Hire for passion
When a man fell off a ladder and broke his shoulder while working as a painter, he knew his painting career was over. He interviewed at PartsSource and was charismatic and passionate — but
he also had a criminal record. Dalton looked at his own past and
remembered an Air Force recruiter telling him how smart he was
when nobody had ever said that before and giving him a chance to
succeed many years ago. So despite that dark spot on this man’s
resume and possessing no sales experience, he seemed driven,
and Dalton took a chance by hiring him five years ago. That man
grew to be the top performer for all but one month of last year.
“I never forget where I came from, and I value the person, and I
value what the person can become — not who they are, but what
they can become,” he says.
Sometimes, leaders get so fixated about characteristics they do
or don’t want that they forget to see a person’s potential, so
Dalton says to throw out “the list.”
For example, he won’t hire salespeople with medical or sales
experience — the two very things his company does.
“We don’t want their bad habits,” he says. “We want to train
them exactly the way we want them trained.”
While most leaders would drool over Ivy League MBA grads,
Dalton doesn’t even care if his employees have a college
degree — and only 17 percent do.
“A college education doesn’t really make you any smarter,”
he says. “What it allows you to do is ask more difficult questions and understand the answers, but it doesn’t give you … the
personal skills. Our business is very high on the personal skills
— can you address them? Can you have a conversation?”
To help discover potential, three different people interview candidates, and each person gives a “yes” or “no” recommendation. Any “no” rules a candidate out.
If the candidates get past all three people, then they get one
final interview with Dalton. It’s an opportunity for him to set
expectations and explain why their position is important. At
the end of the conversation, he tells them to think things
through, and if they want to commit to the expectations he’s
laid out, to call the human resources manager the next day and
tell her that. If they don’t call, he knows they don’t want to and
wishes them luck.
This approach personalizes the hiring process and educates
the candidate upfront, but it also requires a lot of time on his
part because he’s hiring eight to 10 people every month.
Despite that, it’s important and needs to be focused on.
“CEOs who don’t take the hiring seriously are building a
house of cards,” he says. “They wonder why they have issues
or why they’re underperforming, and it’s because they didn’t
make any investment, and why should they reap the returns if
they didn’t make the investment?”