Avoiding Owner/Associate Divorces

Leadership has been defined as crystallizing your business vision and executing rock-solid processes to implement that vision.  As the Chief Executive, your vision should propel recruiting excellence.

Your mindset ordains your hiring results.  For example, many executives embrace the premise that it’s perfectly acceptable (even normal) to establish hiring standards at the level of the “Best Available Candidate”.  Most fall prey to this thinking without giving it much thought.

Imagine the upside if you mandated standards that dictated your staff could only interview and select from a short list of IDEAL Candidates.  The difference is huge.  The “Best Available” bar might rest lower than any standard.  What if the “Best Available” at the moment is a poor fit for your office environment?  What if your “Best Available” candidate is a bad match to your business model?

“Best Available” candidates only succeed when three conditions align: A) you defined the correct candidate criteria; B) your assessment accurately assessed ALL the criteria and C) SOMEONE in the pool matched ALL your criteria).  That approach foolishly ties success to serendipity.  (Who wants to rely on luck for such an important decision?)

When it comes to hiring, far too many have surrendered their practices to the momentum of mediocrity.

Hiring to the standard of “Best Available” is simple and lazy.  Hiring to the standard of “IDEAL” talent is never easy, but you can make it simple.  It takes work.  The initial step of the transformation begins in the CEO’s office with his or her vision.  Great recruiting follows a steadfast mindset.

I recommend interviewing and hiring only candidates whom you assess and validate are IDEAL matches.  This affords you the opportunity to disqualify poor matches up front rather than wasting time with candidates you’ll eventually flush.

Change your mindset to exchange weak and slow hiring results for strong and fast ones: “I accept only candidates that match my IDEAL criteria and I will upgrade to a stronger hiring methodology”.

Evidence suggests that few practices have analyzed their recruiting and hiring practices to expose process breakdowns.  Fewer still have implemented recruiting processes that achieve EFFICIENCY and EFFECTIVENESS.  Sadly, others simply “wing-it”, concocting steps as they go along.

I believe if you keep doing the same things, you’ll get the same results.  After witnessing the pain and frustration of traditional “old-school” recruiting methods, many look to engage outside recruiters to run their searches.  In many cases, outside recruiter expenses run 30-40% below the costs of internal recruiting.