Glenn’s Space: Never Ever, Ever Hire the Best of the Worst

Glenn’s Space: Never Ever, Ever Hire the Best of the Worst

By Glenn Van Ekeren

Here’s some great insight from long-time NBA coach and general manager Red Auerbach: “How you select people is more important than how you manage them once they’re on the job.  If you start with the right people, you won’t have problems later on. If you hire the wrong people . . . you’re in serious trouble.”

The right people are the key to taking any team performance to the next level. Here are some of my random thoughts on making that happen:

-       Never hire the “best of the worst.” Five people come in to apply for a job. None of them are stars but hey, we need to fill a position. So, we hire “the best of the worst.” Dave Anderson believes, “Hiring is a lot like dating: As desperation sets in, standards fall!”  Bad mistake!

-       The worst time to hire someone is when you need them. Position yourself in a continual hunt for top talent. Snatch them when you can.

-       Your greatest recruitment tool is to become the “preferred employer” in your community.  If your current team isn’t excited about working with you, there are very few people in the community who will be inspired to join the ranks.

-       Law of attraction: You attract what you are, not what you want. Are you a place that people are willing to promote without question, hesitation, or doubt? If not, you’re not too attractive.

-       Hire people you would like your kids to work with.

-       Recruit – Re Recruit – Re Re Recruit: The key to hiring and retention. If you don’t understand it, you don’t have it.

-       The person you interview is never the person you hire.

-       Generally speaking, want-ads attract the frustrated, terminated, transferred, and searching. See Law of Attraction.

-       Better players make better players better.

-       Every interview is a “Public Relations Moment.”

Hiring on the Front End

If you hire right on the front end, carefully selecting the best of the best, instead of the best of the worst, you won’t waste valuable time and energy desperately trying to change someone from who they are to who you want them to be. That’s an exercise in futility!

Warren Buffet reminds us, “If you are going to hire someone that doesn’t have character, you had better hope they are dumb and lazy or they will do a lot of stupid things.”

If you want to hire the best of the best, the ones with positive attitudes, joyful spirits, enormous talent, and compassion, then you must never forget that they can get a job anytime, anywhere.  You’ll have to have something special for them to come to you.

Questions to Ponder:

Read through the suggestions once or twice or more. Have a conversation with at least three other people about these little thought provokers. Use a few of them as springboards for better ideas. Then, identify one to three changes you will make to create a culture of hiring excellence.

Again, what is your hiring credo?