At this stage of our COVID-19-Socio-Economic Recovery, the most prevalent, and perhaps precipitous concern facing the CEOs we work with is the finding, hiring, and retaining of competent employees. The challenges range from the need for unskilled labor to competing for top talent in management and leadership roles.
We have heard of issues across the board: from drivers and warehouse workers; restaurant kitchen and server staff, hotel employees, factory workers, clerical help, customer service agents, teachers, daycare workers, nurses, social workers, staff accountants, and technicians. What there is no shortage of are opinions and explanations as to why this has become so problematic, with popular commentators pointing to political gaffs, unemployment incentives, lack of daycare, remote learning, and people finding alternatives to traditional jobs through work-from-home and remote work options and a gig economy that provides freedom and flexibility for a portion of the overall workforce that is less concerned with earning capacity and income stability.
Debating the root cause doesn’t even begin to solve the problem and there is no time to waste waiting for someone to come along and fix it. Every business (at least those that operate in a free-market environment) exists for the purpose of solving problems – and finding ways to solve this one is paramount.
The problems we solve for our customers are why we are in business, and the problems we solve for ourselves is how we are in business.
One thing worth understanding about the current talent market is that it does not impact every company equally. Even within hard-hit industries, there are companies that are thriving while others struggle. The question isn’t “how do we avoid being negatively impacted by workforce crisis?” It’s “how do you make this a problem you can benefit from?”
Some people will benefit by poaching employees from struggling companies – and others will benefit by servicing the poachers. But the real winners are the companies that shore up the critical weaknesses that the current labor market exposes.
We can often find opportunities in the problems we solve. The current workforce crisis presents a clear and present competitive advantage for organizations that understand a few critical leadership principles and find ways to adapt them in the way they lead and how their organizations operate.
Competing for talent is not new. And neither is the challenge of hiring the best people for every aspect of your company.
The current climate exposes two serious weaknesses that most small and mid-size companies face. High-performance companies have always found a way to attract, hire and develop the best people. This doesn’t happen by chance. Increasing the odds in your favor is a product of having competent leaders and smart systems designed to accomplish this.
The first opportunity is to make your company the place where the most talented and conscientious want to work. It’s no secret that the most accomplished people in any field or position can pick and choose where they work and who they work for. Money alone will not attract these people – and certainly will not retain them. They seek (and find) personal satisfaction in what they contribute through their accomplishments. And they measure how rewarding their efforts are based on the value they create for others and the impact they have on the world around them. This must be part of your organization’s mission and central to the role description of every employee – especially the key people.
Unless being the workplace of choice is central to how you make decisions and operate – your efforts will amount to fluff and recruitment marketing. But when the DNA of your company is bound to a central value that focuses on attracting, hiring, and retaining the best people – and your organization lives by this as a principle, word tends to get out. And when people come to your door looking to work with you, the people who already do understand that doing so is a privilege. They tend to be more conscientious and less apt to leave. Turnover becomes a function of purging underperformers and your high-performing employees become loyal advocates and your recruiters for other high-performing candidates.
The second opportunity is to become a virtuoso hiring artist. Regardless of the tools, systems, assessments, and resources available to assist you, hiring is an art. For most companies, the process amounts to a low-odds crapshoot. Making things worse, companies tend to hold onto their hiring mistakes at a great cost, oftentimes, simply to avoid going through the pain of the process over again. Rather than correct the problem, they compound it. But these costly mistakes are not only predictable but are also avoidable.
While hiring is an art insofar as the human relationship component is concerned, the core problem leading to most hiring mistakes is a system and process error. Most small companies do not even have a formal hiring system – and the process amounts to flying by the seat of your pants, relying on some vague idea of what to look for in a resume, attempting to identify the keepers from the losers, and then conducting interviews that serve little value in making a well-reasoned decision. Hiring tends to be a gut-driven process that is based on highly subjective and biased assessments that amount to liking or disliking a candidate –while gleaning some modicum of assurance that the person you select has the competencies the job requires.
Even employing seasoned professional recruiters does little to improve the outcome – unless you have the internal systems and processes in place to make a final decision based on their recommendations. The cost associated with hiring a professional often amounts to paying someone to do the more time-consuming work – and do little to improve the quality of the hires you make. This is not a reflection as to the work that good, reputable recruiters do – but on the fact that they are not the ones doing the hiring, onboarding, and professional development of new employees.
There is a system and process that does work. It begins by correcting the critical error that most people make when hiring.
Nearly all candidates are first sorted by their raw competencies to determine if they are qualified for the job. These amount to the knowledge, skill, talent, and experience necessary to accomplish whatever the role entails. The error is that this should be the last thing you evaluate – rather than the first.
Yes, it is important that you don’t waste time with people that are clearly unqualified for a position. The initial process for determining this is a rudimentary and tactical task that ought to be accomplished by someone who has no part in the actual hiring decision. It should be a function of a role-specific job application that can be easily scored by a standard rubric. Anyone that falls outside the standards should be eliminated for consideration.
The reason this should not be included in the hiring decision process is that most employers become infatuated with people that check off those boxes. In reality – you should never bother to consider anyone that doesn’t. But when you cull through applicants – you find that only a small percentage of people are qualified – which elevates their status from the start.
Competencies are among the capabilities considered in the 3-C Hiring System. The process involves evaluating for Curiosity, Caring, and Capability in that order. Competencies are critical, but they tend to skew or outright short-circuit the process.
The 3-C Hiring System is designed to determine which candidates will most likely be competent, meaning those who can be counted on to accomplish what the roles they are being hired for necessitate. Competencies are essential but insufficient for predicting competence. Plenty of people who have the wherewithal to do a task fail to do it well – or accomplish anything of value. It’s the first two criteria that help sort that out.
Curiosity is the most critical trait for anyone you might employ. It is the basis for learning.
Curiosity is the most critical trait for anyone you might employ. It is the basis for learning. On a basic level, people need to learn how to do their job – regardless of prior training or experience. It is often easier and sometimes better to hire people with no prior experience for a job and train them to perform as you need them to. People with prior experience must adapt to the new environment – and it is common to find that people who already think they know how to do something find it difficult or are unwilling to learn how to do things differently. People not only bring bad habits and worthless baggage from previous roles, but they also seek comfort in what they think they know – and are fearful to expose what they don’t know.
People operate in either the learning mode or the knowing mode. People who resist change, gravitate towards personal comfort and crave the status quo are what we call knowing beings. They might make good critics, effectively hold positions of authority, and quell the anxiety of people with lazy or feeble minds. People who supply answers are far less useful than people who ask questions. Learning beings are the ones who bring innovation, solve problems, collaborate, and contribute value to teams and represent the kinds of people found most in high-performance organizations.
Curiosity informs the intellectual humility that people need to be coachable. New situations tend to make people feel vulnerable and uncertain. This is a good thing when it means that they are coachable and able to be adaptive to the needs of their new environment. People who can get comfortable being uncomfortable are more likely to learn how to be successful in a new role. People who feel the need to demonstrate that they have the knowledge and skills they think you need – are more apt to fail. You can easily test for curiosity in an interview. It starts by demonstrating your curiosity with thoughtful, open-ended questions, and listening for proclamations of certainties and references to absolutes that make clear that a person operates in the knowing mode. Once you determine that a person expresses curiosity you move to the next step and explore for “Caring.”
Everyone cares about something. Even sociopaths care about themselves. You are not judging the capacity of a person to care. You are determining what they care most about – and more importantly – whether what they care about aligns with the values that serve your organization’s mission and purpose. If you are the CEO – you want to see if the candidate cares about the things you find important. And if you are a hiring manager – you want to make sure that the candidate’s beliefs are in alignment with the organization’s Worthy Indelible Purpose, your WIP.
Everyone cares about something. Even sociopaths care about themselves.
Your WIP speaks to what the organization is built for and must accomplish. It is not what you do – but why you do it – and why it is essential that you do. If your WIP is to make more money than anyone else, you should look for people who are motivated by personal financial gains. If your WIP is to bring joy to the world by cultivating exceptional leadership, which is what my company does, you want to be sure that anyone you hire cares about bringing joy to others and demonstrating leadership. Most of us are taught that caring is a quality that speaks to how we serve the needs of others, but in this case, it is a selfish assessment. You are looking only for those people who share your beliefs and values.
Once you have discerned that a person is caring and curious you can then review their capabilities. You want to test their competencies. And you also want to make certain that they are capable and willing to apply them to meet the needs of the role they will be undertaking.
Will the commitment they need to make interfere with other commitments they may have for raising their family? Things like travel, commuting distance, relocation, and compensation all speak to the capability to perform fully and competently. You might be able to make certain accommodations to secure a great hire – by adjusting the requirements, increasing the compensation, or making mutually desirable changes to the expectations that make the candidate a good fit for the job. But before you do – you want to be certain that there is a high level of confidence that this person will prove entirely competent.
A competent employee is one who operates in the learning mode, constantly strives to improve their competencies to continuously adapt to the changing demands of their role, has a guiding sense of purpose that aligns with the organization’s WIP and causes them to be conscientious, shows grit – or the ability to be comfortable being uncomfortable – and understands that competence is always a measure of what they accomplish.
It may seem counterintuitive to place a higher burden on the hiring process when good people are hard to find. But the reason you must is that finding good people is never good enough. For your organization to be extraordinary you need extraordinary people. And to find extraordinary people you must lead an extraordinary organization. It is like a flywheel, where you gain momentum through specific actions that create operational efficiency through human effectiveness. It isn’t that it is easy to be mediocre, it’s that choosing not to be requires exceptional leadership. Unless you start with that – your chances of beating the odds and thriving in difficult times become slim to none. But if you endeavor to elevate your leadership and the level of leadership in your organization you might defy the odds and accomplish more than what most people believe is possible.
