Expedition to Better Management

Find the Right Person in 6 Steps

The market has changed, but smart hiring strategies are timeless.
By Burton Goldfield

Hiring is more of a headache than ever, so say many companies who receive HR services from my firm. This might come as a surprise considering that there’s no longer an overheated talent market in which companies desperately compete for top talent. But instead, business owners are facing a down economy in which scores of job seekers clamber over each other in order to land scarce positions. The influx of new candidates into the marketplace makes it even more difficult for executives and hiring managers to find the perfect people for open, high-impact positions.

And yet, hiring the right person is more important than ever. A single bad hire can cost between $60,000 and $120,000--that’s not exactly the way you want to spend precious dollars in a difficult market.

For the most part, the way to make the right hire is the same as it’s always been:

Define the requirements carefully. This sounds ridiculously easy, but it’s amazing how many business owners will embark on a search without determining exactly whom they want to hire. It’s important to detail the specific job requirements and desired personal characteristics, creating a “hiring scorecard” that can be used in screenings and interviews to determine if a candidate can fulfill the requirements of the job. Needless to say, it’s also critical to determine if the candidate will be a cultural fit as well.
Look for repeated patterns of success. Don’t just look for tactical job responsibilities and skills--find the applicants who have repeatedly made a mark and exceeded expectations, time and time again. Drill down in the interview to ask those questions; find out how they measure their own success and whether their employment history tells a story of a superstar.
It’s the network. With so many resumes flooding in for each open position, you should rely on inbound candidates even less than you ever have. Your friends and their friends know the fantastic players who are searching for their next opportunity; tap into them and save yourself a lot of paper time.
Find a recruiting platform that allows for pre-screening. When you do need to wade through resumes, use a recruiting system with pre-screening questions and candidate rating capabilities. This allows you to focus on the exact capabilities you need and only review the candidates who have passed the initial screening, saving yourself massive amounts of time.
It’s still about the passive seekers. I personally recently hired a VP of Marketing for my company, but when I first came across him, he was already installed at another company. I courted him for months, persuaded him and eventually he came to work for me. In essence, I treated this executive search as though it was occurring during a gangbusters economy where talent is scarce. The reality is, the truly premium talent is still scarce, and always will be. If your bar for talent is as obscenely high as mine, passive seekers can make or break your search.
Don’t settle. Almost every tip I’ve provided works in both a good and lousy economy. But let’s be honest: When the good times roll, it’s easier to find someone and say “good enough.” But in a down economy, you should never do this. Take the time you need to find the right candidate, either active or passive, and make the right hire.
There’s no question this is a great time to hire people. But don’t make the mistake of thinking it’ll be easier. The exceptional hires are out there, but just as in the old days, you may need to do some detective work and actively seek out the people who will make your company great.

Burton M. Goldfield currently serves as president and chief executive officer of TriNet, an HR outsourcing company. In this role, Goldfield is responsible for setting TriNet’s overall corporate strategy and directing business operations; he also provides strategic guidance in regards to TriNet’s human capital offerings.

How to Get Fired with Dignity

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter

John Thain's resolute face popped off the front page of the Wall Street Journal recently. Fired from his post at the helm of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America, he now "fires back," the headline screamed. The Murdoch-era WSJ likes a good gun fight.

Fired, fire back, and fire again. I imagine that Thain, whom I met in Davos when he was still heading the New York Stock Exchange, has been seething ever since the short meeting a few months ago in which BofA CEO Ken Lewis asked him to resign. At first, WSJ reporter Susanne Craig writes, he was stoic, remaining silent. Now he is railing against being made a scapegoat, as he claims, for distributing billions of dollars in bonus money to Merrill executives, despite heavy losses, before the closing of BofA's takeover. Now he says that he was completely transparent about the losses and that paying the bonuses was part of the merger agreement.

But telling his side of the story many months later will not dampen the controversy surrounding him. To mix metaphors, he has moved out of the frying pan into the fire. The story is back in the public eye, and accusations of "he said/he said" are fanning the flames for another set of news cycles. Lewis or BofA executives won't leave the attacks unanswered, because their reputations are at stake, too. And Thain is back in the news without any new good news about a new accomplishment (except that he left Merrill in good shape, which is pretty good in this economy).

Who is right matters less than the fact that Thain has lost dignity and respect. A talented executive and, apparently, a good leader, Thain has been so tainted by a mess that gets messier that his prospects for further public leadership have diminished.

There's a lesson in this for anyone who is being fired for any reason in today's layoff-prone economy: Don't let this happen to you! Try to die with dignity (career-wise), because you will be resuscitated and rehabilitated faster if you do. Some principles:

Try to leave on good terms, even if it is means swallowing hard. If you can, leave doors open a crack. Make your public statements positive, to show that you always had the company's or organization's interests at heart. Reminisce about the good times rather than lashing out about feelings of unfair treatment.

If you are attacked for alleged misdeeds and there's another side to the story, get it out fast. Don't let it drag on. As John Kerry learned to his dismay (and loss of the 2004 presidential election), if you don't fight back when first attacked (e.g., the Swift Boat Veterans against Kerry), later defenses seem weak, and the controversy stays alive a lot longer. Having observed this, Barack Obama's campaign countered attacks at Internet speed, and negative publicity faded quickly.

Admit mistakes immediately and show that you have learned from them. Taking personal responsibility rather than blaming others can be disarming (back to those gun fight images again). You can always say that "if I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't have done it," whatever the "it" is.

Let your newest good accomplishments speak for themselves. To avoid bad stories about the past, create new stories. For example, if Thain had started a smart new anti-poverty program since leaving Merrill and Bank of America, he might be in the news for other reasons than executive bonuses.

Avoid burning bridges. I doubt that Thain will write a revenge book, the way Carly Fiorina did after being fired from Hewlett-Packard. But he made public accusations of mistreatment. The financial world is a small club, where people move from company to company, sit on the same Boards, and support the same charities. That's true in many sectors. The people you trashed when leaving in anger could pop up at the next company with job openings.

Of course, it's hard to get fired with dignity if those firing do it indiscriminately and painfully. And the fire-er can suffer along with the fire-ee, because other top people see the risks and flee the scene, draining talent and motivation. In the Thain/Lewis fight, Bank of America lost good Merrill people, and BofA took on a taint itself. Pulling out the big guns leaves casualties on all sides.

I want to aplogize

By Peter Bregman

Why Should You Apologize?
One of the clearest ways President Obama has set himself apart from his predecessor is by demonstrating his willingness to apologize. He has apologized for using inappropriate language, making jokes in poor taste and even acting arrogantly toward Europe in the past few years.
What exactly is Obama doing? He is disarming his opponents and paving the path for reconciliation. Next time you are ready to defend your actions and play your part in a knockdown fight, consider apologizing first. Demonstrate empathy, concern, and willingness to change.
Ultimately, apologizing is not an admission of defeat but a humane gesture that can keep you out of a fight.

I was backing out of a space in a mall parking lot in New Jersey when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement and instinctively slammed on my brakes. Another car sped by, missing me by inches.

I was instantly furious. I pulled out fast to chase the other car, leaning on my horn and flashing my lights. Finally, the car stopped and I pulled up right behind him, still honking. We both got out of our cars.

"What the hell were you thinking? You almost hit me!" I screamed.

"I didn't see you!" he yelled back.

"Of course you didn't. You were driving way too fast!"

We yelled at each other for a few seconds and then he opened his arms wide and shouted:

"What do you want from me?"

An awkward silence hung between us for a moment. That was actually a great question. What did I want from him?

I knew he shouldn't have been driving recklessly and I was angry enough to drive recklessly behind him to tell him. What I really wanted was impossible; I wanted him not to have done what he did. Well, too late.

So what did I want now? Why was I screaming at him? The brief pause calmed us both down a little.

"I want you to apologize," I told him.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"Thanks," I said feeling strangely better, and we both got back into our cars and drove off without another word.

We have big problems in this country. Wall Street played recklessly with our money. Banks made bad loans. Insurance companies guaranteed stupid risks. People took out unrealistic mortgages and borrowed too much to buy things they couldn't afford. Companies are going out of business and laying off workers. And, the government is bailing people out and billing our kids.

It would be easy (and tempting) to go on. But we have one more, deeper problem that's making all these other problems worse.

No one is apologizing. No one is taking responsibility for what they did to contribute to our problems. They're all blaming someone or something else. We have a kindergartener's problem and it's tearing us apart.

A friend of mine, Paul Rosenfield, was skiing with his six-year-old son Yonah when Yonah fell. It was not a terrible fall, but the binding didn't release and Yonah broke his leg. After an emotionally wrenching day spent in the emergency room tending to his child, Paul went to the shop to return the skis and speak with the owner.

The owner of the shop immediately became defensive. He claimed the bindings were set within the normal acceptable range for Yonah's 40-pound weight (in fact one reading showed the binding set above 60 pounds). He claimed he used a special machine to calibrate the setting, a machine that had been used in several court cases. And he initially resisted Paul's request to see the printout from the machine's test.

Paul went into the shop to have a conversation and he left angry enough to sue.

I asked him what the shop owner could have said that would have given him a different feeling.

"If he had been more concerned with the injury than protecting himself, if he had apologized, if he hadn't tried to cover over the fact that the bindings were too tight, if he hadn't given me a hard time about asking for a copy of the measurement printout, if he hadn't mentioned how many times his machine was used in lawsuits, then I would have left feeling less angry."

We try so hard to protect ourselves from lawsuits that we bring on lawsuits. We forget that we are human beings dealing with other human beings. And what human beings want more than anything is empathy — to be cared for and treated with respect.

By avoiding responsibility, empathy, and apology, the shop owner became a target for all of Paul's anger about the accident.

In a study of medical malpractice lawsuits, the top five reasons people gave for initiating the lawsuit were:

1. So that it would not happen to anyone else
2. I wanted an explanation
3. I wanted the doctors to realize what they had done
4. To get an admission of negligence
5. So that the doctor would know how I felt

And the number one thing the doctor or hospital could have done to prevent the lawsuit? An explanation and apology.

When the University of Michigan Health System experimented with full disclosure, existing claims and lawsuits dropped from 262 in 2001 to 83 in 2007.

Apologies work. Real, heartfelt empathy between one person and another diffuses anger and builds relationships. Defensiveness and resistance to admit mistakes creates anger.

Whatever you think about President Bush, admitting mistakes was not his strong point. If you don't admit mistakes, you can't apologize for them. And if you don't apologize for them, you will generate anger and fighting.

President Obama has shown his ability to apologize for his own mistakes. One of his earliest apologies was during his campaign when he apologized to reporter Peggy Agar for calling her "Sweetie." Most recently he apologized for his joke in poor taste about the Special Olympics on the Jay Leno show.

And now he's apologizing for America's arrogance towards Europe in the past few years. He apologized for being "dismissive, even derisive" towards our allies. For failing "to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world."

And while he chastised Turkey for not coming to terms with their treatment of the Armenians, he admitted "our country still struggles with the legacy of our past treatment of Native Americans." And he reinforced our commitment to do better: "we recently ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed, and prohibited — without exception or equivocation — any use of torture."

President Obama is being criticized by some for apologizing. Because, they say, apologizing will reduce America's standing in the world. I couldn't disagree more. The world needs less anger and more apologies. And President Obama is a great example, a role model, for how we can diffuse anger and repair relationships.

Apologizing is a humane gesture, a way to treat others with respect. And, not for nothing, it might just keep us out of a fight.

Source Harvard Business Blog