Your Next Candidate Interview: Why Facts Eat Instincts For Breakfast.
“Hiring instincts are overrated. Your gut is designed to eat bacon, not make bacon.
The strongest companies are built on facts and proven performance, not flavor.”
What if I told you that your last major hire was probably determined by what you had for breakfast?
Hear me out.
Did you hire based on defined behavioral competencies, proven past performance, reference checks, and a structured, multi-interview system? Or did you hire based on what your gut was telling you?
Here’s what I hear all the time:
“She interviewed so well, but she took forever to get rolling. What a disappointment.”
“He looked great on paper. What happened?”
“I’ve had three amazing employees quit in the last six months. I thought it was something I did—and it was. I hired the worst person to work with them.”
And I get it, believe me. I’ve made those mistakes, too. High performers like us pride ourselves on how to meet, read, and lead people, so when we bomb in an interview—as the interviewer—it sucks.
And here’s why. Your gut doesn’t have the stomach for effective interview techniques. It was designed to save you from mortal danger, not to keep you from losing your best employees or up to 40x the base salary for every mis-hire. (Yes, those are real numbers. Just ask Dr. Brad Smart, who wrote Topgrading.)
Effective hiring doesn’t take guts. It takes training. If you want to hire better people, you have to learn how to hire better, period.
Onward,
Bill
We all have nightmare hiring stories. Send me an email with yours—and what you learned from it. By putting it in writing, you’ll ensure the situation never repeats itself.
Your gut can be a powerful tool—when you need to know what time to eat. When it comes to hiring, however, your company will starve for A-Player talent if you don’t know what—or who—you need.
Here are four tips we recommend in our A-Player Hiring Toolkit:
Invest in a badass employee referral program. A-Players want to be part of a winning team, so encourage them to invite like-minded performers to your company. The more you assemble, the more your company will benefit from their exponential brainpower.
Strategize and standardize your interview process. Use the same questions, the same desired answers, the same rating standards, and the same assessments for every single candidate.
Add depth to your perception. Each position should have two people interpreting the face-to-face interview, with one person asking the questions and the other running the process and taking notes.
Ask for references, and then check them.You’ll very quickly find out which candidates talk the talk and which ones will hit the ground running.
