Hiring The Best

You can't eliminate mistakes in hiring, but you can work to improve the odds

To hear a lot of managers talk about it, they might as well be rolling dice. Like it or not, they say, hiring is one of those areas where you cross your fingers and hope for the best. The person sitting across the table seems like a great candidate. Bright, eager, well-spoken. Your gut says, go for it. But how do you know it's a good decision? The truth is, you don't -- which is why hiring good people is one of the trickier parts of any manager's job.

Not only do you have a myriad of factors to consider -- experience and compatability, to pick two big ones -- but each is so hard to gauge. Your goal is to learn as much as you can about the applicants. But their goal is to impress you, which, if they're smart, amounts to telling you what you want to hear. Fortunately, there are ways to become more skilled at getting the information you need. One of the simpler and more straightforward approaches I've come across is that of Kurt Einstein.

Einstein, 64, who trained as a psychologist and worked for nearly 25 years as an executive recruiter before he started The Einstein Institute Inc., in Cary, N.C., doesn't pretend to have quick and easy formulas for spotting good people. Unlike a lot of consultants, he doesn't use standardized tests or handwriting analyses. Nor does he guarantee a batting average of 1.000. What he does offer is an instructive critique of why managers make so many costly hiring errors. He also has a smorgasbord of techniques -- everything from interviewing tips to how to read a rÈsumÈ.

When I first heard about Einstein a few years ago, I seriously questioned whether something so subjective as interviewing could be taught. It seemed to be a skill you either had or didn't have. But talking with people who have adopted some of his ideas has persuaded me that I was wrong. "If you really work at it," says Dennis Campbell, president of Plastech Corp., in Forest Lake, Minn., "you can begin to get better information about prospective employees."

According to Einstein, there are several key elements to hiring good people, and the interview itself is only part of it. While he doesn't really expect people to follow his guidelines to the letter, understanding them will lead to a more disciplined selection process.

* Setting the standards. One of the biggest impediments to successful hiring, Einstein says, is knowing precisely what you're looking for. Managers typically define the scope of a position -- "That's the easy part," he says. But they don't always take the next step, which is to identify the characteristics of the desired candidate. Without a clear notion of what they want, interviewers are frequently less confident in their questioning, Einstein notes. If you know you want an accountant with five years' experience, for example, you won't be too quick to settle for one who has two.

A good solution is to spend a little time before you start interviewing listing what you really want in the individual you hire. For any position, some criteria will be "musts" -- fluent Chinese, say -- while others are only "preferreds." Of course, you may have to revise your standards in response to the applicants you get, but at least you'll have a point of reference.

* Framing the environment. Play your cards right, Einstein counsels, and you can learn a lot in an interview. The flip side is that the process can be a gigantic waste of time. To a large extent, it's up to you. The key is to create an atmosphere in which candidates feel comfortable, one in which they feel safe enough to talk about both their strengths and weaknesses. How do you do that? In part, says Einstein, by making people feel important. Seemingly insignificant gestures can go a long way toward setting the right tone: greeting applicants personally -- and on time; asking secretaries, in the presence of the candidates, to hold all calls; requesting the interviewees' permission before taking notes. It sounds simple, says Chuck Frank, president of C. Frank Chevrolet Inc., in Highland Park, Ill. "But if you're opening your mail or looking out the window, people don't want to tell you much."

Yet we're not talking about just good manners here. Many managers, Einstein says, need to reexamine their own role in the interviewing process. Most interviewers want to talk -- a lot. They want to explain the company's approach to business, to sell. It's only natural, but it's also a handicap. "When you talk," Einstein explains, "you're mostly repeating what you already know. You're offering information, so you're programming an individual's answer." Better, he says, to go into an interview with a clear set of ground rules and to explain them early: that you, the interviewer, will ask all of your questions in the first part of the meeting. After that, the applicants will have their turn to ask questions. "You might ask if that sounds all right," Einstein suggests, "but I seriously doubt anyone would say no."

* Asking the questions. The purpose of an interview, Einstein points out, is to explore what the person can do and what he or she is like. So to a large extent, the interview will succeed and fail on the quality of the questions and what they reveal. It isn't possible to create a list of questions that would be relevant to all settings. Yet there are certain kinds of questions that are more likely to give you useful information than others (see "The Art of Asking Questions," below).

Chris Eugenis, sales manager at C. Frank Chevrolet, for instance, used to ask applicants for sales positions if they liked their current job. The response was predictable, he says. "Most would say yes, and if they said no, it would be for some innocuous reason." On the basis of what he's learned from Einstein, Eugenis now asks people to name three things they like about their jobs, followed by three things they don't like. "I get more out of the answer to that single question," he says, "than I used to get from the entire interview."