Drafting Quality Players

While achieving superior employee performance is greatly dependent on how they are managed, it's also important to be disciplined in your hiring decisions. By metaphorical example, superior coaching is crucial to building a winning NFL team. First-round draft choices can also provide the nucleus to build a winning team. But since the NFL apportions draft choices inversely to the won-lost record, how do some teams manage to be "winners" year after year?! The answer is they invest significant effort/resources in scouting the lower draft ranks of players to find "coachable" attributes necessary to continually renew themselves.

After many years of entrepreneurial experience, here are some "drafting" keys I've found in building/maintaining a winning team!

Know what employee traits you are looking for

Every person comes to the workplace with a unique set of attributes/talents which best suits them to certain roles. (i.e. In football, athletes with speed, agility, and "good hands" make great receivers, but lousy linemen.)

In business, the same thing goes in finding the right employee to fit a given position type. i.e. The personal traits of a good accountant are much different from the traits of a good salesperson.

Therefore, "drafting" for the "right fit" requires clearly identifying which personal traits are important to success in that job before you start looking for a new hire to fill it! To augment your own intuition, ask existing employees what personal traits they think are best for the job.

Hire for traits, train for skills
While it's terrific to hire an experienced employee who is "ready to play" that doesn't usually happen. Like first-round draft choices, people with perfect "traits" and excellent skills for a particular position rarely walk in off of the street! One of the lessons I learned was that "experience" was less important than a person's traits. Why? Because you can teach skills, but you can't change personal traits. (Trying to fit square pegs into round holes wastes valuable time/energy!)

Don't skimp on screening
In the same way that winning football teams thoroughly scout/test/analyze low-round draft choices, a rigorous interview process is critical to evaluating candidates. At our company every position (regardless of level) is predefined by a list of "must's" and "preferred's" qualifications. ("Must's" are non-negotiable and "preferred's" are a bonus.)

I believe it's the employer's moral responsibility to carefully evaluate every candidate so as to avoid the mutual trauma of subsequently firing hiring mistakes. (Since the employer has the yea/nay decision power, hiring mistakes are almost always the employer's fault.) So regardless of job urgency never skimp on screening.

Use indirect interviewing to discover personal traits
The predictive quality of job interviews largely depends on asking "clueless" questions wherein the manner of response is more important than the content! If you are interviewing for a waitperson position, don't ask a direct question like "How do you handle tough customers?" — it will only reveal what the applicant thinks you want to hear.

Instead, take an indirect approach and listen carefully with your "third ear." (e.g., "Describe the single worst customer experience you ever had.")

Carefully listening to how the applicant responds to clueless questions reveals much more of their personal traits than direct questions.

Never settle for good enough
Finally avoid falling into the "good enough" trap by hiring someone who doesn't meet your predefined "must's" but does solve the short-term need. It's my experience that you're always better off running short-handed (while continuing to look for the right person) than making a "square peg-round hole" hire — the equivalent of trading today's headache for tomorrow's upset stomach!

Summary
Nobody's perfect, and a disciplined screening process will not prevent all hiring mistakes. However, if your goal is to be in the Super Bowl every year, I've found the foregoing keys increase the odds of success!

This article was originally authored by Dino Cortopassi in Oct. 1996. He notes, "While I originally wrote this column 10 years ago, it's equally true today!" It was republished in the Dec. 2006 issue of LaTrattoria, a newsletter for independent restaurateurs. Cortopassi is co-owner of Stanislaus Food Products of Modesto, CA. This article is used with permission of Stanislaus.
Date reviewed: 3/15/07

This story was featured in the March 2007 newsletter