Great People Decisions

Picked this up cos it's written by an Egon Zehnder guy. The beginning was a bit boring, as he droned on about why companies need to hire right. Maybe useful in helping to convince organisations that still do not believe that having the right people on board is crucial to business performance (do such organisations still exist? I pity them cos then they are or will soon be light years behind competition.) The book picked up the pace midway through and there are some interesting insights offered. Helps that he likes to use stats to beef up his analysis, probably due to his engineering background. I mean the guy even came up with some mathematical formula for spotting the "perfect" candidate. But for me, the numbers and strange shapes in the formula don't make the link to reality. These however do.

37% rule: after screening through the first 37 candidates, pick out the best one (B),then from the 38th candidate onwards, select the first one that is better than B. That person will be the one. This probably works for a large pol of candidates, maybe middle management and below. He suggested a 1 in 12 rule for more senior management hires, where the pool is likely to be much smaller.

Facts, first things first: i/v questions should all be geared to gather facts or behaviors from the candidate. The focus should be on concrete actions, events etc that underscore his personality/competency. And competency requirements should be defined in behavioral terms.

Truly understand a candidate's motivations.

Bias: First impressions last and it's not always a good thing. Falsify your own initial hypothesis. Unfortunately, humans are wired to seek out evidence to confirm their own thinking while shutting out warning signals.

For more senior hires: he conducted some surveys and ranked the various combinations that contribute to a successful hire (one that has moved up the ladder 3-5 years after he was hired)

1. Experience + EQ

2. EQ+IQ

3. Experience + IQ (lowest: in fact a candidate with low EQ is highly correlated to failure)