Jarrod Parkes

Who - The A Method of Hiring

2019-01-25

“Who: The A Method of Hiring” by Geoff Smart and Randy Street

My Notes

Intro

• your answers to the WHO questions are often more important than your answers to the WHATs; you can spend your whole career trying to find the right processes or building the right things, but if you don’t have the right people you are doomed for failure or lots of headaches along the way
• 4 parts of the hiring process where failure usually occurs
  • unclear about job requirements
  • weak flow of candidates
  • don’t trust their ability to pick the right candidate from a pool of candidates
  • lose candidates they really want

Part 1: The Number 1 Problem

• resumes are inflated descriptions of accomplishments with all the failures removed
• bad hiring habits (fallacy: “it is easy to know if a person is a good hire”)
  • good lunch, good chat, good candidate
  • you can’t just read people on the fly (like judging art); don’t trust gut
  • “the sponge” - let everyone interview the person and ask the same questions
  • “the prosecutor” - asking trick and really hard logic questions; remember “knowledge” and “ability to the job” are not the same thing
  • “the suitor” - interviewer who spend lots of time talking, no time listening; they are just trying to sell the person on the company
  • “the trickster” - interviewer who does things like throw trash on the floor to see if the person will pick it up
  • “animal lover” - interviewer that hold on to “pet questions” (“i look for people with a witty answer”)
  • “chatter box” - interviewer that just talks about the weather, sports, etc. and doesn’t get to what is important
  • “personality tester” - interviewer that asks bubble test questions to try and make a decision
  • “the aptitude tester” - again, aptitude is not the only part of the hiring equation
  • “the fortune teller” - interviewers who ask candidates to look far out into the future and answer hypotheticals (lots of times the answers are canned anyways)
• find A players
  • finding the “right” superstar
  • has 90% chance of achieving a set of outcomes that only the top 10% of candidates could achieve
    • 90% chance of achieving outcomes - we’re really confident this person can do the job we need them to
    • outcomes only the top 10% of candidates could achieve - we don’t want good, we want great; set the bar really high!
• “you are who you hire”
• the A method
  • step 1: make the scorecard
  • step 2: source people for the job(s)
  • step 3: select people for the job(s)
  • step 4: sell the A folks on the job and hire them!

Part 2: The Scorecard

• It’s a blueprint for an A player consisting of mission, outcomes, and competencies
• Mission - super concise (1-5 sentences), plain language description of why the job exists “to own and develop all the android apps for comment sold”
• Don’t hire generalists (seems to contradict some with Google’s smart creative mantra)
• Mission statement should evolve over time
• Outcomes are 3-8 tangible things the person should achieve (like KR’s)
• Outcomes weed out B and C candidates because they are tangible results expected to be achieved instead of just a broad list of responsibilities that can be stretched
• Outcome example “Recreate our baseline Android shopping app with scalable architecture in first 90 days of start date” or “Redeploy 100+ Android shopping apps using new baseline in first 120 days”
• Instead of guessing whether they will be good fit or not, they know
• Competencies define how you expect the new hire to operate in the fulfillment and the job and achievement of outcomes
• Critical competencies for A players: efficiency - able to produce significant output with minimal effort; honesty - doesn’t cut corners, speaks plainly; focused - focuses on key priorities; proactive - takes initiative and is unafraid to respectfully raise issues or problems; scale-oriented - constantly thinks with 10x in mind; architecture - writes, clean, DRY, easy to use code; intelligent - lives to learn; and learns quickly; flexibility; teamwork; egoless; data-driven; creative; etc (these should really match YOUR needs)
• Competencies should be crafted around the job itself as well as cultural values of your company
• Identify 5-8 competencies for culture, and then as many as reasonable for the job itself to put on the scorecard
• Scorecards can borrow a ton from OKR-thinking (outcomes)!
• Scorecards should exist for all new roles (and existing ones — codify your role and help with annual reviews, purpose, etc)

Part 3: Sourcing A-Players

• Best place to source a players is from your personal an professional networks
• “Who is the most talented person/people you know [for X job] that I should hire?” ask this often, ask it in response to people asking you “what do you do?”
• ^ use answers to this question to build your own source list of people
• Internally asking this question is a great starting point - who knows what you need more than the A players you already have?
• Deputize people external/internal to go on the A search for you; can offer cash rewards or other monetary incentives
• Bring outside recruiters inside so they can better understand what you need
• Sourcing systems: spreadsheets, index cards, and dedicating time (30 mins a week) to nurturing, calling, prioritizing, and updating your the leads
• Example calls: “X recommended I talk to you. We are looking for great Y talent and I’d love the chance to know you and learn about your career interests”
• If you get external recruiters take time to make sure your on the same page, go over your scorecards and hold them accountable to the items on it (make sure the grade leads based on it)
• Action item: create a list of the 10 most talented people you know and start asking the questions!

Part 4: Select: The Four Interviews for Spotting A-Players

• 4 part interview
  • the screening interview
  • The top-grading interview
  • The focused interview
  • The reference-check interview

The Screening Interview

• “Im going to spend the first 20 minutes asking some questions and getting to know you, after that you can spend the next 10-20 minutes asking me questions to get to know us. How’s that sound?”
• 4 key questions: (1) what are your career goals (2) what are you really good at professionally (3) what are you not so good at or not interested in professionally (4) who were your last 5 bosses and how would they rate you on a 1-10 scale
• What are your career goals? This tells you alignment and helps you weed out people that ultimately don’t want to do something like the job your hiring
• What are you good at? Have them to tell you 8-12 examples; if they say decisive, then ask them to give you examples that reflect that
• What are you not good at? This is more revealing than “your weaknesses”; push them for a real weakness, if you don’t feel like you’re getting one tell them in the next stage of interview we’d reach out to your references what might they tell us a weakness is?
• Who were your last 5 bosses and how would they rate you on a 1-10 scale? Here, candidates don’t feel like they can lie if they think you’re going to call the references in next stage; weed out anything 6 and below; 7 is neutral; look for 8 and above
• Check all answers against your scorecard
• Use the “what? How? And tell me more?” (Getting curious method) to learn more about answers; many more variations of these questions
• If you don’t like the answers you are hearing you can shorten the screen
• Screen aggressively and hit “next” quickly — don’t want to waste resources on bad fits

The Top-Grading Interview

• top-grading interview: data-focused and observes patterns of behavior
• Ask these questions for each of the jobs listed (max 3?):
  • What were you hired to do? Hopefully reveals their “scorecard” from previous job
  • What were you most proud of? You’ll get the real stories versus possibly embellished resume line items; these stories should correlate to outcomes/results
  • What were some low points during the job? Keep pushing until you hear the lows, people can be hesitant to share
  • Who were the people you worked with? Specifically your boss? What was their name and how do spell that? What was it like working with them? What would they say were your strengths and weaknesses?
  • How would you rate the team you inherited on an A,B,C scale?
  • What changes did you make? Did you hire anybody? Fire anybody? How would you rate the team when you left it on an A,B,C scale?
  • Why did you leave that job?
• ^ split persons career into chapters and ask these questions chronologically; for big positions like CEO this could take a few hours, for other smaller positions, maybe 90 minutes
• Do this kind of interview with 2 people, one can take notes whole the other asks questions
• 5 rules to help make this kind of interview flow well:
  • you’ll have to interrupt, but do so politely
  • Measure their performance against the three P’s (performance versus last years? Performance versus the plan? Performance versus your peers?)
  • Push vs pull (people who are good are usually pulled to new roles, not pushed from existing ones)
  • Painting the story, if you can do that, then you’ve learned their story well
  • Stopping at the stop signs; when people look squirmy or indirect with their answer, that is a time to stop and ask questions

The Focused Interview

• this is your “odds increasing” interviews
• Split the outcomes and competencies up into groups and have people interview over 2-3 of them each; interviews lasting about 45 mins
• Things to consider
  • Write out the goals of these interviews - the purpose of this interview is to key-in on these kinds of outcomes and competencies, we want to be certain the candidate has these
  • What are your biggest accomplishments in this area during your career
  • What are your insights into your biggest mistakes and lessons learned in this area

The Interview day

• this assumes you do the top-grading interview and focused interview(s) on the same day
• schedule:
  • quick sync with interview team to double-check candidate scorecard, resume, and team’s responsibilities
  • someone from team greets the interviewee, makes a few intros, goes over the schedule
  • top-grading interview is conducted with two folks
  • lunch (causal, and can continue asking questions if stretched for time)
  • focused interviews w/ breaks if needed
  • final person tells candidate next steps, and sees them off
  • interview team syncs again and decides whether to continue to the reference checking or terminate the process

The Reference-Checking Interview

• pick the right references, pick the bosses and peers
• personally do about 4 and then have colleagues to do about 3
• questions to ask:
  • what context did you work with the person?
  • biggest strengths? get curious and ask for multiple examples
  • biggest areas for improvement back then? get curious and ask for multiple examples
  • how would you measure their performance on a 1-10 scale?
  • why did you give that rating?
  • the person mentioned that they struggled with X in this job, can you tell me more about that?
• best way to learn about a manager/CEO is to talk to their subordinates (not their bosses or other execs)
  • you may have to get permission to do this — either way, don’t always assume the provided references are the best ones to ask
• it is really important to “read between the lines”; pay very close attention to what/how people say things (b/c people typically don’t want to give bad feedback); look out for “uhms, errs, carefully chosen words, lukewarm responses”
• a truly positive ref check will be fully of enthusiasm and admiration

Decide Who To Hire

• skill/will profile
  • does the candidates abilities support them being able to achieve the outcomes on the scorecard with 90% assurance? grade A-C
  • does the data acquired support the candidate possessing the competencies listed on the scorecard with 90% assurance? grade A-C
  • ^ do this for each outcome and competency
• red flags (should explore these more)
  • exaggeration of skills
  • taking credit for others work
  • candidate is more interested in compensation and benefits than the job
  • non-growth mindset
  • Self absorbed
  • If hiring a manager and the person has never fired or hired before
  • doesn’t mention the weaknesses
  • Winners don’t blame others, they take ownership over their problems
• deciding process
  • Take out scorecard for all candidates, make sure they all graded and assign a final grade for each
  • If you don’t have any A’s then start back at sourcing
  • If you have an A, then you have your person
  • If you have multiple As then rank order them and pick the best
  • Now you have to get that person to join the team!

Part 5: Sell: Sealing the Deal

• sell fit, family, freedom, fortune, fun; be genuine
• fit shows/sells the candidate on your vision for how they’ll make the company better and help achieve your and their goals
• family appeals to the candidates family/spousal situation, relocation, and other needs; make the family feel great about this change and you’ll have a better chance of getting the candidate (especially in US)
• freedom should stress that the candidate can spread their wings within the organization; build confidence, trust, transparency — encourage the candidate to do reference checks on you
• fortune should optimally not be the focus; but it important to relay the financial successes of the company, it’s trajectory, and any up-sells on the value of working within your org for career growth
• fun can focus on aligning really well with their professional interests as well as specific benefits
• You should be selling the 5 F’s throughout the entire process and even after the hire
• Don’t be silent after the offer, assume they are entertaining other offers
• Ensure you have a STRONG on-boarding program so that you can retain the great A players you worked so hard to get
• Listen, listen, listen, and be persistent

Summarizing: Part 1

• get people/talent wrong and you’ll have big problems
• are we going to use the A method or just talk about it? to buy-in we actually need to start writing scorecards and repeat “we’re going to win because we have the best people, we have A-players!”
• be fair; evaluate people based on the scorecard, not on things unrelated like marital status or race

Summarizing: Part 2

• the best CEOs are “cheetahs”, they attack persistently, are gritty, and are fast and focused
• what propelled you to a new role, probably won’t be the same to get you to the next role; your own scorecard changes and you’ll have to adapt to improve
• think of the best person you work with, now thing of the second best person you work with, what would happen if they weren’t at your company anymore? what would happen if you have 10 more folks just like them? that is how you should think about hiring and talent management