Positive Principles Newsletter
June 2005
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"… [get] the right people on the bus, the
right people in the right seats (and the wrong people off the bus) and then [figure] out
where to drive it.”
- Jim Collins –
Good To Great
"Hire the best staff you can find, develop them as
much as you can, and hand off everything you possibly can to them.”
-
John C.
Maxwell – The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership
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This month's tip –
Hire the person, not the resume.
In May, I wrote on the
topic
“Confront negative behaviors”. In that article, I discussed the
necessity of addressing negative behaviors. This month, my focus is on
avoiding the problem in the first place. You do that by hiring the right
person.
The subject of hiring the
right person comes up frequently in my work with various clients. It comes
up when they need to fill a position. It comes up when they realize they
have the wrong person in a position. Sometimes it comes up as a question in
a training session. Sometimes it comes up in a private conversation. But
it almost always comes up.
The most common mistake
that I see people make - one that I have made myself - is ranking the
person’s technical skills ahead of their “soft” skills. I agree that
technical skills are important. I don’t want to hire a CPA who knows
nothing about accounting, and I don’t want to hire a nurse who knows nothing
about nursing. So, I am not suggesting that you ignore a person’s resume.
I am suggesting that their experience and training (i.e. - their resume)
serves primarily to qualify them for your time investment to interview
them. It gets them in the door, but it shouldn’t give them the job.
Consider this situation.
You hire a person with
outstanding technical skills. They know everything about the industry, the
legal environment, and many other technical aspects of their position – but
the rest of your staff cannot stand to work with them. This “technical
expert” demands special attention, resists every change, speaks negatively
about management and other team members, pushes the limit on workplace
rules, etc.
Are they worth the
trouble? Does the positive contribution from their “technical expert”
status justify the damage they do to overall team performance? In most of
the situations I’ve been involved in, the answer is no.
In the above scenario, I
created a situation where the person under consideration is truly a
“technical expert”. Among the best, technically, in their field. But, what
about the more common situation? The situation where the person is good
technically, but they’re not necessarily among the best in the industry.
Now, how does their behavior with other people balance against their
technical skills? It only gets worse.
I assume that you will only
consider hiring people with at least the basic technical skills to do the
job. So, faced with a choice between two candidates:
1) Great “attitude” and acceptable technical skills (for this
article, my definition of attitude includes work ethic, drive, initiative,
ability to work with others, and other “soft” or difficult to measure
skills), and
2) Outstanding technical skills and a poor attitude
I choose number one. I
find it easier to help people strengthen their technical skills than to
improve their attitude.
What if you have difficulty
finding a person with the right attitude? I suggest you keep looking until
you find them. It is better to work short-handed for a short time than to
work with a problem employee for a long time. As Jim Collins states in his
landmark study Good To Great – “When in doubt, don’t hire – keep
looking.”
(For a suggestion on how to
identify the right person, check out
Hiring Tip – Picking the Best Candidates.)
So for now, I encourage
you to remember this month's tip . . .
Hire the person, not the resume.
Have a great day,
Guy Harris
The Recovering Engineer
