Hiring Methods

Langworthy Company
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Revised: 05/03/2002

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"Becoming a good
manager is not an
event but a process"
Dr. Kenneth Blanchard

"People don't resist change, they resist transition."
Dr. William Bridges

Improve Screening
And Interviews
With Top Job
Candidates

Hire High Performers

10 STEPS TO HIRING SUCCESS

STEP 1: Define Job Success

Every recruiter and hiring manager should tape this to the bathroom mirror:

"If you want to hire superior people, first define superior performance."

Get somebody to carve that in wood. Or needlepoint it on a sampler. Then put it where you can see it.

Everybody wants to hire superior people, don’t they? Then why do so many hiring decisions yield employees who are just average performers at best, and disastrous at worst?

"Having" vs. "Doing"

In the case of these less-than-stellar outcomes, perhaps there’s an underlying cause. Too many hiring managers create job descriptions that are really laundry lists of candidate "requirements." When these lists drive the interview process, hiring results suffer. The selection process becomes focused on what candidates must "have" to get the job, instead of what candidates must "do" once they’re on the job. It’s difficult to hire superior performers in these scenarios because there’s no definition of what superior performance actually is.

The Critical First Step to Hiring the Best

Why is defining superior performance so important?

Because it’s only after you define superior performance that you can write great ads, assess true competency, and close an offer on your terms. You can spend your candidate interview time discussing past accomplishments that are related to the performance you’re seeking. The entire interviewing process becomes a much saner, more enjoyable, and much more productive experience on both sides of the table. And you’ll find it’s much easier to recognize superior candidates when you’ve painted a clear picture of "superior performance."

Getting Started with Major Objectives

So how do you get started? Begin by revising standard job descriptions, using language that defines superior performance. Here’s how:

Make a list of the top 5-8 things a person must do to be successful in the job. These are performance objectives. Focus only on Major Objectives and the interim steps necessary to achieve these objectives. These could include problems to solve, changes to make, team/management objectives, and technical objectives.
Take a look at your current job description in light of the list you’ve created, and convert each "having" requirement into an action-oriented "doing" task.
Put these deliverables into priority order. Tasks are much easier to prioritize than arbitrary lists of skills and experience.

Add Supporting Objectives

Once you set up the Major Objectives for each job, you'll also want to touch on some Supporting Objectives (such as the key steps needed to meet major objectives). You could include some of the following:

	Management or organizational issues
	Changes and improvements you'd like to see implemented
	Problems that might arise (or problems that already exist)
	Technical issues
	Team and people issues
	Projects and deliverables

Get S.M.A.R.T.

Once your job description is defined in terms of the tasks you want the employee to do, you’ll need to take each task and turn it into a S.M.A.R.T. objective.

S.M.A.R.T. objectives are:

Specific

Measurable

Action-oriented

Results-focused

Time-based

There are three approaches to developing and using SMART objectives. You can use these approaches separately or--even better--all together to prepare a complete performance profile for each position to be filled.

The Macro Approach works best for jobs with lots of projects. This is also known as "The Big Picture" approach, one that has as its subtext the question "What will the incumbent need to do to be successful?" Write measurable objectives for each major job factor, and be sure that supporting objectives are covered.

If you're looking for a software project manager, the objectives might include "Launch three new products within the next twelve months" and "In the next 90 days, upgrade the planning system for manufacturing."

The Micro Approach works well for technical positions, where there’s often a gap between the "having" and the "doing." Convert each job requirement or skill listed on a traditional job description into a SMART objective by asking what the candidate has done with that particular job requirement or skill.

A basic grounding in PC skills can be translated into a simple objective, such as "Use PCs to develop a new project tracking system." Something like "Design three new products per year" could be a SMART objective that tests for a candidate’s design experience.

The Benchmarking Approach works for positions that depend more on process/transaction than on task/project. Examine your best performers in the position you’re trying to fill. Determine what these high-performance employees do that makes them effective, and then make these actions the criteria for your SMART objectives. By drawing only on those who already do the job exceptionally well, you avoid defining performance based on the habits of under-performers who hold the same job title.

Finding the language to articulate your SMART objectives takes some effort and practice--but it pays off in better hiring decisions. You should express performance goals with these elements in mind:

An action verb.

Examples: Increase, change, improve

A specific, measurable goal.

This is where you address desired results and a timeframe.

Example: 10% improvement in 90 days

Sometimes you won't have all the information necessary to complete each performance objective, but it’s worth the effort to get as close as you can. Complete SMART objectives are the most effective because they make expectations clear to everyone involved.

Once you get into the swing of it, you’ll be developing SMART objectives for a job opening within less than an hour. If you need help, you’ll find excellent tools at the POWERHiring.com Web site. You may select from among more than 50 pre-written performance profiles for a variety of job positions. These can be downloaded and modified to fit your requirements, and they’re free.

Now that you know how to define superior performance, you’re much more likely to hire superior performers as you go through the selection process. After all, isn’t it a lot easier to find something when you can describe what you’re looking for?

STEP 2: Consider the Source - - How to keep finding the best candidates

Sourcing is the process of getting enough candidates to interview. But volume isn't everything--as a wise man once said, "If you're seeing only turkeys, you'll hire a turkey." You have to constantly work to improve the quality as well as the quantity of the candidates you attract. When you get to the point where you're seeing only top-notch people for every position, you know you're doing it right.

Of course, there is no one "right" way to find good people. How you look for candidates depends on who you are looking for and what type of skills they need. But you can make it easier and much more efficient by following a few simple steps

Using the Internet

The CareerBuilder Network is the perfect place to start; it features ways to target all types of candidates. It delivers, with prime exposure on more than 30 leading Web sites--including MSN, Bloomberg.com and USAToday.com--that reach more than 80 million people each month. This attractive combination of reach and focus gives you access to both passive and active job seekers, whom you can target by profession, geography, and specialty niche markets. This approach allows your company to zero in on candidates with the exact skills and experience you need.

Other Internet Tips

As we keep on saying, your ads need to sizzle and offer S.M.A.R.T. (Specific, Measurable, Action-oriented, Results-based, Time-based) objectives at the top. Minimize passive verbs (such as "having" or "responsible for") and focus on opportunity and challenge to draw in the best candidates. Writing Outrageous Ads is the "sweet spot" of being an ace recruiter. Instead of writing a dull ad that begins, "We need a Senior Unix System Administrator with 5-10 years experience administering medium to large environments on multi-platforms (SunOS, Solaris, HP-UX, and AIX)," be a bit more outrageous. Write one that's headed "Mega-Opportunity with Mega-Visibility" and goes on to say: "Get on the fast track and leverage your big time Unix background with Sun, Solaris, and HP. You'll be traveling across the globe, leading the effort to set up complex international networks. This is a high-visibility position that will touch every facet of our business and the unique Oracle and Sybase databases that drive them. Two years in this role and you'll be positioned to handle any challenge."

Pre-Qualify Respondents. Ask them to submit a separate write-up of their most significant comparable accomplishment. You can put this request directly in the ad or in an e-mail autoresponder.

Datamining. If you don't get a big enough pool when posting ads and screening resumes, it's time to begin datamining. You might want to do this anyway, and least to some minimal degree. This requires a dedicated research effort using your own staff or a third-party recruiter.

Multi-Channel Sourcing. Things will always go wrong, so don't put all your sourcing eggs in one basket. Multi-channel sourcing is the best technique. Run ads everywhere and develop formal referral networks--including your own employee network.

Reach Out and Touch Someone. The best people are rarely looking actively, so you have to grab their attention. Direct mail and e-mail campaigns can help. Be original: get trade group rosters and contact members.

The Old-Fashioned Approach

Even when you contact a candidate by telephone or snail mail, your initial contact should be compelling. Make sure they notice and remember you by giving them something active to do--something that will help you learn more about them.

Develop direct sourcing programs to go after the strongest candidates. These people already have good jobs and need to be pried away. Develop a college recruiting program. Some of the best people are easier to attract right out of school.

And don’t forget: networking and referrals are still the way to go. This is what recruiters do, mostly because it works. Use your employees, vendors, customers, trade associations, and professional service corporations to get the names of top people who might not be actively looking. Then go after them with a personal pitch. Here are a couple of tips:

If you're looking for resumes within a certain company, make sure that lots of people within that company know about it--even if they themselves aren't the right fit. They might know someone who just left the company, or someone in another department, that could be your perfect candidate

If you find a candidate with the right background, but not yet at the level you require, keep the contact alive anyway. They might well have a superior or a higher-level associate who could fill your needs.

You should build your sourcing program around this simple concept: "Treat candidates as customers." You want these great candidates to "buy" your company. This requires the use of compelling ads, personal contact, and lots of attention.

Identify what motivates the candidate. A "going-away" strategy means that the candidate's current situation is bad, is actively seeking a new job. But most top performers have a "going-toward" strategy--they have to be lured away from a good situation. Write ads from this prospective.

Three primary reasons motivate top candidates to take a new position: the quality of the job, the reputation of the company, and the leadership qualities of the hiring manager. An effective sourcing program has to address all three of these issues.

Anticipate your needs. A forward-looking staffing plan can pinpoint requirements months in advance, making your candidate search less frantic.

Make it a point every year to upgrade the bottom 20 percent of your staff--and make sure that the top 20 percent is happy and will stay in place. You can do this by giving people bigger challenges and getting everyone more involved in meeting critical objectives.

Always look for promising candidates, even when you don't need them. Build your own personal network of potential employees.

Sourcing must always be a high-priority process, along with forward-looking staffing plans and a well-conceived compensation program. This will keep you on top of the situation, rather than always reacting to surprises.

Network to Get to the Passive Candidate. Don't just search resume banks for active candidates; search for specific companies or functions and use these contacts to find passive candidates. Call these candidates, and ask about their boss, subordinates, peers, and associates. Take no prisoners--get names numbers and ask if you can use their name as a reference. Search trade associations and other connections. Look for indirect connections. Don't ignore customers, vendors, social or academic connections. It's not high-tech, but it works like a charm!

STEP 3: Write Outrageous Ads

Traditional ads are written toward candidates needing a job, but the best candidates already have good jobs! No one moves on to a new job doing the same thing, for the same pay, with the same future prospects. Use these five secrets in the right balance and you'll attract more top people.

1. The Doing. Focus your ad copy on what a person needs to do. This is the heart of the job, what you expect the person to accomplish. Make this exciting and it will prompt the semi-active and qualified candidate to apply. People who don't want to do the work are naturally excluded. If you want to motivate people to excellence, devote at least 50% of the ad to the "doing."

Generously add lines like this to your ads: "Get set to rebuild a electro-mechanical consumer product line with lots of potential, but little direction" or "Take over a customer service department of 10 people that needs an energizing force and a new direction."

2. The Becoming. Paint a clear picture of how the person can grow and develop over the first year. Give them something to reach for. Feature this vision in the ad, and you'll attract some of the best people. People stay on the job when they can see a compelling future. Often they'll take a lesser salary increase. Career opportunities more than compensate for an additional 10% in salary. The "becoming" needs to be mentioned subtly, in line with some pizzazz about the company. For example: "Become an e-commerce guru as you lead the launch of our state-of-the-art Internet application." Here's another: "Enhance your UNIX Systems Administrator skills as you take on one of the biggest IT challenges to come to Austin."

3. The Having. Don't pack your ads with lists of requirements, skills, academics or duties. These are a big turn-off and exclude the best from even applying. Unqualified people, who often only read the title, will apply in great numbers. Do you get too many responses? "Experience" is a poor predictor of job success, so limit this preference to one general sentence in your ads. Say something like, "Send in your resume if you have a few years in our industry, solid academics, and a track record of building awesome teams." Keep it that simple and that vague.

4. Outrageous Titles. Use interesting, exciting, creative titles for your positions. Instead of "UNIX Administrator," use "UNIX Guru". Instead of "Sales Manager," use "Sales General" or "Decorated Road Warrior". An "Inside Sales Person" could become a "Tele-Sales Wizard." This causes candidates to read the ad and learn more.

5. Qualify Candidates Right From the Start. At the end of your ad, ask the candidate to submit a one-page write-up of their most significant comparable accomplishment. This is a more meaningful way to filter candidates that shifting through a resume. You might even add this request to an automatic e-mail response. The quality of the accomplishment is more predictive of success than all the education and experience in the world.

Some Sample Job Ads

A change in tone of the ad you write can make a world of difference to the candidates who respond. Take a look at these before and after versions of real ads, taken directly from the pages of a local newspaper.

BEFORE	AFTER
Division Accountant Ajax Parts is seeking an accountant responsible for all General Ledger activity and internal financial reporting. We are a mid-sized industrial parts manufacturing company. Candidates must be able to manage a small staff, and have a BS in business, accounting preferred, with a CPA highly desired. We offer a competitive financial package.	Division Non-Accountant Ajax Parts is on the move. Join us and give your career a jump start! Our new division accountant will be setting up a complete new performance reporting package, pushing the envelop on using the latest systems. A CPA would be great, but not as important as a track record of building top-notch teams with a desire to succeed. A progressive comp package will grow as you do.
Tele-Sales Manager The sales manager for our financial services unit is responsible for managing a team of six tele-sales people for the southeast region. At least 3-5 years experience in the sale of financial instruments, plus a least 2 years in a sales supervisory role is essential. A BS degree is required. Compensation package is commensurate with experience. No calls taken Send resume to P.O. Box 10.	The Artful Sales Manager Our financial services unit is launching a great new competitive line. If you can build and train a team of tele-sales wizards, you'll be looking at your best years ever! We're putting the resources behind this product line expansion, and need a leader who can take us to the next level. If you want to leverage your abilities and compensation, send in your resume with an example of your greatest sales management accomplishment.
Sr. Unix Administrator We need a Senior Unix System Administrator with 5-10 years experience administering medium to large environments on multi-platforms (SunOS,Solaris,HP-UX, and AIX). Must have expert networking knowledge of DNS, NFS, NIS (+), Automounter and TCP/IP. Strong shell scripting development skills (C, C++, Perl, AWK, Bourne, Korn) is a plus. Position requires expertise in database administration (Oracle, Sybase, SQL, etc). Willing to travel 50% up to 75% with possible international travel is required.	Mega-Opportunity with Mega-Visibility Get on the fast track and leverage your big time Unix background with Sun, Solaris, and HP. You'll be traveling across the globe, leading the effort to set up complex international networks. This is a high-visibility position that will touch every facet of our business and the unique Oracle and Sybase databases that drive them. Two years in this role and you'll be positioned to handle any challenge. This is an extraordinary opportunity coupled with an outstanding comp plan!

STEP 4: Posting Great Ads is the foundation to recruiting programs

Posting Great Ads: The Foundation of Your Recruiting Program

Internet ads are very effective in reducing your cost per hire. Great ads are particularly well suited for attracting candidates that may not have their resume posted on the Internet, but are actively reading ads. Most top candidates are willing to respond to a compelling ad.

You should consider these key elements when posting your ads to the CareerBuilder Network:

	Job Title
	Job Category
	Job Type
	Geographic Location
	Short Description (the most compelling ideas to capture interest)
	Long Description Keywords (see below)

CareerBuilder Will Cross-Post Your Ad

Like any advertisement for a product or service, your employment ad must get maximum exposure. That means it must be placed in multiple locations. By using the CareerBuilder Network, you can post your ad to over 30 other targeted sites to increase your exposure. This is referred to as "cross-posting" or "meta-posting." Even if your company has national name recognition, just posting ads on your Web site is never enough! They should be posted on your Web site, of course, and be as compelling there as any other Internet sites.

It is important to accurately choose the best Job Category when posting your ad, because it will also get posted to other sites and expose your job opportunity to additional candidates. The total number of sites where your ad may be cross-posted will vary by the type of Job Category selected.

The Short Description

CareerBuilder has a short description for each job. This section should be as compelling as possible. This short description is what the candidate initially sees when search results are returned for their evaluation. It must quickly capture interest, so try to think like a candidate. What can you say about this particular job that would be most appealing? For example: "Our pre-IPO company with a long client list of Fortune 500, blue-chip firms needs a world class e-Business consultant to lead client engagements and deliver true Internet solutions in e-commerce, b2b, and b2c. We expect to IPO during this year."

Tricks and Secrets of Keywords

The previous section covered how to write outrageous ads. When preparing your ad content, remember that candidates will be searching the Internet using keywords as well as job categories. Therefore, be sure to use a lot of keywords within your ad just to make sure that your ad will be selected by the search procedure on the job-posting site. When you are coming up with your keywords, think like a candidate.

Ask yourself, "What words would my perfect candidate use in their search for this opportunity?"

Many search processes rank the keyword match by how often the word appears in the ad. After you write your outrageous ad, it is permissible to have a section at the bottom of the ad called "Keywords." Most candidates will know why you included it and will be pleased that your ingenuity brought your compelling ad to their attention. It is not so much about having a "prim and proper ad" as it is about getting the attention of qualified candidates and creating interest in your job opportunity.

For example, if you were searching for a JAVA developer for a company in the financial industry, you might have a keywords section that listed some or all of these: JAVA Java Internet developer Web finance financial banking securities investment. Note that all commas were left out; commas after each word can sometimes affect the search engine handling of keywords.

Testing Your Job Postings

As soon as your ad is posted to the Web, you should run a test search. The objective, as discussed above, is to think like a candidate. Using the keywords and other job/category criteria that you think the candidate would use, pretend to be the candidate for a few minutes. Conduct a search and see if your ad is found. If so, how close was your ad to the top of the list that the search produced? A candidate may not read more than 50 ads before choosing ads to answer from that list. If you ad isn't close enough to the top, you may try changing the content, particularly the keywords. Run a test search again. Keep at it until you get your ad as close to the top as possible.

Summary

	Write a compelling ad
	Place it on your company site
	Place it on CareerBuilder Network sites
	Run tests for ad position during the search process
	Tweak after tests
	Measure results over a period of time
	Tweak and refresh based on the results of above activity

STEP 5: Finding the right resumes

There's a famous recipe for cooking a tiger which begins, "First, catch your tiger." You can say the same thing about recruiting. The first thing you have to do is get your tiger to submit a resume--which often means going out to beat the bushes yourself. After setting your initial trap by posting an "outrageous" ad on the CareerBuilder Network, here are some additional bushes you might not have thought about:

Trade Association connections--these people network like crazy.

Companies you know of and work with--even competitors and suppliers!

Academic connections--again, they love to get together to swap job leads.

Trade shows and presentations--the ideal candidate might just show up.

Social Network--Determine what this type of candidate might do when not working (based on age, family, sports, income, and similar issues) to discover other means to connect.

Use these connections to create a network with only one degree of separation from your ideal candidate. For instance, if you're looking for someone with traditional consumer marketing experience, you might use Procter and Gamble as a keyword when searching for resumes. The people you find may not be an exact match for the job, but they are likely to know people who are. Send an e-mail to these people with a clear compelling description of what you are looking for, and ask them to forward it to interested candidates.

Identify all the keywords that will help you to review resumes, meta-search resume banks, or search the Web using AltaVista and Yahoo for a candidate. In addition to the typical functions, also include special technical terms, geography, titles, academics, societies, and names of potential employers. Make sure to include the words "resume" and "education" in your search criteria. If you are not willing to relocate, include area codes from your surrounding areas. You'll be amazed at the resumes just sitting out there on the Internet waiting to be discovered. Your goal is to create an active network of people who will recommend your position to a "passive" candidate.

A major problem, of course, is that many of your prospective tigers will turn out to be dogs. Most professional recruiters don't spend their time calling on unsolicited resumes. However, an e-mail message to targeted resumes may help you find interested candidates and filter out unqualified ones. In your e-mail, restate your original compelling job ad, and then ask the candidate to respond back with a half-page summary of a past comparable accomplishment. We use this same approach for candidates who submit their resume in response to an ad. Often their response to this question will give you much better insight into the candidate's desire and ability than a resume ever will.

What To Do When You Get a Great Resume

The Internet has shaken up the recruiting business as dramatically as it's changed most other aspects of our everyday lives. We're all working and thinking differently as we take advantage of what's possible on the Web. And probably the most dramatic change is in the speed of our response to a great resume.

Who knows how long that resume has been making the digital rounds? Just because it's up there on your computer screen, apparently as fresh as dawn, that doesn't mean you can relax and wait. It might have been making the electronic rounds for weeks, seen by everyone--including all those other recruiters. Your work has just begun: you have to turn a great resume into a strong candidate. And to do that, you need to create a fast and effective process for bringing the best candidates aboard.

We've developed what we call the "1-2-3" Rule for dealing with great resumes. Within one day--that's just 24 hours--you need to express your interest and get the process started.

An auto-response e-mail is useful here, but be sure to make it sound personal and heartfelt. For example, it could begin like this:

"Thanks for sending in your resume. You've got an impressive background. We'll be back in touch with you very shortly." Avoid the whining approach used by too many organizations: "We regret that we can't answer all replies personally." Not a very upbeat way to start a relationship, is it?

Then, within two days (48 hours), phone the top two or three candidates. Your goal is to schedule a personal interview to be completed no more than three days later.

Ideally, the interview should be followed by a successful offer and hire a week or two after that.

To win the e-talent wars, you need some old-fashioned creativity and a new game plan to make the most of the speed and reach of the Internet. It's an evolving learning process. Only those who fail to embrace it need worry about their own futures.

Using CareerBuilder

CareerBuilder offers two excellent online tools to help you acquire and manage candidate resumes.

Using the same online interface you use to post ads to the CareerBuilder Network, you can set up the initial management of inquiries to your postings in order to meet these timetables. Using a simple Web interface, you will be able to review the resumes of those who have responded to specific ads. Once you click on a specific resume, you will have a series of tabs across the top of the page that include:

1) The candidate's resume. 2) Your job summary data so you can quickly compare the resume to the position requirements. 3) Scoring notes that enable you to rate the resume for position suitability and jot down any thoughts. 4) Sections to either reply via e-mail to a candidate and/or forward a copy of the resume, with your notes, to another recruiting team member.

The CareerBuilder Network Resume Database allows you to proactively seek candidates by industry, education, salary, location, key words and more. By creating a Resume Search Agent, you can sit back and let the CareerBuilder Network do the work. The database will notify you when newly posted resumes arrive that match your candidate criteria.

STEP 6: Manage the screening process

Different Candidate Types Require Different Tactics

In developing our POWER Hiring System, we've defined four different types of potential candidates. These definitions matter when targeting your online efforts.

Active/Active: Hungry for employment, this candidate is actively seeking a new job every day. This person is responding to job ads in all sorts of media, and may or may not have posted a resume on a job board.
Passive/Active: This candidate is also somewhat hungry, but not looking every day. The Passive/Active is the type of person who may post a resume on a job board and hope to get a call.
Active/Passive: This is someone who's not really looking for a job. However, if they're presented with a compelling opportunity, they may develop some interest in making a career move.
Passive/Passive: This person is not looking for a new job at all. The passive/passive candidate is hard to motivate, and the cost to reach this person is very high.

The first two types of candidates are those you're after--the Active/Active and the Passive/Active. They're the job seekers who can be brought into the fold quickly, at an attractive cost per hire, and they're also the job seekers who can be reached most effectively using the Internet. The payoff is worth what it costs to source them online.

Active-Active: These candidates are actively--and personally--seeking a new job. They respond to ads that are placed on Internet sites that cater to the skill set and/or industry of your target candidate. They may also respond to ads on your company Web site. Some of these candidates want more control over their contacts and will not post their resume. The key is to move fast. These candidates typically e-mail resumes to multiple ads over a relatively short period of time. If they respond to an ad on your company Web site, they will typically decide whether to send a resume based on the design and content of your site. If they respond to your ad placed on an Internet job board, over 50 percent will visit your Web site before deciding to send a resume.

Would your company ever fail to acknowledge an inquiry by a customer or potential customer? I doubt it! You should always treat candidates as customers. First, make sure that you send an automatic e-mail response to all interested candidates. The e-mail should accomplish three things:

Thank the candidate for responding.
Filter the pool of candidates further by asking them to provide additional information.
Ask the candidate to refer other candidates to you if they are not the right fit for the position.

A sample automatic e-mail might say something like this: "Thank you for sending us your resume. You have an interesting background. We are looking for a [insert a brief, compelling description of the job opportunity here]" Then ask, "Please resubmit you resume with a 1/2-page description of your most significant comparable accomplishment and we'll get back to you right away. If this opportunity is not the right fit for you, please feel free to pass this e-mail on to a friend or associate who you feel might be interested. Thank you!"

Passive-Active: These candidates usually just post their resumes and wait for you to come to them. They're active in the sense that they want a new job, but are not personally too involved. They sometimes answer ads as well. The key is to move fast, especially for those that have just posted their resumes. When candidates post a resume, they will receive multiple phone calls and e-mails afterward. Competition is very fierce for these candidates.

If they are an obvious fit, call them immediately. Don't even wait one day! For those that you are not sure about, use the same email message approach described above. Interested candidates will self select and those who aren't a good fit may become a good source of referrals to other candidates who are. Once again, whether you contact the candidate by phone or email, you must have a compelling opportunity described in an intriguing way.

Upgrade Your Own Web Site

One of the first things an interested candidate is likely to do, even before responding to an ad or sending a resume, is visit your Web site. Your Web site can be the key to landing these highly competitive candidates. For all the reasons previously listed, your site must create enough interest to get the candidate to send you their resume. Your broadcast e-mail should direct them to a specific area of the Web site that will accept their resume and create further interest.

With so many great Web sites around, your own has to be up to certain minimum standards just to hold a visitor's attention. Here are some of the things it should feature:

A real emphasis on candidates, not just a small summary of open jobs.
A statement of the company vision, so that candidates get excited about working for you.
A searchable database of jobs, not merely a listing that a candidate must scroll through.
Jobs that are exciting. If you simply list skills, you'll lose. You must include what the candidate will learn, do, and become. Describe skills in an active sense ("Use your CPA to set up an international reporting system").
Provide reasons for a candidate to apply for a job within your company even if there are no obvious job openings. This means the career section has to be exciting, with all of the job titles and descriptions indicating that this is a great, fun place to work. Use titles like: "Network God," "Tele-Sales Wizard," "A job your mother would be proud for you to have" (They've all worked for us!)
Make it easy to use. Try it out yourself. If it's too hard to apply, people won't.

STEP 7: Keeping Emotional Control - - Are first impressions dangerous to your hiring health?

Here's the single most valuable thing I can tell you about the interview process: Wait 30 minutes before making any decision about a candidate's ability to do the work. That's because first impressions (based on emotion, bias, chemistry, personality, and all sorts of stereotypes) cause most hiring errors.

First impressions are largely about style. Style, or the lack of it, has more impact on hiring than substance. We hire people whose style we like--and are often disappointed. We reject people who don't seem to have any style--and then never know what we missed out on. The real problem is that once we accept or reject a candidate, the evaluation process shuts down. The quicker this happens, the less new information we seek out and process. We still go through the motions of asking questions, but we either use the answers to support our first impressions or ignore them if they seem to conflict.

The key to effective hiring is to move beyond this type of emotional reaction to a candidate and substitute something more important (the job itself, for example) as the dominant selection criterion. Emotions play a powerful role in the interviewing process. Unfortunately, the role they tend to play is negative. We're wired to make bad hiring decisions; we need to reprogram ourselves to keep our emotions under control.

The Important Rules

The old hiring rule based on the Four A’s (articulate, affable, attractive, and assertive) just doesn't seem to work anymore. Here's my second most important rule: Past Performance is the Best Predictor of Subsequent Performance. If you measure performance first (what we call The Top-Down Approach), then character, and leave personality for last, you'll increase your hiring accuracy by 50%.

Think of your internal decision-making mechanism as a three-way switch, with "Yes" at one end, "No" at the other, and "Maybe" in the middle. It's important to keep your switch at the "Maybe" position for as long as possible. Moving to "Yes" too early might make you feel relaxed, but it's also likely to end in tears--causing you to ignore negative data, globalize strengths, slip into a selling mode, and, worst of all, to stop listening. A premature "No" can be equally dangerous. Biases about age, physical characteristics, and even race can easily override a candidate's strong points. Try to remember that nobody is really at their best during an interview. Even the seasoned professionals get anxious or tense. The good news is that these effects usually wear off after 15 or 20 minutes. Hopefully, your switch will still be in the "Maybe" position when that happens.

All this makes it vital for you to know your own interviewing style, so that you can keep it under control. We all have a tendency to seek out aspects of ourselves in the people we choose, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it can sometimes lead to a kind of tunnel vision that excludes their possibilities. By taking a hard look at your own interviewing techniques, you open yourself up to a wider range of talents and abilities.

There are three basic styles of interviewing: emotional, intuitive, and technical. Which one describes you? If you make fast decisions (less than five minutes, let’s say) based on things like first impressions and personal biases about personality and appearance, then you're definitely in the emotional group. If it takes you up to 15 minutes to decide, and you base your judgment on your "gut" feeling about a few critical traits, you're an intuitive interviewer. Technical people take a longer time (over an hour) to come to a positive decision, basing it on a candidate's strong skills, experiences, and methodologies.

Defining Work-Related Behavior

In a broad sense, all work-related behavior can be divided into three categories: performance, character, and personality. Performance-based abilities have to do with getting the work done: technical competency, initiative, organizational ability, leadership and team skills. Character is the sum of deep-rooted traits like honesty, reliability, and integrity. Personality concerns affability, social confidence, and physical presence. The perfect candidate scores high in all three. But the problem is that some of these abilities are harder to measure than others, especially in an interview situation.

Of the three, personality would seem to be the quickest one to come up with a reading on. But then we fall back into the trap of first impressions. At a seminar, I asked the 75 attendees to add up everyone they had ever worked with closely that they actively disliked. Most of them came up with a total of five or six--a tiny fraction of the total. Then I turned the tables and asked them how many of the people they interviewed they disliked or absolutely couldn't work with. The result was anywhere from 40% to 80%. Not only was this a truly shocking differential, but it’s also a lesson for us all. Obviously, personality is not a reliable hiring criterion.

Character is harder to measure than personality, but it doesn't have the same emotional tug for most people. Like personality, however, character (though definitely important for on-the-job success) turns out to be a poor predictor of whether a candidate can actually do the job.

Performance is a whole different ballgame. Of the three core traits, performance is the easiest to measure and, as I've said, the best predictor of success.

Interviewing Tips

Here are 10 Quick Tips to get you through that all-important first 30 minutes of an interview:

	Fight with yourself to stay objective. Recognize when you feel relaxed or uncomfortable. Keep your buying switch in the "Maybe" position.
	Conduct a 20-minute, performance-based telephone interview before you sit down. When you talk with someone on the phone first, you automatically minimize the impact of personality and first impressions.
	Don't start the actual interview right away; chat or take a walk together instead. This will help minimize emotions and set up the framework for a good dialogue.
	Use a pre-planned, structured interview. Write down a few performance-oriented questions to ask right away, whether you like the candidate or not.
	Measure your first impressions again after 30 minutes. Compare these with your original feelings and evaluate your reactions.
	Change your frame of reference: ask tougher questions if you like a candidate, easier ones if you don't.
	Listen four times more than you talk. The interview isn't a casual conversation--it's a fact-finding expedition. Keep a page of notes for each of the candidate's accomplishments.
	Treat the candidate as a consultant, someone you're paying to listen to. We always listen more carefully to those whom we consider experts.
	Talk about real work instead of hypothetical issues. Your accuracy will increase if the interview is more like a problem-solving session.
	Use a panel interview to minimize emotional response. With fewer worries about a one-to-one relationship, you can get to the truth faster.

STEP 8: Performance based interviewing techniques

In over 25 years of recruiting experience I’ve learned two important lessons: First, past performance is the best predictor of future performance; and second, people who have been top performers tend to stay top performers. The goal of every interview should be to uncover a clear picture of the candidate’s past accomplishments. You can conduct a complete interview to accurately measure past performance and predict future performance with only four questions. Sound too good to be true? Stay tuned.

The Right Stuff

The best predictors of success are a track record of high energy (work ethic, initiative), team leadership, and some level of comparable past performance. The likelihood of success is high for candidates with this profile. Add the strong ability to adapt and produce in a new environment and you’ve got an excellent candidate. Using just four questions, this type of profile can be determined for any candidate. Asking about four to eight major past accomplishments in a patterned question format is the key to this type of interviewing approach. Past accomplishments should focus on individuals, teams, and specific jobs. When combined with fact-finding, these questions can reveal all the important details of each accomplishment.

The Four Questions: What to Listen For

Question 1: "Please describe your most significant accomplishment."

Ask this question for the past two or three jobs. Listen for personal energy and impact. Use fact-finding to get many examples and details--when, why, how, impact, results, and timeline. Ask SMART questions (Specific, Measurable, Action-Oriented, Results-based, Time-bound). This should take five to ten minutes. Make sure the candidate paints a detailed word picture of each accomplishment and provides specific examples.

Question 2: "Please draw an organizational chart and describe your most significant team or management accomplishment."

Look for Span of Control and team leadership over the last two or three jobs. Get examples of the candidate's actual role, the time and effort involved, any interpersonal challenges that arose, how well the candidate motivated others and dealt with conflict. During this five- or ten-minute discussion, get details about actual team results and what the candidate would have done differently.

Question 3: Anchoring: "One of our key performance objectives is __________ [Insert the most important S.M.A.R.T. objective for your job]. Tell me about your most significant comparable accomplishment."

What you're looking for here is Job Specific Competency. Make sure you dig out plenty of details in order to minimize exaggeration. Many candidates can come up with initial examples that sound great, but as you delve deeper and probe you will discover the scope, initiative, and resources that helped them to achieve their results. Make sure that the candidate can anchor each major performance objective of the new job with a comparable past accomplishment. This question will take at least 10 minutes to answer if you are pushing for details. If they were working on a team, make sure the candidate clearly identifies their role and not just team accomplishments. You’re not hiring the team, just the individual player.

Question 4: Visualization: "If you were to get this job, how would you go about implementing and organizing ____________ [Insert the most important performance objective]?"

The purpose of this question is to see how effectively a candidate would apply his or her capabilities to new job needs. We call this a visualization question. Their answer should give a good idea of a candidate's adaptability, as well as their ability to contribute in a new environment. As you listen to the answer, consider these specifics:

	Job-specific problem solving
	Verbal communications
	Reasoning and thinking skills
	Adaptability and flexibility
	Self-confidence
	Insight and job knowledge
	Creativity
	Organizational skills
	Logic and Intellect

Ask this question for the top two or three performance objectives.

Sound simple? It absolutely is … and it's guaranteed to help you find and qualify candidates. Just make sure you use fact-finding and lots of examples to get all the necessary details (when, why, how, impact, result, and time). Ask SMART questions. Situational questions help target job-specific problem solving, flexibility, insight, communication skills, strategic and tactical planning, intelligence, self-confidence, and communication skills. Caution: you must combine this with a strong pattern of past performance.

Panel Interviews: Learn More While Staying Cool

If you want to save time, learn more, and eliminate your emotional biases, try a Panel Interview. If done right, it can be one of the most effective tools for assessing competency. Shorter interviews test chemistry and fit but tend to be a little superficial.

Hint: "Interviewing" personality is not the same as "on-the-job" personality.

Here is some basic advice on conducting a panel interview:

	Make sure each interviewer has reviewed the resume and Performance Profile before the interview. This is critical. Unless everybody on the interviewing team has a clear understanding of the specific performance objectives of the job, a panel interview will be a waste of time.
	Tell the candidate beforehand that there will be a panel interview; don’t surprise them!
	Avoid intimidating the candidate by limiting the panel to three or four people. Use a round table, if at all possible.
	Assign a leader. This leader will be responsible for keeping the group on topic. Only leaders can change the topic. Other interviewers should be observant and ask fact-finding and follow-up questions for clarification. Leaders should make sure each important topic is explored completely and not change subjects too quickly. Explore each topic thoroughly and weave a thread around the topic with follow-up questions, fact-finding, and examples. The leader also keeps the discussion moving. Once a topic is fully explored, he or she should move on to another topic quickly. Also make sure that other interviewers don't come into the panel interview with a list of prepared questions.
	Ask the candidate to visualize how they would solve a specific job-related challenge. Get into a give-and-take discussion using the "visualize" question (i.e., "How would you handle the task or solve the problem, if you were to get the job?").

Here's another hot tip: Give the candidate a take-home problem to present in the panel session. This fosters a "real life" discussion about the job and makes the interview more of a working session.

STEP 9: Is Your Candidate a Perfect 10?

Use the checklist to rate candidates on a scale of 1 (weak) to 5 (strong).

1. Energy, Drive, Initiative. Don't ever compromise on this one, because it's the universal trait of success. The key to personal success is to do more than you have to, so look for this quality in every past job. Get examples of initiative and extra effort. Don't assume that an extroverted personality means lots of energy; have the candidate prove it by example, including specific dates, facts, and quantities. But the reverse is also true: a low-key person often has more energy and enthusiasm than an extrovert. It takes patience on your part to draw them out.

2. Trend of Performance Over Time. By asking questions about leadership and impact on a company, you get detailed examples of a candidate's major accomplishments and organizational changes over the past five to ten years. From this, it's easy to see how the candidate has grown and impacted the organization. The ideal candidate has had comparable jobs and is still showing signs of upward growth. Rank this person a 5 on your scale. But remember: a comparable job doesn't have to be an identical job. Look at staff size, issue complexity, performance standards, company growth rate, sophistication level, etc.. Combine these factors and search for an upward growth pattern.

3. Comparability of Past Accomplishments. Use SMART (Specific, Measurable, Action-oriented, Results-based, and Time-based) objectives to compare a candidate's past accomplishments with the required performance objectives of the job to be filled. Be concerned about mismatching. A highly energetic designer might be ineffective as a manager, and very bright consultants aren't always the best candidates for technical jobs. Make sure you have a copy of all the SMART objectives handy during the interview, and get anchoring accomplishments for each one. Give a candidate a 5 if comparable past accomplishments for each one are offered, a 4 if all but one matches up, and so on.

4. Experience, Education and Industry Background. Use this in tandem with the Past Accomplishments category. Strong education and experience can sometimes offset a weaker accomplishment rating. Examine experience in the context of the environment--the pace, style, and standards of performance where the experience took place. If the candidate's previous company had a slower pace and lower standards, of course, 10 years of experience doesn't mean as much. Give some credit for direct industry experience and education. Add a point or two if these add significantly to the candidate's ability, or if they improve the job fit.

5. Problem Solving and Thinking Skills. How smart does a candidate need to be to be effective on the job? Just smart enough--any less and you're in trouble. A strong candidate needs to understand the work, solve job-related problems, and anticipate what needs to be done. Collecting and processing information to make appropriate decisions is important; so is the ability to apply previous knowledge and experience to solving new problems. Asking a SMART visualization question about the actual job tests all of these things much better than any intelligence test ever devised. You'll gain an understanding of the candidate's thinking and reasoning skills, adaptability, communications skills, logic, decision-making powers, and problem solving abilities.

6. Overall Talent, Technical Competency, and Potential. How you rank a candidate in this broad category depends very much on the needs of the job to be filled. The score should represent the candidate's ability to grow, develop, and take on bigger roles. To get a 4 or a 5 in this category, candidates should have a broader focus than the job demands. Search for thinking skills (the same ones described in Category 5, but here you're looking at them in conjunction with other abilities to evaluate potential); breadth of business understanding (candidates who see the broader needs of a business beyond their own functional requirements add strength to an organization); application of technical skills (the ability to learn technical skills is often more important than already having them, unless the job is very technically intensive and requires immediate knowledge.)

7. Management and Organization. Most interviewers focus on individual competency instead of managerial skills. This approach is a major cause of hiring error! If the management and organizational aspects of the job are important, spend as much time as necessary to validate a candidate's competency. Use projects to get at organizational skills, even if the candidate doesn't have a big staff. Ask a candidate to describe their most complex team project--you might be surprised at the answer. Early in the interview, have the candidate draw an organizational chart for the last few positions. Assign names, title, and direct and indirect staff size. This shows the size and scope of candidate responsibility; perfect for comparison with your current job needs.

8. Team Leadership: The Ability to Persuade and Motivate Others. Team leadership is a component of both management and personality: it's important enough to consider separately. It represents the ability to tap into and harness the energy of others -- getting them to move in the same direction, to do something they might not want to do. Team leadership has two aspects -- motivating your immediate subordinates and motivating people who work in different departments. Motivating a subordinate is easier: look for managers who can point to a number of people they have personally helped to become successful. Give high scores to candidates who consistently go out of their way to hire superior people, and then take a sincere interest in upgrading their skills. As for motivating people outside their own department, get examples of major team projects and use fact-finding to uncover the candidate's true role.

9. Character: Values, Commitment, and Goals. Character is a deep-rooted trait that summarizes a person's integrity, honesty, responsibility, openness, fairness in dealing with others, and personal values. Save this whole topic until the end of the first interview, or wait for the second interview. It will be more relevant then, and candidates will be more open and comfortable with their responses. Ask candidates to explain their personal value system and how they developed it. Be sure to listen carefully; this answer can be very revealing. It's important to know why someone wants to change jobs and what aspects of work that the person finds important. Understanding a candidate's value system allows you to predict how they will react to various work-related circumstances. When talking about goals, be specific: ask a candidate to describe one or two major goals already accomplished.

10. Personality and Cultural Fit. Personality is revealed in an individual's accomplishments. Look for flexibility and a pattern of accomplishments in different situations: as a team member, as leader of a team, and as an individual contributor. You can discover a preferred relationship pattern by categorizing the candidate's accomplishments on the ABC scale: "Alone," "Belong to team," or "in Charge of the team." This type of analysis becomes even more valuable when the candidate is free to pick the accomplishment. Keep track of the responses by putting little marks on top of your notes (Consider making three columns: A, B, and C). By the end of the interview, a definite and revealing pattern should emerge.