How you hire says almost as much about who you hire because it says a lot about who you are as a leader. So not paying attention to our hiring process could mean that we’re not paying attention to our culture and our talent. This could allow a lack of performance in our organization which might be about culture gaps in the organization or it might be a misunderstanding of direction or a lack of accountability, because there’s a lack of measurable goals.
This could also have residual effects that are only noticed downstream. There we look at a situation and thing, “Hey, what’s going on with that. Why isn’t that getting done. Hey, why, why are people treating this seriously? How do we get that culture?” It’s at that point that we look downstream and try to troubleshoot issues there that are really a byproduct that starts in the hiring process.
Now I am not an HR expert. I’ve hired people and I’ve fired people. And if you ask me to explain all the details of the process, I’m going to defer to someone else. But this is a leadership issue, because it goes to how you create a team, how you lead your organization, and what kind of culture you create.
So the question is, “Are you putting people in positions that set them up for success?” If the person you hire is not put in a position that supports their strengths, they don’t really have a chance to succeed. And that’s the fault of the leader.
Too often, an organization hires someone just to fill a spot. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the right person for the right spot, it just matters if that spot is filled. That’s not setting people up for success, that’s simply filling a spot. And when you do that, you create the potential for failure. For the employee. For the company. For you. that again it says as much about you as a leader as it does about them because you’re the one doing them a disservice by putting them in the wrong spot.
As leaders, we really need to think about how we put together our talent practices, our talent acquisition policies because ideally you want to hire the best people. You want to hire them and put them in a role that that they can function and they can succeed in instead of putting them in a misplaced or mismanaged role.
So first, we need to have clarity on the direction and the vision. What players are needed on the team to make that happen. People will follow clarity over certainty and clarity is very important within our leadership. We need to be clear on the direction of our organization, the vision that we have for it and then really what we need and what roles are needed. Then you need to present that to your team so they can understand it. This is really about the “why?”. Why are, why do we want someone to join the organization? Why is that person joining the organization
Second, is the selection process. You need to match the organization’s values to the talent’s values. For example, if the culture and values of the organization is not one the fosters growth, then don’t hire people who who are constantly growing because they will grow faster than your organization will.That will create tension between between the talent and the organization. They’re going to get restless and want to move on.
So you really have to hire the people that match the personnel and match the idea and the values of the company.
And last, is effective onboarding. Within this process, you need to consider 3 things. The first is accountability. Define for the talent you’re bring on how performance evaluations will be done. Make it clear what that will look like and when that will take place. Second, provide them a mentor. Have a mentor working with them to give them training. This ensures that they have experience with someone who has excelled in that role. And the third aspect of effective onboarding is providing feedback. Provide feedback in increments of 30, 60, and 90 days. This helps the person understand where he or she needs to make adjustments to what they are doing and gives them time to make those adjustments. Or the time to learn a new skill.
If you would like more ideas around this topic, listen to David and Christy Geiger talk about this on this edition of the Innovative Leader podcast.
