by Kevin Kernan

How effective is your executive level interviewing and hiring process? I mean truly effective…does it consistently produce the quality and quantity of top tier talent your business demands? When you fund a new executive hire, or replace an existing position – what happens next? Often times in hiring, as with many other key decisions, the first few steps really do determine the outcome. You’ve probably read about the power of High Performance Teams, the difference “having everybody on the bus” can make, and “hiring for success” — but what have you as a hiring manager done to make this a reality in your company, and are the results repeatable, or even measurable.

We’ve all worked for CEOs, boards, & executive managers who rail about the importance of bringing on the right people – the value of chemistry amongst the team, why hiring someone who has “…done this before” will take the risk out of the business, and the need to hire the team that will reach the next level. Realistically, how do we do this? What are the real mechanics and how can we as professional managers not only do this consistently, but impart the magic ingredients once found on others in our organization. As you might have guessed the purpose of this article is to share a variety of thoughts, processes, stories (good, bad, & somewhat humorous), & criteria for interviewing and hiring, that when combined will help you and your company establish a more rigorous process capable of producing better results than you are getting today. At the very least it will generate conversations on the topic, the sum of which will hopefully promote positive change.

The whole process starts with a need for new talent, whether it’s backfilling or creating a new executive level role. Backfilling is often perceived as easier; regardless someone needs to take on the project of managing the new hire process. In larger firms this is often the Chief Human Resources Officer, in startups the CEO owns it start to finish. Regardless of who owns the project, there are some basic steps which can’t be overlooked. We all know what these are, yet we continually talk ourselves into completing them in less time, or “just calling a few people who can quickly find me exactly what I’m looking for…” The minimum requirements for getting successfully launched are:

1. Complete a detailed job specification – this can be a dynamic document that changes as you learn more about the your requirements, but it’s important to complete this, ensure all stakeholders are aware or are in agreement, and be prepared to circulate to qualified candidates.
2. Establish the process you will use to identify, attract, qualify, interview, and select the right candidates. Think of each of these steps as mini-projects, and where possible establish metrics and timelines to measure progress along the way. In many cases you will be at different steps in the process with multiple candidates, so managing and coordinating candidate interaction becomes critical.
3. Determine whether this search project will be conducted with internal resources or completed using an external firm who specializes in your sector, company size, or level and scope of the position being recruited. Choosing a search firm will be a topic for another day however, keep in mind you will likely spend the same amount of money/resources either way, the key questions being the likelihood of achieving the desired result, and perhaps the opportunity cost of your time spent.
4. Decide up front how the hiring decision will be made, and who will make it. Regardless of the overall process you outline, you will be interviewing senior executives and there will be a hard requirement to qualify, interview, and select. Identifying the criteria for each before you start interviewing is critical.

Once the steps outlined above are completed, you now need to build a “go-to-market” message which becomes the platform for describing what you are looking for, what type of company you are, what profile would the ideal candidate have, and why the position would represent a truly unique opportunity for the right individual. This is different from the position specification. Depending on corporate norm or personal preference you can go-to-market in many different ways: email, social networking tools, posts, word of mouth, etc. Either way, you intend to attract highly talented and qualified candidates – and you need a method for determining who proceeds to the next stage, and who doesn’t. Crafting the right go-to-market message keeps everybody on message without sending a more sensitive position specification to all corners of the globe. Rest assured this process will also attract less desirable candidates, yet it’s very important that everyone responding or expressing interest be treated fairly, honestly, and if eliminated, still remain positive about the company and the people. It’s a small world and disqualifying people from the process is handled poorly by most organizations AND search firms.

Qualifying the responses– go back to your job specification and select the 5 or 6 critical elements that anybody you would hire must have to even warrant consideration. Assume for a minute we’re hiring a Sales VP for a technology company – you might suggest the following are critical:

• Experienced at building distribution strategies for co’s over $100M in revenue
• Located in Boston, Massachusetts
• Earned undergraduate degree in Engineering; MBA is a bonus
• Promoted from within at multiple companies during career
• Implemented sales effectiveness program in the last 3 yrs which yielded revenue growth

Having established very crisp qualifiers for interested candidates, you can now field responses and explain to those not qualified that you have candidates who in fact meet all of the criteria. The elimination explanation should rarely be about the candidates’ shortcomings, and almost always focus on how other candidates have a stronger profile. Disqualified candidates should be managed out of the process very quickly and politely, with the understanding that they may very well be exceptional candidates for another position when such a project presents itself.

Interviewing the selected candidates– Your qualifying process has yielded 5-7 candidates and it’s now time for interviewing. You will have selected the interviewing team, reviewed the 5-7 resumes as a group, and determined which interviewers will question candidates on the various evaluation criteria. It is absolutely critical that you determine the hiring criteria, the evaluation criteria, and develop a set of questions in each category which will highlight the attributes you are seeking as well as illuminate potential risk areas or flat spots. The following represents an example of this approach which has been successfully used by a variety of companies, each considered best in class at hiring top talent:

Note that the initial 30 minutes of the interview is focused more on the evaluation criteria/questioning, and the last 15-20 minutes addresses more quantitative elements of the specification which provide insight into scale (in the case of a Sales exec): team size, dollar level of revenue responsibility, growth rates, and metrics used for operational management. Why this approach? Data is easy and in many cases inarguable – it’s what candidates expect to cover. Focusing the early questioning on judgment, decision-making skills, situational awareness, and management practices forces earlier exposure of those key attributes which contribute to sustained success: logical thinking, intellectual capacity, project management, complex problem-solving, and most importantly, personal characteristics. It becomes much easier to assess what drove the achievement of the goals/objectives/team growth after uncovering core values and determining complex reasoning skills.

Most executive managers are poor interviewers of executive talent. Unless the interviewer has received formal training or follows a prescribed process (i.e, McKinsey Problem-Solving Test), we all tend to focus either on the quantitative because it’s easy, or we just plain talk too much because that’s more comfortable than asking hard questions. Recently I had a candidate call me after an interview for a CMO position. The first thing she said was the interviewer talked for 45 minutes in a one hour interview. Recall what was mentioned above; develop a plan for interviewing and execute it. Create a scoring matrix and hold the hiring manager or whomever is project managing the process accountable for receiving this back from each interviewer within an hour after the interview. Capturing the critical interview data as well as scoring the candidates is a critical element in the assessment and selection process. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve spoken with hiring managers or interviewers and the response I get is, “…well, he [she] was a pretty good candidate”, or “…you know, I really liked that person”. Ok, but what does that really tell you about the candidates’ ability to do the job successfully against the specification, or fit with the company culture. A key element in the process is reference checking, and the quality of the reference taken is directly proportional to the quality of the interview data validated/discussed during the reference call. If your firm struggles with this part of the process I suggest you bring in some external expertise to assist in improving it, or consider retaining an external firm to conduct in-depth interviews and/or reference checks for you. There are some excellent firms that specialize in this.

Selecting the right candidate – You now have 1 or 2 very well qualified candidates (preferably 2), they’ve completed the interview process, the interviewing team met as a group after the interviews and assessed the data/scoring from each interview, and it’s now time to select one. The hiring manager will make the final decision, and at this point you’ve eliminated guesswork, references are complete, and frankly either candidate can do this job well. How do you make the final call?

Several things to consider at this point:

1. In today’s market executive teams are really concerned about a combination of 6 critical factors: customer success/demand, revenue growth, increased margins, reduced costs, increased competitiveness, & opening new markets. Identify which of these are most critical to your company and directly impacted by the role being hiring for. Now ask how well the candidates related their decision-making skills, accomplishments, and personal growth to your company’s critical factors.
2. Either the position specification or the interview process itself, or both, should have exposed the growth potential for the position being hired for, and where the 2 candidates stand as far as their ability to grow with the job, or develop into succession candidates. Based on the career trajectory, interview feedback, and reference data – mentally graph each candidate in terms of fitness for the position today, ability to grow as the job expands, and suitability as a succession candidate for the hiring manager. The key question here is whether the candidate is on the up slope or down slope of their career, and what’s the angle of attack.
3. It’s often said that the first 90 days of the administration determines the success of the term. At this stage in the hiring process both the hiring manager and the candidates should have a basic understanding of “the 90-day plan”. How well is the plan understood between the parties and how analogous is it to what the candidate has done in the past? Is it a huge stretch? Is it spot-on to what has been done before, or is it a lay-up and possibly unchallenging? It’s easy to rush to the altar with what seems like the right decision, but make sure you know what you’re going to get once the honeymoon is over. Discuss it in detail.
4. It’s human nature that some people are energy accretive and some are energy consumers. I’m being polite but the concept is well understood. It’s imperative that the hiring manager understand the impact this new hire will have on the team they will be managing. In today’s economy all managers, and particularly executives must motivate their teams to over perform, innovate, and understand the demands of their customers. Anything less and you’ve not found the right person.

Hiring the right talent is the most important decision any manager will make, whether you’re the CEO or a new first line. This is even more important in today’s market for a variety of reasons. Perhaps the most important is that we are living thru a true buyer’s market. For whatever product or service you are selling, the buyer has more options than ever before, and your ability to differentiate, deliver lasting value, and understand market demand is critical to survival. Hiring top talent with the personal characteristics and aptitude to take your firm and your customers to the next level requires discipline and process. Evaluating skills, knowledge, and experience is a given requirement in any hiring process, but developing a system for assessing and selecting key executive based on evaluating all hiring criteria will dramatically reduce the risk of hiring mistakes and raise the bar for talent development in any organization.