Surround yourself with the best

“If you had to rebuild your team today, how many of your current employees would you hire again?” When this question was put to 300 top executives at a seminar, the answer was edifying—about 50%! And interestingly enough, only two of these 300 leaders had actually been trained in recruiting. This certainly gives cause to ponder when considering that human capital often has greater impact on the success of business organizations than their strategic choices or access to resources.

This is hardly surprising, however; recruiting fails 50 to 70% of the time. One of the reasons is that managers find it difficult to invest sufficient time and energy into it. Recruiting after a resignation or to deal with excess activity often feels like one more task piled onto an already overloaded schedule.  Admittedly, they know the stakes are high and that recruiting quality will have a lasting impact on the performance of their team and the company as a whole. But given their immediate operational priorities, they are tempted to move quickly and choose the first candidate who meets the criteria for the job “fairly well.” Hence, “managers spend 2% of their time recruiting and 75% of their time managing recruiting mistakes!” underlines one expert.

Beyond the time required to recruit for a specific position, the real deficit lies in the quality of the recruiting process. Top leaders, like Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Jack Welch of General Electric or Yin Jong-Yong of Samsung, are distinguished precisely by their ability to surround themselves with the best. All testify that they were not particularly gifted at recruiting at the start and recall many expensive mistakes. But they made this skill a development priority.

And experience shows that major improvement is possible. Recruiting experts, for instance, fail only 20 to 30% of the time. This synopsis reviews the practices that enable them to achieve these results.

In this synopsis:
- The key steps in a job interview
- Recruiting: three easy-to-implement areas for improvement
- Understanding candidates well: what questions to ask?