Hiring Great People

Finding and hiring the right people is the most important thing you can do. If you hire the right people, your job will be easy, and your team will achieve great things. If you don't, you will spend your days dealing with the consequences. Bad employees cause a huge time suck and affect the leader the most.

Job Ads

When creating an ad for an open position, keep it short and to the point. Don’t list every single item you think you will need to do the job. List only the most critical items. I have seen some ridiculous ads asking for twenty or more skills they want the applicant to be highly proficient in. I send these around to my friends, and we laugh at them because no one can be highly proficient in all these areas. It just turns off qualified candidates adept at the four to five skills you really need.

Interview

The trick in an interview is to get people to open up. You want to learn about them. How smart they are, can they answer questions under stress, have they done any research on your company. If you can get them to open up, look for the following five things setting them up for success.

1. Do they love what they do?
2. Are they interested in advancing their career or improving their skills?
3. Do they have a strong list of achievements?
4. Is there energy and interest in the position?
5. Are they trustworthy?

Do they love what they do?

In an interview, I always ask the applicant, “In your career, what have you done that you love to do?” Does the answer to what they love to do align with your open role? If yes, then that is great news. Then reverse the question: “In your career, tell me what you hated to do.” This can tell you a lot about the person. The answer I get sometimes is they hate politics. Well, depending on the job, that might not be a problem, but if you are looking for a leader, that would be a red flag.

If you are looking for a programmer and find someone that loves to write programs, you won’t need to worry about their work ethic. They will put in extra time and won’t complain about the work. They will bombard you with new ideas or new ways of doing things. They will always be a hard worker and consistently improve their skills.

Are they interested in advancing their career or improving their skills?

Look for a history of career growth. It shows someone else valued their experience and abilities. Ask what they do to keep their skills current? What have they studied recently? No one in technology will survive long if they aren’t interested in building new skills.

Do they have a strong list of achievements?

A strong list of achievements is a good sign. Ask them questions about their accomplishments. Determine how they were engaged with these tasks. Dig a little to see if they align with the role you are offering.

A junior person may not have a solid list of achievements. That may be ok if you are looking for a junior person. If someone has been around for a while and doesn’t have a list of achievements, it could mean they aren’t engaged, don’t take risks or do the minimum to get by.

Is there energy and interest in the position?

If they don’t have interest in the position they won’t stay long. Ask what about the position motivates you? What interests you about our company? Look for honesty and energy in their response.

Trustworthy

The last point on my list is to determine if the candidate is trustworthy. It isn’t an easy question to answer. Do background checks and look at their credit rating. A background check is a must in most organizations. You don’t want a felon handling credit card data. A credit rating is also a good check. It will tell you if the banks think they are trustworthy enough to loan them money. Reference checks are less important because no one gives a bad referral. But talking to the reference may give you some insight if you can read between the lines.

I talked to one reference where the only thing he would say is the person worked there. I couldn’t get any other information from him. That was a red flag to me. The individual may have been instructed to only give that response, but I find, most of the time, the person I am talking to wants to help a friend and will give more information if it is prompted.

There is a great video on YouTube about trust from Simon Sinek. I highly recommend watching it. I created the following chart below. It’s my interpretation of what he discussed.

The chart shows skills down the left side and trustworthiness across the bottom. If you identify a person of high skills and high trust, this is someone everyone wants to hire. Even medium skills with high trust are a better choice than high skills and low trust. The people with low trust will become a problem and likely where you will find the toxic individuals I discuss in some detail in chapter five. Even a low-skilled person with high trust is a potential hire if you think they can improve their skills. In my experience, high trust people tend to care more and work harder.

To Be Continued...

This is just a subset of the chapter. There is a lot more to review about building a great team. I listed a few of the items below that will be in this chapter. I have a projected release date for the book on 9/22/2021.

- How to Attract the Best People.
- Handling Senior Manager Referrals.

If you have any questions feel free to contact me.

Regards,

Scott Matson

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