Do You Measure Your Manager's Effectiveness at Hiring?

I know who my best interviewers/hiring managers are.  Or at least I think I do.   But that knowledge is more intuition than science, because I don't measure the success of my hiring managers.  Do you?  Probably not, because you have a million things to do.   But for companies ramping up their hiring efforts, it makes sense to track which hiring managers "get it", and identify those that don't.

How do you measure who makes quality hires?  In a recent BusinessWeek back page column (subscription required), Jack Welch recently laid out this common sense approach called the "Hiring Batting Average":

"HERE'S HOW IT WORKS. Every candidate for a job at your company must be interviewed by at least three people in the organization beyond the hiring manager, and each interviewer must sign off with a "Hire" or "Don't Hire" vote. No maybes allowed. Fast-forward six months. Every new hire gets evaluated by his manager on how he has performed against expectations: below, meets, or exceeds. Soon enough, and with enough critical mass, you can start to compare every interviewer's "Hire" recommendations with actual performance. For instance, say a manager named Emily has approved 10 candidates and, six months out, eight of them are performing at or above expectations. Emily's HBA would be .800. That impressive score lets you know Emily is a first-rate evaluator of talent, and she should be rewarded accordingly. By contrast, say Emily's colleague John has given the nod to 12 hires and, after six months, only four are working out, for an HBA of .333. Keep John in his day job and away from picking people!"

I like the concept, but there are some "must-haves".  To effectively use this type of system, companies have to be OK with using the consensus-building system that Welch describes - 3 to 4 interviewers for each open position, with the hiring manager having final authority but everyone on the team being forced to say "yes or no".   For some hiring managers, this feels like they are giving up control.  They don't want the feedback, which feels like meddling.   An unwillingness to solicit feedback from others is likely a leading indicator of a low hiring batting average for these types of managers.

Another control issue with this type of metric would be the "gamers" of the system.  It's plausible that these gamers could simply pledge not to vote "yes" for any candidate who wasn't perfect or who wasn't a direct fit for the position in question.  As a result, their batting average might go up, but it would be fairly meaningless since multiple quality candidates might have been missed.  If the hiring manager still decided to hire such a candidate and he/she was successful, maybe you could debit the naysayer and call it a "miss" after the fact.

No system is perfect, and you'd have to fight through these types of issues.  Still, if you are hiring big groups of employees, it might make sense to give it a shot.  Welch also points to the fact that this type of vote might make managers more emotionally invested, which would lead to better employee support and even informal mentoring, which all companies need more of.

Last word - Batting .300 in baseball will make you an All-Star.  In hiring, it makes you unemployed....    

Comments

[James Hayton]

So, a validity check on your hiring interviews. Textbook stuff really. HR folks have been banging on about the need to check validity of hiring tools (even interviews) for 40 years.

But to the last point (and the example in the original article), if you are hiring large numbers (hundreds), surely you would want to use a more predictive test than the interview. It's official: interviews tend to be unreliable and poor predictors of performance if you don't put in a lot of work into the system upfront (training and structuring the i/v tools). In a less professional way of putting it: they suck! Why not construct or buy some decent predictive tests instead?

It's not just a small thing. If you can improve the quality of your hires with decent selection testing there will be a positive ROI like you won't believe.

[dan mccarthy]

Kris -
I like the "HBA" concept. Nice and simple.
You’re right, no system is perfect, and there will always be gamers. We need to trust that that kind of behavior will become transparent and catch up to a manager.
I do wonder about the manager doing the evaluation after 6 months. It would be better if there a more objective measure of performance. For example, in sales it could be hitting quota and turnover.

With all due respect to James (“interviews tend to be unreliable and poor predictors of performance if you don't put in a lot of work into the system upfront”) – wow, you could say the same thing about employment testing, right? There’s no silver bullets when it comes to selection – it’s a combination of good sourcing, selection interviewing, testing, background and reference checks, and judgment – all combined to help you make a good decision.

[Marcia Robinson @ BullsEye]

Jack Welch is really full of practical advice just like this.

I hear what is said about the system gamers and so my question would be - "who would be in this hiring pipeline?" Who picks the set of interviewers?

Totally agree with: "it’s a combination of good sourcing, selection interviewing, testing, background and reference checks, and judgment – all combined to help you make a good decision". I think it must start with good assessment of the talent actually required to staff for the mission.

Marcie