Hiring right

Hiring Right
By Ivan F Rodriguez
August 2016

This tool aims to help hiring the right talent,
reduce the failure risk when bringing new
talent into the organization.
Principles are based on the famous Winning Book by Jack Welch (2004).

NON NEGOTIABLES | Acid Test (binary
approach, you either have or you don´t)
Integrity
Intelligence
Maturity

Integrity
Meaning How to measure it?
People with integrity tell the truth, and they keep their word.
They take responsibility for past afraid to use it. actions, admit
mistakes, and fix them. They know the laws of their country,
industry, and company—both in letter and spirit—and abide by
them. They play to win the right way, by the rules
If a candidate comes from inside your
company, that’s pretty easy. You’ve seen him or
her in action or know someone who has. From
the outside, you need to rely on reputation and
reference checks. But those aren’t foolproof.
You also have to rely on your gut. Does the
person seem real? Does she openly admit
mistakes? Does he talk about his life with equal
measures of candor and discretion?

Intelligence
Candidate has a strong dose of intellectual curiosity, with
a breadth of knowledge to work with or lead other smart
people in today’s complex world.
Sometimes people confuse education with intelligence.
Smart people come from every kind of school. Some of
the best executives have attended public or technical
schools. Candidate’s education is only a piece of the
picture, especially when it comes to intelligence.
Perform the Interview by an intelligent person using a
Face-to-Face assessment, analyzing the deepness of
thought, resourcefulness of responses and language
used. This must be paired with specific IQ tests
focused to the specific function candidate will
perform.

Maturity
Mature people respect the emotions of others. They feel
confident but are not arrogant.
In fact, mature people usually have a sense of humor,
especially about themselves!
There is no real test for maturity. Again, you have to
rely on reference checks, reputation, and most
important, gut.

4E’s + 1P
Energy
Ability to Energize Others
Edge
Execute
Passion

4E’s + 1P
Energy
Ability to go go go!!! —to thrive on action and relish
change. People with positive energy are generally
extroverted and optimistic. They make conversation and
friends easily. They start the day with enthusiasm and
usually end it that way too, rarely seeming to tire in the
middle. They don’t complain about working hard; they
love to work. They also love to play. People with positive
energy just love life
By simply talking and interacting with this person and
measure your reactions, do get tired of listening, do
you want the candidate to continue with his/her
conversation. You simply will know it!

4E’s + 1P
Ability to Energize Others
Positive energy is the ability to get other people revved
up. People who energize can inspire their team to take
on the impossible —and enjoy the hell out of doing it. In
fact, people would arm wrestle for the chance to work
with them. Now, energizing others is not just about
giving Pattonesque speeches. It takes a deep knowledge
of your business and strong persuasion skills to make a
case that will galvanize others.
Assess again, your own reaction of interacting with
the candidate. Review candidate´s vocabulary,
posture, body language, timbre and modulation of
her/his voice. Assess the deepness and strategy of
her/his arguments. At som point in the conversation,
"challahenge" her/him with a difficult question and
observe carefully her/his reaction.

4E’s + 1P
Edge
Courage to make tough yes-or-no decisions. World is
filled with gray. Anyone can look at an issue from every
different angle. Some smart people can—and will—
analyze those angles indefinitely. But effective people
know when to stop assessing and make a tough call,
even without total information.
Little is worse than a manager at any level who can’t cut
bait, the type that always says, “Bring it back in a month
and we’ll take a good, hard look at it again,” or that
awful type that says yes to you, but then some one else
comes into the room and changes his mind. We called
these wishy-washy types last-one-out-the-door bosses.
Make the candidate a "tough" question (one that
requires assessing at least 2-3 scenarios) related to
the field of knowledge you are hiring for and assess
the solutions candidate come with. Then, ask her/him
what would it be her/his decision about taking one of
the possible solutions. Assess the questions s/he
come with. If the candidate cannot make a choice,
s/he will have issues with this characteristic. Some
people become inhibited from taking action. That
indecisiveness kept their organizations in limbo. In the
end, this will was a fatal flaw.

4E’s + 1P
Execute
Ability to get the job done. Candidate can have positive
energy, energize everyone around you, make hard calls,
and still not get over the finish line. Being able to
execute is a special and distinct skill. It means a person
knows how to put decisions into action and push them
forward to completion, through resistance, chaos, or
unexpected obstacles.
Execution is measured through actual results. Here,
you remove the words, and focus on the numbers,
what the candidate has actually done/achieved that
can be tangibly and objectively measured (both,
quantitavely and qualitatively).

4E’s + 1P
Passion
Heartfelt, deep, and authentic excitement about work.
People with passion care— really care in their bones—
about colleagues, employees, and friends winning. They
love to learn and grow, and they get a huge kick when
the people around them do the same.
The funny thing about people with passion, though, is
that they usually aren’t excited just about work. They
tend to be passionate about everything. They’re
sports trivia nuts or they’re fanatical supporters of
their alma maters or they’re political junkies.

Additional Assessments for Senior Leadership
Positions
Authenticity
See Around Corners
Smart Pragmatism
Resilience

Positions
Authenticity
A person cannot make hard decisions, hold unpopular
positions, or stand tall for what he believes unless he
knows who he is and feels comfortable with that. Self-
confidence and Conviction. These traits make a leader
bold and decisive, which is absolutely critical in times
when you must act quickly. Just as important,
authenticity makes leaders likable, for lack of a better
word. Their “realness” comes across in the way they
communicate and reach people on an emotional level.
Their words move them: their message touches
something inside. Leaders can’t have an iota of fakeness.
They have to know themselves—so that they can be
straight with the world, energize followers, and lead
with the authority born of authenticity.
Look for information that depicts if the candidate is
pretending to be something he is not—more in
control, more upbeat, more savvy than he really is.
Usually, he didn’t sweat, he didn’t cry, he squirmed in
his own skin, playing a role of his own inventing.

Positions
See Around Corners
Every leader has to have a vision and the ability to
predict the future, but good leaders must have a special
capacity to anticipate the radically unexpected. In
business, the best leaders in brutally competitive
environments have a sixth sense for market changes, as
well as moves by existing competitors and new entrants.
Evaluate the level of creativity and intelligence to see
around corners, to imagine the unimaginable and get
ahead of rest. Analyze the elements considered on big
successes and big failures on his career.

Positions
Smart Pragmatism
Strong penchant to surround themselves with people
better and smarter than they are. When a crisis arises,
quickly assemble a group of the smartest, gutsiest
people you could find at any level from the company
and sometimes from without, and lean on them heavily
for their knowledge and advice. Make sure everyone in
the room came at the problem from a different angle,
and then have all wallow in the information as worked
to solve the crisis.
Good leaders have the courage to put together a team
of people who sometimes make him look like the
dumbest person in the room! I know that sounds
counterintuitive. You want your leader to be the
smartest person in the room—but if he acts as if he is,
he won’t get half the pushback he must get to make the
best decisions.
Assess the type of team s/he has built up, criteria
used to assemble such team, and ultimately, her/his
level of humility to accept s/he is not or will not be
the smartest people of the team.

Positions
Resilience
Every leader makes mistakes, every leader stumbles and
falls. The question with a senior-level leader is, does she
learn from her mistakes, regroup, and then get going
again with renewed speed, conviction, and confidence?
The name for this trait is resilience, and it is so
important that a leader must have it going into a job
because if she doesn’t, a crisis time is too late to learn it.
That is why, when placing people in new leadership
situations, you have always look for candidates who had
one or two very tough experiences. The global business
world today is going to knock any leader off her horse
more than once. She must know how to get back in the
saddle again.
Assess concrete situations where candidate has failed,
ask what s/he did after, emotional reacitons,
strategies implemented, tools used, lessons learned.
Did s/he quit the Job? Abandon the Project?
Go deep inside with further questions. You are in
search of factual information about candidate's ability
to fail, and stand up again, stronger and more
determined.

Qualitative & Quantitative Assessment
Template
Access this File to raise exponentially the
effectiveness of your hiring process. Remember, this
is tool, you will still make mistakes as human
psychology is complex and dynamic.

mr.ivan.rodriguez@gmail.com
Ivanrodriguez1
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivan-f-rodriguez-b3977a17?trk=nav_responsive_tab_profile_pic

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