You need winners to be successful, and you need measurements for their success. If they’re not the ultimate closer, who cares how well they work, and where their loyalties lie? A successful hiring strategy begins with finding the people who stand out before and in the interview process.
Look for the individuals who express a leadership trait and who you feel will roll up their sleeves and get to work. Don’t be afraid to bring someone in on a temporary basis.
You need to be developing a checklist of what to look for in a prospect. Create an interview strategy – a game plan – to find rock stars, not just employees. Determine how well they can work within the team you’ve created or are creating. Determine their goals, how they align with your business, and their motivations.
When it comes down to interviews, most owners and hiring managers don’t take the time to craft great interview questions. Most of the stock questions you’ll find online about climbing a mountain are nonsensical. You don’t need one hundred questions to find out if that applicant is the right choice, you only need three.
What do you know about us?
What are you looking for?
What career challenge that you’ve overcome has made you who you are?
HR organizations, hiring managers, and business owners spend mountains of time and energy recruiting, interviewing, and screening candidates. They probe, they query, they test for skills, they check references, they perform background checks, they even scan candidates’ social media posts. Sometimes they make them take the Myers-Briggs test (or some other personality assessment that can help assess “cultural fit.”) In many ways, it has never been easier to determine if a candidate has “the right stuff.”
But we don’t have a lot of evidence to show that these tools and resources help us hire better people than we did before these innovations.
To me, the perfect profile is a candidate that is about 70% percent qualified and 30% terrified. Terrified of failure, terrified of missing out on a big break, or terrified of letting down that hiring manager, coach, or sponsor that gave them a shot. A candidate who values a window of opportunity or a chance to push their own limits.
Why is this? Put bluntly, people who have deep emotional attachments to success and a fear of failure tend to work harder and act bolder. They pay attention to the little things. They fit in that extra meeting, and they spend time on the weekend preparing for the week ahead because they want to make sure that they’re on top of their game.
People that are 30% unqualified become obsessed with closing their skills gap and building the muscles that they need to succeed. Because they feel like the world is watching, they often go out of their way to evaluate and assess their progress and ask their coworkers and mentors for constructive feedback, which they take seriously.
They are humble and have great attitudes.
They know that they have doubters in their midst, and unlike their 100% qualified contemporaries, they still need to prove themselves. They know that the skills that earned them the current position won’t get them to the next career station. They are not resentful of the fact that they need to develop additional skills when they start a new job.
As Carol Dweck brought to life in her groundbreaking book Mindset, people that best help companies, governments, and society lurch forward are usually those that embrace a growth mindset. People with a growth mindset, she says, don’t just seek a challenge, they thrive on it. The winners that we want on our team, she postulates, are not necessarily those looking for money, or fame, or a good review, but those who embrace their job for the sole sake of learning, growing and impacting.
And producing results.
Winners are the embodiment of “grit”.
The building blocks of grit may be perseverance and passion, but grit is more than the sum of its parts. People with grit are goal-oriented, purpose-driven and willing to put in the work to realize their dreams and become the best in their fields.
Taken together, these elements make grit a key ingredient in innovation and creativity. People tend to underestimate the hard work that creativity requires, assuming it is an innate capability. In practice, it involves sustained effort and dedication. Studies show people’s first ideas are not always their best but that they steadily improve with continual effort, study and attention over multiple iterations.
Consider James Dyson, inventor of the Dyson vacuum, who tried over 5,000 prototypes before developing the models that would generate billions. Some of his early prototypes were probably adequate, but his final one revolutionized an entire industry. That is the power of grit.
This demonstrates why grit is a fantastic asset in any new hire. Imagine two candidates for a position, both with top-notch experience and training. The grittier candidate won’t shy away from thinking outside the box and considering multiple solutions. The less gritty one, however, is more likely to take their first idea and run with it, missing bigger and more exciting possibilities.
A candidate with grit also knows mastery of a skill does not happen overnight. Take the example of professional athletes, who build on their natural talents with continuous practice and often suffer sidelining injuries in the process. An employee with grit will work to improve their abilities, develop new skills and grow in their role, rather than just fall back on natural talent.
What’s more, people with grit remain resilient in the face of setbacks, an unavoidable feature of even the biggest success stories. Gritty high achievers aren’t discouraged by rejection or failure, but rather are encouraged to try even harder. This makes them a huge asset to any team. They will persevere in their goals and motivate teammates who need that extra push.
How strongly do you feel about a deeper dive into what winners do with the talent they have developed and what they measurably do to move you and your tribe, team and organization to that level of excellence you can sustain? Take a look at this new book about winners –
Thanks for being here and please stay tuned for more.
Joe
jls@sladegroup.com
#crazysmart #aligned #doitright #winners