You're Not the Person I Hired

Vistage speaker Barry Deutsch studied thousands of companies over 20 years and found that most CEOs and hiring managers report only 50% of their hires live up to expectations. Fifty percent. They might as well be throwing darts.

How could this be?

One reason: we don’t spend enough time up front defining what success actually means — the specific results we want the newly hired person to generate. Instead, we write job descriptions that set out minimum acceptable qualifications: “X years of experience, Y level of education.” This stacks the deck against us in two important ways.

First, job descriptions are what the film business calls “one sheets.” They create the candidate pool — the group of people from which you’ll hire. The “A” candidates you’re looking for already have a job, particularly in today’s market. They might be interested in something new, but only if it presents a real growth opportunity. When you write a description that defines minimums, you attract those who meet those minimums — the bottom third of the candidate pool. A players’ eyes glaze over. They never see the challenge, so they don’t raise their hands.

Second, these descriptions define inputs — the criteria you hope will lead to results — rather than the results themselves. If instead you write a one sheet focused on the specific stretch outputs you’re looking for, two things happen. Your interview questions change: instead of checking minimum qualifications, you drill down on whether this person can generate the results you actually need. And you set up a challenge for A players — people who are internally driven to grow, who take ownership and hold themselves accountable. You raise the quality of the entire pool.

What do your job descriptions look like?