A Crash Course on Avoiding Hiring Mistakes

In the first minute of our Performance-based Hiring workshop we tell hiring managers that this course is more about becoming a great manager than hiring great people.

In fact, it turns out you can’t be one without the other.

In the second minute we ask hiring managers to list out their worst hiring mistakes. These are the people we call “90-Day Wonders” since after 90 days you wonder why you hired them.

Traits of the "90-Day Wonders"

• Marginal work quality
• Lack team skills
• Soft skills are hard to find
• Unreliable
• Lack of motivation
• Low productivity
• Poor attitude
• Inconsistent performance
• Need too much direction
• Absent too often, aka "Quiet Quitting"
• Not coachable
• Doesn’t fit the culture
• Not competent

Then we ask them what percent of the people they hire aren’t competent to do the work versus everything else on the list. This is usually less than 25% of the time.

Which pretty much suggests that assessing competency to do the work is not the problem, assessing everything else is.

We then ask what percent of  the people who lack motivation to do the work are competent to do it. This is typically about 25%.

We sometimes ask if there is ever a problem with the hiring manager’s leadership style or some unusual company cultural issue like demanding people be in the office full-time or too much corporate politics. This usually gets another 25% vote.

So for our informal pie chart that leaves the remaining 25% of the bad hires due to either lack of soft skills, weak team skills or just being a plain old jerk.

Then I suggest we can solve all of these problems by doing four things.

Stuff to Dump to Avoid "90-Day Wonder" Related Hiring Mistakes

The first is throwing away your skills-laden job descriptions and competency models. The second is stop asking traditional behavioral interview questions since they’re too generic to identify intrinsic motivation. (At this point in the session, most of the HR leaders stand up and get ready to leave. However, they all sit down when we mention step three.)

The third thing is asking the hiring manager this question when opening up a new job description:

Define the Job, Not the Person Doing the Job

What does the person in this role need to accomplish over the course of the first year to be considered an outstanding hire?

This usually results in 5-6 key performance objectives (KPOs) that define the task, some metric of success or deliverable, and some timeframe to complete the task. 

For example, for a materials manager in a company producing home building materials the major task was to improve inventory turns by 20% by leading the implementation of a new ERP system by year-end. The first sub-step in achieving this major goal was to conduct an operational audit of the existing order management system in the first 60 days and identify any potential bottlenecks.

Get Examples of Comparable Accomplishments

Now the fourth thing you need to do is to ask the candidate to describe in detail something they've accomplished that is most comparable for each of the KPOs. It will take about 10-12 minutes of fact-finding to fully understand each different accomplishment by asking about the hiring manager’s role, why the person was assigned the project, some of the team and technical challenges faced, who the person worked with, and any recognition the person received for each accomplishment. (Here’s the complete list of fact-finding probes.)

When you’re done you will have enough information to determine if the person is both competent and motivated to do the actual work you need done given your unique set of circumstances. Just as important, since the candidate was hired to do the actual work you need done, you won’t have any surprises during the onboarding process.

It all starts by clarifying expectations up front - before you interview and hire the person!

It turns out that's the not so secret secret for being a great manager and why Performance-based Hiring is really a course about becoming a great manager. And in learning what it takes to be a great manager, you'll fully understand what it also takes to hire great people.

As promised this is a crash course on avoiding hiring “90-Day Wonders” and achieving more Win-Win Hiring outcomes. For any doubting Thomas’ I suggest you cut and paste this article into ChatGPT and ask for a complete and honest assessment. You’ll be shocked at its response.

Lou Adler is the CEO and founder of Performance-based Hiring Learning Systems – a consulting and training firm helping recruiters and hiring managers around the world hire more outstanding and diverse leaders. Lou is the author of the Amazon top-10 best-seller, Hire With Your Head (John Wiley & Sons, 4th Edition, 2021), The Essential Guide for Hiring & Getting Hired (Workbench Media, 2013) and LinkedIn Learning’s Performance-based Hiring video training programs (2016-2023). Be sure to sign up for his "Moneyball for HR!" webinar programs to learn to use data analytics to drive change.