David was a terrific sales guy\u2014at least on paper. He did have one or two excellent years in the nine years he had been in sales. He was aggressive and assertive and had a great military background before he began a sales career. He rocked along for nine years but always managed to sabotage the jobs he had, even when he performed well. He managed to go through six jobs in that nine-year period.
\nHis first marriage was tumultuous at best. Six years of marriage was interrupted by two one-year stints of separation. The two drug rehab episodes didn\u2019t help. One was for three months and, a year later, another for six months. Everyone agreed that David was probably a really good salesperson but his personal life had gotten in his way and, some say, his \u201creal self\u201d came out and his performance was mediocre.
\nIt took David and us six months and at least fifteen interviews to get an employer to take a chance on him. He\u2019s been with the firm for seven years now. For four of those years, he was the company\u2019s #1 salesperson. He has been promoted twice in the last three years and is now the #1 regional vice president in the country. Go figure.
\nDavid and the company we placed him with got lucky.
\nThe role of luck in hiring
\nMost managers won\u2019t admit how much of a role luck plays in hiring employees. The world is full of literature that addresses how to eliminate luck in the process of hiring. The best hiring authorities, however, realize that luck plays a huge part in successful hiring. Above all, these managers feel lucky about themselves and their hiring.
\nNo matter how good the interviewing, testing, and reference checking process is, it\u2019s very difficult to fully measure grit, character, integrity, sincerity, commitment, passion, or professionalism, as well as the lack of any of these traits. We might think we\u2019re able to detect some of these qualities in a candidate when they\u2019re interviewing, but there\u2019s no way of realizing their full impact on the person until we actually hire them. How many of us see the people we work with in the same light as we saw them when they interviewed? Interviewing is a staged, contrived event, and in our hearts we know that, at best, it might give us an indication of how the candidate is going to perform
\nThe average hiring process only involves four hours of face-to-face meetings and, at best, an hour or two of testing, paperwork, reference and credit checks, and other tasks. In spite of good intentions, there\u2019s simply no real way of knowing exactly what a potential employee is going to be like. Our files are full of stories of people who have far exceeded the expectations of the people with whom we placed them. We\u2019re also sure that there were many hired with high expectations that turned out to be mediocre. It\u2019s luck.
\nThere\u2019s no way of predicting when even a less than average employee is going to be in the right organization, take on the responsibility of the family, and catch fire out of need to provide for them. Who knows when people find the right environment, are around the right people, discover their talent, find the right mentor, and turn their life around to be rock stars? Who knows when the right teacher\/mentor appears in a person\u2019s life just at the right time and place to help them tap into the latent talent they may possess? Who knows when someone is going to have an epiphany or insight into all of the mistakes they\u2019ve made and take advantage of what they\u2019ve learned? Ask any group of experienced senior managers about their experience along this line and they\u2019ll also recount to you their experiences with people who were going to be their future leaders, stellar new hires who flopped, were fired, or what\u2019s worse, embezzled or cheated. It\u2019s luck.
\nThe best hiring authorities realize that there\u2019s a lot of luck in the hiring process. It\u2019s often their timing and the right timing for the new employee. Most inexperienced managers will talk about their expectations about their new hires before they start work. The best hiring authorities devote a focused, concerted effort in interviewing and hiring and reserve judgment about their decision until they see the new employee perform. They will hope and be quietly optimistic about the potential and future of the new employee . . . until they see performance. They know a large part of it is luck.
\nLucky (and experienced) hiring authorities consider themselves lucky and look for opportunities to get lucky with the people they hire. They have high energy levels and seek candidates with the same energy. They interview a high number of candidates to increase their probability of being lucky. They increase their chances.
\nThe lucky hiring authorities have high expectations for themselves and for those they hire. They expect good things, good people, and a good future. They are realistic about their judgments and always hopeful for the best.
\nThe best hiring authorities also follow their gut. They verify what they feel in their gut about hiring, but don\u2019t hesitate to fix a mistake in hiring by following their gut and firing when they first get the inkling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
David was a terrific sales guy\u2014at least on paper. He […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1,13],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n