It may seem obvious that it is important to understand what skill sets you need in a job before you start looking for someone to fill it. And, indeed, many Human Resource departments know precisely what is required in closely defined line positions. From sales to production or service fulfilment, these criteria are often quite clear, and the process of discovering who has or can develop them can be just as clear.
Unfortunately, the situation is more muddled for managers at various levels in many types of work. It is for this reason that we raised the question last week. The very same companies that have a fairly precise awareness of the requirements for most of their staffs, have no real clue what their managers actually do.
The evidence of this is in the language in their job descriptions (where those even exist) for management slots. These are often simply aggregate summaries of what the managed work-unit does, or wistfully assembled lists of commonly desirable personality characteristics.
So, what do you do? To begin with, you could examine the situation. Ask your managers what activities they regularly engage in that they believe advance the work. Ask them what are the skills or traits that they believe help them do that. Ask the staff. Hire business coaches to follow them around and study their schedules.
Or how about this: As Gannon Beck noted in a comment to last Friday’s post, “Don’t hire your managers as managers - at least not initially.”
Gannon illustrates this strategy with a description of how the marketing author Seth Godin used it in developing the management team for Squidoo. The key point is that the staff members were initially hired as interns (no MBAs), and the positions they ultimately took emerged from their interactions in the course of actually doing the work (please be sure to see Gannon’s comment for the full story).
So, they weren’t hired into positions, they arranged themselves into them.
This is a valuable and actionable concept. It is comparable to ideas such as giving line staff who are candidates for management, assignments in which their potential can be observed, or stretch assignments for managers being considered for promotion.
But the most interesting aspect of it has to do with how it suggests that you should fill entry-level or vacant higher-level management positions: Don’t fill them. Place individuals or groups in the positions below the vacancy, assign some or all of the duties of the entry-level or other management position to them, and see who emerges to fill the need.
There are a number of points about this that bear consideration, of course. Here are just three:
- This method was used at Squidoo to generate the entire management team of a start-up; it’s use in an ongoing enterprise, particularly to fill individual openings, might be more problematic.
- That concern, however, merely highlights the potential value of the increasingly appreciated wisdom of cultivating a bias toward discovering and developing talent from within.
- Even when hiring from external sources, why not try to find a way to hire into the level below the requirement, even though that would result in a surplus there? Then have the managers/staff at that level sort out on their own how to pick up the duties of the missing manager, and use the information surfaced by this process to select the next occupant of that position - whether it is the new hire or a current manager.
Certainly there are costs of various sorts that may be associated with approaches like these. But is the approach you use now cost-free?
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Today’s tips: Speaking of the costs of plunging into an investment in an MBA, consider this interesting piece from the WSJ about how and why the divorce rate is higher among female than among male MBAs.
If you can’t quite figure out a good system for your daily internet scans (a real issue for me, as an American living overseas, relying heavily on the internet for news), or if your RSS reader is becoming ungainly and disorganized, consider the new site, Alltop. On its home page it sorts information sources from traditional media to well-vetted blogs into intelligent and useful categories for easy examination. Take a look - you’ll likely find it solving some real problems for you. Be sure to stop by the Career section under the “Work” heading - that’s where you’ll find this blog (and a lot of our blogroll colleagues).
The issue of race in the United States has been raised during the current American presidential campaign. In a reversal of the usual course of events for such things, it began with perhaps less than helpful impulses, but has developed into a more-or-less civil and thoughtful dialogue. Many readers of this site may be interested to know that Peter Drucker was a long-time observer of this issue; please see this excellent column from Business Week, written by Rick Wartzman.
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8 Comments
The underlying theme here seems to be that we must seek people of exceptional character and motivation.
It is aligned with the Jim Collins adage, “First who, then what.”
If we locate, hire, and/or partner with people whom we can trust, who have exhibited some intangible qualities that cannot be easily put on or measured by a resume, who share the same goals and values as we do, we will find some way to be successful.
No approach is cost-free, but I think it was you that pointed out before, it’s the easy way. People do it because they’re essentially lazy or lack the confidence in their own discernment or their boss’s tolerance for mistakes.
If a hire doesn’t work out because the person was fundamentally incompetent, the hiring manager can always point to the resume and say, “Don’t blame me. He had an MBA. How was I to know?”
“No approach is cost-free, but I think it was you that pointed out before, it’s the easy way. People do it because they’re essentially lazy or lack the confidence in their own discernment or their boss’s tolerance for mistakes.
If a hire doesn’t work out because the person was fundamentally incompetent, the hiring manager can always point to the resume and say, ‘Don’t blame me. He had an MBA. How was I to know?’”
Cam, you may be right, but it seems to me that limiting the search for people only to academia hurts the company more than it does the job applicant. Companies like Apple, Microsoft, Dell, Disney, and GE were all started by men without degrees. They also hire a lot of people with degrees, but not exclusively. Guy Kawasaki in “Art of the Start” talks about how half the people working on the Macintosh project didn’t have degrees. Dell talks about being “committed to meritocracy.” Thomas Edison would accept talent wherever he found it degreeless or not. These founders and their companies did pretty well without degree bias, or more probably because of its absence. The companies willing to evaluate the largest pool of talent tend to do well in the marketplace — a fact that hiring managers would do well to heed.
Hello Cam and Gannon,
I’ve tried to look carefully at both of these responses, and it seems to me that both of you are right, while you may be emphasizing different facets of the problem.
If I understand you, Cam, correctly, you are arguing that the right approach is to take the time and trouble to look past superficial credentials to make sure you have a good personal match for your corporate goals and culture. This has a cost in time, effort, and money.
But you suggest that my pointing out that the simple credential-check approach has costs also may not be persuasive to many, because it is manifestly the easiest and quickest way to go. It also may be the safest for the hiring manager, because however things work out he or she can always point to concrete “evidence” to defend the hiring/promotion decision.
My reference to the costs in this approach, though (as I think you also agree) is in the organizational energy absorbed and momentum lost by the likely greater number of credential-only candidates that either don’t work out, or that take an inordinate amount of resources to get on track.
And Gannon, if I have this right, you are emphasizing that it is the steak - not the sizzle - that employers should look for. Your reference to how the companies you site may have done well not despite - but precisely because of - the absence of a degree bias is a winner.
It still seems to me that you are both arguing for investing up front in order to earn rewards later, rather than chancing the organization’s fortunes on the inscrutable promise of a degree.
Is that right?
“It also may be the safest for the hiring manager, because however things work out he or she can always point to concrete “evidence” to defend the hiring/promotion decision.”
Jim - You summarized my point precisely. I was describing the historical case, not the normative one. I agree with you completely.
Gannon - I also agree with you, though I’m now less convinced you know that you agree with me.
Cam, I wanted to throw one more thing in here about your comment. The first thought that came to mind when I read it is the admonition many of the Founders offered that the most important thing for a citizen to examine in someone running for political office is that person’s character. It is harder work, but it produces better evidence of who can withstand the pressures of power.
While they all do, this presidential election year seems to be offering a particularly interesting venue for evaluating that advice.
Ah, yes. You reminded me of a great quote by Abraham Lincoln.
“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”
Hi Jim,
That sounds right to me. The two most important messages go out to two different groups of people. I talk about the first one on my blog a lot so I can slip into that discourse pretty easily with little prompting.
Message 1 (to applicants): An education qualification, and an education credential are not the same thing. Concentrate on developing and educating yourself regardless of whether or not you have access to the university system. There are opportunities out there for those with great knowledge and experience.
The second message, I haven’t paid as much attention to on my blog, but I’m thankful for your bringing it up on your blog. It’s made me think about it more deliberately.
Message 2 (to hiring managers): Limit yourself to the halls of academia at your own risk. Historically, in our free market, companies without degree bias been among the most competitive.
These are the two main points I’ve taken from the discussion so far.
I’m curious; in large organizations, how much leeway do hiring managers have with regard to education credentials?
Hello again Cam and Gannon,
Cam, that’s one of my favorite of his quotes for use in management - I used it as a chapter lead-in in my book.
Gannon, there is a wide range of practice in larger organizations, but the greater part of it probably involves credential-based screening by HR departments before hiring managers even see the candidate. That gives those managers little leeway for using whatever authority in that regard they may have with those candidates that make it to them past the culling.
Thanks again for this terrific dialogue!
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