In today’s highly competitive business environment, where securing top-quality IT talent can take weeks and cost thousands of dollars per recruit, hiring average performers is not always good enough. Each new hire should be viewed as an opportunity to add valuable talent to your company and your existing teams. Because every hiring decision impacts all aspects of your business, it is now more important than ever to evaluate every potential hire not only on their skills and work history, but, more importantly, to assess their quantity of motivation and their actual desire to achieve.
If companies were to chart all their employees’ job performances on a graph, the result for the majority of companies would be a bell-shaped curve. Whereas 60 percent of employees would be identified as “average” performers, the remaining 40 percent would be divided equally into below-average and above-average performers. Satisfaction with hiring results can be low when you realize that 80 percent of all hires are merely average or below average performers.
You may be wondering why finding high achievers is so important and what real value they bring to an organization. If you believe that hiring the brightest and sharpest technical talent will ensure a high performer, or that you simply need to hire someone who possesses the right skills for the job to fill an opening, you are wrong.
Many average and below-average job performers do not lack the skills; rather they lack the desire to achieve. They lack “The Achievement Attitude.” Many marginal job performers have become interview-savvy and have learned how to get hired. According to the Orlando Sentinel book review of The 2000 Percent Solution, authors Mitchell, Coles, and Metz suggest that your operation can run as much as 2000 percent less efficiently due to complacent employees.
High Achievers vs. Average Achievers
Most companies consistently make investments in their infrastructures, systems, and hardware. But it is a company’s “human capital” where a solid investment can differentiate your company from your competition. Accurately identifying the best employees is the single best investment you can make, and by securing only high achievers you are almost guaranteeing your company will have a competitive edge.
To demonstrate the importance of bringing in high achievers, let’s compare what you’ll experience if you hire the average performer versus your experience with the high achiever.
The Average Performer
- does enough to get by, but not more.
- looks for someone to blame when a situation turns bad – often the boss, a co-worker, or the company.
- waits for instructions/assignments or may need a push.
- is problem-oriented; problems are viewed as insurmountable.
- doesn’t believe that there is always a solution.
The High Achiever
- consistently achieves more results.
- takes responsibility for solving problems.
- takes ownership for their skills gap by seeking out the knowledge needed to perform the task.
- is a self-starter who takes initiative to make things happen.
- is “solution-oriented,” does not accept “impossible,” believes there is a solution, and is determined to find it.
Think about which type of person you want to lead or add to your existing team. If you consider that most people want to surround themselves with those who are similar to them, you will realize that if you hire average workers, they will, in turn, hire average workers, and so on.
Identifying Tell-tale Clues
So how do you better identify the top job performers? It is easier than you think. It doesn’t involve a radical change in the way you are already interviewing. You can still follow your traditional interview format. However, it does involve a change in the way you listen to and assess what applicants are saying. In addition to assessing skill level, it involves the interviewer listening for clues within the applicant’s answers. The interviewer must determine whether the applicant has “The Achievement Attitude” and the presence of achievement behaviors. All applicants will profess to being a top performer, but not all will follow through with the behaviors and actions once hired.
Traditionally most hiring decisions are based on an applicant’s skills and experience combined with the interviewer’s gut feeling. Unfortunately, none of these are accurate indicators of a high performer. Skills are only enablers, not personal motivators. It is not the skills that are the most important element of high achievers, it is what is done with those skills. The most skilled worker is not always the best job performer and the best job performer is not always the most skilled. Experience and job knowledge can be accumulated by simply doing a job well enough not to be fired.
Similarly, gut-feelings and chemistry mean the interviewer connected with or related to the applicant in some way. An interviewer may easily connect with the personality of an average worker, yet not make that connection with a high achiever.
To understand whether or not the person you are interviewing is a true high achiever, you don’t have to change the questions you have been asking. However, you do have to change the way you interpret the answers. For example, you can ask questions such as:
“Tell me about your toughest project.”
“How did you handle your most irate help desk call?”
“What were some ways you dealt with a difficult boss?”
But you should be aware that interview-ready applicants can gracefully answer these questions without giving you a clue to the truth. Applicants can easily prepare answers or use particular examples of their past behaviors that were successful or positive without ever revealing any negative information in those examples. To help out applicants, many books are available to assist them in preparing for interviews, such as 101 Great Answers to the Toughest Interview Questions by Ronald W. Fry. This is the type of information they are learning before they talk to you. But interviewers can even the playing field by learning interviewing techniques that improve employee selection.
Your job as an interviewer is to keep the interview on track and to probe into the role the applicant played. One technique is to ask many follow-up questions until you understand the entire picture. Some applicants purposely try to stray off course to avoid answering specific questions. The interviewer is responsible for controlling the flow and content of the interview.
Format your questions to elicit a whole range of possible answers. Questions phrased in such a way that they only retrieve “happy ending” results can mislead the interviewer. An example of a poorly phrased question would be: “Tell me about a time you exceeded a customer’s expectations.” This is legitimately a behavior-based interview question designed to measure customer service skills. However, it retrieves only “happy ending” responses. The question should be changed to elicit a variety of good and bad responses from applicants.
A better question to ask to measure customer service skills would be, “Tell me about a time you dealt with an irate customer. Tell me why they were mad and what you did to resolve their problem.” This question will provide a greater range of responses. Do not accept “we” answers; find out exactly what role the applicant played and do not ask “yes/no” or hypothetical questions.
One way to circumvent vague or generic answers is to use the SAE (Situation, Actions, End Results) method of interviewing. As an interviewer, you give yourself an advantage by having a defined method in place prior to the start of the interview. A defined method leaves you free to concentrate on what the applicant is saying, rather than thinking about the next question you’ll ask. The SAE method uses a set of three steps for each skill to be measured to force the candidate to speak in absolutes concerning past experiences. Here’s an example using a C++ developer:
S – “Tell me about a specific time when you had a crisis concerning one of your applications.”
A – “Tell me about the actions you took.”
E – “What were the end-results?”
By using a simple and easy to follow method, you are maintaining control of the interview while soliciting the type of responses that will help you rule out the presence of a high achiever.
What to Listen For
Traits of high achievers will reveal themselves in the answers given to basic open-ended questions. The key is listening. For example, if you ask about how the applicant handled a difficult situation in their last job, you will get different types of answers from the average performer and the high achiever.
The average and below-average performers will more often tailor their answers to project blame and responsibility away from themselves. They will explain their difficult situation as being hopeless or as having few options. Their explanations often sound legitimate. The high achiever will more often take ownership of the situation and explain in detail the action they took to try to solve the problem. They understand that their actions may not initially be successful, but they keep trying until they are. Everyone encounters obstacles and falls down, but the high performer gets back up and keeps going. They show more creativity and tenacity for finding solutions, therefore attaining more results.
This routine of taking ownership or responsibility for solving problems (even if they did not cause the problem) will appear in many of the answers offered by high achievers. From touting their successes to describing their failures, high achievers consistently offer examples that put them in the center of the situation instead of outside of it. It is the consistency of this type of response the interviewer must listen for.
Shedding responsibility for a situation includes relinquishing control over its outcome. The outcome becomes controlled by an external source. With limited or no perceived control, effort is reduced or withheld, thereby causing a reduction in results – “why bother, there’s nothing I can do about it.” People who retain responsibility produce more results and offer less excuses.
Scientific research has found that all high achievers have “The Achievement Attitude” in common. This attitude starts with the belief that results can be controlled or impacted by one’s own actions: “I know I can make a difference.” Since people naturally try to prove that their way of thinking is right, the “I can” attitude produces more effort and results than the “There’s nothing I can do about it” or “It will never work and let me tell you why” attitude. The “I can” attitude ignites effort and the “I can’t” attitude stifles it.
The true performance test occurs when stumbling blocks and set-backs block a path. Anyone can produce results when things are easy and obstacle-free. When tasks or deadlines seem impossible, the high performer will find a way to attain desired results when others don’t. Take a closer look at your applicant’s answers for the right attitude to achieve and also a pattern of behaviors to back it up. Understanding what truly makes a high performer different from the average and below-average performers is the beginning of accurately assessing your applicants.
By listening more closely during the interview, it is easy to identify these achievement attitudes and achievement behaviors that are a part of all high performers. The right attitude to accomplish tasks and goals despite obstacles has more to do with success than an applicant’s skill level. Interviewers may choose to forego some skills for a highly motivated applicant. After all, skills can always be added, but “The Achievement Attitude” cannot.
Applicants polished at interviewing often convince interviewers that they have the “right stuff” when, in fact, they do not. Experts are beginning to take issue with the inadequate training of those selecting the employees for a company. In most companies, the decision to hire belongs to direct supervisors and others who have had little training in the best ways to identify the true high performers. Training interviewers can greatly improve employee selection.
For maximum results, everyone participating in the employee selection process should learn how to hire the best employees. The goal of a supervisor and the company should be to shift the bell-shaped curve by selecting more high performers and fewer marginal employees. This enables a department to become more productive and a company to gain a competitive edge within its industry. Making better quality hires than your competitors provides one of today’s best business edges. But as others improve their hiring processes, it will become a business necessity.
Results or Excuses – Which Answer Do You Hear Most?
During the interview it is not the individual questions or answers that reveal the true merits of the person being interviewed – it’s the pattern of answers the applicant gives. It is your job as the interviewer to listen for these patterns which will reveal whether or not the applicant is a high performer. Information about their skill level and work history is still important, but to make good hiring decisions, you must also assess their quantity of motivation.
Motivation exists in degrees and ranges from sustained to spurts. Since there is no such thing as zero motivation, EVERY applicant can tell you about a time they were motivated. The key to uncovering an applicant’s quantity of motivation is the same as determining whether or not they take ownership and control over situations. The applicant’s answers will reveal a predominant pattern of results or convey a predominant pattern of excuses and blaming. (Note: All applicants will give both types of responses; the interviewer must determine which type of response dominates.)
Motivation intensifies with the increased belief that one’s own actions can impact results. Without this belief, results are perceived to be under the influence or control of something or someone else other than that person, causing personal effort to be withheld. Marginal performers commonly use excuses or reasons as a substitute for results. What you are hoping to gain is an insight into how applicants view their control over situations.
About the Author
Carol Quinn is the President of HireAuthority.com, a company that specializes in interviewer training. In addition to conducting thousands of interviews, Ms. Quinn has conducted in-depth research into interviewer effectiveness by examining employee job performance levels. She discovered that highly motivated individuals possessed visible performance predictors completely unrelated to skills. As a result, Motivation-Based Interviewing (MBI) was developed to improve the interviewer's ability to predict an applicant's future job performance. Unlike traditional interviewing, which relies mostly on skill assessment, MBI incorporates performance predictors tied to motivation. MBI is used to identify High Performers and is rapidly becoming the next generation of standardized interviewing. Ms. Quinn regularly conducts training workshops and keynote speeches. She has been featured on business-related television programs and regularly contributes articles to leading HR publications. Ms. Quinn and HireAuthority.com can be reached at 561-638-0313 or at their Web site. |