

2. Are the desired behaviors mapped to your sales process?

A deep understanding of the sales process helps to identify the behaviors necessary for success. Begin by mapping the typical sales process.

Are there multiple steps? How many people are involved? How long does it typically take? What is the profile of the person being sold? How much writing is involved? How many presentations are required?

These are just a few of the questions that need to be answered prior to putting together the profile of the salesperson. The answers to the questions identify the specific behaviors necessary for success. Creating the template of the successful salesperson is straightforward when armed with the performance expectation and the sales process.

3. Has a recruiting strategy including budget and resources been created?

More time, effort and money are wasted on recruiting mostly because there is no plan. It is vital to the success of the business that recruiting is treated like any other strategic business activity. That means there needs to be a plan. There needs to be a budget. Resources need to be allocated and most importantly, results need to be tracked.

Who is going to do the work? Will it be done in house? How much money is budgeted for the recruiting? What sources will be used to attract candidates? What is our Unique Hiring Proposition (why should someone work for us)?

Every step of the process should show a positive ROI. Like any other investment, evaluate the variables and decide on the best course of action whether using a recruiting service, posting ads or working your own network.

4. Is the selection process defined?

A sloppy approach to selecting salespeople leads to poor results. Use a proven selection process to get the best results.

Start with a system to screen candidates. This allows you to spend time with those people who have the highest probability of being successful on your job. This may include phone screens, phone interviews and possibly the use of an assessment tool.

Next, have a proven interview system. The “I’ll know it when I see it” model is guaranteed to result in failure. Use a system designed to predict success. A behavioral interview system like Selecting Winners helps get the right data that predicts success.

5. Is there an evaluation and decision criteria?

Don’t leave the hiring decision to chance. Don’t rely on your gut-feel to make the decision. The first two steps above resulted in a profile of the target person that includes both the performance expectations and the necessary skills and behaviors.

In step 4 a proven interview system was used to get specific data that helps predict success. The last step is to map the person’s skills and behaviors to the success criteria. This sounds simple and obvious. However, this is where gut-feel and impressions often lead down the wrong path.

Of course creating a good first impression is important but it is not predictive of success on the job. Enthusiasm is important but once again is not predictive of success. It is very easy to be swayed during the interview by factors that are not the best predictors of success.

Past behavior is a much better predictor than interview behavior. Everyone is going to be on his or her best behavior during the interview. But the use of a thorough interview process results in large quantities of data when the focus is past behavior.

Rather than making decisions based on a few impressions, the goal needs to be to gather as much factual data as possible.

6. Is the table set for the new salesperson to succeed?

The first step in success is bringing the right salesperson on board. The second step is to make certain the person has the tools necessary to be successful. What resources will the salesperson need to succeed?

Is product training needed? Is specialized sale training required? Will the new person need a mentor? These are some of the questions requiring answers. The way to get the best return on the investment in the new salesperson is to give the person the tools required to succeed.

Hiring new salespeople can be a great investment. Be certain to view the process like any other strategic business process. Apply the right resources, use the right tools and the return on the investment can be tremendous.

A post crossed my desk that revived a subject from many years ago regarding the “One-Question” interview.  The contention is that it is possible to conduct an effective interview only asking one question.  Without spending much time on the analysis, common sense tells us that this is most likely not true.  But let’s take a closer look and see what’s wrong and how to fix it.

Before revealing the question, you need to be warned:

Here goes: “Please think about your most significant accomplishment. Now, could you tell me all about it?”

Let’s analyze.

First, this is a Yes-No question.  The correct answer is either yes or no. Yes or no question are of little value because you don’t get effective behavioral data as a result.

Second, the question has handed control of the interview to the candidate.  Controlling the interview simply means controlling the agenda.  By asking this open-ended question, the interviewer is now going to get what the candidate wants to tell them as opposed to getting the specific data they need to predict success.

Third, the question raises the anxiety level of the candidate.  The person needs to “figure out” what you are looking for.  Increasing the anxiety level in an interview never adds value.

Finally and most importantly, the answer does not help predict success.  It is necessary to interpret the answer and try to map it to the job.

Here is a much better approach.  First, determine the behavior necessary for success on your job.  Find specific situations in the person’s past where they had the opportunity to demonstrate the sought after behavior.  Ask specific questions designed to get them to “TELL YOU HOW THEY BEHAVED”.

Here is an example.  Look for situations where the candidate needed to solve problems and overcome obstacles to complete a project or task.  The reason for this line of questioning is you know the person will need to solve problems and overcome obstacles to be successful on your job.  Look at the person’s background and ask about a specific project or task e.g.; “What was the biggest problem you faced when installing the new software package?  How did you solve the problem?  What resources did you use?  Who helped you with the solution?”

The sequence of 4-5 effective, behavioral question results in information that helps to predict success.

Of course no single question leads to an effective interview.  You goal is to gather as much data as necessary to predict success and make a quality hiring decision.  The more data, the better the hiring decision.

As always, I welcome your your comments.

Click the link for more information on effective interview questions.

As a result the requirements for our leaders have changed as well.  Certainly there are some skills and traits that leaders need regardless of the economic environment.  The ability to attract, choose and retain top talent is a skill that transcends time and circumstances.

It is impossible to maintain a successful organization without great talent filling the halls.  Talent certainly cures a lot of ills in other facets of a company.  The one sustainable competitive advantage in this or any market is the quality of the people in the organization.

A leader who doesn’t attract, choose and retain top talent will not be a leader for long.

However, current economic conditions have dictated a change in emphasis to a new set of skills and traits for leaders. The new economy is characterized by an escalating pace of change, and the surge in competition from more diverse sources.

As a result, there are three “core skills” that an effective leader needs to exhibit.

The three skills are Flexibility, Ability To Learn and Strategic Thinking.

Flexibility

In today’s marketplace, a leader needs to be able to change direction based on an ever-changing analysis of the situation.  The rapid pace of change in the market and arrival of new and unique competitors forces flexibility.

The dogged Type “A” leader who refuses to vary from the plan has a much harder time being successful in today’s market.  This doesn’t mean the new leader changes for the sake of change.  It does mean that planning is on going and fluid enough to meet rapidly changing conditions.  Today’s leader must constantly compare and analyze new information and take the appropriate action.

Ability To Learn

The ability to learn is defined as quickly absorbing new information and putting it into use.  Interestingly, we usually assign this requirement to entry-level employees.  In today’s market, this skill is a must for the effective leader.

The changing market has caused many of the “traditional” solutions to problems to be rendered useless.  A leader who relies on past solutions may be doomed to failure.  Today’s leader needs to constantly upgrade their knowledge and skill set if they are to identify new and unique solutions to problems and challenges.

The best leaders I know all view learning as a continuous process that needs to keep pace with the pace of change around them.  They are great students and constantly invest in their own education.

Strategic Thinking

Strategic thinking is the process of blending both short-term and long-term thinking and actions.  The knee-jerk reaction when the environment is rapidly changing is to focus strictly on tactical issues.  Putting out today’s fires.  The strategic leader always weighs short-term actions against long-term consequences.

Selling out for either short or long-term is not the act of real leader in the new economy.  Careful consideration is given to both and decisions made accordingly.

There are certainly other traits and characteristics of leaders but these three because more prominent in this market.  The question now becomes how to select leaders in these challenging times.

The good news is the process of choosing leaders remains consistent.  It is always best to rely on the Behavioral Model.  This tells us that:

Past Behavior Predicts Future Behavior

Putting this into practice is as easy identifying the behaviors necessary for success in your environment and choosing people who behave that way.

When interviewing for flexibility, get specific examples from candidates of plans they adjusted on the fly.  Question them about how the decision was made.  Learn what options were considered and how the final decision was made.

Don’t just get one example.

Multiple examples lead to more consistent behavioral patterns.  Using the behavioral model, it is possible to project the behavior to your environment with great accuracy.

For the ability to learn, get multiples examples of how the candidate has improved their skill set.  Explore all the investments they made in their own education.  Get specific examples of how they put the new information or skill into practice.

Never settle for generalities.  Get specific examples with results attached.

For strategic thinking, get examples of decisions the candidate made that considered both short and long-term consequences.  Go into great detail about everything that was considered.

Get examples of decisions made that sacrificed either the short or long-term.  Once again, get all the details and have the candidate walk through everything that was considered in making the decisions.

For every example get as much detail as possible.  Your goal is to learn all of the circumstances of the situation and all of the actions the candidate took.  The more data collected, the better the hiring decision.

The traditional profile of a leader needs to be modified as a result of the current market conditions.  New times call for new leadership models.

I do my best to monitor my marketplace.  I get dozens of Google Alerts daily on various hiring terms.  This is just one of the tools I use to stay on top of my subject and marketplace.

Today I received an alert about an article on how to select winning employees.  The article boils down to 2 pieces of advice.

1. Ignore experience

2. Interview for personality

The author contended that experience didn’t matter and that personality was the driving force behind success.  He said to identify 8 personality traits, ask questions to see if the person had them.  And if they did not have at least 5 of the 8, eliminate the candidate.

Thanks for nothing!

Even if this advice was correct which it most definitely is not, nowhere in the article did the author explain what to ask or how to determine if the person had the personality traits.  On other words, he told you what to do without telling you how.  Not much help.

I could spend the rest of this post explaining why the advice is wrong but I won’t.  You can get volumes of quality advice on my <a href=”http://selectingwinners.com/blog”>Selecting Winners Blog</a>.   The purpose of this post is to help you evaluate the the advice based on the source.

After reading the article, I spent some time researching the author.  It turns out the person who wrote the article is a financial adviser.  I am not quite sure why this person was writing an article about hiring employees but it is a huge red flag.

The source of the advice you pay attention to is critical.

It is not a good idea to look for advice on your investments from your golf instructor.  It is also not a good idea to look for hiring advice from your investment adviser. Remember, everyone has an opinion.

Hiring is one of the most important jobs you have as a manager or business owner and cannot be left to chance.

The advice you follow needs to be from a reliable, proven source.  Try to evaluate the source of any advice before you put it into practice.

As always, I would love to hear your comments!

Just recently I ran across a white paper that listed the top 100 questions you should ask a sales candidate.  In the intro, it was suggested to use these as the standard questions asked of every candidate.  The reasoning was this approach empowers you to compare candidates.This is a prime example of advice that has been around for years that is not effective.  Let me explain.

On the surface it seems logical if you ask everyone the same questions you can compare answers.  The problem is if you ask everyone the same questions, by definition, the questions need to be general generic questions.  As a result, you get general, generic answers that do little to predict success on the job.

Here is an example from the list.  “Do you feel sales is a team sport or an individual sport?  Why?”

The first problem is the question is asking for the person’s feelings.  How are you supposed to evaluate feelings?

The second problem is how are you supposed to compare one person’s feelings to the next?  It just doesn’t make sense.

Here is another example form the list.  “Which has a greater impact on sales results … sales process or sales people?”  Just as a side note, the correct answer is, “It depends.”  Here is another question where you are asking the person for their opinion.  Opinions are of very little use in predicting success on the job.

Also, how can you compare one person’s opinion to the next?  The idea that these types of questions help you compare candidates is just false.

A list of 20, 50, 100 standard questions seems like a good idea but quickly fails in the real world.

The fix is really straightforward.  Step one is to have a list of critical requirements for the position.  This list acts as the standard.  Next develop questions specifically for each candidate designed to determine their strength or weakness against each specific requirement.

Finally, make certain your questions are behavioral in nature.  An effective interview question requires the candidate to provide data (not feelings or opinions) that helps you predict success in the position.  Behavioral examples of how they handled the same or similar situations to those they face on your job are best.

Here is an example of an effective, candidate-specific question: “How did you overcome the price objection during the ABC sale?”  The answer to this question gets you specific, behavioral data that allows you to predict success on your job.  For the next candidate you might ask: “How did you handle the delivery schedule issue during the XYZ sale?”

In both cases you are getting specific about how the candidate handles problems during a sale.

The goal is not have each candidate answer the same questions,  Your goal is to have each candidate demonstrate knowledge, skills and abilities as relates to specific job requirements.

For more than 35 years I have been studying the subject and teaching companies how to hire top employees.  I try to read most everything that is being written.  Some from experts.  Some from amateurs.  Some from practitioners.

Some of what I have read adds real value.  Some is interesting but not actually effective.  And some is just plain wrong.

This past weekend I was reading the Inc 500 report and in the middle of the report was a page titled, “Words of Wisdom”.  It had 10 ideas put forth by CEO’s from the list.  And at number 4 was the phrase I have railed against for years.

“Hire Slow, Fire Fast”

Just so we can limit the conversation, I have no problem with the second half of the phrase.  Fire fast is good advice.  However, the better job you do of hiring the less likely you will face the problem of firing.

It is the first half of the phrase I have the problem with.

On the surface, this seems like such good advice.  Take your time, be considerate, don’t rush into a decision.  It just sounds right.  And as a result, the uninformed and the mis-informed have been repeating it like it was the gospel for years.

To understand why this phrase makes no sense we have to go back to the beginning.  Why do you hire employees?

This is not a rhetorical question!

The answer to this question is at the heart of my argument.  Many people think you hire to fill a position.  How often do you rush to fill a position when someone leaves your organization?  How often do you let your organization be driven by “headcount” or some other measure of how many employees you have?

There is only one reason to hire employees.  That reason is to satisfy a business need.  That’s it.

Now you might be thinking that this is not a very profound revelation.  But let’s look a little closer.  Think about the last person you hired.  How well did you frame the business problem the new person was going to address?  And I am not talking about a generic job description.

Did you have very specific, time-bound and measurable results the person needed to deliver to satisfy your business need?  Whether you wrote these down or not, I can guarantee in your conscious our unconscious mind you had very specific results you wanted from this new employee.

If your new employee delivered these results, you were probably quite happy and had a successful, prosperous business.  If the new person did not deliver the results, you were most likely unhappy, your business suffered and you were forced to employ the second half of the phrase.

Employees prime purpose is to satisfy business needs.  And that is the only reason you should hire an employee.

Now let’s go back and explore the first half of the phrase, “Hire slowly”.

If I was to profess that your best course of action was to satisfy your business needs slowly, how much credibility would you assign to the advice?  Anyone who tells you to hire slowly does not understand why you are hiring.  They don’t realize that every day you have a business need not being addressed you are either losing money or wasting money.

You have to hire as fast as possible once you have identified a business need and then determined to satisfy that need with a new employee.

One of my long-time clients has monetized the process.  They hire many direct sales reps.  They calculated exactly what it costs on daily basis to NOT have a salesperson in the field selling.  Armed with that number, they can make very informed decisions about what strategy to use and how much to spend in their recruiting activities.

Before you get the wrong idea, I am NOT advocating rushing into decisions.

What I am advocating is to move through your recruiting and hiring process as swiftly as possible … without violating your due diligence process.  You need a proven and thorough selection process but that doesn’t mean it needs to take a long time.

One other myth while we are on the subject.  Market conditions have no effect on this argument.  Many people are taking much longer in the selection process due to the fact that there happen to be so many candidates currently available.  Market conditions do not change the fact you have a business need.

Everyday you have that position open you are losing or wasting money.

From now on -

Hire Fast and Fire Fast

I welcome your comments!

(B) Tell me about overcoming objections.

(G) How did you overcome the biggest objection in the ABC sale?

(B) Have you ever created a budget?

(G) Step me through the last budget you created.

(B) Do you use a system to manage your time?

(G) How did you plan your schedule today?

(B) What was the last book you read?

(G) What have you read in the last year to keep your skills current?

(B) How will you manage projects if we hire you?

(G) How did you put together the project plan for ABC?

(B) When is the best time to close in a sales cycle?

(G) At what point in the call did you start closing?

The burden have reversed from not being able to find candidates to having too many to deal with.  Many people have never faced this problem before and are looking for solutions.  This 22 minute video gives you the model I have used successfully for many years to deal with this specific problem.  The ideas can be put to use immediately and don’t cost any money.  As always, I welcome your comments.

The best solution is to adopt a hiring model (like my Selecting Winners program), and have it proliferate throughout your organization. Without a model you are flying blind.

A consistent methodology and language when hiring is absolutely essential if you are going to get it right.  If everyone in your organization is “doing there own thing” your probability of making hiring mistakes goes up astronomically.

Here’s an example.  Two people interview the same person and agree the person has good presentation skills.  Do they really agree?  The answer lies in how each person defines presentation skills and how they apply that evaluation to the person.  One person thinks if the person can just get the point across, that is good presentation skills (the easy grader).  The other person wants someone who can create and deliver persuasive presentations to customers (the hard grader).

You can see from this example how ambiguity and a lack of process leads to mistakes.  Common methodology and language are necessary to keep hiring mistakes to a minimum.

So my answer to the sales executive was to “get everyone on the same page”.  He needs to implement a process that includes a common language and methodology and make certain all of his managers are using the process.  Then he can have intelligent conversations about candidates.

I have always said that any process is better than no process when it comes to hiring.  There are 3 things that you need to verify before you adopt any new process.

1. Is it effective?  Does the methodology have a track record?  Are there people similar to you that have succeeded with the process?

2. Is it easy to implement?  Let’s face facts, your managers are not going to use any process that requires too much work.  That is just the nature of the beast.

3. Be certain the process does not put your managers in a position they are not qualified to be in.  Too many models out there advise you to ask questions that require interpretation and force you to get into the candidate’s head.  That is not a place you want to be.

The process and model you choose should pass your common-sense test.  Do the tools and techniques make sense?

Of course I would like you to try y Selecting Winners tools.  Please click here to learn more about our process.

As always, I welcome your comments.