Hire With Your Head

Lou Adler: Well, I think you said it. It was a tremendous introduction, and I appreciate that. The issue is, is that the interview itself is really not a test of the job. It's really a communication and a social event more than an evaluation event and, unfortunately, that adds so much complexity when the person actually starts, or so many unknowns when the person starts. So if you use the interview to assess the person's motivation, fit with the manager, fit with the culture, ability to do the work – number one, most managers in interviews aren't trained to do that, so they substitute their feelings, their emotions, their intuition, how they feel that day, and also their desperation to make the decision. And, unfortunately, that's the worst way to make the decision, and using tools that aren't really that well defined at assessing competency. So you put it altogether, there's a high probability mistakes will be made and, unfortunately, whether it's a good economy or a bad economy, every single hiring decision is so, so critical, and most people make it in some very informal manner.

Rachel Salaman: Well, just to put it all in context, how often do you think hiring managers do get it wrong and end up employing people who underperform, or just don't work out?

Lou Adler: Abject total failures, probably 10-15% of the time; I mean, just a real mess-up. Someone who underperforms, I would probably say 50-60% of the time, not meaning the person's terrible, but they're just not nearly as good as the person thought they would be in the interview. People who meet the expectations of the interview, that's probably 20-25% of the time, and people who exceed expectations, 10-15% of the time. That doesn't mean they're all perfect candidates, but I just would kind of put it that way. But so there really is a range. Most people don't really mess up at the interview completely; they get someone who's competent 'cause it's pretty easy to assess competency to do the work, but motivation to do the work, that's pretty hard, and that's where most people make the mistake.

Rachel Salaman: Well, we'll be coming on to some of the points related to that, that you make in your book but, first of all, perhaps we should just talk about the downturn in the global economy. What difference does the state of the economy make to the recruitment process?

Lou Adler: Well, I think there's a number of them. Number one, if you think about good people who are fully employed, traditionally they've been called 'passive candidates.' I don't know that that's necessarily a great term, but nonetheless let's assume someone who's fully employed, a hard worker, could certainly do the work and motivated to do the work. In a down economy, those people are much more difficult to attract. I'm going to be a little bit more conservative, I don't need to change careers. I'm just going to hang in here for a year or so, pull my head in, and just work hard and keep my head down and, you know, push forward, so real good people tend not to look if they're fully employed.

So therefore, if you try to hire those best people, you've got to go put extra effort in just to get them interested even to talk. Most companies aren't willing to do that, so they run an advertisement, they post an ad somewhere, and they hope – and they generally get people who are actively looking. Well people who are actively looking, who need a job, they're going to read every single book on how to interview, they're going to clean their shoes, wear their best tie, wear their best suit, be prepared. They're going to read the company's website, they're going to ask the right questions, so they're going to be prepped and over-prepped to do a better job.

So what you're dealing with is, generally speaking in a down economy, is all people who are totally excited about coming in for an interview, they don't have many interviews, so they're even going to be more prepped, and the people you want to meet you're not going to see many of them. So you've got this total shift in the population you're meeting, which really makes it very difficult to discern if you're really meeting a top performer?" So you've really got to be extra diligent in this time to assess true competency more – and equally, from a sourcing side, you're not seeing the best people, so you've got to be extra aggressive if you want to see those people who are fully employed, but aren't quite ready to come in for an interview. So you've got this dynamic shift, which kind of sets yourself up for making more mistakes.

Rachel Salaman: So what can people do about that?

Lou Adler: As a recruiter for 30 years, I realize that the most important aspect of on-the-job performance was what I call 'job fit.' Job fit is the candidate's ability and motivation to do the real work that needs to be done. So I used to take assignments; I would never take an assignment unless I talked to the manager and said, "What is the real work? How is this person going to be spending his or her time? What kind of projects are they going to be working on? What type of deadlines are they going to have? What are some of their performance objectives?"

When I actually knew what the person was going to do, now I had an opportunity to, number one, go out into the marketplace and find candidates. Now I might find candidates who are fully employed or are looking, actually it's immaterial, but the point is, when I assessed them, I found out where they excelled, where they got excited, where they went the extra mile, where they performed at peak levels. Now, and if that was comparable to what the job fit was or the job was, now I knew I had a good match. Now, I then had to convince that person this is the best among competing offers, or even just staying there. So, to me, understanding the real work is the first step in eliminating the problem. Number one, you can use it as a lure to get people who are not looking, convincing that person it's a career move, and those people who you are seeing, whether they're looking or not, you can assess them against that benchmark, so that to me is the first step. You've got to know the job. I call that a 'performance profile.' If you don't know that, you're just – it's – you're just playing Las Vegas odds.

Rachel Salaman: So I suppose that's about more than just having a job description. How do you actually get to know?

Lou Adler: Oh, a job description is useless.

Rachel Salaman: So how do you actually get to the bottom of what the job is about, then?

Lou Adler: Yeah, what I do is – now everybody puts these job descriptions together which, largely, in most companies, certainly in the US – and I've seen many in the UK and many in Europe – they still tend to emphasize skills, experience, responsibilities, academic background. I call them the 'having.' "A person has to have three years of this; have to understand this, has to be able to do that." Those aren't unimportant, but they're not greatly important. When I take that list of job descriptions, I will ask the manager, "Why does a person need three years of experience doing that work? Can you explain to me what they're actually going to be doing with that, so I can at least excite the candidate when I talk to him or her?" And when they tell me what they're going to do with their skills – I call it 'doing', what they do with what they have, not what they have, that's most important.

When I get that, then I ask, "If I can show you somebody who can do that work, and I'll prove to you they can do that work, but they might not have as many years of experience as you've written, would you still see the person?" 99% of the time, the manager says, "Of course I would." They just use the skill – the benchmark job description as a filter to get people in, and it's also easier to do that rather than define the work. It takes work. You've got to spend a half hour to an hour defining the real work, but spending that hour upfront prevents you from making bad decisions after you've hired the person 'cause you can then accurately assess job fit. So that's how I use it. I just say, "Let's walk through this job description with skills and experiences, and tell me what they're going to do with that?" Then what they do with it is what you use as the benchmark to assess competency and motivation.

Rachel Salaman: But before that, obviously you have to get the candidate's attention, which is what you mentioned earlier. How should you go about doing that?

Lou Adler: Oh, there's so many different ways. I would say that – all the stuff that I talk about: defining the work, assessing competency, checking/evaluating the person, quite frankly none of that has changed in 30 years. Nothing's changed. I think we do a better job, and that's a pat on the back, but neither here nor there. What has profoundly changed is how you find candidates. That Internet web 2.0, profound change. And I would say the job boards – what I would call web point, web 1.0, job boards and you post an ad, we're heavy on skills. Old technology doesn't work. Number one, at some level there's really two criteria to find people. If you're going to use the Internet, you can use the phone but that, those calls – that gets somewhat expensive. A creative advertisement is the first part. It has to be creative, and it has to be compelling, it has to get somebody who's on the margin excited, 'cause if people are being bombarded with all these advertisements, how do you discern between company A, company B, and company C? So you have to have a compelling ad that gets the person excited. That's number one.

The second piece is that person's got to find the ad, so all of the ideas about search engine optimization, buying keywords, understanding how your candidate looks for work, and that's very personal. It could be, if you're looking for a 20-25 year old woman who's unmarried, it's totally different than looking for a middle-aged guy who's an insurance agent who's got 20 years' experience. How you post the ad, the words you use, the demographics you define, you've got to kind of almost go through a consumer marketing activity to figure out what is that person going to look for, and where can I put my ad so that gets that person's attention? So it's the combination of pushing your ad to the right demographic, and a very creative compelling copy, the words themselves so they say, "Yeah, I've got to apply for this." Those two things are what's really changing, and I've seen them changing profoundly over the last couple of years. Consumer marketing has really become the forte of recruitment advertising, and engage with the person upfront. Don't make the person apply. Good people, when they first hear about your company, just want to talk about it, just want to look. Just like going into a department store, they just want to look. They're not ready to buy, so you have to set your processes up to allow people just to look. Like talk to a recruiter, talk to a manager, just explore. Don't make it too official to just get into the game, and I think those three things: great advertising, placements that are visible to your target demographic, and the process behind it. Hey, candidates don't force them to apply. Engage with them; let them talk. They're just looking, and they're not ready to buy. You do those three things, and you have a chance to profoundly improve the quality of people you're seeing.

Rachel Salaman: Bearing in mind those three factors, where do most of these ads sit? Are they on companies' own career sites?

Lou Adler: Well they could be, but there's a whole host of technologies that are coming out – really they're out, but you'll see them more and more. First let me just talk about the finding piece, and there's probably two big things: number one, the use of aggregators. I believe that they're in Europe and the UK; they're certainly in North America and, well, Canada and the United States. An aggregator is a Google search engine like – let's say it's not Google, but it's a search engine for jobs. Indeed is an aggregator, indeed.com, simplyhired is an aggregator. What they do is they scrape all career sites and put them together into a common job board so, rather than going to a company's career site, candidates might go to simplyhired, put in let's call it software development jobs, Luton, and see what pops up, and there might be a series of jobs would pop up. So the idea is an aggregator aggregates company job sites and career boards, so every day there are crawlers and spiders going around the Internet and bringing them together, so that's number one.

Number two is what's called a talent hub. A talent hub is a micro site that a company makes. It could be anywhere, it doesn't have to be on a company site, but it's certainly a mini website, two or three or four pages, but a micro-site is for a class of jobs, like all financial analysts, all people in a call center, all people for sales selling widgets. And it's company sponsored, but you make it so that it doesn't matter how much experience the person has. It'll say we're looking for sales people, we're looking for software developers, and it's a very appealing site, it talks about the career opportunities; it's got rich media, meaning RSS feeds, video clips, a chance to instantly engage, i.e. chat built into it; a host of different ways where a candidate can engage with the company without officially applying. I call it a warm-up.

It does a couple of things: number one, because it collects dozens or hundreds of right jobs. I'm looking for all software developers. Rather than specifying one year, five year, 10 years, if you get to this site, you'll apply because it's very appealing whether you have one year, five year or ten years and it's easier to find; it's search engine optimized, so it's easier to find. What it does is it lets the candidate look, number one, and be involved in the company, that when a specific job becomes available, and you know it will be sent to the candidate, "Hey, Rachel, we've got a great job for you. Are you interested?" You know, if you send a very compelling email to the person, they've been warmed up; they've come by the site once a month or so to see what's going on, see if there's any unique information there. They can chat with the recruiter. There's a host of things one can do to interact with the person, and then when a job comes up, you email the person and they're already kind of warmed up, so it's really a very interesting philosophy.

So there are two big things we see being changed. In fact, we have a couple of webinars every month on those topics that I just described here, using all these sourcing tools to find people. So those are some real big shifts we see, but I believe that the idea of posting a job requisition in the United States, in two to three years from now will just be so old fashioned people will say, "Jeez, I can't believe you actually posted a boring job requisition." The idea of a talent hub will replace it completely.

Rachel Salaman: Well, job interviews are clearly central to hiring the best people, and your book offers a lot of advice on this including to "Avoid forming your first impressions until the end of the interview." What do you mean by that?

Lou Adler: Oh, let me tell you. Over the years, I've sat in hundreds if not thousands of interviews, actually physically. Well, I'll say this: I've certainly conducted personally thousands of interviews. I've sat in on hundreds of interviews with my clients, 'cause I quite frankly didn't trust some of my hiring manager clients to be very good at interviewing, so I would coach them along, and I would lead the interview.

But it's very apparent that more mistakes are made in the first 30 minutes of the interview than at any other time. We form a first impression, whether you like the person or not. If you like somebody, you kind of relax and you start asking easier questions. If you don't like somebody, you tighten up and you start asking harder questions. You just don't like the person, so you look for facts to prove they're no good. If you like the person you just kind of – you don't even interview the person, you just start, "Hey, let me tell you how great this job is." You ask a few questions. And, even if they say something you don't like, you ignore it 'cause your mind has already formed an impression. Your opinion is "I like this person. I don't want to" – I mean, interviewing isn't a lot of fun. Looking for another person to fill the position isn't a lot of fun, so hey, you want to get it over with as quickly as possible. When someone comes in whom you don't like, you just – your instant reaction, your natural reaction, human nature is to avoid the person. Someone you like, your natural reaction is, "Hey, let's see if I can bring this person in."

Our whole focus is let's measure first impression at the end of the interview when it doesn't affect your judgment, so we do a lot of things, and our training is what you have to do to put your emotions in the parking lot. You evaluate this person objectively; can they do the work that you really need done? That's why that performance profile, which defines the work, is so important. Determine if the person is motivated and competent to do that work. I don't care if you like them; I don't care if you don't like them. I don't care if they make a good first impression or a bad first impression. If the person can do that work, and is successful doing that work, they obviously made a good enough first impression. So initially we want you to put your bias and the deep feelings you have about a character in the parking lot, at least until the end of the interview, or at least wait 30 minutes, and then measure first impression objectively.

So what we always say is measure first impression at the end of the interview. Look at the person when that person leaves, and say, "Did that first impression change from when I first met him to now that the person's leaving, and will that first impression help or hinder that person on the job?" And usually, actually evaluating what they've accomplished, you'll see that the first impression did not have nearly the impact that you might have thought it was. There are a lot of people who look great, who don't – who are just all fluffery, just pure veneer, don't have a lot of substance, and a lot of people who are average first impression, who get a little bit nervous in the interview, who look what appears to be pretty terrible, at the end of the interview they actually look pretty decent. So what I've discovered is, when you wait 30 minutes, or wait until the end of the interview to make your first impression, a third of the people you thought were great aren't so great, and a third of the people you thought were terrible actually aren't too bad. It doesn't mean you're going to hire them, but they're just not nearly as bad as you thought they were, but if you wait 30 minutes, you see this profound change, just all the emotions, all the nervousness on both sides of the desk dissipate by 30-45 minutes.

Rachel Salaman: You talked earlier about the idea of 'fit'. From what you're saying now, it doesn't matter so much whether someone's personality fits; it's more about their accomplishments, and whether they can do what the job requires. Is that right?

Lou Adler: Well, I don't want to say that, 'cause really when I talk about fit, in fact I'm writing a series of articles called Are You Hiring Misfits? And it really goes to two things: one, 'job fit' is the ability and motivation to do the work, but there is a personality associated with that: assertiveness, persistence, resilience, competence, confidence, communication skills. So, to do the work, there is a lot of personality components to it, but just because you have those components doesn't mean you can do the work. So the personality piece is not unimportant; it's just not a driver for success, so job fit is critical.

A 'team fit' is also part of it, which is the personality piece. Hey, you've got to work with the team; you've got to be able to work with other departments, other functions; people within your team, so there's a team fit component as well, so where personality comes together. Can you communicate? So I think that comes together.

Another key component is what I call 'managerial fit;' a huge component. Is the hiring manager's style of managing consistent with that new employee's preferences and needs? There are certain managers who are very controlling, very strong supervisors. "You do it my way. I'll train you how to do it my way, and I'll follow-up every hour to see how well you're doing." Well, that's not going to work too well with someone who wants to be a little bit hands-off. Conversely, if you've got somebody who is a strong delegator, they'll do a little joint planning, they'll delegate the work; they expect to follow up once a week, but not more than that. Where you have someone who needs more coaching, more training, more follow-up, more support, you're going to have a clash there as well, so the idea of job fit, team fit and managerial fit are essential to making that right assessment. So I don't know that I would say you could take personality out of it, but I would say don't put it in at the beginning 'cause it has no meaning when you're first evaluating the candidate. After you've determined a person's competent and motivated to do the work, then I would look at managerial fit and team fit, and I wouldn't ignore it 'cause they are critical.

Rachel Salaman: So what's your view of the types of tests that are currently popular with recruiters, like personality and aptitude tests?

Lou Adler: 100% of the time, for the last 20 years, after I've interviewed the candidate, when they're the final one or two or three candidates, 100% of the time I will give them an aptitude test that's called a GMA, general mental ability test, and which really focuses on numerical reasoning and verbal reasoning 100% of the time. IQ-like, but I do it 'cause I know that that is a strong predictor of on-the-job performance. I've got to be a little bit careful 'cause I don't want to screen people upfront, so we only give it at the end, but that's a legal issue not a logical issue, but I do it 100% of the time.

I also give a personality style test at the end, you know, for the final three candidates as well. I just happen to use a product called Profiles International. I use it, got it built in, it's online. There's other tests that do it, and I just happen to use that one 'cause I like it, and I know it does the job, but I do it. When I get down to the final three to four candidates, that's when I use it, and I do it 100% of the time 'cause I think I'm a good interviewer, but you make mistakes.

I remember meeting this woman, who I thought was a remarkable woman. I mean, she was great, and she didn't do too well on the IQ portion, the general mental ability part, and I couldn't believe it. I knew this woman was smart. I've been doing this for years. It turned out – and she had no noticeable accent – she looked North American or European, and she spoke English perfectly. It turned out she grew up in Italy. Italian was her first language; then she moved to Montreal, so French became her second language, and English became her third language, and when you take some of these tests, because they're written in a language, and because they're time based, sometimes the words, because of idiomatic expressions or how words are phrased, there is a flaw there. So my sense is they're important, but you've got to kind of balance the viewpoint of who is the person. In my mind, they're not predictive indicators, they're confirming indicators, and that's why I do it after I've done the evaluation. It also makes me more honest, and allows me another series of questions in the second and third round of interviews.

Rachel Salaman: And when you get to the end of the interview process, what kind of things should people bear in mind when they're trying to pick the final candidate who they're going to offer the job to?

Lou Adler: Yeah, I think that's where people really mess it up. Interviewing is flawed. There is an assumption that most managers, and I would say 90% of managers believe this, is that the interview is used to assess competency and motivation. That's not the primary reason. That's easy if you've got someone who's an active candidate, who's desperate, but if you've got a candidate who is a strong candidate, who's got multiple offers, the primary purpose of the interview isn't to assess competency. I'll say it again – the primary purpose is not to assess competency. The primary purpose is to look for voids and gaps in the candidate's background that can demonstrate to the candidate that this job is a career move. That's the primary purpose of an interview when you're dealing with good people. In the process of that you'll determine if the candidate is competent and motivated. If those gaps are too wide or too big, the candidate's too light. If there's no gaps between what you need in the job and what the person is doing, they've either done it already or it's below them, they're not going to be interested.

So, as a recruiter, my job, when I look for a candidate is, how big a team have they managed? How big a project have they managed? How big a budget have they handled? How complex are the issues they've been involved in? Have they handled similar tasks, similar projects, under similar time pressures, under similar challenges? Well, if I can see that the candidate is, let's say, 80-85 – let's say – I'll say it the other way around, 10-15% sure, "Rachel, you haven't handled a big budget, you haven't handled a big team, you haven't worked with senior marketing executives, you haven't worked in this complex technology." If I can demonstrate that there's some career growth there, I can use that as part of my recruiting tool, and in the process I know that, hey, I can talk to – as well as the hiring manager will look at that and say, "I think this is a good person. If Rachel brings in 80-90% of what we need, but she's a little light here, but I can use that as the career move opportunity for you." And I can say, "Hey, Rachel, I'm interested in hiring you, but recognize you're a little light in these areas, so, if you're interested in pursuing it to the next step, you know, I'd like to get you in, but recognize the compensation increase is going to be modest, it's not going to be great, because I think you've got a lot of potential, but you're a little light overall."

So I think most people ignore the fact, and they treat candidates as sitting there, that they can test and probe and prod, but good candidates need to be lured into this process. You've got to use the interview as a tool to both recruit the person and assess the person and get them excited, and also, as part of it, is eliminate the competition, 'cause good people will get other offers from other companies. Most managers haven't learned the fact that interviewing is as much a recruiting tool as it is an assessment tool.

Rachel Salaman: Are there any other tips that you can share about the process of actually offering the job or persuading a candidate to come on board?

Lou Adler: If your candidates, when you make them the offer, say no, or they're not interested, I would make the contention you've made the offer prematurely. As far as I'm concerned, and we train recruiters and managers how to do this, never ever, ever make an offer until the candidate says yes. I'll say that again, never ever, ever make an offer until you're 100% sure the candidate will accept it, and the way you do that is test it. "Candidate, if we could get you back for another round of interviews, is this something you find seriously interesting? Recognize that you might be a little bit light, so if you come back, recognize that you're probably going to be offered a modest increase, but not a great increase. On those conditions, are you willing to come back for another round of interviews?" If the candidate says yes, I've negotiated part of that offer. "Hey, we're down to our final one or two candidates, would you be seriously interested in this? If we could put an offer together – you still have some background to do another test we'd like to take, but if we could put an offer together that's acceptable to you, when could you start?"

Now I didn't make an offer. I just asked the person when they could start. If they say yes, they're probably very interested in taking the offer. Even further on, I say, "Hey, if we could put an offer together and give it to you this afternoon, when would you be in a position to accept it?" If they say, "I have to think about it," well there's a bunch of stuff; you're not ready to make that offer yet. So I go through this process step by step to make sure the person's going to accept the offer. I look at it as most companies and most HR people, and most managers are very, very unsophisticated with how to make offers. I think they're very unsophisticated how to define the work, how to recruit, how to interview, and how to make offers, and all four of those things have to be done in parallel. None of them are hard, but you've got to do them all at the same time, you've got to systematize it. It's not one person doing it; the company has to have systems to do it, not purely with performance-based systems, just a set of rules at each step of the process that integrate together.

And I know more than what we just talked about, but it's the idea of, hey, hiring is a process, but it really is a sales process, just like selling a complex product, going through discovery. "What do you need? If I can find something that fits, would you be interested in going forward?" So good sales people, who sell complex products or intangibles, look at this and say, "Wow, this is great. It works exactly the way" – they get it instantly.

Rachel Salaman: Assuming the global economy is going to stay subdued for a while, what should hiring managers be focusing on, going forward?

Lou Adler: I believe that managers have to look at this idea of managerial fit with a team together today. If you look at why people leave companies, why do they leave? They leave because the work isn't satisfying primarily and, number two, because they don't work well with their managers, so this idea of managerial fit, to me is a critical piece. It's really based to some degree on [Ken] Blanchard's Situational Leadership. But, when you really look at it, if I was just to give advice to team I'd say, "Take your team. If you're a line manager, take your team, understand your coaching style, your management style, and look at each of the people who you have working for you. Number one, are they a top performer? Are they motivated to do the work?" Well, you've got it if they're not motivated to do the work you either have to reassign the work to keep them motivated, so you still want to achieve peak levels. So understand if the work they're being assigned is not appropriate for their level then maybe you can reassign it and get better performance out of the team.

Secondarily, if you're a line manager, look at the people, understand them. What kind of needs do they have in terms of training, coaching, developing management? And look at your style. And I think at some point I need to say how do I rebuild this team? Now I know that there's less flexibility in Europe and the UK than there is in the United States in rebuilding the team, but there are some very, very good people out there. Companies should take advantage of this and say, "How can I optimize this team performance based on the manager?" So I think a lot of work with what I call managerial fit, team fit and job fit, can still be done with the existing team; maybe reassign people, replace certain people, but go out of your way to rebuild it.

Secondarily I'd say is, you should start today, even if it's only a year from now, build the pipeline of proprietary prospects. Build a talent hub today. If you know you're going to be hiring software developers a year from now, you want the best of them. Well, why wait a year from now to find them? Put a talent hub out there, start getting people, start nurturing that database, start contacting these people, develop this deep network, so, when the economy recovers, whenever it recovers, I guarantee there are people on the starting blocks right now, ready to say, "I don't really like what I'm doing here. The moment I see a couple of good jobs, I'm going to jump ship." A lot of people are that way.

So the first three months of the recovery will be the best time to get the best people. That's when all these people who are sitting on the margin, who are really underemployed, who are ready to leave, are going to look, and those companies that are ready to do something in that first 90-day period, once the economy recovers, are going to have a goldmine. They're going to have a feeding frenzy of the best people, and then a year, six months later, people will say, "Where are all the good people? I thought the economy's recovering. All the good people have just accepted other jobs." At the end of every recession that's what happens. The best people take jobs in the first 90 days of a recovery, and then six months later people wonder why they're still having trouble finding good people.

So that's what I would do is, number one, rebuild your team, understand the concept of job fit, managerial fit and team fit; assess your team, see if you can reorganize it, then build these talent hubs and build a proprietary résumé database of prospects so that you can nurture, so when the recovery's there you get them; they call you guys first. Get them to call you the moment they decide to look, or there's a recovery is – call you first to see if there's anything available, and I think then you'll be able to increase your share of top performers.

Rachel Salaman: Lou Adler, thank you very much for joining me.

Lou Adler: Rachel, it's a pleasure.

The name of Lou's book again is Hire with Your Head: Using Performance Based Hiring to Build Great Teams. You can find out more about his work at his website www.adlerconcepts.com. I'll be back in a few weeks with another Expert Interview. Until then, goodbye.