Well Managed

Never Hire the Best Applicant

Sometimes I'll present a management idea in a way that sounds a little crazy when you first hear it  but makes a lot of sense after it's explained. This grabs people’s attention and makes the idea more memorable.

For example, here's a rule I tell my managers to follow in the hiring process: "Never hire the best applicant."

Of course that sounds pretty counter-intuitive because hiring the best applicant seems like a good thing to do. However, if go into the hiring process thinking that your goal is to hire the best applicant, then it is easy to fall into the trap of assuming your goal is to hire the best applicant who applied for the position.

This is a trap because you lose control of your hiring standard. You let the marketplace set your hiring standard for you, and that standard is "the least unqualified person who happens to apply." This happens all the time. A company opens up a position, ten candidates apply, and the best candidate gets the job. But what if the best of the bunch isn’t really the right person for the job?

To achieve success through selectivity you need to consciously stay focused on hiring the right person rather than the best applicant. If none of the candidates is truly the right person for the job, even if one of them comes very close, don’t hire any of them. Keep looking.

Like all other aspects of the selectivity process, this takes discipline. Sometimes it will seem very urgent to hire someone as soon as possible. Never give in to that pressure. The short-term pain of taking the time to find the right person is always better than the long-term pain of hiring the wrong person in a hurry. Just keep telling yourself, "It’s never too late to hire the right person."

You need to continually remind your managers, and yourself, of this because it’s so easy to forget. Every once in a while I fall into the trap myself and hire the best candidate who applied. And I always end up regretting it.

A Wonderful Problem

We recently had an opening in a supervisor position, because the very successful incumbent was ready to move on to a new job within the company. This particular supervisory spot is a key position because this supervisor runs a training and development unit, and the graduates of that unit go on to perform critically important work. I decided to help select the new supervisor personally.

Seven employees submitted applications seeking to be promoted into the position. My assistant put the applications on my desk and I leafed through them to see who had applied. When I got to the bottom of the stack, I leaned back in my chair feeling, frankly, a little stunned. Every applicant was a superb employee. I looked back through the applications. Sure enough, there was not a single applicant who could be eliminated from consideration.

In fact, as I thought about it further I realized we could literally try to identify the least-qualified candidate of the bunch, give that person the job, and we would still have chosen an excellent supervisor. We apply very high standards in who we promote into supervisory positions, so this was a remarkable realization.

Every once in awhile, we managers get to enjoy the sweet sensation of having an important thing well. This was one of those moments for me. My directors, managers, and supervisors have, for the past five years, exercised a consistently high level of discipline in hiring and firing. It was not always easy and it was not always fun, but we have rigorously pursued the vision of building a truly selective organization and now we could enjoy the fruits of that labor. We have assembled an excellent staff well-stocked with talent and potential, as well as terrific personalities.

Of course, selecting a single individual to promote from that exceptional field of candidates was going to be very, very difficult. But what a wonderful problem to have!

Office Utopia

A recent conversation reminded me of a book I read in college titled Famous Utopias. Being a book lover, I still have it, so I got it off the shelf, blew off the dust, and have it sitting next to my laptop as I write this post.

It's a collection of Renaissance-era writings describing how to create a perfect society. It includes excerpts from books and essays like Francis Bacon's New Atlantis, Tommaso Campanella's City of the Sun and Thomas More's Utopia. Each writer proposes a system of governance that would result in a haven of perfect harmony and happiness.

The problem is, none of them would really work. Each writer imagines an ideal community and describes how happy and peaceful the inhabitants are under its wonderful laws. However, if you read closely you realize the writer has only created an illusion through a literary sleight-of-hand. The citizens aren't happy because of a brilliantly-conceived political system, but because the citizenry has been rigged. They don't act and think like a population of normal humans. They're all happy and peaceful simply because they're all happy and peaceful people. The rules of the proposed society are largely irrelevant.

One writer comes close to being honest on this point. In The Abbey of Theleme Francois Rabelais places an inscription above the great gate of the abbey. This inscription specifies who may enter and who is excluded. A welcome is extended to those who are brave, witty, honest, and faithful; "the brisk, the fair, whoever comes with eyes that sparkle." A thumbs-down is given to those who are greedy, quarrelsome, deceitful, and whiny; "sots, imposters, sniveling hypocrites, bigots." Also unwelcome are some mystifying characters: "slipshod caffards, pelf-lickers, and huff-cap squires." Hmm. Not quite sure what those are but they do sound disagreeable.

This same principle is true for those of us seeking to create a utopia in the workplace: The rules matter less than the employees. If we are smart about who we let in and who we keep out, things will be pretty wonderful regardless of the dress code, the disciplinary procedure, or the office supply procurement process. The best people can do great work and enjoy doing it under almost any set of rules.