WEBINAR: Hire for smart (unless you think the world will stop changing)

I'm sure you've seen or heard statements like '61% of the jobs in the USA by 2017 don't even exist today' or 'Kids are learning things during freshman year in college that are already obsolete by the time when they graduate.' Ok, I made up the '61%' stat - but the gist of the assertion is probably accurate. No matter what you or most of the people in your organization are doing today, there is a pretty good chance you and they will be doing something different, even significantly different, tomorrow.

What matter more to long-term, sustainable, and adaptable organizational success probably isn't finding and holding on to people that (just) know how to do their current job, but to find, develop, engage, and retain the kind of people that will be able to thrive in tomorrow's uncertain future as well. Way back when, before we knew anything about competencies and personality types and employee engagement mumbo-jumbo - most smart managers knew that finding the smartest people was the only to be able to navigate uncertain times. With this in mind, my friends at Fistful of Talent are back to help you make the leap to hiring smart vs. hiring a resume.

Here are the deets: 

Join hiring smart (people) experts Kris Dunn and Kelly Dingee for Brains Before Bros: Why Hiring Smart People over Experienced People is a Winning Talent Strategy, sponsored by our friends at SumTotal, on Tuesday June 12 at 1pm EST and they’ll hit you with the following:

 

A rundown of the factors driving talent scarcity in today’s workforce and why it’s better to hire smart people and train for success.

1. FOT’s definition of “smart” and common false positives you need to consider when defining what smart looks like for your organization.
2. Three signs that your top talent may be looking to jump ship and how to reel them back in by providing the incentives they really want. (Hint: It’s not always monetary).
3. Five ways to keep training and development programs aligned with evolving expectations from top applicants and your existing talent – without breaking your budget.
4. We’ll close this webinar by bringing in Steve Parker from SumTotal to help you ensure your leadership team is creating the right environment to get the most out of your existing talent.

Your traditional approach to talent isn’t working –- start putting brains before bros and maximize your talent strategy today.

Register for the FREE webinar HERE.

As always the webinar comes with the standard Fistful of Talent promise: 100% of the time it's guaranteed to work 60% of the time.

More on the Danger of Hiring for 'Fit'

Late last year I posted 'Work, Play, and Hiring for Cultural Fit', a post that referenced a recent study on hiring published in the American Sociological Review that suggested, essentially, that people tend to hire people that are like them, and they 'get along with', as well as some comments made by some front-line HR professionals at a conference I had attended. While the study, and the thoughts of the HR pros I spoke with last year were both enlightening, I think the ideas expressed in this piece, 'What Your Culture Really Says' on the Pretty Little State Machine blog frames the 'Hiring for Cultural Fit' discussion in the best way that I've seen yet.Pop art American Greyhound - Carol Lynn Nesbitt

It is written specifically to address the challenges and problems common to tech start-ups and other Silicon Valley-type firms, but still resonates more broadly I think. It also is a long-ish piece, and you should take some time to read it all, but I'll pull out the key part about the danger of focusing too heavily on the nebulous idea of 'fit' in the hiring process:

We make sure to hire people who are a cultural fit

What your culture might actually be saying is… We have implemented a loosely coordinated social policy to ensure homogeneity in our workforce. We are able to reject qualified, diverse candidates on the grounds that they “aren’t a culture fit” while not having to examine what that means - and it might mean that we’re all white, mostly male, mostly college-educated, mostly young/unmarried, mostly binge drinkers, mostly from a similar work background. We tend to hire within our employees’ friend and social groups. Because everyone we work with is a great culture fit, which is code for “able to fit in without friction,” we are all friends and have an unhealthy blur between social and work life. Because everyone is a “great culture fit,” we don’t have to acknowledge employee alienation and friction between individuals or groups. The desire to continue being a “culture fit” means it is harder for employees to raise meaningful critique and criticism of the culture itself.

There's lots more in the piece worth reading, and also taking a few minutes to think about your own experiences in your career, and how your organization evaluates cultural fit, relies on employee referrals to staff open jobs, or tends to recruit from the same few universities year after year.

When I first broke into the workplace more years ago that I care to admit, people talked a lot about 'culture' and 'fit' then too. It also had another name - the 'Good 'ol Boys Club'.

Happy Wednesday.

What's 'Study abroad' got to do with it?

Quick piece for a busy Wednesday - take about 2 minutes and check out this summary on the Fashionista site, (and no, don't be surprised that I read Fashionista, I cast a pretty wide net to find good content), of a recent interview with J. Crew CEO and fashion retailing legend Mickey Wexler.

Wexler offered some great nuggets of insight from his 40+ year career from really simple observations that we all know to be true but sometimes try to forget - "Marketing only works if the product does"; to takes on more fundamental elements of business and organizational strategy - "Mission statements are a waste of time. Just live by them."

But the one bit of advice from Wexler that caught my attention and is probably most relevant for the talent professional is Wexler's take on evaluating talent - advice that he was careful to emphasize was applicable for his business, certainly has more fundamental and universal applicability. Here's his take first, and then I'll leave you with a question or two to consider:

The person is a resume, not what’s on a piece of paper. Whoever gives advice about resumes in college should be dismissed. Titles don’t matter. GPAs don’t matter, nor does what school you go to. What matters is hard work, and emotional intelligence. People put ‘study abroad’ on their resume. I actually like when they don’t study abroad because that means they aren’t entitled. What about study abroad will make you a better J.Crew associate? I hire a lot of waiters, waitresses. Someone who’s successful has a background that’s not predictable.

Great quote right? And one that I think, moving beyond the specifics of resume formatting and the relevance of particular academic credentials, gets to a really essential point about talent assessment and evaluation. Namely, a really deep and intrinsic understanding of what backgrounds and types of people are likely to accomplish two things at J. Crew. One, to identify who actually be successful at the company; and two, to determine who is likely to be the type of employee that others want to work with and will 'fit'.

Again, for Wexler and his fashion retail business, 'study abroad' doesn't fit his model, for you and your business it might. The specifics of Study abroad and its value to a person's growth or their job candidacy are not the point, the point is whether or not you know if 'study abroad', (or any other precise indicator) is predictive of success at your company or not.

So here is the question I promised - if the next resume that you review for one of your openings lists 'study abroad' as an accomplishment, does that matter at all in your assessment?

Should it?

Have a great Wednesday all!

Work, play, and hiring for cultural fit

A few weeks ago I attended and presented at a fantastic local SHRM affiliate event in Northern Virginia, and I wanted to share an observation from a presentation I saw there about modern approaches to recruiting and hiring. During the session an interesting question was posed by a member of the audience, and the question, and a recent study on hiring published in the American Sociological Review ties the thoughts together.

At the event, the presenter spent some time emphasizing the importance of determining a candidate's cultural 'fit' during the screening and interviewing process, and generally espoused an approach or philosophy to hiring that we see more and more these days.Gran Cairo - F. Stella

Namely - that while a candidate's skills and previous experience are, and will remain essential criteria in the evaluation process, that the more ambiguous assessment of the cultural 'fit' of a candidate might be just as, if not more important that demonstrable skills and verifiable experience. At one point during the talk, a member of the audience asked the following question of the presenter:

'Isn't hiring for cultural 'fit, simply just code words for hiring more people that are just like us?'

I loved the question, and even tweeted it out to see what folks online had to say - most of the replies I received were similar to the presenter's comments - that cultural fit is really truly very, very important, and no, I am not talking about anti-diversity initiatives, but rather a process to ensure the best chance of success for the candidate and the organization.

A few Twitter replies were even more strident - almost as if even suggesting that expressing doubt about hiring for something as hard to measure and calibrate precisely as 'fit' was an irrational thought, and that in the new, fast-moving, and ever-changing workplace that 'skills' morph so quickly that they ultimately matter less than 'fit', which at least theoretically will endure.

I was reminded of that dialogue when taking a look at a recent paper on the subject titled 'Hiring as Cultural Matching: The Case of Elite Professional Services Firms', by Professor Lauren Rivera of Northwestern University. In the study, Rivera examined the hiring practices of investment banks, law firms, and management consulting firms over an extended period spanning from 2006-2008. 

According to the study, hiring professionals at firms often valued their personal feelings of comfort, validation, and excitement over identifying candidates with superior cognitive or technical skills.

In fact, more than half of the evaluators in the study ranked cultural fit—the perceived similarity to a firm's existing employee base in leisure pursuits, background, and self-presentation—as the most important criterion at the job interview stage. 

You can take a look at the entire (long) paper here, but this quote from Professor Rivera sums up her findings as well as echoes the concerns and trepidation raised by the attendee I referenced above.

"It is important to note that this does not mean employers are hiring unqualified people," Rivera said.

"But, my findings demonstrate that—in many respects—employers hire in a manner more closely resembling the choice of friends or romantic partners than how one might expect employers to select new workers. When you look at the decision to date or marry someone what you think about is commonalities. Do you have a similar level of education? Did you go to a similar caliber school? Do you enjoy similar activities? Are you excited to talk to each other? Do you feel the spark? These types of things are salient at least to the employers I've studied."

The study also found that the cultural similarities valued at elite professional service firms have important socioeconomic dimensions. "Evaluators are predominately white, Ivy League-educated, upper-middle or upper class men and women who tend to have more stereotypically masculine leisure pursuits and favor extracurricular activities associated with people of their background," Rivera said.

"Given that less affluent students are more likely to believe that achievement in the classroom rather than on the field or in the concert hall matters most for future success and focus their energies accordingly, the types of cultural similarities valued in elite firms' hiring processes has the potential to create inequalities in access to elite jobs based on parental socioeconomic status.

Hiring for cultural 'fit' is probably somewhat important, I am not trying to deny that or convince you otherwise. But as the astute attendee in Virginia noted, and this recent study illustrates, that this approach is not without its potential shortcomings.

What do you think - is hiring for 'fit' a potential trap and at times a convenient way to screen out those folks that seem just a little bit different?

Basketball and Bad Hires

For the several years of his professional basketball career, Richard Jefferson was an extremely successful, popular, and accomplished player.  

A quick review of the first part of Jefferson’s career, (courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com), reveals two appearances in the NBA Finals, one year as a Top 10 scorer in the league, and two years averaging over 22 points scored per game.

Prior to the 2009-2010 season Jefferson was traded to the San Antonio Spurs, one of the best teams in the league over the past decade, and winners of four NBA championships in the last twelve years.

The Spurs roster is laden with all-time greats (Tim Duncan), current stars (Manu Ginobili), and international point guards/pretty boys (Tony Parker).  Their head coach, Gregg Popovich is regarded as one of the top two or three coaches in the entire league. While still a top-team, the Spurs core were starting to show some age, and an infusion of a fast, athletic, wing player who could score (Jefferson, pretty much exactly), was seen as an important step to help keep the Spurs in title contention.

So on paper the addition of Jefferson, an established solid-almost-star type player, to a team with a consistent winning tradition, full of smart, talented players, and a great coach should have been (forgive yet another basketball reference), a slam-dunk.  After a short adjustment period by the player and the team, Jefferson should have thrived, and the team should have greatly benefited and improved their overall play.  

So what actually happened in Jefferson’s first year with the Spurs?

He struggled. Mightily. His per game averages for scoring, rebounds, and assists plummeted from the performance standards he had established the past several seasons with his former team. Watching Jefferson play, he never seemed in synch or comfortable with the Spurs’ systems, and meshing with the other star players on the team.  Jefferson looked unsure, a step slow, and eventually it appeared like his confidence was shot, and ultimately he had the worst year of his career, by both statistical and observational objectives.

A classic bad signing, or in the workplace context, a bad hire.

Maybe.

Conventional wisdom says the organization needs to cut their losses, to find a way out of the contract, trade Jefferson for whatever they could get, or in the ‘normal’ world of work, simply give him the old, ‘It’s not working out’ speech and wish him well on the way out the door. A bad hire is a bad hire, right?

So what did the Spurs do after the 2009-2010 season ended?  

Instead of figuring out how to get whatever they could for Jefferson on the market, team coaches and officials challenged Jefferson to change his approach to the game to better fit his new team, their proven and successful playing style, and Coach Popovich’s expectations. For a veteran player, one that had quite a bit of personal success in this career, it would have been easy for Jefferson to balk or gripe or to pretend that the problem with his performance was some one else's.

Instead, Jefferson bought in to the program, and in the off-season worked hard on the specific parts of his game that needed improvement and refinement to better align with the team goals and style of play. So far, in 2010-2011 his performance is improved, and the team has had the best record in the league for most of the season. Sure, over time, age (Jefferson is 30, an age at which peak basketball performance is usually passed), and other factors might conspire to detract from his individual performance, but certainly through just over half of the season the decision by the team and player to work though their adjustment issues, and commit to doing the necessary work to adapt and improve appears to have been a good one.

Ultimately while Jefferson is no longer a star player, he is an important contributor making a significant impact on what is currently the best team in the league.  Will the Spurs win the championship this year? Who knows. But by most accounts the team’s decision to stick by their ‘bad hire’ a little bit longer than many would have wished seems to be paying off.

In the workplace it is often said that many leaders are too slow to pull the plug on under performers, and while that is certainly true in many cases it is likely also true that some leaders and organizations are too hasty.  Even traditionally strong performers, when placed into an entirely new environment, with new colleagues, systems, norms, and expectations, might take longer that originally hoped to make the necessary adjustments.

How long is too long?  When do you label someone a ‘bad hire?’

And when do you as a leader and organization make a commitment and challenge to turn the ‘bad hire’ into a high performer?

Postscript - I really can’t stand the Spurs, but that is because as a Knicks fan I am jealous of their success.