William Clapper likens
getting the right people
in the right positions to running a football team. The
founder, president and CEO of
MTI Information Technologies
LLC says that if your team has
good passing skills, you should-n’t try to force people to run
the ball, and the same is true in
business.
“Don’t do things or don’t give
(employees) assignments or
tasks or challenge them to do
things they’re probably going to
fail at,” says Clapper, whose
$24 million company optimizes
communications to physicians.
Smart Business spoke with
Clapper about how to use the
hiring process to find the
right employees to fit in to
your culture.
Q. How do you evaluate
employees’ skills to see where
they fit in the organization?
It begins with the hiring
process. It begins with a clear
understanding of what you are
trying to accomplish. Then,
implement that through having
a singular focus of the kinds of
people you think fit specific
roles.
Again, the football analogy
— you want to make sure that
you’ve got a quarterback that
has certain skills versus a line-man that has certain skills. So,
you’ve got blocking and tackling people in the organization,
you’ve got skill players in the
organization, and you want to
make sure they match up.
Q. How do you use the hiring
process to find the right fit?
It begins with understanding
what the job is all about and what you are trying to accomplish on that job. Now, I don’t
mean so narrowly defined that
you can scope out a daily
activity for someone, but I
mean a broad view, a strategic
view, of what you are expecting from that position.
Then, you try to find people
who do two things or two key
things. One, they match up
from the skill standpoint of
what that job would require,
and two, most importantly,
that they fit in to the culture of
the organization.
