5 Things You Can Do To Improve Hiring (Part 1)

Dr. Brad Smart, in his book Topgrading, gives a scary statistic that should make any Manager or Executive cringe:

“[Only] 25% of people hired and promoted by most companies turn out to be high performers.”

An even more alarming statistic: Topgrading has only sold about 150,000 copies. Why isn’t it the most popular business book ever written?

The most common answer we hear: implementing all of the Topgrading principles isn’t easy. With that in mind, here are 5 simple things, many of which are based on Topgrading and Good to Great, that you can implement in your business today to have a direct and positive impact on your hiring track record.

1. Work Backwards to Create a Job Description. Most people start with the Job Description when they start to think about hiring a new employee. The next time you need to hire someone, start at the end: be honest with yourself about what your year-end review would look like with this new team member. Quantify as much as you can. By understanding what could be accomplished by an A-Player in the first year, the creation of a job description is a lot easier. An added bonus, because you know where the person needs to be at the end of 1 year, your 30, 60 and 90 day reviews just got a lot easier.

2. Write a Scorecard. What are the top 5-7 things that you need from this new hire? Could you handle hiring someone who has only 4 of the 7 skill sets? What if they have 6 of the skills but not the most important? Scorecards give you a strong focus and allow you to rank and quantify the people you’ve interviewed objectively and unemotionally.

I’ll cover #’s 3, 4 and 5 later this week.

Tags: 90 day reviews, bonus, Brad Smart, chris mursau, employee review, good to great, jim collins, job description, Scorecard, top performer, Topgrading