Hire With Your Head: Using Performance-Based Hiringsm to Build Great Teams, Third Edition

Chapter 1. Performance-based Hiring: A Systematic Process for Hiring Top Talent

	Hire smart, or manage tough.
	--Red Scott

A Rude Awakening—What it Really Takes to Get Ahead

I still remember the following situation like it was yesterday. I got the call sometime in the morning on a mid-October day in 1972 at my first management job, financial planning manager at Rockwell International’s Automotive Group in Troy, Michigan. At the time, I was working on my first presentation, due the next day, to the Group’s president and vice president of finance. It was going to be a very long day and night. I didn’t mind, since my new wife hadn’t made the move to Michigan yet. My boss, Chuck Jacob, and the reason for my being in Michigan, was on the phone with a desperate plea. Chuck was a 29-year-old Harvard MBA whiz kid, just out of Ford Motor Company, trying to prove to everyone that he deserved his position as controller for this multibillion-dollar automotive supplier. He was also my idol. I listened. He was over at the University of Michigan interviewing MBA students for planning analyst positions to fill out our department. We needed these people urgently. The good news—too many had signed up for the interview, and Chuck needed me there to interview the overflow. We were going head-to-head with Ford, Procter & Gamble, IBM, and every other top Fortune 500 company, who wanted the best candidates from this prestigious MBA program. He told me there were stars in this group that we needed on our ...