D.I.S.C.O. The Good Hire Process

Written by Sam Alibrando, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist and president of APC, Inc. his own consulting firm that works with organizations and senior executives.

There are few things more important to the success of an organization, than getting the right people into your organization (and then keeping them). The costs of a bad hire are enormous in terms of the financial investment in the hiring process, cost of poor performance, lost time and energy in needless management, decreased morale and employee retention (there is growing evidence that good employees don’t leave organizations, they leave bad bosses).

When you think of the worst things about your organization, you can probably trace it back to a bad hire. Likewise, when you consider what is working well, you will probably trace it back to a good hire. 

There are three ways to get the Best People into your organization. You can Hire them, you can Inspire (or develop and retain) them or you can Retire (reposition or fire) them. Firing people is necessary but difficult and at times carries with it risk. Repositioning is often a good alternative as long as the problem was poor fit rather than poor emotional intelligence or incompetence. Developing is always good but you can only develop people within their capacity to truly learn. It is hard to take an average employee and develop them into a star (and even more difficult to take a low-performing employee even to only the next level). By far and away, the best option of getting the work force that you want is to hire them. It is easier to hire a star than attempt to develop them over years. And let’s face it, not everyone is teachable.

One of the favorite things that I do as a consultant is to help organizations hire good-fit, emotionally intelligent leaders and then to help integrate them into their new position (and possible new work culture). Below is the five-step choreography that I use, let’s D.I.S.C.O.

Define the position.  Not enough time is spent on thinking about the position to be filled. What exactly are you looking for and what kind of person would fill it?  We often assume that we should just fill the same position that is vacated. If you think like that you will at best get what you already had. Think about what you need now and into the future. We are currently helping the president of a company hire a COO. We are suggesting to him to think 2-3 years ahead. Who do you want or need this person to be in two years? Consider the position that you are looking to fill, a new position that is aligned with your current strategic plan (if you have one). Once you do that, describe the KSA (knowledge, Skills and Aptitudes) of the ideal person. As consultants we use a system that profiles that ideal candidate, one that we later use for assessment and interviewing purposes and even later for measuring success after they are hired.

Identify the best (and fewest) candidates. There are many ways to identify the best candidates. You can identify candidates as simply as advertising the position on the web (e.g. Craig’s List or Monster.com) for lower level hires to employing a search firm for C-level executives. Although very expensive, the advantage of using an executive search firm is that they can locate people who are already working and currently not-looking. Although we do not identify and recruit we help you determine the best way to do it. We also partner with recruiters and search firms as well. What is important in the Identification process is to get the best prospects, and not one more. This involves not just identification but also good screening.   You can screen candidates by reviewing their resumes, doing a standardized phone screen or hire a search firm to do the screening for you.

• Selection.  Once you have a final group of good candidates you now need to go through a thorough selection process. Here are the ABCs of this process:
• Assessment. We put candidates through a battery of assessments that assess fit to ideal profile, strength assessment, their team role, cognitive capacity and personality fit. We then use this information to guide the interviewing process.
• Behavioral Interviews. The typical interview has about a 50% accuracy (might as well flip a coin) for predicting success.  Do you want to improve your odds? Then you need to do what is called a behavioral interview. The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. In the interview, you want to assess how a person performed and therefore will perform in your organization. If you do this, you improve your predictability to 80%. I would take those odds. As consultants, we have both guided this process and will actually sit in on interviews. And speaking of sitting in on interviews, generally speaking the more touches (the more people in the interviewing process)–up to a certain reasonable amount, the better chances of making a good hire (and avoiding a bad one). 

 Confirm. You want to confirm what you are told. This includes actually following up with references, confirming allegations and doing background checks. We worked with one company that was hiring a very important general manager. The chair of the hiring committee found someone who was a friend of a friend (not the best way to identify a candidate) and he had everything that they were looking for in a GM. The chair of the committee loved him was ready to hire him on the spot. Fortunately, three other people interviewed him. One seasoned executive who interviewed the candidate had a “bad feeling” about this prospect. The assessments that we did indicated an average to poor fit for the position. This instigated enough concern that a background check was done. And when they did a background check, they found that he had a history of serious problems that would likely follow him into this next position.  If the chair selected this person–in a manner that most organizations do– without following the ABCs of Selection, they would have hired their next huge headache and unnecessary expense.

Choose.  This is the shortest but obviously most important decision you will make in the DISCO process. Bring together all the stakeholders, interviewers, data from assessment, information from references and background check and make a decision. Honor people who have a “bad feeling” about someone.  Don’t necessarily trust “likeability” (remember narcissistic people are notorious charmers).  You need to tie likeability to performance and fit. And when you choose someone, think emotional intelligence. You can have a very talented person but if they cannot regulate their emotions or they relate poorly to others, you will get more than you bargained for.  After having the basic KSAs in place, few things are more important than emotional intelligence, especially if this person works with clients, needs to work in a team or manage or lead others.   

Onboarding. The hiring process does NOT end with the hire. This is a mistake that many organizations make. In our process we will stay with the new hire over the course a several months helping them integrate into the new position–and the new culture if they are an outside hire. Monitoring and assessing their progress and enhancing important communications along the way. We will use all the assessment data to both coach the new hire and direct his or her boss on how to mentor the new hire. The purpose of onboarding is to instigate a soft landing (integration), detect any issues early that might be problematic down the road and hone in the performance to the strategic needs of the position. 

If you are going to cut costs in an organization, do not cut costs in the hiring process. It will come back to haunt you for years.  Instead learn to do the D.I.S.C.O. and you will not regret it for a minute.

Ken Nowack

Kenneth Nowack, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist (PSY13758) and President & Chief Research Officer/Co-Founder of Envisia Learning, is a member of the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations. Ken also serves as the Associate Editor of Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research. His recent book Clueless: Coaching People Who Just Don’t Get It is available for free for a limited time by signing up for free blog updates (Learn more at our website)