Rohan Manchanda

Recruiting A-players

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Recently, I heard the audiobook of Who: The A Method for Hiring, an NYT bestseller that tries to codify the process for hiring high performing professionals. I found the book fascinating for many reasons (also, trivial in some places) and decided to document my personal takeaways. My favourite ones are:

  1. ALWAYS do reference checks and conduct Due Diligence
  2. Asking ‘Who are the most talented people you know’ can reap phenomenal rewards

— Guide to recruiting A-players: Yes, this is more applicable for senior executives, but, the principles apply to any hiring scenario.

  • WHO decisions are more important than WHAT decisions in business; Management Talent is about 20% of the business
  • If you mis-hire, you will obviously end up doing more work and in particular, ‘THEIR’ work
  • ‘WHO’ decisions either move markets positively or plunder millions of dollars
  • Always have a healthy scepticism about the resumé
  • The worst mistakes Boards make — No Due Diligence! Matt Levin from Bain Capital says that Boards make a mistake of not knowing the story behind a candidate
  • Voodoo hiring: How do such seasoned executives make such costly mistakes? Because hiring strangers IS difficult. Hiring has still not been codified whereas many other business practices have been. Ten voodoo hiring methods below:

The Art Critic: 100% reliance on Gut instinct for recruiting is terrible

The Sponge: Letting everyone interview. Total time waste.

The Prosecutor: Asking tricky questions and logic problems. Might land you the smart candidate but not one who is good at the job

The Suitors: Recruiters/Managers who always talk and never listen

The Trickster: Takes the candidate to the party to test their behaviour

The Animal Lover: Managers who hold on their pet questions. Judge by questions such as what type of animal you’re?

The Chatterbox: An enjoyable method but banter mostly gets you nowhere

Psychological and Personality tester: Asks stuff such as ‘Library on Friday or cocktail bar?’

The Aptitude tester: Straightforward as per definition — Let this not be a sole determinant of a candidate

The Fortune Teller: Asks hypothetical questions about future business scenarios such as ‘how would you react during a conflict or what would you do to resolve one?’

  • Recruitment is DIFFICULT because it’s hard to see who people really are in a SHORT period
  • A-player is not just a superstar. S/He is the superstar who gets the job done. Hire people who have at-least 90% chance of succeeding in the job to be done. Only ten per cent of total players should be able to get the job done with 90% success chance

Four steps of the A method

1. Scorecard: Outcomes and competencies that define job done well. The person you seek MUST be able to accomplish this

2. Source: THE catalogue

3. Select: Structured interviews

4. Sell: Persuade A-players to join. Don’t allow them to join anywhere else.

  1. Scorecard:
  • What do you want? → Define outcomes or impact. Hiring managers mostly don’t know what they want.

Mission: Executive Summary of the jobs’ core purpose. For the mission to be meaningful it should be written in simple language. Helps avoid the hiring of generalists. This can’t change every day but can be dynamic

Outcomes: Defining what must get done. Three to eight outcomes are acceptable. Scares of B and C players while keeping A players excited. If it can’t be quantified, then it should be observable or objective

Competency: Behavior fit. Flows directly from the first two. Traits of A-players are Efficiency; Honesty and integrity; Speaks clearly; Aggressiveness; Follow through on commitments; Intelligence; Planner; Strong analytical skills; Attention to detail; Persistence; Tenacity; Proactivity

Five values assessed by Heinz CEO Bill Johnson: COMMITTMENT (Is very difficult to assess but very important). The EGO must be under control. COACHABILITY. INTELLECT. CHEMISTRY.

  • VERY FEW leaders/managers write down the objectives of employees that report to them
  • Scorecards spread PLANNING throughout the organisation

2. Sourcing:

  • ‘Talent pools’ rarely contain the best candidates and grow stagnant
  • How to source A-players?

Referrals are the best way, and this is where innovation matters less than the process [Yes, this is obvious to some, but, still people do not implement]

  • Five ways to source

1. Referrals from the business network

2. Referrals from personal network

3. Hire external recruiter

4. Hire a recruiting researcher for lead gen but not interviews

5. Hire an internal recruiter

  • THE question to ask your personal and professional colleagues/friends — Who are the most talented people who I should hire?
  • Senior hiring should only be targeted in nature
  • Leadership, vision, and taking people along is important. One of the best ways to hire a candidate is to judge how many talented human beings she or he will bring along
  • A-players only hire A-players
  • Keep index cards — name, snippets, discussion topics for people to talk to about [I, personally find this icky]
  • Sourcing also involves nurturing A players. Have thirty-min calls with people you have identified
  • Time to educate the recruiter is important
  • Simple stuff such as ‘Source 5 A players who pass the phone screen’ goes a long way in recruiting à Put this into the performance scorecards of employees so that they’re always recruiting.

3. Select:

Four interviews for selecting A-players. Skill-Will matching with the scorecard is important. Skill = past; Will = future!

  • Series of four interviews that build on top of each other
  • Track record, passion, and competencies are essential in any candidate
  • If a candidate says, ‘I don’t know’, there is always a better answer. You have to keep reframing the question; Use TORC (Threat of Reference Check)
  • Asking follow-up questions (What, How, Tell-Me-More framework) is essential, and you need to be curious with candidates

What happened? What happened next?

How did that happen?

Tell me more?

How did that feel?

  • Screening Interview: To clear out B and C candidates. 30 Minutes on Phone. Follow a standard set of questions → fosters consistency. Finish the interview early because the whole idea is to weed out quickly. You do not need to be collegial even with borderline cases, and you can let go of A-players also

1. What are your career goals: You need to give the candidate the first word so that they do not regurgitate your website

2. What are you really good at professionally: Get the candidates to give a set of 8 to 10 positives. Listen for strengths that match the job requirements

3. What are you not so good at or not interested in doing professionally: You can tell them about the reference checks that follow to get authentic answers

4. Who were your last five bosses and how would they rate you on a scale of 1 to 10 WHEN we talk to them: 7s are neutral and 8/9/10 are good. 6s or below is bad because they are essentially 2s

  • Top Grading interview: This is a KEY step in the Select process. Chronological walkthrough of the career. Data and patterns in behaviour are essential. Top Grading interview usually takes three hours. Each job of the candidate deserves these five questions:
  • What were you hired to do? You can figure out the scorecard of the previous job
  • What accomplishments are you most proud of? Candidates will just describe the role they described above. A-players tend to talk about outcomes related rather than events or people
  • What were some of the low points during the job?
  • Who were the people you worked with? Follow TORC = Threat of Reference Check. Ask these questions in sequence:

1. Name of the BOSS and spelling of his name? Write this down so that candidates know that you are serious about calling them. Show them the spelling.

2. How was it like working with her or him?

3. What will Mr. X say about your strengths or areas of improvement? You may have to reframe this and be very persistent. THERE IS ALWAYS A BETTER ANSWER than ‘I DO NOT KNOW’

4. Rate the team you inherited on an ABC scale?

5. What changes did you make?

6. Did you hire or fire anybody?

7. Rate the team, when you left, on an ABC scale

  • Why did you leave that job?

A-players leave even when they are happy and successful

  • Master tactics to conduct a Top Grading interview

You have to interrupt the candidate and do not let them ramble. You may have to do this once in 3–4 mins. A good way to interrupt is reflective listening — just do not shut off the candidate

Three Ps: Use to evaluate how valuable an accomplishment is?

1. Performance comparison in current year versus in the previous year

2. Performance comparison with the planned performance

3. Performance comparison with that of peers

Push vs Pull: Do not hire anyone who has been pushed out of their job 20% or more times. A-players are pulled to bigger opportunities linked to outcomes

Painting a picture: You need to see the visual of what the candidate is saying = empathic imagination

Stopping at the stop signs: Get curious at important milestones

  • Focused Interview: For final and more granular details. This is not a top-grading interview. This is an odds enhancer. Helps with cultural fit also. Each interview is 45 mins to an hour:

The purpose is to talk about a specific topic (specific topic is determined by the scorecard e.g. selling skills or hiring skills)

Accomplishments on the specific topic

Check for insights on that specific topic

  • The Reference Interview: Test what you learned. Do not skip this. You lose out on 25% of the information you should have. Time constraints and pushback from the interviewees should not prevent you from interviewing references:

Pick the right references

Ask the candidate to set up the interview

Conduct the right number of reference interviews: Four (personally conducted) plus Three (your peers). Five questions to ask in a sequential manner + curiosity:

1. In what capacity did you work with the candidate? Back Then helps with framing but competencies usually do not change over time; past is a good predictor for the future

2. What were the strengths of the candidate back then?

3. Areas for improvement back then?

4. Overall performance on 1 to 10 scale? What causes you to give that rating? 6 is really a 2. Look for 8s, 9s, 10s

5. The candidate said you might say he is X, what is your take on that?

No one likes to give negative references, but it is your job to be alert and figure out the ‘code’ for a negative reference. For instance, hire this person if you want to be disagreed with…

4. Sell:

Five F’s of selling to A-players

  • You have to identify which matter most to the A-player and then make a plan to execute on that and also on the others

1. Fit: Vision, Strategy, Needs, Values matching with that of the candidates. This is the most critical area to sell. A key differentiator for companies as most organizations do not do this

2. Family: The Broader ordeal of changing jobs. Family++ considerations. You need to be persistent and assure A-players of family considerations throughout the hiring journey

3. Freedom: Candidate should have the freedom to make decisions. She should not be micromanaged

4. Fortune: Overall financial upside but it is a PART of the package and not THE package

5. Fun: Work environment

  • You have to have a persistent pursuit of hiring A-players; you have to keep asking them out till they join you

What kind of CEOs make investors significant money? (research-backed): Fast, Focused, and Aggressive (CEOs are cheetahs) | Emotional Intelligence is essential but not at the expense of getting things done. Cheetahs know when to stop getting feedback and execute.