Hiring, the Achilles Heal in Strategy

Hiring remains the Achilles heal in strategy implementation and in scaling.

Hiring slows down the growth of many high-growth companies, furthermore, compounding the problem, a large percentage of senior hires don’t work out.

This is because many companies continue to have a dated hiring philosophy (as seen in their job specs and adverts) that focuses on what candidates need to have to get the job rather than what they need to do to perform well in the job and contribute to the delivery of the strategy.

Here is an example randomly pulled off a jobs board.

“XXX is looking for VP, Product. Responsible for leading technical product management . . .

Must have

  • 10 years managed platform experience
  • A degree in Computer Science/Engineering
  • Etc. “

To get better results hiring manager should list the 3 to 5 specific and measurable objectives that the candidate should have accomplished within the next 12 months to have been an excellent performer in the role (and that are critical to implementing the business strategy). And assessing candidates based on them having accomplished the equivalent of 70% of this in the past. The 30% represents their growth opportunity and the reason to leave where they are.

The recruitment spec should look more like

“The VP, Product needs

  • To recruit and lead a team of 4 developers and migrate the company’s application to a cloud-based platform using XYZ technology
  • Determine the next generation features of the platform and develop a new product architecture to easily incorporate additional features
  • Etc. “

Hence the hiring process and interview moves away from what the candidate has or does not have, to what the candidate has done that demonstrates that they can do.

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