Q. How do you judge
whether a potential
employee will fit in to
your culture?
Especially if it’s a senior manager, I like to
talk to people in different environments. You
might have one where
there’s a formal environment the first time they
come in the office. You
might have another one
at lunch, or something
like that, to make sure
you can see people at
different times of the
day and different days
of the week, so you can
see how people are over
time. Because anybody can act
at any given point, but it’s difficult to communicate a consistent view or a presence over a
period of time.
The second thing is to get
opinions of your associates.
We like to do two things here.
We always like to schedule
interviews here where people
can talk one on one with
someone who they may be
reporting to or who they may
work with, so that maybe we
get three or four different
views.
Then, oftentimes, again
depending on the level, we’ll
bring people together for a
group interview where you
can see how that person
interacts within that group
that you’ve assembled. Pretty
soon, these patterns begin to
emerge.
Q. How do you decide whom
to hire?
That depends on the position
in the organization. There are
some I don’t even see anymore who come in to be interviewed.
The manager of that group,
that team, the leader of that
team would make the hiring
decision.
But, generally, it’s a question
of, if we look at middle management or senior management, where I would be
involved. Oftentimes, we’ll
even develop score sheets.
They would say, ‘Here are the
10 characteristics of this position that we’re looking for,’
and give weighting factors to
each one of those, and then
have people fill those out independently and anonymously.
Then, assemble the score,
and we see that, generally, we
all think about this or we all
think about that. Then, when
you get some dissenting opinions, that’s when you really
drill down and start to discuss
the differences. Why do you
see that differently?
Q. What advice do you have
for leaders who want to make
sure they are getting the right
people in the right places?
The No. 1 thing that you
could do is … have a clear
vision of what you are trying
to accomplish. I think people
tend to try to think about
something in very general
terms and then develop the
vision on the fly.
I always had problems with
that. I always like to think
through, ‘How do I visualize
this position working, and
how does it fit in to the
organization?’
Then, I like to think about
who the people they’re going
to interact with, and then
you think about people that
you know. Then I pretty
much, by the time I’m ready
to interview, have a perception in my mind of what I am
looking for, and then I test
against that.
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