Q. How do you make
smart hiring decisions
when a test-drive isn’t
possible?
When that’s not the
case, then obviously you
do all the work you can
do, and, ultimately, you
make the best decision
you can make based on
the data points and personal observations and
experience you bring to
the interviewing and discussions.
Here’s what I try to do
in a small company like
ours or a midsize taking
it to the next level: The
last interview before
we’re ready to offer
them the job, I say, ‘You need
to go home this weekend,
and you need to really think
about this.’
In the case of my CFO, he
tells the story that my last discussion with him went something like this: ‘Gene, I don’t
have the words to describe
how hard this is going to be.
Now, I need you to go home
and think about that over the
weekend and decide if you
want to do this because this is
not a place for the fainthearted. There can be peaks and valleys, and if you don’t really
want to do his, I implore you
to really think about that.’
So the last thing you do in
the interview process is you
try to scare them off. If you
can’t scare them off, you’ve
probably got the right person.
It usually works because competitive people, they’re like, ‘I
can do this!’
You really see their best
virtues come through if they
have the competitive zeal that is
required to be part of something
like what we’re building here.
Q. What is the toughest
thing a leader has to do?
In any line of work or in any
walk of life, when you’ve got
to look somebody in the eye
and say, ‘We appreciate what
you’ve done, but you’re not
going to be able to help us get
to the next level’ — it’s those
decisions around people that
are most challenging and the
toughest.
You sometimes are making a
decision that can have a short-term negative impact on people’s lives. But you can’t just
wait and hope a problem will
work itself out.
You can’t shirk making tough
decisions around people, especially people who are in invisible leadership roles. They may
be hardworking, they may be
technically getting the job done,
but they can be a cultural poisoner of the well.
Q. How do you handle that
problem?
In any company, but certainly in a small company, if you
don’t address that quickly, you
can really do a lot of damage.
You have to remove those people, and you can’t bide your
time and hope it gets better.
Because fundamentally, with
all the training and with all the
internal and external opportunities to learn and grow, people don’t change that much
once they establish who they
are professionally.
So you have to challenge
that. You have to give them
opportunities to grow and
change. But ultimately, if they
are not a cultural fit, you have
to make the tough call, and
you have to do it quickly.
HOW TO REACH: Allconnect Inc., (404) 260-2200 or www.allconnect.com