The Seats on the Bus...Build the gauntlet, trust the gauntlet

4. Build the gauntlet, trust the gauntlet

Don't take the gauntlet literally...it won't end well

They say patience is a virtue for a reason. Virtues are hard earned, but well deserved. Patience in your selection process is so crucial for a myriad of reasons, starting with the mighty dollar. According to an AARP study, the cost of replacing an experienced worker is at least 50% of that person’s base salary in turnover related costs. According to a study at Berkeley, the hiring of a new recruit alone will cost about $7000. Links to both articles are posted below. If you’d like to look at how much it will cost to replace an employee at your organization, Express scripts has a cool calculator you can use as well. Their link is below as well.

• AARP on Turnover
• Berkeley on Turnover
• Turnover calculator

Long story short, it’s not cheap to replace someone, so you want to keep your talent once you select them. That in mind, your process should not be a rapid fire, one and done type of interview. Your HR team is talented I’m sure, but they should not be the final say on whether someone moves forward or not. You need to paint a full picture of the kind of candidate you want, but as a selecting manager you should be actively involved in the process from start to finish. The process itself, for you strategists out there, should touch every aspect of the organization. You want individuals that not only have the requisite skills to do the job; you also want individuals who can fit into the culture you are trying to build. This is why it’s so important to define your values and the behaviors you believe reflect them early in your company’s life cycle, because behavioral and cultural style interviewing is crucial in garnering the right fit for a team.

The selection process should touch HR, the selecting department, and whichever departments the role is to interface with. It sounds a like a lot, and the recruiter side of me is screaming “hurry up! We have requisitions to fill”, but you don’t want to get this wrong. It’s too easy to do it, so take your time. If you’re going to implement this strategy, you need to earn buy-in from all the parties we mentioned. It’s not a haphazard process to ask people to give up an hour of their day every few weeks or so to sit with a candidate that won’t even be in their department. Remember to be a creator of value when you are asking someone to sacrifice their time for you. You are letting them know you value them as a partner, but that you also want to get this right for everyone’s sake.

Once you’ve communicated the importance and you have the buy-in, everyone needs to be speaking the same language. Interview training is a rarity within smaller companies today, and for larger practices it’s not widely practiced within a department. Take the time to either partner with HR or a member of your team that’s well versed in the legal and behavioral intricacies of talent selection to build and host these trainings. If you put a bunch of people in a room and just tell them to ask questions they’ll do it, and they’ll all be looking for different things. Create the expectation of what to look for, and your team will take that expectation and make sure it aligns with their own personal expectations. Once we get this process in place, we’re ready to get cooking.

So long recruiter, hello in house system!

The selection process is not easy at any level. Your entry level positions many times get overlooked because they don’t command the salary of a C suite, but trust me, they will affect your bottom line too. One paper cut doesn’t hurt, but ten or fifteen and you’re regretting the day you asked for more stationary in your office. If you don’t have integrity to the systems that permeate every level of your organization’s talent management strategy, you’re going to have too many of those bad hires and not enough good selections. Be deliberate, involve the right people, don’t settle, and look at what you needed, want, and will need and want. Say goodbye to those recruiters, and hello to your new talent management system! Enjoy!

Stay inspired, be developed, be the change!

~AI

The Seats on the Bus..."Involve me, I will understand"

3. "Involve me, I will understand"

He wants to know who you selected..tell him

Alright! So now we’ve laid the foundation for what we want in a candidate by defining the needs and wants of the role, as well as committing to selecting candidates for roles we have prepped for them. It’s time for the interview process to start. This is the most critical component of the selection process, because now you’re linking theory to practice. Everyone needs to be on the same page, especially in smaller organizations. One of the most frustrating things for any department or small organization is hearing about a new member of the team for the first time…AFTER they’ve been selected. “Well am I going to like this person? What’s their background? How did he/she get hired?” All of these are valid questions. Let’s nip the gossip in the bud by remembering one thing: global involvement = global accountability.

When you want to bring new talent to your organization, let your team know about it. For larger organizations, it’s usually a department selection, and department heads should announce what they’re looking to bring on to their team. If you’re in a smaller organization, letting department leaders know what you’re looking for, you can give them the heads up. The second half of making them aware is offering them a chance to be involved.  There was a Chinese proverb that was told to me once by a mentor of mine:

“Tell me and I will forget

Show me and I may remember

Involve me and I will understand”

Involve the team...you won't regret it

When you offer your team, whether other department leaders or members of your department, a chance to be a part of the selection process, you immediately do two things: create trust, and create investment. We all want to be depended on in some capacity. It’s human nature to feel that connection with others. In involving your team in the selection process, you let them know that you value their opinion in bringing someone in that will affect the culture, performance, and overall dynamic of your organization at either a macro or microcosmic level. Trust is the framework upon which a great relationship is built, and that goes for the one you have with your team. This is an easy way to nurture that relationship. Also, you remind your team that it isn’t just your team, but their team. Investment is the key to engagement. Engagement is the key to performance. It’s amazing how telling them to weigh in on a candidate in some capacity will motivate them, and also help you make an informed decision that is in the best interest of your team.

At the same time, we’ve got to be practical in our involvement of our team. They have jobs to do, and if they are involved at every level of the process, you’re hurting productivity. My personal recommendation of where I have seen this to be successful comes in the final stages of the selection. A panel interview where the candidate meets the team and the team meets the candidate is very helpful. The team gets to ask their questions, and at the same time you have put a candidate before them that you are confident in, because the candidate has run your “selection gauntlet”: They have passed an HR screen, yourself as the hiring manager, and any other pieces of the selection process that you have at your organization. Your team has a wealth of information in front of them about the candidate to help them in their assessment. It’s not that it’s fail proof, but at the same time, it almost is, and that is fine. We want to get the selections right without disturbing the team dynamic. Involve the team, and the team understands.

Home stretch next week team! Stay with me and let's get a dynamite selection process together!

Stay inspired, be developed, be the change!

~AI

The Seats on the Bus...Right Bus, Right Seat

Hi all,

Keeping with our theme of talent selection, let's just jump right back into where we left off...

2. Right Bus, Right Seat

This...never works

This is a hard one for employers. We see dynamite candidates with such unique skill sets that they could do anything, and we salivate, especially in this job market. “We have to pounce on this person, or they’ll get swept up by a competitor”, you think to yourself. When this happens, you start strategizing with your team, thinking where you can fit them in so you don’t miss out on the candidate. There’s something to be said about seizing an opportunity, but there’s also an old adage about trying to fit a square peg into a round hole…it doesn’t work.

Too often as employers, we are guilty of thinking that a candidate with specific skills can fit into the box that is our organization, even though we don’t have the right role for them at the current moment. We don’t know what the ideal role would be, we don’t take the time to find out or craft it, and so we make sure we offer just to ensure we don’t lose him/her. What you’ve done here if you’re guilty of this, and many of us are, is do a disservice to both the organization and the newest member of the team. When you think someone will be a great fit for your company, you have to remember why you think that: because that skill set and attitude will be a game changer. You have to let that skill set and attitude flourish in the right role, or you just filled a requisition with a body, albeit a talented one. With that in mind, placing a candidate just to keep him/her will often result in you not getting the optimal performance you expected, and your new selection being dissatisfied with the work and the company.

People will be who you want them to be..don't settle

In today’s job market, many people will take any job they can get, and that involves sacrificing their personal passion to earn a paycheck. While there is nothing wrong with this in theory, we have to be weary of feeding into this. The survivor mentality is admirable, but no one wins here. You will get performance, but once the lore of having a job again wears off, employees are human, and they will get restless. “I’m not being used properly. I can do more”. This is wonderful to hear, because they want to grow.  But it will fester and become discontent after a while. Discontent breeds attrition, and attrition affects morale and performance. Not the ideal situation we planned for. But we could have avoided this in the first place if we had held true to our principles. Put the right person in the right seat, and the bus that is your organization runs with little turbulence. Start fitting square pegs into round holes, and watch out for morale issues, performance issues, and real questions about the integrity of your talent selection process from candidates and employees themselves.

Alright guys! Almost there! 2 more and we're through our talent selection conversation. I hope this has been helpful. Stay warm!

Stay inspired, be developed, be the change!
~AI

The Seats on the Bus...Past, Present, Future

Hi all, 

Picking up from where we left off, we begin discussing talent selection strategies. I gave you four different areas we'll talk about that will help you bring in the talent you need as an organization. They were:

1. Remember the Past, Want the Present, Plan the Future
2. Right Bus, Right Seat
3. "Involve me, I will understand"
4. Build the gauntlet, trust the gauntlet

Remember the Past, Want the Present, Plan the Future

Remember what you need that past performers couldn't deliver

When we look to bring on new talent, there’s obviously a myriad of reasons as to why. Usually it’s that you’ve lost or promoted good talent, gotten rid of an underperformer, or saw a need for a new position. Regardless, when you look to select someone to fill a role, we’re always thinking about what the past person didn’t have or didn’t do. Is this a bad thing? Not necessarily. You should always be looking to fill gaps with new talent, because you don’t want a repeat of the last person, even if they were good. If you want the same exact thing you had before, it means you’re content with the status quo. Greatness is always about taking the next step, and so you should start your search thinking about what you needed that would have helped you back then. However, understand that this is just one piece of the puzzle.

Hire for what challenges you face today

Present wants should build on past needs. It’s not just what you needed to have someone be successful in the role that wasn’t present, but also what you will want in order to meet today’s challenges. Remember that whatever obstacles you faced in year one of your company are different (at least you hope so) than what you’re facing in year five. Even if the obstacles haven’t changed, the present wants and past needs are aligned but are not the same, because the issues have compounded. When you look to bring in new talent, build a checklist of the challenges your current landscape or climate are presenting you with, and what traits or skills you want the person to have that will help you meet them.

Select for the future! Foresight never hurt anyone

Once you’ve built a set of past needs and present wants, it’s time to get back in your Dolorien (Back to the Future reference if you missed it…it was the time machine), and start looking forward. The gift of foresight is not easy to master, but it isn’t impossible to paint a picture of what the future looks like either. You had to do it for your organization’s vision, values, and culture, why not the people and roles you need to execute? One of the issues that may have caused this need for talent is you did not foresee the challenges that would come as the role and or the company began to evolve. I have personally seen this happen in some organizations, where someone is brought in to do a specific role, but a change in company direction, for whatever reason, puts the employee in a situation where they are completely under prepared for the task at hand. You need the right person at that point, and the current employee just won’t cut it, so you make a change. You cannot be an oracle and nail it on the head of course, but knowing what you want your company to be, what you want to role in its final form to look like, and what expectations you have for the highest performer you could ever ask to take the role will help you in your search. Keep in mind, the future may be now for the position, meaning the present wants and needs of the past may be exactly what the future needs and wants are. If that’s the case, you’re set. In any case, try your best when thinking about a role to give some time to what it should look like 3-5 years from now. At worst case, you’re incorrect, but at least you prepared a path and could communicate that expectation to new talent, so they know what they’re getting themselves into. Not a bad concession at all. 

Below is a basic example of a hire table for an executive assistant:

Past Needs	Present Wants	Future wants and needs
Able to file efficiently/stay organized	Good phone etiquette/prompt follow up	Manage up, hold CEO accountable to commitments
Computer savvy	Manage schedule effectively	Executive brand integrity

Just some things to think about as you look at the role. You've got to know what you want before you ask for it. Expectations pave the way for accountability and growth. 

We'll get to the the rest of the points in our next chat. 

Stay inspired, be developed, be the change
~AI 

The Seats on the Bus...(Part 1)

Happy new year all! I hope everyone is doing well. Excited to talk about the next area that really will drive your organization: the people. This will be a 4 part series, because each part of this is so critical in order to get the team you need to help you drive that vision. So let's get to it!

Once you start to lay the infrastructure for what your organization to look like, it’s a good time to pat yourself on the back. A compelling vision, a strong set of core values, and the expectations of the cultural landscape you intend to implement are all difficult tasks to accomplish. Ultimately though, all of this is theory. These are all the words that have been spoken by the executive team and their leader. In order for these words to translate into works, we need individuals that not only feel the same way, but can execute in step with this infrastructure. In short, linking theory to practice, the time old struggle between good and great anything, will be your greatest challenge. So where do we start in order to ensure we can bridge this gap? You got it: Talent selection.

How do we select the right talent? If there was a perfect science that was easily implemented, we’d never have to worry about our organization’s health. Why? Because the right employees do three major things for your company: they perform their jobs at a suitable level, they either establish themselves as depth in your leadership pool or groom you potential leaders, and they affect your bottom line and your culture because of it. That being said, I think all of us can raise our hands when I ask how many of you are lacking these people in our organizations. Lacking doesn’t mean you don’t have the talent, because some of your people are doing this. It’s just that not enough people fit this bill…and you can never have enough of the “right employees”.

So now, let’s get back to our question of how to select the right talent. From my experiences, I see four overlapping concepts that will steer you in the right direction when it comes to selecting the right people:

1. Remember the Past, Want the Present, Plan the Future
2. Right Bus, Right Seat
3. "Involve me, I will understand"
4. Build the gauntlet, trust the gauntlet

We have a unique opportunity through this process to select talent that can transform our organizations. It takes a little faith, a little luck, and a whole lot of integrity to make it work. Happy reading!

Be inspired, be developed, be the change!

~AI