Four Essential Guidelines For Hiring Well

Advice on what to do and what not to do from Dr. Geoff Smart, the world's leading expert on hiring.

I know a lot of leaders who love bragging about hiring instincts.

They share stories about the unconventional hires they made based on gut feeling, and how those gutsy selections turned into stars. They often have a favorite magical interview question such as “where do you see yourself in 10 years?” or “what animal best represents you?” and claim these non-work-related questions contain the secrets to whether someone is right for their company.

But as I led a fast-growing team at Acceleration Partners I became convinced all these leaders were fooling themselves. The data backs this up.

Part of effective leadership is understanding your limitations and building systems that mitigate them. Hiring is more science than art, and the best way to consistently bring top talent into your team is to create a rigorous hiring system that can be used for any role.

No one has influenced my thinking on this front more than Dr. Geoff Smart. Smart is the CEO of ghSMART and the co-author of Who: The A Method For Hiring, which is the best book on talent acquisition you’ll ever read.

Over nearly three decades, Smart and his team have obsessively burrowed into the data on hiring and reached a sobering conclusion: most hiring managers don’t know what they’re doing. In fact, they’ve found that hiring managers worldwide only make a good hire 50 percent of the time, which is equal to a coin toss.

Building a great team or organization is difficult even with the best people. It’s nearly impossible if you’re only getting half your hires right. That’s why I urge you to listen to the expert—here’s a brief guide to what Smart says are the four steps to hiring correctly.

1. Create A Scorecard For Success

The first step to a great hire should be taken before you even post the job; you need to get clear on your expectations and definition of success for the role. Personally, I recommend writing the clear top five outcomes you want the person in the role to provide, such as “Serve as Lead Account Contact for Enterprise Accounts” or “Develop and Lead Industry-Relevant Marketing Strategy.”

Then, once you’ve outlined that top five, write a statement for what success in the role looks like after six and 12 months. For example, a role for a client-facing account manager might say the following: