If you’re going to hire senior staff from outside your organisation then you need to find a specialist agency. Don’t adopt the normal approach of using a high street recruitment firm or placing an advert in the paper; it almost certainly won’t work.
You need to find an agency that has been tracking the careers of a number of people for a large number of years, because they should be able to vouch for anyone they put forward.
The person you take on must have excellent references. This doesn’t mean that they will have an impeccable record – many great senior staff became great by making some big mistakes, so don’t ignore these men and women.
34.
Meet the spouse for senior roles
A senior manager will not be effective if his or her partner is not behind the appointment.
A senior manager will work long hours and travel away from home. It may also be necessary for them to relocate. All three factors will put significant pressure on their partner and family, so the family need to be supportive of the new role, and thus you must meet the family before you appoint.
This is particularly true if the relocation is to a foreign country (even more so if non-English speaking), where the partner left at home is at risk of becoming isolated and lonely.
35.
Use references early in recruitment
Many people lie on their CVs – to some extent.
Perhaps they claim a piece of work was delivered by them, whereas it was actually delivered by a team of which they were a member. This distinction can make a huge difference to their ability to repeat the success for your company. Therefore, take up references and take time to verify what are, for you, the key achievements and experiences they boast of.
When entrepreneurs (and businesses in general) do take up references, this is usually after a second-round interview. At this point the reference check is typically to ensure that there is no obvious reason notto hire this person. This is not as effective a use of the references as possible; in effect the decision has already been made, and all that insight goes wasted. Instead, take up references before the first interview (if less than six candidates) or after the first interview (if more candidates).
Be aware that you will need to get permission from the candidates for this, as they will probably not expect their current employer to be alerted to their job hunt at a point in the process where their appointment elsewhere is so tentative. Again, this demonstrates why freelancers are easier to deal with, as their current customers won’t mind taking your phone call and they won’t mind you making it.
The purpose of taking up the references earlier than usual is to:
• verify the level of duties performed
• verify the dates and the salary
• verify if there was any question of honesty and integrity
• the ‘can they do your job’ killer question.
Most people taking up references will ask the referee the first three questions, but probably one more question: “Would you employ this person again?”
However, this last question fails to address the really important question: “Would you hire this person again in a more senior role than the one they were in?”
Why do you want to ask this question? Simple – staff move jobs invariably for one of the following reasons:
• to gain more money than they are currently offered
• to win a promotion denied to them at their current job
• got fired/were being pushed out/were worried about job
• want to work for a different type of company and/or in a different industry or due to family relocation.
If they are moving jobs due to relocation, then they won’t be expecting an increase in pay and may actually be willing to take a cut in pay, but you would still want to make sure that the previous employer would be willing to hire them again.
The other reason for someone switching jobs is because they want to ‘get on’ and earn more money and achieve greater promotion.
Why weren’t they able to achieve this at their previous employer or client?
Now, there may be a good reason for this – but you want to know it, and you also want to know what the previous employer or client thought. Without this kind of information it is likely that you will continue to make recruitment errors 86% of the time – as per the average highlighted by Michigan University in recruitment by interview alone.
36.
Avoid job titles
When a business is small and not paying the highest wages it is tempting to offer big job titles instead.
Of course, all team members want to have big job titles as it makes them feel good, but be careful – once given it is very hard to take one away. If you have a director of a £50k-turnover business, you will have to fight to be able to hire a senior manager (another director) above him or her when your business is a £5m-turnover business.
Team members want the feeling of progress – but have they deserved it? Well, yes, if they have hit their key performance indicators (KPIs, as they are sometimes abbreviated; we look at these in more depth in Rule 15 and 42). Then you can set them bigger, more challenging KPIs. Otherwise, it’s definitely something to be avoided.
And even if they have hit their KPIs, it’s not a particularly great reward. So, devise a mechanism for recognising those who hit their KPIs, such as a bonus, or a team-member-of-the-month award – not a fixed and permanent mechanism or job title that panders to egos and gives a false sense of authority. That helps no one, least of all your team member.
A better approach for delineating responsibilities would be, for example, to allow someone’s business card to say “In charge of technical developments”, rather than ‘chief development officer.
It is an accurate but not unalterable description of their role, rather than a permanent job title.
So don’t give everyone big job titles. And if you can’t agree on a job title, let them have the name ‘consultant’.
No more and no less.
The days of job titles come from traditional hierarchical business, which operated in fixed structures. This is not how business is done today; today it needs to be highly adaptable and we all have to be willing to switch roles, to innovate at the drop of a hat, and responsibilities need to be flexible – especially if you are building a business that expects to see massive growth.