Courtney Abbott's Key Ideas from Who: The A Method for Hiring
by Geoff Smart, Randy Street

The hiring process can be compared to that of an amateur art critic. They are not familiar with the language used by real art critics and their knowledge is limited to whether they like or dislike a piece of art.

This means that talented artists can easily trick them into thinking they’re good when they aren’t. Similarly, people who hire based on instinct may be fooled by charismatic candidates who have little true ability.

In some cases, managers act like prosecutors who try to trick candidates into saying something wrong.

This approach only makes the candidate feel defensive and prevents you from finding out whether he has the right skills for the job.

Many leaders focus on the “Whats” in their organizations, e.g. the strategies, products and services, systems and processes.

However, without the right people in the right place, whatever problems you fix will only resurface again. When you address the “Whos”, the Whats” will naturally fall in place.

Most traditional recruitment and interview techniques are ineffective because they don’t test if someone can really do a job well. After interviewing many CEOs, leaders and management experts, and then analysing the data in detail,  the author found 4 key mistakes that lead to hiring failures at all levels:

• Lack of clarity on what the job requires

• Lack of good candidates

• Inability to choose the right candidate

• Losing the selected candidates

The A Method for Hiring is a simple, proven 4-step process to identify and hire A players at all levels of the organization.

The most common approaches (or “voodoo hiring methods”) lead to hiring failures. 

Would you hire someone to work on your house without a license? Probably not, since it’s hard to know whether they are qualified and have the skills necessary for the job. The same goes for hiring new employees. You need to define what qualifications they should have before you make them an offer.

Recruiters often don’t have a clear idea of what they’re looking for. This can cause problems in the hiring process.

Scorecards describe the mission for the position, outcomes that must be accomplished, and competencies that fit with both the culture of the company and the role.

The scorecard is composed of three parts: the job’s mission, outcomes, and competencies. Together, these three pieces describe A performance in the role—what a person must accomplish, and how. They provide a clear linkage between the people you hire and your strategy.

The mission is an executive summary of the job’s core purpose. It boils the job down to its essence so everybody understands why you need to hire someone into the slot.

Outcomes, the second part of a scorecard, describe what a person needs to accomplish in a role. Most of the jobs for which we hire have three to eight outcomes, ranked by order of importance… While typical job descriptions break down because they focus on activities, or a list of things a person will be doing (calling on customers, selling), scorecards succeed because they focus on outcomes, or what a person must get done (grow revenue from $25 million to $50 million by the end of year three).

Competencies define how you expect a new hire to operate in the fulfilment of the job and the achievement of the outcomes.” Critical ones are:

• Efficiency
• Integrity
• Organization
• Aggressiveness
• Follow through
• Intelligence
• Analytical skills
• Attention to detail
• Persistence
• Proactivity

You can only build a house with a blueprint. Likewise, you can only hire the right person with a scorecard. The scorecard is a job blueprint—it describes exactly what success in a role looks like, including the

1. mission (why the role exists),

2. outcomes (what the person must deliver)

3. competencies (how the job should be done given the job requirements and company culture).

Most managers don’t plan in advance. When a position opens up, they pull out an old job description and rush to fill the vacancy.

HR shortlists several candidates with the limited time and info, and the hire one of them using voodoo methods. Sourcing is about systematically looking for and identifying potential talents before you actually need the people.

Traditional interview techniques don’t predict job performance because they focus on how someone behaves during the interview rather than on their track record. You need a structured approach to gather info and evaluate candidates against the Scorecard. Specifically, you’re looking for A Players who have a history of delivering the desired outcomes, have competencies that fit the role and culture, and are passionate about the role.

Sift out the B and C Players quickly using a short phone-based interview.

You can potentially weed out 80-90% of the candidates at this phase, thus saving yourselves lots of unnecessary time and energy later on.

This interview covers the candidate’s career in a chronological order, using 5 questions to draw out specific facts and stories about each career phase. By the end of 3-5 hours, you’ll have a much clearer assessment of the candidate.

This interview takes about 45-60 minutes, and the goal is to dig deeper for info on specific outcomes or competencies in the scorecard.

You’re now ready to test what you learned about the candidate through reference checks. Never skip this step.

Only move someone to the next phase of the interview if you’re truly excited about them and convinced that they could be the ideal candidate. After the 4 interviews, complete the scorecards and give each candidate an overall grade of A, B, or C. Only hire A-graders. If you have no A-graders, keep sourcing; if you have multiple A-graders then hire the best.

Your job is not done until the candidate is delivering results as your employee. To get them through the door, you must sell to them by sincerely appealing to the 5Fs that people care about: Fit, Family, Freedom, Fortune, and Fun. 

You’ll have to sell throughout the recruitment process, not just at the end. Specifically, you must sell across 5 phases of the hiring process: during sourcing, during interviews, while waiting for the candidate to accept your offer, after the offer has been accepted, and during the new hire’s first 100 days on the job.

Hiring A Players takes deliberate effort, hard work and persistence. However, the results are worth it, since the right talents will influence/shape your company culture/direction and define your long-term success. Eventually, your goal should be to build an A-team, i.e. a team of A Players, each with their own strengths suited for a specific role.

You don’t have to be a CEO to use the A method of hiring—it can be applied at any level in an organization, be it a department, business unit or a function.