Hiring in a Down Economy

Hire well or manage hard. It’s truly one or the other. Hiring well is arguably the single most important function a manager can perform. Strong training, education, and mentoring programs can certainly foster knowledge, and to a degree, skill, but they cannot replace superior hiring practices. And while there is not a great deal of hiring going on these days, hiring well is all the more important given the skeleton crews some managers are left with. We want only the best skeletons on our crew. Doing more with less requires better people, processes and technologies. And, let’s remember, the processes and technologies are created by the people. The key is always the people. Get the best people, and you will have the best of everything else. It is considerably more efficient to hire top people than try to build them

Before I get too far, I’d like to say everyone knows everything that is in this article. It just seems so many have forgotten it in this nutty economy. One would think with all the top flight talent on the street, and the urgency for corporate performance, razor sharp hiring practices would be a principle concern. One would think companies needing to squeeze the most out of every resource would seek brilliant people and employ exceptional methods to pull these white knights from the masses. One would think … well, you’d just think one would just think. What are some of these guys thinking?

Hiring well has always been hard. Interviewing well is hard. Candidates humbly recount when they invented air. “… and so I said to God, sure, a formless, wet substance is ok, but I’ll make my stuff invisible and float around. God took the credit anyway. Made me so mad.” There is no doubt the blend of art and science of sifting through paper and people is tough. And, today, with so much paper and so many people to sift through, it can also be overwhelming. Furthermore, the important qualities that managers should be looking for are the most difficult to discover. The focus of this discussion is not how to determine a candidate’s true abilities, but rather what abilities mangers should be looking for.

I believe there are three basic areas that hiring managers target when interviewing and hiring. The lower level attributes are easier to train and transfer, but hold less value. The most basic is job-related knowledge and history. When interviewing, this is good stuff to find out. Easy stuff to find out … even when the candidate invented air. Easy stuff to confuse with skill and solid experience. Knowledge isn’t skill. Knowledge is important, but it’s much easier and cheaper to obtain. History isn’t experience. History is what happened in the past. Experience is what you did and learned when history was happening. Twenty years of doing stuff can be twenty years of experience or one year of experience twenty times. Knowledge and history are important, but in an industry as liquid and fast-paced as CRM, they are clearly the kindergarten of value.

A “next level” attribute is skill. Skill is what you do with knowledge. How you obtain knowledge. It’s the strengths you’ve built from your history. It’s how you do what you do, apply what you know, how you make decisions, why you decide what you do … your approach. Skill is more important than knowledge and history; skillful people are more valuable. While it is possible to develop skills into your people, training and education impart knowledge (not skill), take time, and are expensive. Knowledge is nearly 100% transferable, while skill is only partially transportable. This is why the only sure way to obtain it is to hire it. The spectators in the stands have tremendous knowledge of the game. The NBA is full of remarkably skillful athletes. But there is one level left. What separates a Michael Jordon or Kobe Bryant from the other skillful guys?

Talent. Find it. Hire it. You can’t create it. You can’t transfer it. You can’t train it or educate it into people. It transforms knowledge and skill into value. Talent is an innate ability. Some people have a nose for talent. These people will have an easy management life, productive teams, and a successful career. I hate them and their noses.

The top of the heap are those that understand their talents and consciously apply them. “A” players. They are knowledgeable, skillful, know how to apply these qualities, and they just get better every day. They adapt quickly and provide value consistently. The first step in hiring well is to be aware that talent is what you are looking for. I know this seems elementary, but …

Managers are hiring knowledge these days. “Yes, yes … I see you have remarkable troubleshooting skills, a strong background of innovative problem solving, a customer-oriented mentality and history of bringing strong value to your employers. Unfortunately, you have never implemented the Siebel Pricer 7.2.1.4.5.22.3 with patch 4.2.3 running on HP-UX 11 and Oracle 9i … we can’t see how we could possibly use you here.” In this economic wasteland, I have heard many stories of this type where skill and talent were clearly secondary targets during the interview. It was knowledge and history. Very specific knowledge and history at that.

It’s a classic battle of tyranny of the urgent vs. the important. Clearly, the urgent is winning. Companies and managers alike are more focused on the here and now than the long term. There is a feeling there may not be a long term if we don’t hire with short term priorities. Many times, it doesn’t feel like there will be enough time to hire skillful, talented people who will need to absorb the required knowledge. Better to hire the guy who understands a specific technology than someone who has successfully mastered many. No time to train this guy.

Yes, I know managers feel they are looking for talented people. They just want talented people who have considerable experience in a specific area. Understandable. I recently nearly took a position with a CRM firm that I feel clearly had their eye on the ball and their priorities well placed (I had to decline for personal reasons). I’m just saying let’s try to not major in the minors. The problem I am seeing is that skill and talent are either assumed or ignored, and interviewers are concentrating almost solely on knowledge and history. I confirmed this phenomenon with a few recruiter buddies of mine. The job specifications are becoming ridiculously knowledge specific. Companies do this because they can. In the current candidate-glut, employers can be very picky and demand very deep, specific knowledge. Picky is good. My point is that managers should be picky regarding skill and talent, and less focused on knowledge.

A good friend and talented technologist, has been turned down time after time in his job search for this reason. This guy can learn a specific technology or application in a matter of weeks, and then leverage his considerable talents to provide value light years beyond mere application knowledge. Evidently, this is not being discovered or is not a priority during the interview process.

In contrast to these practices, my latest engagement has taken a different tack. The company is a couple of years into a large SFA implementation. They recently hired a dynamite project manager who has little knowledge regarding the specific application, but commands a terrific balance of talent, skill, and knowledge. Had they focused mainly on knowledge of the specific SFA application or module, she would not have been hired, and they would have missed a very valuable manager. My interview with this client centered around my talents and their needs to determine if there was a good match. I am not an expert on the particular technology or application that I am currently working with, but I have enough knowledge to do what I need to and can always leverage SMEs.

A final note on this particular subject is that I still serve as a SME for a couple of companies, and a large part of my value to them is deep and specific CRM knowledge. I don’t discount this knowledge (pun intended) and, in some cases, the chief value is knowledge. In the main, however, very specific knowledge has fleeting value and should be measured within the entire scope of a candidate’s value. Now, go out there and hire someone smart.