“This job candidate sounds qualified, but how do I know they’ll actually deliver?"

The most important update you can make to your hiring process, so you don't get burned by a bad hire

Photo by Jackson Simmer on Unsplash

If you’ve been burned by a bad hire, you know it’s awful.

All that lost time, given over to interviewing and onboarding. The worry that if you start all over again, you’re just going to repeat the same mistakes. The stress about the money you’ve spent to get very little return.

It’s no wonder so many business owners decide to stay solo after a bad hiring experience.

But before you give up on your dream of growing your company, I wanted to share with you the breakthrough that turned this dynamic around for me.

If you know my story, you know I built an absolute dream team at my agency. Zero missed deadlines. Team members who spearheaded new products and lines of business. Folks I came to depend on and who I’m still in regular contact with now.

I sure didn’t start out with this kind of track record. In my first few attempts at hiring, I put a lot of thought into the process. I asked each candidate standardized behavioral questions, checked references and gave an assessment.

As a result, most of my initial hires were pretty good – but something was missing.

One woman was absolutely crushed by feedback on her work. Another got frustrated when I couldn’t give her precise instructions for a task.

Here’s the problem – the typical hiring process doesn’t actually tell you how someone will perform once they’re in the job.

Here’s why:

1. Strong interview skills don’t translate to reliable and consistent job performance.

2. It’s easy to game an assessment or fake a portfolio, especially now that AI tools can complete them for you.

3. You can’t count on a job candidates’ self-assessment, because they don’t have enough context to tell you if they’re a fit for your company.

This is why someone can be very impressive in an interview and an absolute mess once you bring them on.

The solution?

Figure out how you can more closely align your hiring process with the experience of working for your company, and cut through the bullshit to learn how your candidates will think and behave on the job.

In other words, do something unexpected in an area of critical importance for the role.

Let me give you an example. My agency had a high feedback environment. I expected that everyone in an account role would work with their peers and continually look for ways to shift with the market and sharpen their skills.

We looked at data together, trends, and were constantly doing small experiments to see if we could get better results for our clients.

Early on, I had a few challenges with folks who could not function in this environment. They felt off-balance and demoralized by all the feedback and analysis, and instead of improving, their work deteriorated over time.

Honestly, I couldn’t fault anyone who didn’t thrive at the company. Early in my career, I would not have been able to take it, either.

So, I asked myself, “How can I be sure my next hire will work well in our high-feedback environment?”

The solution was so simple. I started giving feedback on a candidate’s assessment during our second interview.

This was an absolute game changer:

• I was immediately able to tell if a candidate did the assessment themselves or got help with it.
  

• I could see how they handled feedback. Could they incorporate it, or did they get defensive?
  

• I got a better handle on how they made decisions and what kinds of judgments they’d make on the job, especially when I started asking, “Can you tell me about your choice to…” In this way, I wasn’t just looking at the deliverable, but learning how they work.
  

• Candidates could better evaluate for themselves if they could thrive in our culture. After our 15-20 minute conversation about their assessment, I’d say something like, “Thank you so much for having this conversation with me. I know it’s stressful to talk about your work in an interview situation, but we’re a company with a high feedback culture. Is that an environment you can see yourself working in?”

Are you starting to see? Instead of walking away with the wrong lesson – that hiring folks isn’t worth the effort – I gave all of us the opportunity to experience something a lot closer to the actual conditions of the job.

Those bad hires in your past are so instructive! Now you have important information about what your existing process missed, so you can strengthen and improve it.

If you brought on someone who didn’t have the baseline skills you need, take a look back.

• If you gave a skills test or did a portfolio review, did you ask questions that helped you suss out whether your candidate actually did the work?

• If you struggle to bring on folks with good judgment, how are you evaluating that they’re on the same page as you on the important things?

• What is it that clients rave about after working with you, and are you making sure your new hires uphold the same values and principles in their own work?

We make a mistake by thinking these things are universal, but they are not.

Once you can identify 3-4 non-negotiable values, skill sets or attributes that drive success in the role you’re hiring for, you can start getting creative about assessing how each candidate will fit into your organization.

Some of these things can be the sorts of tests I wrote about here, but oftentimes, getting out of interview mode and having a more typical conversation can tell you a lot about how the person works and thinks.

And if you want a brainstorming partner, schedule a quick chat with me! I’d love to work with you in a VIP Day or quick session to help you better evaluate new team members.

My long-time business therapist and mindset coach Nicole Lewis-Keeber always said to me, “You can have that.”

Whatever qualities and skill sets you’re looking for – that person is out there.

The trick is getting clear on what you actually need in the role.

You can do this.