Ask HN: How do you validate new hire candidates (especially senior leaders)?

[PakG1]

All throughout life, but especially recently, I've seen a ton of people who suck at planning, suck at getting things done, and suck at critical thinking. However, these people are often great at personal relationships, so whatever their track record, they know how to navigate organizational politics and snag amazing referrals. I was disappointed to see this also happen at senior levels, after getting senior management positions myself (before, I'd always given benefit of the doubt, maybe I'm not seeing the whole picture).

The result I see over and over is people building amazing resumes, but leaving a train wreck of a situation at every position where they get hired. But on the resume, each train wreck only looks like an amazing company and an amazing job well done, with some nice referrals about the person's leadership skills. It seems once you get one senior position, everyone automatically believes you're qualified to be a heavy duty leader, and nobody questions whether you need to be sent to the minors again first! Especially if you have an MBA.

So my buddy and I are building something to try to fix this problem, but I'm curious. Do you guys also agree it's a big problem that needs fixing? In especially difficult projects/environments, is it just a situation where anyone would have failed, or is it usually that the person actually is that bad? What are your experiences and what do you do now to make sure these people don't slip through the interview process into your companies and startups?

Me, for example, I once came onto a project as the #2 guy; this project was in the red zone, high visibility, and couldn't be cancelled. I took one look and realized the #1 had done the architecture all wrong so that the requirements could not be fulfilled. I spent 2 months with the team redesigning everything, and I mean everything. Furthermore, the schedule could never be dependable because the #1 could not foresee whether certain activities were dependant on other activities, and so never planned for the details to happen in sequence. The #1 guy of course took all the credit for a successful delivery and went on to make other glorious mistakes for other things. I believe this is a classic story, and one that needs to be fixed. What say you?

As for what I do to prevent such people from coming into my organization/project/etc, I tend to only rely on referrals from people I trust in my innermost circle (which contains only 4 people). Any other referral carries no weight in my mind and should be treated the same as any candidate off the street, no matter what the credentials or recruiters say.

[VladimirGolovin]

I'm currently reformulating my hiring requirements. Last time I hired people was about 9 years ago. Some of them were great (they still work for me), some awful.

I looked at the most awful cases and I think I've figured out what was missing -- a personal productivity / GTD system. From now on, all my candidates must demonstrate their personal system for capturing ALL their tasks and keeping their todo lists synchronized with reality.

Allen's GTD style is not a requirement here. It can be a paper todo list, a Google doc, a mindmap, or whatever else they chose to use. The key here is that they don't forget their tasks, and they get them done without babysitting on my part.

If they don't yet have such system but show promise, I may still hire them, but I'll make it clear that a personal GTD system is a requirement, so if they want to continue working for me, they'll have to develop such a system. And of course I'll be happy to coach them on this.

And there's another key requirement, also related to Allen's GTD. I'm still looking for appropriate wording, but here's a rough draft: The candidates must strive to understand what do I want them to do, i.e. what shape I want to bend reality into using their hands and minds. They must be able to understand and imagine what I want to achieve.

[Revisor]

Shouldn't you have a ticket system/todo-list/... for the whole team? As for the last paragraph - whether they understand your mission or not depends IMO again largely on yourself.

[miyudreams]

Actually this is very common in many organizations. I hear many friends complain about their managers. It's a tough situation to be in. The part where the manager gets all the credit for work you've done, just isn't fair. Sometimes, I've heard good managers tell you to face the situation face on with that "bad" manager. If he/she doesn't change the situation, you go up to his/her manager, etc. However, it's not easy to do that, and how you do it may just make you look bad. Most companies should have feedback and review times, so that should be a good opportunity to raise issues. I think the root of the problem is to screen carefully when hiring the individual. Make sure the candidate goes through many cases studies properly or even go on a 3 months probation period. I also know big companies usually have leadership conferences or training seminars to keep the employees up to date. I took a course before, and realized I wasn't ready to lead. Not everyone can admit to that, when they have big egos or cocky attitudes. I'm curious to see what you and your buddy are building. Best of luck with your project.

[PakG1]

Humility is huge and almost nonexistent! I remember when I first did something hugely visible and couldn't handle it, felt like a total failure. But learned from it. It's funny how the best leaders I've ever seen or experienced also happen to be the most humble. Maybe that's why they become so good, because they're willing to acknowledge their imperfections and thus willing to learn.

[fadzlan]

Well, one of the reason of this problem, is that when you have a bad manager, there are two ways of getting the manager to the door, that is up, or down.

Making him go down is quite hard. You have to build your case against him/her, and it will take quite some time. Plus, if you do such good job at your work that he can take the credit from, this may not be easy. Then again, if the situation is not okay in your job (because of him), it won't be any easy either. That is not counting his/her personal/political skills yet.

On the other hand, making him going up the ladder is much easier. Assuming that you are good at your job, so much that he can take credit from and then doing good reviews of him when you can, there is a good chance that he'll be promoted. While he will leave a train wreck somewhere else, he would leave you in peace, at least for now.

For that reason alone, I guess that is the reason why bad managers can go to the top, at least where incompetence would not have much effect on the bottom line. (ie. monopoly, having good people on the operational line, etc)

[PakG1]

Hehe, that's the exact definition of the Dilbert Principle. The problem though is that leadership is responsible for building and setting the culture. It's a recipe for poor organizations and poor morale, no?

[michael_dorfman]

I agree that this is a problem, and it is one I have run into repeatedly.

However, I don't know any good way to fix it. Hiring is a tough nut to crack. Clearly, one can always be more assiduous in following up references, but that's not always a big help, because you are then in the position of trusting what one stranger is saying about another stranger, in a situation where the motivations of the reference are not always clear.

Note that saying "Any other referral carries no weight and should be treated the same as any candidate off the street" doesn't solve the problem-- the "any candidate off the street" problem is the problem.

[PakG1]

Hehe, I agree, that's the problem we're trying to solve anyway. The "any candidate off the street" set. :)

[wpeterson]

You need to make an interview process that reflects the work they will actually be doing.

You need to answer 4 questions:

- Are they smart?

- Can they get shit done?

- Are they passionate about their work?

- Are they an asshole?

For programmers we solve this with the following:

- Phone Screen

- Coding Challenge (offline, on their time, reviewed by team)

- Design Challenge (take loose requirements, build UI, models, and project plan)

- Project Presentation (talk about an awesome project you did in detail)

- Pair Programming (Work directly with an engineer to solve a simple coding challenge)