Each time I sit down to write, I start off being grateful to you, the readers, for continuing to read and provide feedback and comments.

I am also grateful to those who contributed to my tenth Falmouth Road Race for Cystic Fibrosis. As you can see, I did not finish last.

Notably there were only 71 runners in my age group, and I left 13 of them in the dust.

The only disappointing part of the whole day was there weren't any frozen yogurt bars at the finish line. I'm going to have to rethink participating in an event without frozen yogurt bars.

It was about 50 years ago that I hired my first employee. I was as an assistant manager at a restaurant, and her name was Rhonda. She was a very good employee, and after she left, we ended up staying in touch for a couple of decades, even having a family meet up when we both lived in California.

Since then, it is safe to say that I’ve personally hired hundreds of people and been somehow involved in the hiring of thousands of people in my various roles as a company President, Human Resources Officer, Director of Operations and Consultant.

Many readers of this weblog have also been involved in the selection of people and may agree with my time-honored cliché and the title of this weblog: “No one is better than the wrong one” when it comes to filling a position. 

Most hiring managers reading this right now, are thinking back to a mistake they made, I know I have made plenty when my goal was to fill the position, and I forgot the cliche.

Here are some of the reasons that I believe it is true.

Damage

When the wrong person is selected, and it doesn’t matter if it is a dishwasher or a senior vice-president, or a volunteer, damage follows. 

It might be broken dishes, or it might be broken morale, but you can be sure that the wrong person in the wrong position causes damage. Almost everyone reading this has seen damage from a bad selection. Sometimes it starts immediately, sometimes it takes a while, but sooner or later, everyone involved the organization pays a price in dollars, morale, productivity, customer satisfaction or all of the above.

Wasted Time

The sad part about hiring the wrong person isn’t just the damage it does to the organization and the people affected, but it also proves to be mostly a waste of time for the person hired. They were looking for their next, best, or last position, but instead, they have to start over again when the ‘this isn’t working’ reality sets in. 

Usually, quitting and terminating are slow processes. Quitting is slow because the person has to come to the conclusion that ‘this place’ isn’t the right place. Firing is slow in part thanks to the government and the protections it affords.

More Wasted Time

Time is also wasted by the company, the department and the employees associated with the wrong hire. Things may start in a direction that will be reversed, or assignments made will soon be irrelevant.  Starting in a direction and stopping and reversing course or taking a new road is not the definition of efficiency.

When someone is added to a team, whether as a replacement or an addition, everyone's duties are adjusted, creating built in learning time, inefficiencies and ineffectiveness. Some would call that wasted time, and if the person doesn't work out, it is sort of wasted time squared, isn't it?

Missed Opportunities

When the wrong one is hired, that means that the right one got away or wasn’t interviewed, or was rejected somehow, and their expertise, their leadership, their alignment with the organization was missed, and both the individual and the organization are worse off. There is no way of knowing if another candidate in the interview process would have excelled in the role. But those who selected the wrong one, once they realize the mistake, do have regrets.

Credibility

A leader can blow their credibility in one fell swoop by hiring the wrong person. It is interesting that usually everyone knows the new hire is the wrong person before the person who hired them knows. 

And, of course, the hiring manager is naturally defensive about the decision, because to admit that the wrong person was hired reflects poorly on the person who made the final decision. Unfortunately, in many cases, when leaders realize they have made an error, it has already significantly impacted credibility.

Productivity

Characteristic of having the wrong person in place is the impact they have on productivity, and in today’s world it appears that productivity is king or next in line to the throne. Whose productivity? Everyone’s. The wrong one cannot be productive because things aren’t going well. If they have direct reports, the complaining itself reduces productivity, and the poor direction dilutes it further.

Costs

All of the above reasons translate in costs of some kind. They could be opportunity costs, they could be severance costs, they could be costs due to ignorance or misplaced priorities, but you can be sure that there are costs involved.

Intuitively we know that the higher level the position is, the more costly a mistake can be. The wrong one hired as a dishwasher probably doesn't have the same impact as the wrong one hired as a vice-president or board chair. If the impact of the wrong one is so great, what can leaders do to improve selection?

Before sharing my thoughts, years ago someone told me that the best you can do with hiring decisions is to get 51% of them right. I wasn’t sure then if it was true, but I do know there are things you can do to achieve a higher percentage.

Collaboration

Some may think they are a waste of time, but I am a huge fan of group interviews. In fact, the more the ‘merrier’ or the better.

When a candidate is facing a group of interviewers, they demonstrate their poise, or lack of it. They demonstrate how they handle pressure, or don’t. 

Additionally, multiple interviewers tend to flush out any unconscious bias, especially if coming to a consensus is the goal. You know Abraham Lincoln’s expression ‘you can fool some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people, all of the time’ is very true in interview situations. In my experience: more minds = better decisions.

Interview Questions

If you ever worked with me, you know that for many years I have been using something called ‘behavioral interviewing.’ The core concept of the method is that past behavior is the best predictor of future performance. 

• If you think about it, people who are late are usually late all the time. 
• People who back their giant pickup trucks into a parking space, do it all the time. 
• People who swear, do so a lot. 

You get the point. So, if past behavior is a predictor of future performance, during an interview asking questions about past behavior is the way to go. “Tell me about a time…” is a typical start to a question. When someone gives you an example of the situation or task they faced, the action that they took, and the result of that action (called a S/TAR example), you have a behavioral example that you can use to predict how they will react in a similar situation in the future. 

This type of question eliminates the theoretical examples to questions that can be rehearsed. “Tell me how you would handle…” generates a theoretical response that the candidate uses to paint themselves in the best light. 

Ten great answers to ten theoretical questions tells you nothing about a candidate that is of value in making a hiring decision and can often lead to the wrong decision.

Assessment

It may sound simple, but in my experience, the best criteria to use when hiring someone is the talent or the strengths of people already doing the job. 

If your four best performers in a role have three strengths or talents in common, target your questions to determine if your candidate has the same or similar qualities.

For example, if your best performers are good communicators, are good at arranging things, and have a high degree of empathy, and you are hiring someone to do the same role, ask questions that give you examples of how they communicated, arranged things and used their empathy skills effectively.

Brains

Except for professional athletes and some unsavory occupations, most people earn their living from the neck up. That means that ‘brains’ are very important in the selection process. Regardless of the position, it makes sense to select those who are smarter than you. 

At least smarter than you at something important, whether that is social media, or customer service. To select someone smarter than you can make your job easier because of the talent level. To select someone not as smart as you, almost guarantees more effort and more bumps in the road.

Well Rounded-ness

Clifton Strengthsfinders is a profile used across the world and one of the principles is that people should do more of what they do best, for more success. (For example, football quarterbacks should practice passing, not blocking, and offensive lineman should practice blocking and not pass catching). 

Clifton also says that the goal is not to be a well-rounded person, but to have a well-rounded team. That means if you have a team that is great with ideas, but weak on execution, hire someone is strong on execution to complement the team. 

A CEO with great strategic thinking, but a lack of people skills, needs an assistant with people skills. The list of combinations goes on and on, but the point is if you are hiring for ‘need’ make one of the things you ‘need’ be balance.

There is no one who goes through a leadership career and tracks how many good hires they've made, and how many mistakes they've made. At least I've never met anyone who does that.

But the longer you are the hiring manager, or the longer you are a member of a team, the stronger evidence you have that no one is better than the wrong one, and you can probably extend this cliche to friends and partners, but I'm not going there today.

If you are interested in learning more about Strengthsfinders or Behavioral Interviewing or how to ace an interview using behavioral examples, reply to this email to discuss.