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

Preface

I became a line manager for a Fortune 100 company in my mid-20s. Within days, and with no interview training, I was sent on a corporate recruiting trip to a few of the top MBA schools in the country. The vice president of human resources (HR) called me before leaving and gave me three minutes of advice on how to interview. What he said still sticks in my mind today. It was wrong, but it was the only training I had, and it seemed reasonable at the time.

He said to consider only candidates who possessed the 4A attributes of success—assertive, affable, attractive, and articulate. With this benchmark and a decent resume, I could determine competency in 15 minutes. Or I thought I could. As I look back, this process was about 60 percent to 65 percent effective in predicting subsequent success. This was true for the 30 to 40 people I hired to work for me personally and for the 50 to 100 I recommended to work for others. I hired some duds, but I hired enough great people that I got promoted very quickly. Within six years, I was a business unit manager for a division of a Fortune 500 company. One thing I did learn was that hiring great talent is the key to a manager’s career progression. I also found out that being a headhunter and helping other managers hire great people was a far more lucrative career.

The Best are Different Than the Rest

Despite the weak predictive value of the 4A interview approach, I still used it with great success as a headhunter in my early days. Because I started ...