Hiring well is vitally important to business success. It’s also a skill with a substantial learning curve. Here are a few things I and my managers have been learning about it lately.

See Hiring as a Major Project

It’s a lot of work to recruit and hire a great employee. In most small companies it’s an extra project on top of a manager’s regular workload. This can make it tempting to look at it as something to quickly take care of on the side. I’ve learned it’s more realistic to see it is a big project and give it serious time and attention.

Stack the Deck

Make it a tournament with many entrants and multiple rounds of elimination. We’ve found it’s much easier to compare candidates to each other and choose the best one, than it is to decide if any given candidate is good enough. Our goal is to get down to two finalists that are both excellent candidates for the job. Put yoruself in a position to choose the best of a great lot.

Don’t Give the Benefit of the Doubt

This is hard, because it’s not how we treat customers and existing employees. Hiring is not the time to give the benefit of the doubt. You must take the limited information you have at face value. If the candidate is late for the interview, don’t assume it’s a fluke. It may be, but more than likely it’s part of a pattern of behavior. If a candidate has a troubled history, look for objective evidence that lasting change has occurred. Past mistakes are not a deal-breaker, but a sincere story about turning over a new leaf is not enough.

Keep Digging Until The Story Unravels

There’s a point in the interview process when you’ve gained enough insight into a person to fairly reliably predict their answer to the next question. You’ve figure out their core motivations and seen common themes in how they respond to a variety of situations. I’ve learned if I haven’t gotten to that point, I haven’t interviewed that person well enough. If I can’t get to that point because a candidate is giving vague or inconsistent answers, that’s a red flag.

An incredibly clarifying post by Seth Godin on why we do what we do.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/03/three-masters.html

A business coach asked me a tough question the other day. I think it brings up one of the most important lessons I could learn at this point in my leadership career.

He asked, “Are you doing this because it’s best for your business, or because you want to be right?”

I like being right, and I hate being wrong, so that question was hard for me to digest. My thoughts ran forward to how much damage I might do to my lifetime impact potential. What if I don’t have the maturity to do the wise thing even when it means being wrong in my eyes or someone else’s? The foolish choices I could make in the name of being right scare me.

Leaders need to be resilient. Part of that is having the security to admit a wrong, or tolerate being called wrong, and not let that interfere with wise decision-making.

I’m really thankful he asked me that tough question.

I think of organizational culture as “how we do things here”. It includes what is praised here, what is frowned upon, and what will get someone fired. Different cultural styles exist, from expertise-oriented, to inclusion-oriented. One style is not necessarily superior to another, but it’s important that everyone in the organization be aligned.

When cultural alignment problems exist, two things need to happen:

1. The leader needs to clearly communicate in words and by example “how we do things here”.

2. Team members who are unwilling or unable to align with the desired culture must be replaced.

If you want a high-energy, can-do culture and you have a low-stress, enjoy-the-process team member, it’s probably not going to work.

There is no such thing as culture change without turnover.

Of course the logical thing to do going forward is purposefully select employees who fit the desired culture at hiring time.

I’ve been back in the USA for three days now. It’s great to be back home.

My American friends, I want to challenge how you think about distant countries like India.

Value the Differences

Realize that there are good reasons for the strange customs, the strange food, the strange family culture. Do not assume that different equals inferior. In most cases the American way is not better, it’s just suited for a different context. In most cases our way wouldn’t work as well there as their way does. America is great at a lot of things, but not everything is better here.

See the Commonality

Some of the circumstances are different, but people everywhere have ambition to better themselves, loyalty to family and friends, desire for meaningful work, struggles with insecurity, and pain in difficult relationships. Human emotion and human psychology are pretty universal.

Care Across Borders

Do you see yourself on the same team with your fellow citizens of earth in all countries, or do you see opposing teams? Are you willing to give up some prosperity if it means more people across the globe can lift themselves out of poverty? Are you willing to send aid money to places in need? Are you willing to send outsourced jobs to places in need? Isn’t a job better than a handout?

Do you love people because they are from your country, because they are like you, or because they are inherently valuable humans?