How to hire well: Focus on behaviours
This article is part of Dare Be's Leadership Handbook, a guide to help people lead with impact and heart
Do you recruit people? Chances are you could do much better - and you already know it! On average, roughly one in every two new hires ends in failure.
Having recruited hundreds of people in my career, and coached many recruiting managers, I picked up a pattern of what works well and what doesn’t.
Here’s the key: Focus more on behaviours and attitude, and less on experience and technical abilities.
Let’s jump into why that’s the case, and how you can implement it.
Why are behaviours so important in recruitment?
Here’s a surprising statistic: 46% of new recruits fail in their first 18 months on the job. This means that about half of all hires don’t work out.
Here, “failing” refers to the recruit being fired or deciding to quit, or receiving poor performance reviews.
If you’re unsure whether you’ve got a failed hire: do you regret bringing them on the team? If your answer’s yes, you’ve got an unsuccessful recruit on your hands.
Plus, the same study found that only 19% of new recruits become high performers. That means the remaining 35% of “successful” recruits are simply meeting the bar, instead of raising it!
Clearly, if one in every two recruits doesn’t make it past onboarding, and only 19% of hires are going above and beyond, then recruiting managers have a lot of work to do to improve their hiring processes.
Making a wrong recruitment decision is costly!
To learn more, I did an independent investigation with my friend and recruitment expert Ryan. It turns out that the problem is much bigger than we expected.
For one thing, the cost to a business of a mis-hire adds up to 3 to 18 times the new hire’s salary.
Think about it: the time spent interviewing and onboarding the candidate, the recruitment fees, the time spent not performing, the negative impact they may have on the business or their colleagues - it adds up!
Avoid this pitfall!
I have made it too many times and seen too many people fall for it: they are in a rush and hire the first person meeting the criteria on paper for the job, even if their gut feeling tells them something is wrong.
Never, ever do this. You may think you are gaining some time and bandwidth in the short term. In the end this is likely to consume your bandwidth much more.
You are also doing a disservice to the person you recruited by bringing them to the wrong job or company.
Just imagine the classic “Job Switching” scene from I Love Lucy, when Lucy and Ethel get hired at a chocolate factory - but it’s a terrible fit (beyond the fact that it’s also an impossible job!).
No doubt the factory needed a couple extra hands and were charmed by the ladies’ initial enthusiasm… but ended up losing quite a bit of product to Lucy and Ethel’s hats, shirts, and mouths.
Not to mention the stress and stomach aches that Lucy and Ethel suffered as well!
9 out of 10 recruitment failures relate to behaviours and attitudes
So, where does the hiring issue come from?
It’s rarely the candidates’ technical skills. In 89% of cases studied, people stated that the new hires’ behaviours and attitudes were the problem. Only 11% of cases cited a lack of technical skills.
This tells us that hiring managers typically do a good job of identifying technical abilities. Where they fall short is in identifying and developing the right behaviours.
In Lucy and Ethel’s case, maybe their interviewer should have assessed how the ladies address workplace difficulty - for example, asking to slow the conveyor belt down instead of panic eating 3 boxes of chocolate!
Let’s jump into 3 steps that you can take to address this problem and hire the right talent for your team.
Step 1 - Define the behaviours needed for the role
In most cases, hiring managers have clear criteria and benchmarks for a role’s hard skills. Unfortunately, this leaves the behavioural assessment undefined.
When a role’s behavioural criteria are an afterthought, this lets unconscious bias creep in - and it’s no surprise that behavioural mismatch ends up being the culprit of 9 out of 10 recruitment failures.
To address this, define the needed behaviours prior to the recruitment process. Really take your time on this step - it can undermine the entire process if your target traits are unclear or poorly chosen.
Pick the role’s needed traits based on three levels: the organisation, team, and role. If this is a senior position, pay particular attention to the organisational level.
Here’s an example:
The CEO of a software company is hiring a new Chief Revenue Officer (CRO). He knows that collaboration across teams needs to improve; therefore, he will look for someone who is highly collaborative and vulnerable.
Also, the CRO will be part of the executive team, which needs more ownership-taking and honesty to address issues candidly.
Finally, leading 25 remote sales staff, it will be helpful for the sales leader to have high levels of empathy to identify the needs of the team and individuals.
So here are the five traits the CEO will look for: collaboration, vulnerability, ownership, honesty, and empathy.
Now, here’s how to sniff those traits out at the recruitment stage.
Step 2 - Probe for the behaviours during the recruitment process
Of course, start with the interviews themselves. Instead of only asking questions or assigning evaluations based on technical ability, add targeted behavioural questions as well.
Here are some examples:
On collaboration: “Can you tell me about a complex project where you had to work across departments?” Then dig into how the interviewee worked with other people.
On vulnerability: “Can you talk about a difficult failure?” How comfortable is the person talking about the failure, do they blame others or do they put the emphasis on their learnings from the experience?
On honesty: “How have you handled situations where it was difficult for you to say something to someone else because they may not like it?”
Avoid talking about the behaviour you are looking for; instead, get them to talk about experiences when they may have exhibited these behaviours.
Also, don’t limit your evaluation to the time the candidate is sat in front of an interviewer. Use the whole process.
For example, take note of candidates’ tone in their emails and calls. Observe how they interact with the members of your staff who aren’t the decision makers: receptionists, recruiters, etc.
If you are probing for humility, honesty, or vulnerability, you may create an exercise where candidates will necessarily fail. You can then debrief with them to see how they experienced the exercise and how they talk about it.
Is the candidate showing the desired personality traits even when they aren’t being explicitly observed? Will they stuff chocolates down their shirt if the conveyor belt moves too fast?
You need a holistic view to make an informed decision.
Keep in mind that this goes both ways. The candidate will also be looking at your entire recruitment process as a test of your organisation. So make sure your recruitment is a good reflection of your company. (And don’t forget to give them timely and respectful feedback after their interviews!)
Step 3 - Reinforce the behaviours whilst on-boarding
If you’re at this step, then congrats! That means you’ve screened and hired a candidate who meets the explicit technical and behavioural traits you laid out in steps 1 and 2.
The last step is to make sure they’re set up for success.
And don’t skimp on the onboarding: Studies show that companies with a proper on-boarding process have 54% greater new hire productivity and 50% greater retention.
You can implement this in three stages:
First, engage early. Explain which behaviours you probed during the recruitment process. Share the on-boarding plan. Invite the recruit to team events and share high-level information about the business and the team. Have a short call prior to their first day.
Second, make them feel welcome. Send introductions to all the people they will interact with. Avoid logistics issues. Do not just drop your new recruit without warning into a team they’re supposed to manage!
Third, continue the on-boarding process until at least the end of the probation period. Make your onboarding process as long as it needs to avoid information overload and an avalanche of meetings. Salesforce.com, for example, has a 6-month on-boarding process.
This is your time to provide clarity, give feedback, course-correct early mistakes, and foster the kind of team spirit that drives performance and a safe environment.
Finally, make it safe to quit. I know - we’ve just spent all this time going over how to hire people who will make a lasting positive effect on your organisation, and now we’re talking about letting them leave!
Here’s why: you will hire the wrong person once in a while. You may not know it, but the new recruit will. In this case, from day one, tell them they can go with no hard feelings if it’s not the right fit.
Bring it all together
If you see recruitment as an opportunity to develop and align your organisation’s culture, then you’re on your way to higher employee retention and satisfaction - and likely higher profits as well!
Hire and onboard your recruits with thoughtfulness and purpose, and you’ll see a positive change in your organisation with each new arrival.
PS: I want to be extra clear: a new recruit’s failure is not exclusively the recruit’s fault. The onus is on the company to find and foster the attitudes and behaviours they want!