Wrong Senior Level Hires, A reflection on the hiring process.

What comprises best hires in Leadership positions? When do things go wrong? Can there be a permanent assurance for the best/most effective kind of Senior leadership hiring?

Times of India published an article this weekend that caught my eye, my two cents on the same.

In my years of hiring for Senior Level Leadership positions, there have been times I have wondered how that particular hire’s first day..rather first week might have been. I have a habit of getting so deeply entrenched in the hiring process, right from the time the mandate (hiring request) is sent to me by the client till my selected candidate joins the company, I find it hard to disconnect even a little after the individual has joined the client’s teams! :)
So in effect I always wonder/imagine how this employee’s first few days/weeks/months really are.

Anyway. The first week (leave alone the first month), for a Senior Level Hire is never the famous or infamous ‘Honeymoon period’ as corporate cats like to call it. As you go higher, the time in which a Senior Leadership Executive is supposed to Hit the ground running gets lesser & lesser, as the organizational  ecosystem is heavily, heavily dependent on its top line. And this pyramid cannot function without its tippy top. 

Imagine, with this short a gestation period, an even more impatient bottom-line, time running out even before the incumbent has joined the company, what is he/she happens to be a wrong hire from the start? The image of an organizational equivalent of a Hiroshima/Nagasaki blaze in my mind, as I imagine the chaos. 

Ofcourse I have seen & heard of far more realistic versions of this chaos in the industry in the last decade, from clients, HR Reps, CEOs/COOs lamenting on how a wrong hire can range from being mildly annoying (in very strong, top heavy setups where someone is always there to take over & do damage control) to being a disastrous domino effect where an entire line of top performers quit owing to a wrong, wrong, wrong Senior Leadership hire.

So, what goes wrong? I hear a million voices answer that question echoing from the hallowed wood paneled cabins of those company stakeholders/owners/promoters to the cubicles of Human Resources/Operations teams who report into these mishires (like misfire? :) heh). Ok that’s not a word, but you know what I mean.

From force-feeding management styles from their previous workplaces, down everyone’s throats at the new company, to over or under estimating how much trouble the current situation at the new company is in, not taking enough help/assistance to over relying on immediate reportees to not understanding policies & procedures or whatever, & about a zillion more things.

Now, while this all could be true AFTER joining, what are some fatal hiring flaws made WHILE hiring or BEFORE the person in question joins in?

1> Need over Deed?: Time constraints unfortunately play havoc more times than any, when the company need in short time for a new hire far surpasses...ok, ok, slightly discounts the deeds or performance background or even simply the skill set fitment of a particular hire. Ofcourse there are prerequisites in place that have to be met with even before a person is shortlisted, but aside from years old & sometimes shoddy barely there outlines of a job description, depending on company to company, even a job skills outline can be defective or ill written/constructed. And adding to that the ticking time bomb of a deadline can severely mar the quality of a good hire. Time Constraints + Shoddy Job descriptions = Faulty/Compromised Hires. So although in cases when there just isn’t time, its best to work with larger recruitment teams, outsource this hiring to discreet Executive level search consultants or simply make do with off loading these responsibilities to tier-II teams until a suitable replacement is found.

    2> The Halo Effect/Biased Hiring: Many a times, top management in companies, based on succession hiring, select their own protégés or someone from outside the company but from inside the industry, who they deem to be great fits, which has generally been touted as a great & reliable practice, but in essence, any kind of hiring that involves a bias, or a halo effect as recruiters call it, has the potential to backfire. I never sit for an interview thinking this candidate I’m interviewing is a definite select or even think that somewhere midway in the interview. I keep both options open, so my biases don’t get the better of me, & I make a hiring decision after the candidate has left my office, not before. It helps in this scenario to atleast have a 2 people interviewing panel if not 3 or more, so alternate impressions can be sought to arrive at a much more wholesome median which reflects a better hiring decision.

    3> Wrong shoe, wrong foot:

There are times, especially recent times, where I’ve witnessed cross functional hiring happening, where incumbents from a different background are chosen for jobs of a different background. For eg. Marketing savants are hired for Operations jobs, Operations guys are chosen for HR, HR Generalists are chosen for out & out Training openings, etc etc. Although if a person displays the inclination & technical aptitude for a line of work that isn’t his/her own, there are chances that they may excel..maybe? But I woudn’t necessarily make it a thumb rule. Far from it. So if you’re feeling adventurous, dabble in stocks or go sky diving, but try not to bring a newbie to handle large responsibilities of a totally or even slightly new area for them in your company. There's good reason why tried & tested hold true at critical times, especially.

    4> Compensation Conundrums & Job Roles – Expectation v/s Reality :

Many a senior level professionals have called me within a month of joining a new dig, looking to quit because of compensation related problems or complaining that the job role offered isn’t even half of what was promised/expected of them. So what goes wrong here? HR has been held in contempt for centuries [I’m sure Caesar’s HR Manager was hated by the entire Roman army, & don’t even get me started on Cave man HR politics] for fudging/obscuring/not giving enough clarity on salary break ups to under pressure candidates on the threshold of joining a new company & wanting clarity on their offer letters. This is mostly where salary related issues come to the forefront, or possibly another factor is an alternate employer throwing more money at the same candidate who joined for much less at the previous company, & now wish to jump off a bridge. Salary expectations aside, surprisingly more than even money, senior level professionals look to quit jobs based on roles they have a problem with! I recently spoke to a senior level professional who after working for almost a decade at one of India’s biggest MNC’s joined a new company, where the job role was not even 10% of what he was doing at his previous employer’s company. Obviously, stability doesn’t matter to him at the moment, & he’s all for quitting this role for a much meatier role (money is not an issue he said), but role is very important. There you go. So ensure monetary mayhem is transformed to Sentient Salaries & Job descriptions are neither inflated nor underplayed. Transparency is your friend.

So, while CXO Inc India battles with a horde of problems everyday, never has the need for a perfect hire been more important in decades, that it is now. Can’t ride into battle with a Vice President who’s from a Toy Factory, now, can you? :)

With Best Hiring Regards,

Neha Asthana

CEO

HR Interface Corporate Services

Mumbai | India