Recruiting and Hiring: Attributes to Focus On and How to Set Expectations
This month, CEO Jeff Smith and Director of Leadership and Strategy, Jennifer Owen-O’Quill sat down to answer two questions:
When recruiting, what should the managers focus on? How can you tell if an employee will fit company culture, but also, technically, have the skills?
2. After you recruit said employee and after you hire them, setting them up for success, the next important objective is: what is the right way to set expectations with employees and are there tangible action steps in order to do so?
When recruiting, what should the managers focus on? How can you tell if an employee will fit company culture, but also, technically, have the skills?
Jennifer: I think in recruiting, it’s important for a manager to scope the current job and the job on the horizon. What is the current reality of the work that the person who is leaving the role is doing? Looking ahead over the next eighteen months and at the current team, what are the functions that that role might take on or how might it be reshaped, so that they can recruit for the role that they need on the horizon.
Jeff: One of the most important things is you’re not backfilling the same person. Try to take a step back. People pick up responsibilities that they’re good at. Wipe that away and ask what the job requires. Then, project that forward. Once you know that, develop the job description, make the interview questions, etc. to match where the job is going forward. Stop hiring the same type of person. Shifting to culture, the most important thing is to consider who your best performers are. Figure out how do they live out the culture? Study them. How do they describe the culture and what behaviors do they exhibit? Then, look for that in future hires.
Jennifer: Also, figure out what are the culture tells? When you’re under pressure, as a team, where, over the past six months, has your team performed really well under pressure and what caused that? What were the dynamics of the group? What question do you craft to figure out if a potential hire would match that response in that type of scenario? Thinking about this allows you to figure out how to test for a culture match.
Jeff: Technical skills are relatively easy to search for. Get two or three really technical people and have them interview. Often, you’ll get a yes/no. Add a third category: Yes, with certain training, they can close the technical gap. However, most technical people forget how hard learning that aspect was and aren’t very patient. As the search leader, take a step back and say, “Hey, if we give them 30 days, 90 days, of training, could that be a yes?” A lot of times the technical is a yes/no. I like to add a yes, but with 30 days of mentoring, 30 days of training, would we hire that person? Finally, technical is important, but that is only one component. Sometimes people will knock people out because of the technical without that training, but they don’t consider the cultural implications. Don’t just take someone that’s a check on technical, but might bad culturally. Make sure that you’re looking at both sides.
Jennifer: It’s not about just who’s got the skills on the resume, but how things technically are done in your climate. They’re different from how they were done in the climate that they’ve been in. So, how do you set the experiences of the peer group to be able to create the conditions for that person to learn the way of your particular organization and how those things are executed, technically? Having that clear question of, “What kind of training experience is this person going to need to be able to get them where we want them to be?” is a really important question to ask. Also, it’s an important after-action item to take back to the team to say, “Okay, this is what we said we were going to need. What’s the plan that’s part of our onboarding?” so that you can have a really successful fit. People get really frustrated 2-3 weeks in with their new person who’s not performing exactly the way the person who left was, who was culturally normed. They had been in the culture and were doing the technical work for a long time. They understand that way. Giving the people that are already there some particular and practical responsibility for getting that person up to speed, as opposed to having the expectations that someone is going to hit the ground and run.
After you recruit said employee and after you hire them, setting them up for success, the next important objective is: what is the right way to set expectations with employees and are there tangible action steps in order to do so?
Jeff: Well there’s a wrong way, which is to have no expectations. Unfortunately, many people feel like the process is over when they’ve hired somebody and they submit the paperwork to get the email, computer, etc. Then they just assume that person will be successful. If they go crazy, maybe they’ll have lunch with them the first day. That’s the wrong way. Chunk it out in 30-,60-,90-day segments. One of the most important things is in the first 30 days, the person needs to have the chance to take a listening tour. Meet with a bunch of people. Meet with the critical stakeholders that are going to touch that job and allow them to ask questions and come back to you. You, as their manager, should have touching points in the first 30 days. You should have it daily. Most people are lucky if they get a weekly. A 10 minute touch-in those first 30 days is really critical. Your job is to clarify expectations, and in the first 30 days, most of those expectations are going to be, “go do this and here’s, generally, what I want you to learn.” During days 30 through 60, that person should be looking for small wins in the role. They don’t just show up. They have real work and the chance to put their handprint on an organization. They also need help in prioritizing because what happens is, they’re directed from the viros? and they’re not sure what really matters. Little things, like “go get this thing done” and big projects seem like they have equal weight. So, they have no sense of prioritization. Make it so that they understand their top 3 priorities. Finally, days 60 through 90, what the new hire should be doing is a SWOT analysis, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, to help them to determine their goals for the first year. They should come back to you with a SWOT of, “Here’s what I’ve done to assess the job and here are the goals I think I should have for the year.” Then you give them feedback for how you think they did over the first 90 days. They may ask you for some resources, they may say they need you to change out some talent. Be open to that conversation. Ultimately, at the end of the 90 days, give them feedback on what they did well and where they could improve, but clarify what success will look like at the end of year one. That’s how I handle the first 90 days.
Jennifer: I want to spend a moment on the kind of work people get assigned in that time. Really think about that in advance. Don’t let it be an accident so that there is a way that you approach how to scope and give work to people that are onboarding. Small, achievable projects that you can give feedback all the way through is really important. There will be more time to learn in those first 90 days than there will be in the second 90 days. How do you plan for that in advance and build in a key, broader learning about the role, industry, and company process so that they can learn and understand on the front end? This way, they will have time once they get going in the job and really know what the job is. It’s important to let them know it’s okay to research, and to allow that time and expect it in the first 90 days. It can feel unproductive, but if the peers and the person in the role know that some of that research and curiosity is expected and important during work time, that’s really helpful. Learning is part of the job and it’s important to have that time because as you get busier, you won’t have it.
Jeff: First, if you go straight to task, you’re shortchanging the relationship-building. And once you hit the 90 days, you’re going to be so busy and you’ll be in the flow of the organization. Then, your days will be full of this meeting and that meeting. The first 90 days is the best time to build relationships and to get to know people, so don’t shortchange that time. Second, assign someone a cultural mentor. Who’s the person that can be a check-in and tell the person how we do things around here. That can be HR, a peer, someone you think is a cultural role model. This person can be lower in the organization. Helping them understand that this is the way we do things here can really help people from blowing up. I’ve seen people come in thinking that they have to do X or Y and that’s just not the culture.
Jennifer: How do you normalize the feedback process among the peer group and with supervisor and team? If there’s some normal touch points that you build in on the front end of those 90 days, some of the things that people are holding back because you’re new, they create path for people to say a couple of things that would be really critical pieces of feedback that don’t feel heavy if you know they’re coming. If things start to go sideways, and they will, and there isn’t a plan for those conversations, then, it can feel hard to have them, as opposed to. “This is just part of our process. This is where we pull up and talk about how things are going. We had all these intentions of supporting you and helping you be successful, so this is what that looks like now. This is what we’re seeing, and this is what we need. How do we realign where you are going so that now that you’re here, we can figure out what we really need.” Sometimes the assumptions people make, or people see are not quite what the organization needs to focus on first.
Jeff: An easy way of doing that is, each week, ask the person, “what were 2 or 3 accomplishments from this week, what was 1 new insight, and what’s 1 thing you wish you would’ve done differently?” That becomes a regular rhythm and they get used to the feedback It’s also great for you to do that in your normal staff meetings and normal 1:1s.
