The Four Mindsets

chapter 13 How to recruit the right people into your team

The key to managing performance is to make sure you recruit the right people with the right skills and the right mindset in the first place, to get ‘the right people on the bus' as Jim Collins put it in Good to Great.

A study of 5247 hiring managers conducted by Leadership IQ revealed an alarming failure rate among newly hired employees. According to the report, published in the Harvard Business Review, respondents collectively hired more than 20 000 employees during the three-year research period. Within 18 months 46 per cent were found to have failed while only 19 per cent achieved success.

The study also found that 26 per cent of new hires fail because they can't accept feedback, 23 per cent cannot understand and manage emotions, 17 per cent lack the drive to succeed, 15 per cent have the wrong temperament and 11 per cent lack the key skills required for the role.

But the primary reason for failure was attributed to ‘poor interpersonal skills', which 82 per cent of managers admitted to having overlooked in the hiring process.

If people without the required skills are being hired, it is because the interview process is not being conducted effectively. How you interview candidates and their referees is crucial to ensuring you recruit the right people.

Global research continually validates the conclusion that the most effective way of selecting the right candidate is to conduct a behavioural interview. Yet around half ...