Hire Right: The Key to a Top Performing Team

Have you ever wondered how certain managers have their team constantly produce top results despite the inevitable turnover? Are these leaders just lucky, or have an ace up their sleeve?  

What’s the secret ingredient to building a great team? The HIRING process.

Top managers hire top talent only. Top managers never make compromises when choosing their next team member. They know precisely what they are looking for and adhere to a well-structured strategy to attain their goal. They set the bar high, ask the right questions in the hiring interview and quickly filter out the candidates who miss the ability to add value to their existing team. 

Great managers understand that the candidate’s personality is as important as their professional skills – what use does an experienced senior-level employee have if they are sloppy, argumentative and won’t follow their leader’s instructions?

Also, when assessing the candidate’s personality, exemplary leaders deem (1) enthusiasm and (2) intrinsic motivation as indispensable traits that their new team member needs to possess – there’s no need to motivate a team to produce excellent results if they are already passionate about the job.

Did you get a chance to draft the personality profile of the perfect candidate for your organization? Do they need to be bold and assertive (Leader) or rule abiding (Contributor) in their job? Should they have an affinity for working in a competitive environment (Sales), a creative one (Marketing, R&D), or a compassionate people-oriented one (Customer Service)? Please keep in mind that these are very different personality types that excel at certain jobs and fail to exceed expectations at others. Also, there is no Jack of All Trades, no one is fit for all jobs! And you, the manager, are responsible for having the right person on the right job.

Now that we touched on the importance of personality, I want to talk about the interview process itself. I’ve been in interviews where the candidate was asked cliché questions that didn’t provide any valuable insight into their capabilities. How many times have you heard the question: “So, where do you see yourself in the next 5 years?”. This question is so outdated and doesn’t take the statistical reality into account: the average tenure of an employee with a company is 2-4 years, so why ask them where they see themselves in 5 years? The answer is clear: they’ll most probably be working for another company.

Let’s briefly go over what a proper interview should look like. 

Here are some basic principles that you need to take into account before, during and after the interview:

• Understand the profile of the ideal candidate and write down 10-20 questions that will serve you as the assessment tool – don’t come up with the questions on the spot, have them prepared beforehand
• Ask only relevant questions, don’t waste the candidate’s time – stay away from cliche questions that don’t reveal anything about your candidate
• Use open-ended questions only – have them tell you about past experiences where they demonstrated a specific skill
• Carefully analyze the candidate’s response to every question – you should know how a top candidate would respond to your questions, so compare the response you get against that
• If their answer doesn’t seem clear to you, have them elaborate on the topic at hand – make sure that you grasp their perspective on the subject
• Pay attention to their energy, body language and tone – you should also be assessing the manner in which they present their thoughts
• Use the same set of questions on all candidates, otherwise you’ll have trouble comparing their performance
• As soon as the interview ends, take notes on the candidate’s performance, don’t rely on your memory –  document your observations and use the 1-10 scale to provide an overall score on their performance

Treat the interview process with the utmost respect and attention, as it is the most important task a manager needs to excel at! And remember that hiring a candidate who already possesses the “gene” for top performance saves you from doing employee damage control later on. Never make compromises when choosing your next employee! If you aim high, you’ll get exceptional results.