Let’s call him Frank.
He seemed so sincere, so talented, so driven. When I met him on a business trip—my former CEO and I—I liked him right away. He was looking for work; we needed some help back at head office. Seemed like a great fit.
We flew him to our headquarters to interview with a few members of our senior staff, more of a formality really. The job was his. We were shocked when the team was lukewarm. Didn’t they need the help? One of his colleagues-to-be actually begged us not to hire the man. He’d dug into Frank’s qualifications during his interview and the professed skills got thinner and thinner; but more importantly there was something about Frank he just didn’t trust. His sensors were blinking red.
The CEO and I had spent days traveling with this guy, the team had had little more than an hour with him. Frank was a fine person, a smart guy. He’d learn the business.
Frank was a disaster. He one of the most self-absorbed and devious people I’ve ever worked with. Because of the benevolent nature of our organization I was working for at the time, it took us years to untangle the mess we had gotten into, and by then he’d done serious damage to our team’s reputation—not to mention motivation and productivity.
The point. The CEO and I didn’t listen to our subject matter experts. We thought we knew better. After all, we were the bosses, and these are the kinds of decisions bosses make. Right? Maybe not.
It took me a few years to get over this bad hire. After all, I write books and appear on television shows talking about workplace culture and employee engagement. I’m supposed to know better.
But here’s what I learned: We glean more from the mistakes we make in business than our triumphs, and we’ll all make mistakes like Frank along the way. We only get better if we learn from our gaffes. And boy did I learn from Frank.
Here are just three takeaways:
1) Do your homework. There are stage-gates to screening applicants. Your first interview is just a step, and you have to know your gut or first impressions can be wrong. A friend who graduated from Harvard Business School told me about the “interviewing” class he took in grad school. The goal was to impress and dazzle; it certainly wasn’t to “be yourself.” We may be bosses but we are human, and that means we can all be sucked in by a dynamic personality. Send your candidate to meet the team, your boss, and one or two people in the organization you admire but don’t have a vested interest in the position. They’ll all give you an outside perspective.
2) Challenge them. Frank told us he had qualifications that he didn’t really posses. When he came on board we found out quickly he did one thing well, but he was a one-trick pony. He did not possess the plethora of skills he claimed during the hiring process. When that worried member on my team had pushed him, Frank’s claims about his qualifications had collapsed like a deck of cards. While I hadn’t listened on Frank, on the next hire you can be sure I paid very close attention to what that team member (and others) said, and I can proudly that we hired a string of terrific men and women who were not only very good at what they did but good team players.
3) Ask them why. At some point in the interview your potential candidate is going to tell you a story about a difficult work situation they overcame. It will probably we rehearsed, and that’s understandable. They’ll naturally sound like a champion from Greek mythology, modest yet brilliant, the consummate collaborator, a mediator. The next step is to ask “why?” and then “why?” again. For instance, “Why did you take that direction over another?” “What do you think would have happened if you’d gone the other way?” “Why did your value system make you do what you did just then?” Great interviewers ask “why” many more times than “how.” You are trying to get to know the person’s character. Leaders in great cultures know that character is every bit as important as qualifications. After all, who is more dangerous to your organization: An unqualified new hire or a cancerous new hire?
The point is simple, and yet like most truths is profound: Get the team involved and really listen to their input. They may be able to smell a rat better than you.