Hiring winners, an art in itself
right people on the bus and
It is better to hire a squirrel than
training a duck to climb a tree. Yawar
Baig's, ' Hiring Winners' overtly
brings out the techniques of effective
interviewing says
M R Chandramowly.
W
hat is the first step
to take a good or-
ganisation to great?
Set a new direction, a vision
and strategy and then get
people committed and
aligned behind the new di-
managers.
rection? No. The research
finds quite the opposite. The
executives who ignited
transformations from good
to great orgnisations did not
first decide where to drive
the bus. They first got the
I say responsibility, you ac-
of course, the wrong were
off the bus. When the right
people are in right seats,
they figure out how to take
the bus to some place great
(Jim Collins -Good to great).
Interviewing is the single
most powerful process for
creating and influencing or-
ganisation climate and cul-
ture,” says Mirza Yawar
Baig (www.yawarbaig.com).
Here goes our silent dia-
logue on his latest book
“Hiring Winners” - A must
read manual for practicing
Question:Yawarji, Hir-
ing winners with right val-
ues is the perpetual chal-
lenge in the talent war.
Creating a winning cul-
ture using behaviour
based interviewing has be-
come inevitable for organi-
sations. Your book “Hir-
ing Winners” is about this.
Let me understand what
exactly you mean ‘Win-
ners’?
Answer: Mowly, you are
a winner if you are willing
to take responsibility. When
cept accountability and ac-
tively see achieving it. We all
want to be winners but why
aren’t we?
We all start as idealists to
achieve some thing great
and to be remembered. What
happens in the real life?
Some people lie, deceive and
let you down. You could be
victimised by corruption or
cheating and in the process
you start sliding down.
Since idealism is tough to
put down, you hope that
some thing better will hap-
pen. So you become an op-
timist. With more expo-
sure to the world, you
would start valuing reality,
which moves you to be-
come a Realist, then Pes-
simist.
Then you will get ‘wis-
dom’ from advisors who
will tell you not to getting
in to trouble by following
the ideals that wont work
in this world. That makes
you a Cynic and you stop
caring what happens
around you and that is the
beginning of the bottom-
less pit - you would finally
become indifferent! See,
winners are people who
light the lamp of others’
idealism. To do that, they
must ensure that their
own lamp never goes out.
They are the people who
challenge the status quo,
who refuse to accept the
‘accepted’ just because
those around them do.
Question:Sir, you say
that losers can never be-
come winners because of
training and the only
way to select winners is
through effective inter-
viewing. What skills and
tools one needs, to select
a winner? What should
our interviewers do to en-
sure hiring the best?
Answers: First, let us
look at some common be-
lief about interview. There
are some assumptions
such as: interview is most
reliable tool to measure
job skills; first impression
generally pays off;
Turnover is just an un-
avoidable cost of doing
business and so try people
out and they don’t work
well, replace them. Re-
search shows that these as-
sumptions are false.
Unstructured interviews
are like throwing darts at a
board on which you have
written the names of the
candidates. Unstructured
interviews are lot more ex-
pensive. The effect of wrong
hire is difficult to undo
which spoils culture and
morale.
Second, would our inter-
viewers hire ‘below’ them-
selves? Some are ‘threat-
ened’ by people who are
more competent than them
and will not hire them. Often
this happens unconsciously.
Such awareness is critical
for interviewers to be effec-
tive.
Question: Yawarji,
what do you suggest inter-
viewers to make them to
hold on to this awareness
to hire right people?
Answer: One must re-
member that right people
are those who can share our
values, beliefs and passion.
They are ignited by our own
goals and can dream bigger
than we would every dare.
Such people with high as-
pirations can be a challenge
for managers to constantly
inspire them. Interviewers
must break the boundaries
of ‘safe’ movement and re-
member that the whole se-
cret is in spotting the right
people, the winners. There is
no alternative than tagging
on to structured interviews.
Question: Yawarji, they
say that interviewers un-
consciously select or reject
candidates by interpreting
observed data to fit expec-
tations based on their own
personal traits and beliefs.
I think it is important to be
aware of this. This has
been brought out well in
your book highlighting the
importance of structured
interviewing. Would you
like to say more on this?
Answer: Its there in it.
You see, there are three
things which most of us
think we are good at. Parent-
ing, driving a car and inter-
viewing. People believe that
it is easy and natural. But
there are lot of mistakes one
can make.
While training and prac-
tice can help them, but most
interviewers are not
trained. Some people inter-
view rarely and have little
practice. If the selectors do
not have a pre-identified job
competencies and required
behaviours, they make dif-
ferent decisions on same ap-
plicant. Assertiveness ob-
served in a candidate may
weigh more important for
one and it may be irrelevant
for other. Some interviewers
follow a method of looking
for reasons to reject candi-
dates. If they don’t find any
negative reason, they feel
that the candidates are OK.
What they must focus is on
whether the applicant can
and will adequately do the
job they have in mind."
Interviewers also decide
too early before collecting
data of all evidence and they
rarely change their first im-
pressions. Research has
shown us that a typical in-
terviewer makes his deci-
sions within four minutes
and spends the rest of the in-
terview only finding evi-
dence to support the deci-
sion they have already
made! They seek out and re-
member good aspects of the
candidate if they have decid-
ed to accept the person and
negative aspects if they
don’t want to take the per-
sons on.
Question:What are
some good tips to become
effective interviewers?
Answer: An effective in-
terviewer generates lot of
information by sifting im-
portant information from
the unimportant. He is
aware of the first impres-
sion effect and makes an ef-
fort to generate data to con-
firm or change his impres-
sions. He would also remem-
ber to reduce the subjectivi-
ty or bias to protect the can-
didate even from uncon-
scious biases.
Most importantly an ef-
fective interviewer tries to
find out what one has done
in the past and look for some
specific indicators of what
one will do in the future. He
may not over depend on the
personality factors.
To be concluded in the next
issue. The author is former
corporate Vice President - HR
and currently HRD and Lead-
ership Competency Building
Consultant. E-mail: cmow-
ly@hotmail.com