The Randal Osché Podcast: Business Bites | Episode 5
Join us on this episode of Business Bites as Chris Taplin and I explore the essentials of effective hiring practices and talent assessment. We discuss why competencies often outweigh experience and examine the pros and cons of various recruitment techniques. Learn about the importance of continuously prospecting for potential hires, even without immediate openings.
What You'll Learn:
Balancing Skills and Potential: Discover strategies to strike the right balance between current competencies and future potential in candidates.
Intuition vs. Structure in Hiring: Understand the significant role of intuition in the hiring process and how it can be effectively paired with structured evaluation methods to make superior hiring decisions.
Finding the Right Fit: Explore how to identify the ideal candidate for your team and how a comprehensive recruitment strategy impacts long-term business success.
Don’t miss this episode to uncover strategies that will enhance your hiring approach and help you build a stronger, more capable team. Tune in as we share practical tips and real-world examples that can transform your recruitment process and drive your business forward.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube, Podcast Index, Podcasts Addict, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.
SHOW NOTES
Questions this conversation has Randall Pondering
What strategies do you find most effective for identifying the right fit for your team?
What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments!
And that's it for today's conversation here on the Randall Osché podcast. Thank you so much for joining us and we hope that you've enjoyed listening as much as we've enjoyed recording it.
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Business Bites Episode 5
[00:00:00] Randall: This episode of business bites with Chris Taplin and myself, Randall Osché, we're going to be covering effective hiring practices and how to assess talent.
[00:00:10] Randall: So, Chris, in your years of experience and leadership what are some effective hiring practices that you have done or perhaps been a part of from the other end of that equation and, or some of the things that you do to assess talent or consider talent to hire talent?
[00:00:29] Chris: Yeah. So from a recruiting point of view, you know, I have done everything from recruited extremely quickly based upon gut instinct and some knowledge of the person, maybe not. And I thought my statistics of success were quite high, you see, using a very small interview technique. And that was when I was working for a company that was so small, it was a startup, no one had ever heard of us.
[00:00:52] Chris: And half the interview is me selling the company to them. To get them to leave somewhere nice and stable and coming to somewhere that's a bit different from that. So, as a recruitment technique, though, statistics showed that it was a good move. And some of these people have gone on to some brilliant things, but I sort of hold more stead on competencies and capabilities than I do on experience.
[00:01:15] Chris: And certainly when I try and get very clear definitions about what those competencies should look like, I then try my hardest through a recruitment process to find out how people are in those competencies. So if it's a great team worker or something, I'm trying to find in the questions that they show what they understand by teamwork and how they behave and so forth.
[00:01:38] Chris: So I try to not look at how many years X company or Y company, but much more do competency based assessment. But yeah, I still use my intuition as well, which is not so good.
[00:01:51] Randall: I would like to get into that intuition a little bit more, but I would agree with you. Experience does not equal competency. I think that there's a significant misconception in the marketplace that I've been doing X job for 10 years is that I'm good at doing X jobs. No, it only means one thing. It only means that you've been doing the job. Doesn't mean you're good at the job.
[00:02:11] Randall: Doesn't mean you're exceptional at the job. You could hire somebody that is more competent or hungrier has a different skillset and they can go further in one year than that individual had gone in that career and the progress they made in 10 years. I think for, you know, leaders, hiring managers out there, I would just be cautious about thinking that experience does equal competency because in my experience, experience doesn't equal competency.
[00:02:38] Randall: And to Chris's point, there's, assessing what they're competent at and then, does that fit the role that you're hiring for or doesn't it fit the role that you're hiring for? But let's talk about the, actual hiring process. So I know that in the market today, especially in the technology field, that the hiring practices, because the job market's tight, have Gotten increasingly cumbersome, and there's a four step process, a seven step process, you have to interview with 10 people and eight of those people you're not going to work with on a daily basis, et cetera.
[00:03:17] Randall: So that's sort of on one end of the spectrum. And then the other end of the spectrum, perhaps is. Maybe, hiring with your intuition and being like, yeah, this person checks out, they pass the vibe check to an extent. So, where you land on that, what one would you lean on more or what one might you think is more effective or at least effective?
[00:03:38] Chris: Yes, the curse of Zoom or any of these things now is that people want or can, for not a lot of effort on their side, include more and more people in a decision. And before you might go through an interview, maybe with HR, maybe with your hiring manager, and then maybe a panel or something. Now my experience has been up to 10 or 11 interviews, different people peers and other influencers, it's great if you join the company because you've met a lot of people already but it's pretty hard and I think, for every single person to like you and every single one to put the thumbs up is not likely and so that casts some doubts or whatever in maybe the hiring manager.
[00:04:20] Chris: And to be honest, I think it's close to cowardice to not take a strength, what you think that's the right person, you recruit that person, try and delegate it to a cast of hundreds, so that there's like a vote for the most popular person or something. The person who gave the most concise answer to any question these people thought up.
[00:04:45] Chris: So if you are using a panel, make sure they've all got different areas supposed to focus on and quiz into and have as their job. But show some strength. If you think someone's the right person and hire them. Not just spread it out.
[00:04:58] Randall: Yeah, I would agree. I think leveraging panels or leveraging the cumbersome process is shirking the responsibility of the hiring manager, right? This is my opinion, but what does everybody else think? And you let that maybe guide your, thinking. Again, I would agree cowardice it should be your responsibility, you're the hiring individual.
[00:05:19] Randall: Make the decision. I think leveraging people's opinions, right? I pressure check me, right? Maybe I'm seeing something that you're not. But at the end of the day, if I have to fill 10 spots, it's my responsibility to find 10 competent people and my responsibility alone to say yes on that.
[00:05:35] Randall: But I also think they do it as an insurance policy, well. I wanted to hire X, Y, Z person, everybody else said to hire this person, that could go both ways. Exactly.
[00:05:44] Chris: It also take a long time that the best candidates have gone. You know, it is still that reality.
[00:05:49] Chris: I'm hoping things will flip a bit more. Some people will have to be a bit faster. But the best people either don't want to jump through all those hoops and they want to stay where they are, or they'll be snapped up by somebody who's got a better, efficient process with where they've been they back their decisions.
[00:06:05] Randall: That's another good point is the best people are probably happy where they're at and doing a great job of where they're at. How do you find the best people and get them to come work for you?
[00:06:22] Chris: Yeah, force of personality One of the things that I've always encouraged anyone who worked for me in management role was to always be prospecting, always be meeting people, even if you haven't got approval for a headcount, and in that way you get to know people when they're not, actually looking, you're not actually hurrying along, but you've build up some sort of understanding, rapport, trust, maybe.
[00:06:46] Chris: And I think, although they might be excited about the company, they're also, excited about working for you is a good move, really.
[00:06:53] Randall: I would agree. I think a lot of organizations rely on people coming to them. And then not going to people and then, they want to know why there's nobody coming in the door or they don't have qualified candidates is like, as a leader of people or, you know, a manager at an organization, if you want to drive, the initiatives of the organization, if you want to have a more effective and efficient way to operate and you need more people to do that, go find the people, right?
[00:07:22] Randall: Don't just say oh, there's a wreck online. Go, go, go do this. But who's doing the job now, but doing it somewhere else? Go find them and convince them. You know, people want to be wanted. And you could network with the right person on the right day and their current supervisor just happened to piss them off.
[00:07:40] Randall: Yeah, and boom, there you go. You get an impact player.
[00:07:43] Chris: You can't rely on recruiters They are usually, internal recruiters are usually very, very busy with open headcount where they've got, there's a budget and everything else agreed. So you need to be meeting people.
[00:07:54] Chris: The best person I ever saw do that was a guy called Leonel and he was based in Paris and pretty much every lunchtime he was meeting somebody. In France, so many businesses are only in Paris or only, you know, you know, very, very close. So you potentially have, a lot of your competitors and a lot of people you can reach out to and just meet them for lunch.
[00:08:13] Chris: And he did it. And so anytime he had somebody saying they're going to leave, there is always a decision you have to make as to whether to make a counter offer to keep that person. But it makes massive difference if you already have in the back of your mind, some people who could join. And therefore you can make a decision that it's not like desperation, knowing that it's going to be three or four months to fill it.
[00:08:34] Chris: So whenever he came to me and said, bad news, X is leaving, but don't worry, I have Y who's ready to join at a moment's notice, it made me think that he was one of the best best in the game at that.
[00:08:45] Randall: I like that. There's a, never eat lunch alone. I think that goes a long way for a lot of things.
[00:08:51] Randall: Not only for trying to hire talent, right. And having a log of people that you can go to, but even opportunities for yourself. That you never know what's going to happen at the organization that you're at. Maybe you're going to be looking for a new opportunity. Because you haven't been eating lunch alone.
[00:09:08] Randall: Now you have this network of folks that you can leverage.
[00:09:11] Randall: One of the things that I think about is, in the hiring process is actually knowing what you're hiring for. What are the skills, traits and characteristics that I need for the person to have to be successful in this role?
[00:09:27] Randall: And I think when an organization or a leader understands, has a clear idea of what that looks like to them, they can approach finding the right people a lot more effectively. then having a loose understanding of what they're trying to find. What are your thoughts on that? Well, yeah, on
[00:09:46] Chris: top of that, to me, we do often use internal recruiters to go and do the first troll or somebody is going to go out.
[00:09:51] Chris: And so if you haven't got it clear in your mind and you therefore kind of articulate those things to somebody else, and you will be very frustrated with the quality of the people that come to the door. I think thatyou can do a lot, really, to define it from, including the target backgrounds, experience target kind of companies they'll be working for, the roles they'll be doing, you can make it as sort of informational, full of information as possible but I think you are giving yourself a problem if you don't keep things as wide as possible, because there is creative out of left of field recruits that can be fantastic.
[00:10:30] Chris: But at least, obviouslyyou've got to think about what is needed for now and for the future. Where is the company going? What are the skill sets that be needed For the future, how influential with the recruitment person be to change others. And I have always been in a situation, I do a lot of consulting work where there is a kind of need to change a strategy change or acquisitions have happened or whatever it is.
[00:10:52] Chris: And selective recruitment of those people will influence everybody else. If you are trying to tell people to change, if you can bring in an example. of somebody who is doing the things that you're trying to get everybody else to move to. It's so much more effective than you just telling them to improve.
[00:11:08] Chris: So selective recruitment of somebody who's going to show the way.
[00:11:11] Randall: I like that. This other question just came to mind of, What are your thoughts on current competency versus future potential?
[00:11:21] Chris: Current competencies? I mean, I think there weren't some of the competencies are trainable, so you can coach them.
[00:11:27] Chris: Some of them you need to find them in the recruitment process because there's some things that can be improved. One of the ones I would say I struggle to know what to do with is the two areas of agility and attitude. So some people can't juggle lots of balls at the same time.
[00:11:42] Chris: They can't work out priorities. They can't sort of manage to be moving several things along at the same time. And I'm not too sure how to teach them. I mean, there's time management courses, but I'm not too sure on those ones. And attitude, generally, if you want someone with positive attitudes, a change agent, somebody who will grab things and say, okay, this is a learning opportunity versus those that you have to cajole and, swayed and wait for them to say no 10 times before they agree to do something is I don't know how can you improve that in somebody, you just have to make sure you recruit people from the very start with a positive attitude.
[00:12:17] Chris: And then how do you weigh sort of where they're at now with those skills versus where you think that they can go like Upside right? Yes, they're tough to do those two. I've talked about other ones different because you can measure them. Teamwork can be turned into a sort of definition that you always share the best things that you've done, the best practices where you can say, well, how many times have you uploaded the best presentation you've given to a shared drive for others to use, how many times have you volunteered to present to other people about something that worked really wellyou can measure contributions you can say senior people should, for teamwork, it means that they are coaching, supporting junior colleagues.
[00:12:59] Chris: And you can say, well, how many people have you done? So there are things you can measure. Sometimes the rest of it's subjective.
[00:13:04] Randall: I think oftentimes was over weighted in hiring processes. Is past successes versus the potential somebody has. I think a lot of times it's looked at like, what have you accomplished, but not but not how far you've come there.
[00:13:22] Randall: Adam Grant talks about this in his book. We'll put the title in the show notes because I forget it. It came out relatively recently and he talks about how people are measured with where they're at, but not how far they've come.
[00:13:35] Randall: And if you measure how far somebody has come, that's an indication of their future potential. But if you're just measuring where somebody's at, they could have been born on third base, their first job could have been like that executive job versus the person who had not been born on third and has been able to propel themselves in their career.
[00:13:56] Randall: Again, not saying one person is better than the other. However, in this instance, talking about potential. The one that has come further is a better indicator of their future potential and therefore an indicator of the impact that they could have at the organization. So I'm cognizant of assessing how far somebody has come, not just with where they're at in their,professional career.
[00:14:20] Randall: Yeah,
[00:14:21] Chris: that makes, a lot of sense. And, that's really rare. I think people think in that way at all. The only angle that I was thinking of was sales. Salespeople who've been very successful might not be as successful next time. I've seen that a lot. And it could be circumstances. It could be the people that are around them.
[00:14:36] Chris: And it could be the moment in time where the product took off and you just happened to be there. The moment then the big customer wanted to spend a lot of money. Or it could be that they have lost their edge because They've got no big mortgage or big outgoings and, you know, they've, they've secured their fund, the funds that will support them for the rest of their life but that's different from what you're saying.
[00:14:56] Chris: I get it. I'm just thinking on the lines of, again, a different angle on the same question, which is, you know, where they are now. Doesn't show potential.
[00:15:04] Randall: The other thing I think you said, we'll maybe dive into this on a future episode, that the assessing of potential based on how far somebody has come, that's not looked at.
[00:15:14] Randall: I would agree. I don't think that's looked at very often, but I think that's also a great indicator of the potential somebody has. I don't know why people don't. I would love to, understand that.
[00:15:26] Randall: We're gonna put a pin in that for later. But the thing that you just referenced, is something I think a lot of people don't think of either.
[00:15:34] Randall: And this is either for say anybody, right? Was it luck or was it talent? And I think a lot of peopleand oftentimes it's both, but I think a lot of times people have an understanding that their success that they've had in their career was because they've been talented.
[00:15:52] Randall: And not lucky, but like you said, in assessing talent, the person was just at the right company at the right time with the right product. That's a little bit of luck. You could have had the same person who is more qualified and talented, but wrong company, wrong time, wrong product.
[00:16:08] Randall: And they're not going to be able to have a resume to say, I crushed these sales numbers. You know, so I think it's important from say like an employee perspective. Am I having the success? We're not having the success because I'm lucky or talented. And as say like an organization or a leader at an organization, am I doing a good job because I'm skilled and talented or do I just happen to be a little bit lucky as well?
[00:16:33] Randall: And I think it takes both.
[00:16:35] Chris: Yes, I think that's the world that we're in, especially. But I've spent most of my career in the software world. There's plenty of money to invest in good ideas. 1 in 10, 1 in 100 becomes super successful. Some get so far, some get acquired and merged, but a lot just disappear off.
[00:16:53] Chris: And I wonder about lots of the factors and having been involved with the startup myself, which had a super great idea that still is a good idea and still valid now you know, was it this? Was it that? But it certainly is a lot of things out of your control when you join a company and you can be the best person in the world in it, but there's a whole lot of other things you can't control, or not even influence that can be going on.
[00:17:17] Chris: And so you can look at your career and go, I've been a success or not. I guess you can measure it in money terms, or you can measure it in terms of enjoyment and all those other things as well.
[00:17:26] Randall: Yeah, I think that gets into a whole other, area of how do you define success. Yeah. For an individual or an organization, right?
[00:17:33] Randall: To wrap this up, I'm going to try to kind of recap a few things off the top of my head. Yeah. Effective hiring practices and assessing talent that you would want to have come work for you. Define clear job description. What are you hiring for? What do you need? So you can identify the candidates
[00:17:49] Randall: for now and for the future. Sourcing candidates, right? Who do you have in your pipeline? Well, I guess sourcing would be making sure that you are doing the activity to get people in your pipeline. The third thing is, having a short list of those people handy. And then my addition to this would be are you hiring, what's the person's competency versus their future potential?
[00:18:12] Randall: I would be inclined to hire somebody with a higher upside than maybe what their career dictates to what they've accomplished so far. Any final thoughts?
[00:18:22] Chris: Yeah. I just take some decision about the candidate, don't spread the decision across as many colleagues as you possibly can.
[00:18:29] Chris: You're never going to get consensus or you're never going to get outright, a hundred percent agreement on what you're doing. It probably gives you more doubt than help, really.
[00:18:39] Randall: I would add have a refined effective and efficient hiring process with the appropriate parties involved and appropriate can be defined however you want to define it.
[00:18:49] Randall: But it shouldn't have to be an 18 step process to get talent in the door. And if you're doing that, maybe you're not finding the best talent because they wouldn't want to necessarily opt in for an arduous process like that.
[00:19:02] Chris: Thank you.
[00:19:03] Randall: Thank you, Chris.
[00:19:04] Randall: This is another episode of Business Bites.
[00:19:05] Randall: Hope you enjoyed it. Looking forward to bringing you more content of the same.
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