Video: 4 Criteria for Hiring an A Player
How can you make sure that you are hiring the right people?
People always ask me, “is there a trick to finding an A player for each position in your company?” In my short video below, I cover the four criteria that you should take into account when hiring the most effective employees and building the most impactful team to run your business.
Transcript
So, you want to know is there criteria to hire the best a player you can find for each position in your company? The answer is yes there are four criteria and I will discuss them in rank order.
First is will; do they have desire to excel? To persevere? To continually learn? To innovate and to act with courage?
The second is values; do they align with your core values and to know this you must test for culture fit. Now my experience is a lot of companies don't do this test and let me share a personal story. When I was a CEO our engineering team was down a certain technical skill set and we were without it for a long time it was a hot skillset. It was hard to find and our hair was on fire, and one day our VP of engineering Peter (no that's not his real name) came into my office and said “Rob we found the person. We're going to pull together an interview.”
That afternoon Peter walked into my office with an offer letter and we had a hiring process so there was a little piece of paper paperclip through the offer and he noticed that the culture fit test the interview was not done. I said “Peter we haven't done this.” He said Rob it doesn't matter. He has the skills I've got to hire him. If we let him walk out the door somebody else is going to hire him.” I said “I'm sorry Peter if you want to put an offer in front of them we've got to follow our process. Put together the the culture fit interview and the three employees came with a collective ‘thumbs down. Needless to say Peter was really upset, but what we found out is that we knew he had the skill, but he was a micromanager he told us was going to be his way or the highway. If we had hired him, it would have been a train wreck for our culture.
The third criteria is results. In the end, can this person deliver on the metrics as well as the outcomes that you need from a player.
The fourth and final criteria is skills; do they have the skills? Now, keep in mind that this is ranked last since most skill sets need updating every 5 years so. In conclusion you hire the right people and life is great you hire the wrong people and life is miserable.
Contact me if you want to explore how to ensure you're hiring the right people.