The President’s Most important Job (Hiring) part 2 in a 4 part series

In my last blog (part 1), I outlined the most important responsibility of the president of a company (no matter what).  That responsibility is the Who in your company, the employees.  The President’s number one commitment must be focused on who is representing the company.  I outlined some of the blessings that come from being great at the Big Three: Attracting, Developing, and Retaining talented people.  I also committed over the next three blogs to provide some of the keys that unlock the big three.  In this blog, I will be focused on the first and most critical of the big three:  Attracting the Right People to your company.  If you do not attract the right people to your company, then no amount of development will change them into the right person and you certainly won’t be concerned with retaining the wrong people.  Therefore, attracting the right people is simply foundational to having a great company.  If we do not commit ourselves to this as leaders, then we will never reach our potential as leaders or as a company.

I am definitely growing in this area and certainly do not have it mastered, however, over the past three years, we have had a major shift in this arena and are getting more and more consistent with hiring great people.  I think it will be much more encouraging to the reader as well as educational to take a look at my significant failure in this area as a younger less mature leader between 2005 and 2007.  Beginning in 2005 I assumed leadership over a team of three and a half people that were focused on small business and personal lines insurance (now called our Family Unit).  Between late 2005 and early 2008, we had employee turnover of 200% on this team.  That’s right, we turned every position over twice in a period of less than three years.  When you boil this down and try to understand what was happening, there was one common denominator in all of this: ME.  When I analyzed each person that we lost, I found that my failure in one of the Big Three was always at the center of the reason.  For example, I hired one person early in my leadership that was a desperate hire and ended up disastrous from there.  We had a person that filled a critical position who provided us with several months of notice that they were moving to another state.  Instead of moving quickly to interview qualified candidates that could be hired and then trained by this person before they left, we drug our feet and hid our head in the sand.  By the time that person left, we still had not hired a person to replace them.  This put us in desperate situation.  We hired a person who when they left told me this “Dustin, you and I are like fire and water working together”.  We left things with mutual respect, but the fact is I put someone in a position that they had no chance succeeding at because of their skill set, personality, and strengths.  For such a key person, we now average around 6 weeks in our hiring process; back then, we took three days and often times made an offer in the first interview.  Even on entry level positions, we now take around two weeks from the first interview until the offer is made.

During this time period, we hired some great people.  Those people are still with us today.  However, they were two out of ten or more – there was nothing we did that attracted them.  If you hire enough people you will get some great ones and they will be the reason you are doing ok.  However, if you can learn to hire nine out of ten great people, then you will thrive in good times and bad!

By the time 2008 came, I was tired and beat up with personnel issues.  I had basically thrown my hands up; I had not lost my desire to have a great company, but I sure was at a loss of what to do to get great people.  I started saying things I hear all the time in the market place as an excuse for not having great people:  “we are too small to attract talented people,” “all the good people have jobs and their companies are not letting go of them,” “there just aren’t hard working talented people anymore, “young people aren’t willing to start at the bottom anymore; they work six months and think they need to start running the company.”  Any of these sound familiar?  I was certainly guilty of thinking many of these things.  I wanted to put things in place that attracted talented people to our organization.  I started asking myself and the Lord a question:  “What attracts talented people to an organization?”  The answer hit me like a freight train!  Talented people growing and operating in their strengths attracts other talented people.  Talented people want fulfillment from their work; they want to progress both personally and professionally.  They demand a work environment that promotes development and progress as well as a culture of respect and recognition.  This led me to a sobering revelation:  I as the leader of the company had to learn to operate in my strengths and become the kind of leader that attracted the talented people. I am not saying that I have accomplished this in its entirety (or even close), however, I am saying that since I received this revelation, I have heavily invested in becoming a better leader.  I have also dedicated myself to operating in my strengths and to stop operating in areas of weakness.  This is very hard for a leader of a small business.  Leaders of small businesses are used to doing everything and having their hand in everything.  I learned that this is the recipe for remaining a small business.  I made a commitment to stepping back and releasing areas of our business to people who had strengths in that area and guess what happened:  you got it, we got a lot better in that area.  One of the great book series that helped me make this significant change were Patrick Lencioni’s management books.  Through these books, I ended up writing down 5-6 areas that I needed to manage in our organization.  These things played to my strengths and were things only I could do for our organization.  Guess what number one and number two are on the list?  Hiring great people and developing our great people are numbers one and two.  I recommend StrengthFinders 2.0 for understanding and operating in your strengths.

I want to include some guidelines on the hiring process, however, if we jumped to the hiring process without addressing core leadership issues, then we would be merely addressing symptoms and not root issues.  When we hire a person for any position they are interviewed by their potential supervisor for competency as well as fit.  The interviewer takes good notes and makes a decision as to whether they will have a second interview.  We typically test a few areas of competency relative to the position.  If they are to have a second interview, the notes are released to the second interviewer and the candidate is required to complete a Myers Briggs Personality test.  This test will allow us to see how their personality profile will fit with the existing personalities in our organization as well as on their team.  For example, if we see that their personality profile is going to cause a lot of issues with team chemistry or if we have too many of one type (ie extroverts), then we are cautious to tip that balance.  There is no good or bad personality, however, there are personalities that are not good fits for certain positions (ie strong extroverts are often times not a good fit as internal accountants working alone).  There are also certain personalities that do not work well together.  The second thing we test is the candidate’s strengths.  StrengthFinders 2.0 costs around $10 and will let you know the candidate’s top five strengths.  We analyze whether or not the strengths that this person has are a fit for the position for which we are interviewing.  There have been times when the strengths were not a fit for the position, but we made them an offer for another position that they did fit.  Once again we are looking to see if these strengths add to the strengths of the team and will work in a complimentary way to make the team stronger.

Once it is time to complete the second interview we are interviewing for cultural fit.  We are looking to see if this person will align with our company values and mission.  We are looking to see if this person will represent us the way we want to be represented.  There have been times when the person made it with flying colors through the first interview and had a personality and strength profile that was solid, however, when I conducted the second interview for cultural fit, I did not feel that their value system was a fit and I was not comfortable with how they would represent our company.  As the president of a company, you have to decide how involved you are going to be in the interview process.  As a company of 15 people, I am involved in every hire as an interviewer.  I can see where companies of 100 plus people with higher turnover in some of the entry level positions cannot do this, however, a president needs to draw a line where they are involved in the interview process for certain level positions.  I encourage presidents to be involved in as many positions as possible.  There are a couple more things that I do personally for positions of leadership.  I also encourage our managers to do this with all of their candidates.  My wife (Alicia) and I take the candidate (and spouse if relevant) out to dinner to get to know them outside the work environment.  This does two things:  1) It allows me to observe them and get to know them in a less formal setting giving me another glimpse into their personality; and 2)  It allows my wife (who is much more discerning than me) to get a feel for the person and their spouse.  If my spouse has a check about the person, then it is over.  Finally, I spend time in prayer asking for guidance in the hiring decision.  I am aware that the decision to offer a career to someone is not only significant for our organization, but also for their life.  One’s career is a very significant thing and if I mess this up, it not only hurts us, but it hurts the person hired.

In conclusion, a small recap may be useful.  Excellent hiring practices are important, but will not overcome foundational issues where talented people cannot thrive.  We first must have a culture and leadership (that means us) in place that attracts talented people.  This will require us to continuously focus on improving as leaders.  In the midst of that we need to be excellent gatekeepers as to who is coming into our organizations.  Utilizing multiple interviews with focus on competency and cultural fit along with personality and strength profiling are good starts to improving in the area of hiring.  Also, I strongly encourage some type of interaction outside of the formal interview process if possible to provide another look at them.