Insights to Growth

Strong Teams Spark Success

The Importance of Job Descriptions and Job Postings

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Attract a Good Fit for the Position

Have you hired an employee that matches the job posting perfectly, but they turn out to be the wrong fit 90 days later?

When hiring, it’s common for managers to use the top job description they come across. They post it, attract candidates, and make a hiring decision as soon as a likely candidate walks through the door.

However, these candidates will more than likely end up as turn-over. Why?

I believe that over 50% of turn-over can be avoided by better defining responsibilities, required skills, and ideal behaviors in the job posting itself.

If you didn’t take the time to think through the average day this person goes through, then you probably didn’t hold a stake holder meeting with the employees who will interface with this person. This should all be considered when writing the job description.

We also need to consider the changes our company/industry/environment have undergone, which entails that our “next receptionist” be different from the previous one.

Find the Right Fit for the Company

We have to use the right bait for the fish we want! We only want certain types of fishes to be attracted to our job posting instead of simply casting a wide net.

If you’re looking to hire a receptionist for example, then you want someone who is naturally friendly, flexible, and comfortable with being the “face” of your company. They should be able to instinctively follow up on emails and phone calls while being helpful to the rest of the team.

After thinking through their daily responsibilities, it’s important to pull together the stakeholders for each role. Together, you should discuss the role in-depth and look critically at how specific in the job posting needs to be.

Post the agreed upon job description and interview candidates that respond. I recommend you ask about 2-3 questions to identify candidates that are attracted to the role. Here are two examples:

  • Do you enjoy an environment that keeps you guessing?
  • Are you the go-to-person that your friends come to, to organize a party?

This allows you to attract certain fish and repel the others. I hope this helps, and I would love to hear of creative ways that you write a job description and posting to eliminate candidates that aren’t a good fit. Let’s talk!

How effective is your communication with your direct reports?

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Even when we have 1:1 meetings, staff meetings, and real-time pinging through Slack and other instant messenger tools, I’ve never met an employee who said, “my leader over communicates to me.”

People generally believe that there’s more information to know. In fact, the statistics are pretty scary:

  • 60% of companies don’t have a long-term strategy for their internal communications (Workforce).
  • 74% of employees feel they are missing out on company information and news (Trade Press Services).
  • 72% of employees don’t have a full understanding of the company’s strategy (IBM).
  • 86% of employees and executives cite lack of collaboration or ineffective communication for workplace failures (Salesforce).
  • 33% of employees said a lack of open, honest communication has the most negative impact on employee morale (Recruiter).

A direct reports’ need for information and communication increases during time of change and turmoil whether internally or externally driven.

Like any personal relationship, our work relationships thrive or die on our ability to communicate clearly, establish trust, and create a welcoming environment for questions.

To dig further into a manager’s role and the importance of their connection to employees, I found the book by Jim Clifton and Jim Harter, It’s the Manager: Gallup finds the quality of managers and team leaders is the single biggest factor in your organization’s long-term success, to have substantial research and insights. 

Effective communication with our direct reports is a top priority if we want highly engaged team members. I would enjoy knowing what you find to be helpful in communicating with your direct reports. Get in touch!

Do you have a hiring bias for industry knowledge?

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If so, then is your hiring bias founded on facts or can you teach industry knowledge in a short amount of time?

The Challenge

I challenge my clients to look at this, because when you limit yourself to candidates with “X” amount of experience in your industry, you really shrink the available pool of candidates.

I understand that there are truly places where you must know the industry because of regulations, compliance, certifications, or laws, but there are many cases where you might be able to find great candidates and train them. A great resource to understand this bias and many more can be found in Howard Ross’ book Everyday Bias.

The Advantages

Think of the advantages of being able to train a person “fresh” and being able to put your organization’s spin on the industry, so the person starts with a clean slate and without baggage from prior organizations.

We know from Peter Drucker that “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” so really, what you want to do is hire for talent, skills, and interest. If the industry knowledge can be taught, then you should focus on culture fit though talent. One of my favorite books is Bet on Talent: How to Create a Remarkable Culture That Wins the Hearts of Customers by Dee Ann Turner.

My Insights

In the past, I was asked to lead a sales team that was in the green industry. The company had historically hired people who had experience in horticulture, agriculture, or viniculture for sales roles. They were convinced that the person must have green industry experience, but the turn-over for the sales role was 40-50% annually.

Why? Well, people who like plants and grapes generally are not people lovers, they are plant lovers. So instead, we determined what skills and talent were for these roles. Once we made a change, we had top sales performers who came from teaching, hospitality, retail, property management and more. This shift was caused by hiring for talent and training for industry.

I believe that we need to seriously take a look at the advantage of attracting talent with transferable skills from outside our industries and rid ourselves from any hiring bias we may have. We can increase our candidate pool and the chance of finding the BEST talent for the role.

Have you had any success with going outside of your industry? Share your story in the comments below or get in touch with me for further support.

Do you invest time in your employees?

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With the many demands of leadership roles, executives struggle to protect the time needed to develop and nurture their direct reports.

As executives, we get caught up in reports, staff meetings, and even customer calls. It’s not uncommon for time to go by, and we’ve not paid attention to our biggest asset—our people! 

Jim Collins, the author of Good To Great, is well known for exploring the relationship between a well-run company and the people on the team. Once of Collin’s core concepts is “Get the right people on the bus!” More directly, he clarifies: “People aren’t your biggest asset, the RIGHT people are your biggest asset.” 

How do you find the right people?

As a leaders in our organizations we need to be involved in recruiting; it’s never “someone else’s job” to do recruiting. 

As people join your team, they need your advice and counsel. They need to hear your take on the company’s strategy and of course seek help from you on obstacles they encounter. 

To further put this into perspective, Jim Collins gives the statistic that in a new company, you need to put 60% of your effort into recruiting. As your team matures, this can back down to 20%.

So once we find the right people, how do we keep the right people?

They won’t thrive when they are running on autopilot, so remember that your direct reports really need you, your wisdom, your vision, your communication, and your attention.  

We need to make sure that our time allocation is appropriate to the level of maturity of the team – is it a new team, a well-oiled machine team, or a combination? One of my favorite resources on this topic is Patrick Lencioni in his book The 5 Dysfunctions of the Team. Keep this in mind as you plan out your week and reserve time for your teams.

How do we invest time in our people when working remotely?

If you are working remotely, which most of us are right now, here are some questions to help you gauge whether you are investing enough time or not. 

  • Have you built the culture of a “virtual open door?”
  • Do you feel like your direct reports proactively reach out to you?
  • Do you proactively reach out to them? 

If for one week you track the time you dedicated to spending with your direct reports that is just about THEM, how much time is this? 

I’d enjoy hearing about this so feel free to get in touch for further support or questions.

The Staggering Costs of a Bad Hire

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For most businesses 95% of the company’s value walks out the door every evening. Finding the right people is one cost, keeping people in their jobs is another, and when you need to terminate a “bad hire” employee, the dollars add up quickly.

A bad hire is defined a person who did not perform up to expectations and/or one who’s skills did not end up being a good fit for the role they were hired for. In a recent survey performed by Career Builder, 42% of companies reported that a bad hire cost them at least $25,000 in the past year, and 25% reported a loss of at least $50,000. FastCompany created a corresponding Infographic for the CareerBuilder survey.

Besides the direct costs of salary and benefits, bad-hire employees contribute to indirect costs in lost productivity/lost sales revenues, ill-will and disruption for customer facing roles, a drain on support teams and then you face the costs to recruit and hire a replacement employee. It’s no wonder hiring managers get a little cynical about finding good people when their attrition percentages increase.

In the aforementioned Career Builder survey, 21% of companies admitted that they hired poorly because they didn’t take the time to properly test and research the employee’s skills. I’ve sat with hiring managers who tell me that they are “on the fence” about a particular candidate and will “try them out for 90 days.”  This casual attitude makes me cringe as if I am hearing nails on a chalkboard.  If we extend an offer to a person we have a huge responsibility to be their biggest cheerleader, shepherd them within the company and give them every chance to do well. They should be a valued team member, not thought of in the same vein as a rent-to-own RV.

While many businesses may feel like they need to fill a position quickly, it ultimately pays off to take the time to fully vet applicants or wait until better talent is sourced. It will save a lot of money and stress in the long run, and make the company a happier and more productive place to work.

Culture DOES eat strategy for Breakfast

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Peter Drucker is attributed to saying “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Meaning, that no matter how good your strategy is, how much time you spend talking about your strategy, or in many cases, how many consultants you pay to make awesome PowerPoint presentations on strategy, your strategy is going to be useless without the right people demonstrating the cultural values and living these values.

If the company strategy is to deliver the best products and the best services to the customers but does not have the right people in the leadership roles, leaders with the actual skills and abilities to drive these values, there will be a disconnect. If a company spends the time and effort to create mission statements and large colorful posters with aspirational qualities on it – the executive team must live those qualities and be consistent in demonstrating those values.

I’m a big fan of the book Follow This Path: How the World’s Greatest Organizations Drive Growth by Unleashing Human Potential (Coffman & Gonzalez-Molina, 2002). I recommend reading the entire book, but in a two sentence summary of the findings are: “They (the companies surveyed) know that their most valuable resource is human-their employees and customers. And the best companies understand two important facts: people are emotional first and rational second, and because of that, employees and customers must be emotionally engaged in order for the organization to reach its full potential.” My take-away from the research within this book was that if I focused on just customer satisfaction I was solving less than half of my challenges. If I focused on my employees, getting the right people in each role, engaging them through specific metrics and goals, mapping out their career path, understanding what motivates, and providing a robust set of tools to make their work as efficient as possible, that THEY took care of 99.9% of customer satisfaction. Net-Net: if you take care of your employees, the employees take care of the customers.

It takes the right leadership team and the right team members, working together, to make this authentic company culture a reality.

Are People Like Horses?

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The importance of placing the right talent in the right role.

Jim Collins (Good to Great, HarperCollins, 2001) talks about having the “right people on the bus” and conversely, the “wrong people off of the bus.” Some people refer to “horses in the barn” and having a few “strong horses” when they talk about the human talent on their teams.

I grew up with horses being a part of our family. My dad was a Mounted Police volunteer in the ‘60’s-70’s in the rural town of Malibu, California. I had a short stint as a rider, competing in Hunter/Jumper categories. We had a few different breeds of horses and used them for various roles.

Think of all the different sizes, shapes, coat thicknesses, and abilities of horses. There are biological and geographical reasons for every breed. Thoroughbreds are considered a hot-blooded horse, known for their agility, speed and spirit. They are great racers, let them RUN. Clydesdales are workhorses and war horses that have been used to pull and plow. They are very strong and sturdy. The Mustang is often called “The Symbol of the American West” and are known for their rugged athleticism and qualities of endurance. The Friesian horse is a multi-purpose breed; they were used by armored knights in the 15th and 16th century as the breed had the strength to carry great weight into battle and still maneuver quickly. They also made for great carriage horses and riding school horses.

There are rare specialty breeds such as the Lipizzaner, used for spectacular horse dancing and the Andalusian breed for jumping. The pony breeds are great “trainers” for young people to gain experience on. There are miniature horses who look like and act like a horse, but are just for decoration…and they sure are cute.

People ARE like horses. Each of us has a unique set of talents and traits that make us perfect for a specialized role. We can race or pull a plow or jump over a steeple. Rare is the person who could do all of these or want to do all of these. Finding the right person for a particular job is akin to selecting the right breed of horse for the job that needs to get done.

Be smart in picking a horse, saddle up, and enjoy the ride.

Enough about you, let’s talk about ME

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It happens all the time. You have an opening on your team and you are in the interviewing process. You went through your standard behavior-based interview questions, poked and probed at several key competencies, and had some good laughs about favorite sports teams or in my case, favorite chocolate desserts. When you exited the interview, you thought “I like Bob/Jill/Joe/Kate…” You told your recruiting team who the not-great candidates were, “they just get it” or, “my gut says no.” Now you have a list of candidates that will advance in the process. Take another look. Are the candidates who are advancing, well, um, a lot like you?

We are all drawn to people who are like us. These people make us feel good, really good. Hiring managers are often leaders; the driven, passionate, make-it-happen-now kind of people, experts-in-a-lot-of-stuff people. We would love to have a whole company filled with people just like us. The reality is, project deadlines are missed, equipment is not maintained, finances are a mess, marketing sucks, and sales are down. All because the people we hired are just like us. They have the same skills and capabilities, they also have the same blind spots and hang-ups. No diversity in skills, thinking, learning and planning means that the business and customers won’t get what is needed.

Of course we need to find team members who we are compatible with, because we will be spending a lot of time with our co-workers. More importantly, we need to hire the person who has the skill set for the job we need done. A sales manager role requires a different skill set than an operations manager. A marketing director role requires a different skill set than a finance director. A receptionist role requires a different skill set than an IT help desk person.

Do you have a hiring process that is pragmatic and systematic in determining what is needed versus the who is apply? Have you given enough thought and validation to the skills for a particular role?

There is value in teams understanding that people who have opposite skill sets are needed to support each functional role – even if those people drive you bonkers, daily.

With a little planning, an open mind, and some science in the hiring process, it’s amazing how effective a team can be.

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