Leadership and Hiring — How to Achieve Maximum Success from Your Interviews
A leader’s hiring attitude sets the tone for an organization’s culture and values.
Leaders have the power to shape the way a company hires, from determining what roles need to be filled to setting expectations for candidates. It’s essential that leaders understand how their decisions can influence the hiring process and ensure that they make informed decisions that will benefit both the company and potential employees. By understanding how leadership affects hiring, companies can create a positive and welcoming environment for everyone.
Leadership and hiring
In a conversation about leadership and hiring with Brian Alvo, Founder of Next Gen Center, and Chris Leithe, Growth Consultant and Founder of Leithie Labs and former VP of Sales and Customer Success at Adwerx—a technology company in North Carolina—discuss both underrated and overrated aspects of the hiring and interview process, such as:
The importance of hiring
The right fit (inspiration vs. potential)
How successful leaders approach hiring and interviews
Removing bias from the process
What is the importance of hiring? Why should leaders focus on hiring?
“You cannot accomplish anything alone,” says Chris; therefore, hiring is one of the most important things a leader can do. The importance of having a great team—with unique skill sets and a passion for driving results cannot be underestimated.
Chris talks about the time when he had to hire for a critical role and the pressure he faced because it was taking too long to find the right person. Chris ended up hiring a person who wasn’t the right fit. Ultimately, the wrong hiring decision can be costly and painful to both the organization and the person who was hired.
It’s essential that both leaders and hires have skin in the game—to ensure that hiring decisions are mutually beneficial. A key takeaway here is that it’s not only about what a candidate can contribute to the organization, but leaders also need to consider how the organization can contribute to a candidate’s growth and professional success.
The fear of making a wrong hire – How can leaders balance fear and inspiration
Chris explains how ‘preparation’ is the key to success when hiring, and a lot of the fear stems from a lack of preparation.
“Fear is a friend that's reminding you to prepare.”
A key factor to keep in mind when hiring is that you’re not going to be perfect all the time—sometimes, it may not work out. And when that happens, you have to accept it and handle it. Chris talks about a book he read—Who 2.0—that talks about a specific way of reviewing a person’s resume. Other books, such as Sales Acceleration Formula and Hiring for Attitude, are all great additions when building a hiring framework and methodology that works for you.
What is the biggest obstacle to hiring faced by leaders?
The hiring process can be a daunting task for any leader. From the initial job posting to the final hiring decision, it’s important to make the best possible choice for your organization.
Unfortunately, there are several obstacles that leaders often face when it comes to this process, including a lack of qualified candidates or a high turnover rate. Leaders need to be aware of these potential challenges and how they can overcome them in order to ensure successful recruitment and retention of top talent.
Leaders must consider a variety of factors when it comes to hiring, such as screening potential candidates and ensuring that their qualifications meet the job requirements. They must also determine how to best utilize their resources to attract top talent and how to create an environment where employees feel valued and respected. All these factors can make it difficult for leaders to find the right person for their team.
Chris raises the issue of removing bias. Bias towards the person sitting in front of you, schools, networks, and other assumptions could hamper your efforts to determine if the candidate is fit for the role, organization, and culture. As such, these biases must be minimized.
Attracting great top-of-funnel talent can be a challenge for companies that have less visibility— it may require them to cast a wider net, have a longer hiring period, and work smarter at targeting markets for potential candidates. Chris also talks about the challenges involved when more than one person interviews the candidate—having to reconcile all the disparate feedback.
How do you remove hiring bias?
Hiring is crucial, and so it is important to ensure that the process is unbiased. To do this, leaders and organizations need to take proactive steps to identify and remove any biases in their recruitment process. This includes creating a diverse job description, using blind hiring techniques, and eliminating language that could be interpreted as discriminatory.
Additionally, organizations should consider using AI-driven tools such as automated resume screening and video interviewing software to help them make more informed hiring decisions. By taking these steps, organizations can ensure that they are recruiting the best talent while minimizing bias in the process.
Chris talks about how he has a bias for liking people right off the bat and how that clouds his judgment.
He also notes that interviewing people at different times of the day contributes to another kind of bias—interviews conducted earlier in the day tend to go better as the energy is high, enthusiasm is optimal, and you’re not tired. Interviews later in the day or multiple back-to-back meetings can leave you drained with minimal energy to focus on the interview.
The strategy that Chris uses to overcome this bias is to have an interview scorecard—essentially a list of ten questions to help identify traits that are important for the role. Since this scorecard is consistent, no matter a leader’s personal energy levels, they can get the right kind of input from the candidate and form a purposeful insight from each interview.
Leadership challenges around hiring for sales
Sales, as a department, is one of the fastest-growing areas in some companies. Therefore, leaders need to pay extra attention when hiring for high-volume positions.
For many companies, sales leaders are the driving force behind the success and growth of the organization. They play a key role in setting the tone for their team by having a clear vision and direction and inspiring the members to reach their goals.
Chris mentions that “resilience” is a key trait he looks for when hiring for sales positions—a salesperson has to maximize conversions while getting told “no” at least 90% of the time. A good salesperson must also manage potentially interrupting someone’s day without feeling bad about it.
Additionally, compartmentalizing the negative elements of one’s personal life while at work will determine the sales energy during the day. Sales is a less forgiving role than an individual contributor or a knowledge worker.
Another aspect of a successful salesperson is the person’s drive. Chris explains that a person with a high ‘drive’ mentality often succeeds in a sales position. And the greatest strength of a salesperson is their ability to listen and have empathy for ‘what the things are that matter to the prospect,’ so you can effectively sell them a solution and not just a product.
“If you want to continue to move up the ranks in the sales leadership perspective, you need to make sure that you’re always working on your craft.” -Chris Leithe, Growth Consultant and Founder of Leithe Labs
How to get to the heart of the interview?
To really understand a person, you need to ask the right questions and listen closely. With some preparation and practice, you can learn how to get to the heart of an interview. By honing your interviewing skills, you will be able to ask more meaningful questions and gain insight into who someone really is. With this knowledge, you can make more informed decisions about job candidates or people you meet in other settings.
Drawing on his personal experience, Chris recommends writing down the top five or six things that you want to screen for when interviewing a candidate. He then writes down a battery of questions for each trait (with a focus on behavioral, analytical, emotional, and intellectual aspects, for example). The effectiveness of this approach comes when testing out these questions during interviews and auditing the outcomes.
How do you find a question that determines a person’s MO?
Finding the right question to determine a person’s MO (modus operandi or way of being) can be tricky. It requires understanding the individual’s motivations, ambitions, and goals. It also requires understanding their current lifestyle and how they spend their time.
The best way to find the right question is to ask yourself what you want to learn from them. What do you need to know to decide on their work ethic? What kind of information do you need to understand their level of commitment and dedication?
Everyone wants to put their best foot forward—there’s a certain level of hustle that we all display at varying points in life, says Chris. It’s identifying that drive and nurturing that is the challenge. However, leaders who are invested in their employee’s success recognize this and work on honing their strengths and chipping away at their weaknesses.
The ‘aha’ moment for Chris in his hiring journey
“The point and purpose of an interview—an interview well done—is to understand who the candidate is, who they actually are when they’re out there in as normal of a state as possible,” said Chris Leithe.
Chris asserts that it is vital to set a comfortable environment for the interviewee—so you can get to know one another in a normal and relaxed state. This becomes particularly tricky during an interview because everyone is on edge and trying to put their best foot forward. An interview is like a first date; you’re trying to make the best impression.
Here’s a bonus hiring tactic:
Chris narrates the story of how a colleague used to walk around the campus with her candidates so she could get them to relax and loosen up. The best interviews are those where leaders are able to remove the power dynamics as much as possible and focus on having a conversation.
Key Takeaways:
“You cannot accomplish anything alone” — hiring is the most important thing you’ll do as a leader.
Not all hiring decisions will work out. Sometimes, they can go wrong. It’s okay—accept it and handle it.
Bias is often the biggest challenge in the hiring process. Leaders need to overcome biases (personal, professional, demographic).
When more than one person is interviewing a candidate, a unanimous ‘YES’ is rare. Leaders need to know how to reconcile varied feedback.
Using interview scorecards to track key questions and help direct the flow of an interview can be vital when interviewing multiple people in a short span of time.
Resilience, passion, and drive are some of the key traits to look for when hiring for sales positions—the ability to listen to what the prospect is saying and the empathy to understand their challenges differentiate a good salesperson from an average salesperson.
The heart of an interview is a leader’s success in removing the power dynamics and having a conversation with the candidate.
Brian concludes the session in this way:
“Leadership, in a lot of ways, is about partnership, understanding one another, mutual respect, and relationships.”
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