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Articles - Performance Profiles

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The Secrets of Hiring Great Sales People Finally Revealed

Lou Adler, October 10, 2008

Topics: Interviewing, Performance Profiles

Over the years, I've been involved in developing hiring tools for sales representatives in a variety of industries including high technology, financial services, industrial products, consumer products, auto sales, woman's cosmetics, business services, medical products, pharmaceuticals, and healthcare.

» Continue reading "The Secrets of Hiring Great Sales People Finally Revealed"

McCain vs. Obama Using the 10-Factor Candidate Assessment Scorecard

Lou Adler, September 3, 2008

Topics: Assessment, Newsletter, Performance Profiles

Note: this article has raised some controversy. Feel free to comment on Lou's Recruiters Roundtable blog.

In my book, Hire With Your Head (John Wiley & Sons, 3rd Edition, 2007), I introduced the idea of using an evidence-based assessment process when evaluating and comparing candidates. This is based on using ten factors that have been shown to accurately predict on-the-job success, and on having the hiring team rank each one in a group meeting on a 1-5 scale after the interviews are completed. Click here for a sample of the form we use for staffing and middle-management positions. I thought it would be interesting to use this 10-Factor Scorecard to evaluate who would make a better President, Obama or McCain.

» Continue reading "McCain vs. Obama Using the 10-Factor Candidate Assessment Scorecard"

6 Steps for Hiring the Best Every Time

Lou Adler, July 11, 2008

Topics: Interviewing, Performance Profiles, Recruiting, Sourcing

Over the past 30-plus years, I've been involved in thousands of searches, worked with hundreds of hiring managers, trained 3,000 to 4,000 recruiters, and worked closely with dozens of major companies. Following are some of the common threads among the best techniques, processes, and tools that I have seen and used.

» Continue reading "6 Steps for Hiring the Best Every Time"

Defend Your Candidate from the Competition and Superficial Assessments

Lou Adler, December 19, 2007

Topics: Interview Training, Interviewing, Newsletter, Performance Profiles, Recruiter Training, Recruiting

I wrote a version of this article for ERE in April 2007. It seemed worthy of repeating as a year-end reminder of the critical role that recruiters need to play to ensure that bad decisions don't preclude the best person from getting hired. As you'll find out, the key point of the article is that good candidates, who we spent a great deal of time developing, can often be lost for easily preventable reasons. Setting up some process or check-point can prevent the problem from arising in the first place. If this isn't possible, you need to have some counter-measures ready to employ to mitigate any problems that do arise.

» Continue reading "Defend Your Candidate from the Competition and Superficial Assessments"

The One Question Interview Challenge

Bryan Johanson, November 7, 2007

Topics: Interview Training, Interviewing, Newsletter, Performance Profiles

Two months ago I gave a presentation to a room full of HR managers and executives from an engineering company in Omaha, Nebraska. After the presentation I had several conversations about their hiring challenges with individual managers. I ended up giving three people copies of the audio CD, "The One Question Interview," with the challenge that they use this approach on their next big hire and report back on their results. Last Thursday I received the following voice message from John Martin of Cascade Engineering. Here's what he had to say:

» Continue reading "The One Question Interview Challenge"

How to Control Your Hiring Manager Clients and Make More Placements

Lou Adler, October 17, 2007

Topics: Interviewing, Managing, Newsletter, Performance Profiles, Working With Hiring Managers

Our clients do a lot of dumb thing that cause us recruiters to work too hard. These all seem to fall into big buckets of lost opportunities. Here are the ones that head the list:

» Continue reading "How to Control Your Hiring Manager Clients and Make More Placements"

The Official Rules for Hiring Top Talent

Lou Adler, September 26, 2007

Topics: Assessment, Interviewing, Newsletter, Performance Profiles, Recruiting, Working With Hiring Managers

Every sport has rules, even pickup games. We even have rules for our kids - when they can watch TV, play video games, go to bed, etc. Business has rules for just about everything - important things like capital expenditures, accounting, SEC reporting, and product design and testing; or less important things like how to dress, when to come to work, how to earn vacation, and how to fill in expense reports. What's surprising is there aren't any rules for what's supposedly the most important thing a company needs to do - hire and retain top talent.

» Continue reading "The Official Rules for Hiring Top Talent"

Compared to What?

Kathy Barton, August 30, 2007

Topics: Interview Training, Interviewing, Newsletter, Performance Profiles, Recruiter Training, Recruiting

I spent the first half of the '90s working at GE. This was in Jack Welch's heyday: best practices, work-out, and management course from Harvard professors at the training center at Croton-on-Hudson (affectionately referred to as Camp GE.) It was a great experience, but there were a few things about GE's personnel policies that didn't really make sense. One of these was what we called the 10-80-10 policy.

» Continue reading "Compared to What?"

Would Your Recruitment Ads Win a Super Bowl Contest?

Kathy Barton, August 2, 2007

Topics: Newsletter, Performance Profiles, Sourcing

Ok, I admit it. Unless my team is playing, I only watch the Super Bowl for the commercials. And for advertising agencies, the Super Bowl is every bit as critical a contest as it is for the football teams. It defines bragging rights, generates huge publicity, and can mean millions of dollars in future business. If you search the web for Super Bowl advertising, you get over 2.6 million hits--there is actually a site called superbowl-ads.com. There are hundreds of sites that ask you to vote for your favorite (and least favorite) ads. It's become part of our culture. Job Boards such as CareerBuilder (with their chimpanzee campaign) have used the Super Bowl to generate enormous awareness of their offerings.

» Continue reading "Would Your Recruitment Ads Win a Super Bowl Contest?"

Using the Panel Interview to Save Time and Increase Accuracy

Lou Adler, June 21, 2007

Topics: Interview Training, Interviewing, Newsletter, Performance Profiles, Recruiter Training

If you want to increase assessment accuracy and save time, conduct more panel interviews. These are much better than an all-day series of one-on-one 45-60-minute interviews. When organized properly, panel interviews help everybody involved learn more about the candidate, even weaker interviewers, if they just observe. Panel interviews also provide a great means for subordinates to get involved in the hiring process. Subordinates should never conduct one-on-one interviews, since they usually are trying to work for someone they like, so they focus on the wrong issues. For another, they're rarely objective, and worse, many of them are weak interviewers. A panel interview overcomes all of these problems. However, I didn't always believe this strongly that panel interviews were that good of an idea.

» Continue reading "Using the Panel Interview to Save Time and Increase Accuracy"

Being a Good Interviewer is More About Recruiting than Selection

Lou Adler, June 8, 2007

Topics: Assessment, Interview Training, Interviewing, Performance Profiles, Recruiter Training, Recruiting

I learned to become a better interviewer than my clients for only one reason: to prevent good candidates from being excluded for bad reasons. Too many of my clients were assessing candidates improperly, either overvaluing first impressions or using some narrow range of skills to determine competency.

» Continue reading "Being a Good Interviewer is More About Recruiting than Selection"

Why You Must Eliminate Job Descriptions

Lou Adler, March 2, 2007

Topics: Interviewing, Performance Profiles, Recruiting, Taking the Assignment

As far as I'm concerned, the use of traditional qualifications-based job descriptions are the primary reason companies are not finding enough top people.

In this article, I'm going to prove that they are unnecessary, counter-productive, reduce the size of the applicant pool, encourage sloppy management, and are the cause of most hiring mistakes. Of course, your comments are welcome.

» Continue reading "Why You Must Eliminate Job Descriptions"

How to Prevent Just About Every Common Hiring Mistake There Is

Lou Adler, April 28, 2006

Topics: Performance Profiles

In this article, I want to present 12 common hiring problems that can be virtually eliminated by using performance profiles instead of job descriptions.

» Continue reading "How to Prevent Just About Every Common Hiring Mistake There Is"

A Performance Profile for a Recruiting Manager

Lou Adler, April 7, 2006

Topics: Performance Profiles

As you know, I suggest that recruiters prepare a performance profile whenever starting a search assignment. A performance profile describes the top six to eight performance objectives a person taking the job needs to do to be considered successful.

» Continue reading "A Performance Profile for a Recruiting Manager"

How Performance Profiles Will Make You a Better Recruiter

Lou Adler, October 7, 2005

Topics: Performance Profiles

For years, I've been writing about the use of performance profiles as the lynchpin of effective recruiting. Everybody who has ever used one for conducting a search has experienced better results. By this I mean more and stronger candidates, improved relationships with hiring manager clients, better understanding of real job needs, more consensus about candidates, candidates who are easier to close, a significant reduction in salary demands, fewer counter-offers being accepted, a reduction in turnover, increased job satisfaction and far better on-the-job performance.

» Continue reading "How Performance Profiles Will Make You a Better Recruiter"

Eliminate Job Descriptions if You Want to Hire More Passive Candidates

Lou Adler, September 9, 2005

Topics: Performance Profiles

I've been a very successful recruiter, a reasonably successful trainer, and a middling author for the past 25 plus years. Early on, I came up with a new way to take search assignments, by first asking my clients to describe what successful people doing the work required did differently than average people. My objective in asking this question was part of a youthful and dubious goal of doubling my search commission income while cutting in half the time spent on any search.

» Continue reading "Eliminate Job Descriptions if You Want to Hire More Passive Candidates"

The #1 Secret of Hiring Success

Lou Adler, August 12, 2005

Topics: Interviewing, Performance Profiles, Recruiting, Sourcing

If your hiring manager clients are not doing a good job of assessing your candidates, you should review this article with them. No matter how good a recruiter you are, if your clients pass on your good candidates, you're working too hard doing searches over again. The key is just to assess a candidate's motivation to do the work.

» Continue reading "The #1 Secret of Hiring Success"

How to Eliminate the Three Biggest Hiring Errors

Lou Adler, January 7, 2005

Topics: Assessment, Interviewing, Performance Profiles

Consider this: Based on hundreds of observations, about two-thirds of the time hiring errors can be attributed to one of three major interviewing mistakes. They're all easy to correct. It only takes a few simple steps which anyone can learn and use.

» Continue reading "How to Eliminate the Three Biggest Hiring Errors"

Why Job Branding Is More Important Than Employer Branding

Lou Adler, July 23, 2004

Topics: Interviewing, Performance Profiles, Sourcing

What's all the fuss? Hiring top people isn't as tough as most recruiters and hiring managers make it out to be. Job branding is the key. But before you start job branding, you must first stop doing dumb things that prevent you from hiring top people. No hiring initiative will work effectively unless you stop doing these things first:

» Continue reading "Why Job Branding Is More Important Than Employer Branding"

Job Matching and the Universal Core Trait of Success

Lou Adler, December 12, 2003

Topics: Interviewing, Performance Profiles

Here's an idea. Let's ask 25,000 people from all walks of life, in every profession, in every job, in every industry, in every country, what they think it takes to be successful in their field of expertise.

» Continue reading "Job Matching and the Universal Core Trait of Success"

Red Alert: Why You Must Stop Using Job Descriptions, Today!

Lou Adler, October 17, 2003

Topics: Managing, Performance Profiles, Sourcing, Working With Hiring Managers

As most of you know, I don't hide my beliefs very well. For example, in recent articles I've been lambasting job boards as being the number one way not to hire good people. But actually, job boards are number two on the list of obstacles preventing companies from hiring top talent. Number one is the traditional job description.

» Continue reading "Red Alert: Why You Must Stop Using Job Descriptions, Today!"

Using Performance Profiles to Improve Recruiter Effectiveness - Part 2

Lou Adler, January 24, 2003

Topics: Performance Profiles, Recruiting

Part II

It is my contention that the only way to systematically hire superior people is to clearly define superior performance before beginning any new job search. In Part 1 of this two-part series, the idea of using a performance profile instead of a job description was introduced as a means to accomplish this. The benefits of using a performance profile include more accurate assessments, a bigger pool of top candidates to choose from, significant reductions in time to hire, and -- by clarifying expectations upfront -- a more highly motivated and competent workforce.

» Continue reading "Using Performance Profiles to Improve Recruiter Effectiveness - Part 2"

Performance Profiles: The Key to Hiring the Best - Part 1

Lou Adler, January 17, 2003

Topics: Performance Profiles

Part I

I've been a recruiter, recruiting trainer, and recruiting consultant for over 25 years. Before that (when I worked for a living), I had 12 different jobs in 10 years with three different Fortune 500 companies. During this 35-year span, I've either hired to work for me, or placed, well over 500 people, conducted over 2,500 interviews, and debriefed over 5,000 candidates and hiring managers.

» Continue reading "Performance Profiles: The Key to Hiring the Best - Part 1"