Too many hiring processes start off in the wrong direction. A role opens up, someone drafts a job description and it gets posted. The first thing you know, resumes come pouring in and its game on. Where the process begins hitting the guard rails is when the hiring manager realizes that the job description and a success profile are really not the same thing.
A job description works well to define what the role requires, but a success profile tells everyone involved what winning actually looks like. The first is an input to the hiring process, while the other is the foundation it should be built upon. Overlooking that success profile and going straight to the job description would be like laying flooring down before the subfloor is in. It may look good on the surface, but it’s definitely not going to hold up. So, what does a real successful profile look like?
It can start with a simple question: when you look out 12 months from now, what has this person accomplished that makes you feel good about making the right higher? This isn’t about the activities completed, problems solved, or how many meetings they attended. And it’s certainly not about time and attendance. What did they actually do to impact the business in a profitable and meaningful way. Most leaders will find that question harder to answer than perhaps they expected, but that’s the point. Here’s a thought – if you can’t answer this question clearly before you begin the search, how will you properly evaluate the candidates during the interview process?
Here’s a thought – if you can’t answer this question clearly before you begin the search,
how will you properly evaluate the candidates during the interview process?
Don’t be vague. The profile should be specific enough to be useful for both the company and the candidate. Think about how SMART goals are created, and use similar thinking. You may want to use language that sounds like: closes six new accounts in the first year with an average order size above a certain $XX threshold, or rebuild the estimating workflow so turnaround time drops by 30% within nine months. They need to be specific enough to help ensure success for both the candidate and the company.
Keep these realistic – stay away from pie in the sky dreams. Everyone needs to be honest about the environment that the person will be walking into. For example, someone who does well in a structured and process driven organization may struggle in one where they’ll need to build a process from scratch. That’s not a flaw or a problem with the candidate, as much as it’s job match flaw. It’s a miss that a clear success profile may have identified before the offer was made. After all, fair is fair.
Once you’ve developed that success profile, everyone needs to be aligned with it throughout the process. That includes the hiring manager, and anyone who is part of the Interview process that has meaningful input into the decision. When you miss on that alignment, the hiring process becomes much more subjective than it should be. Without that shared success profile, there’s no common ground to evaluate the candidates, and a decision ends up being made on instinct, politics, or popularity rather than alignment to the overall success goal.
Getting that alignment right from the beginning will help the hiring company set itself up to succeed. During the process of articulating what success looks like, it could reveal that the job as we know it won’t deliver what the business really needs. Again, all things that are helpful to discover before you make that offer.
Don’t let the success profile disappear once the offer is accepted. Just like the third-party candidate profiles that are often used, I recommend that they continue to be used and become a basis for onboarding, the 90-day check-in, and the ongoing dialogue between the leader and the person in that role. It’s also helpful to refer back to this when performance questions come up later on, and they will. The success profile is what makes that conversation grounded rather than personal.
Face it, hiring the right people is difficult, and it’s not getting any easier. The cost of a wrong hire in a printing operation goes well beyond salary. There’s loss of productivity, disruption, client impact, and the time and cost of starting the search over. Most of that risk doesn’t come from choosing the wrong candidate for the job, it comes from never clearly defining what success looks like in the first place.
Define success first and everything else will get easier from there.
Mike Philie helps owners and CEOs in the Graphic communications industry validate what’s working, identify what needs to change, and create a practical path forward.
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