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Why Hiring Managers Keep Blowing It

Guest post by: Jeff Ogden

Article Overview: Hiring mistakes happen over and over. We explore why mistakes are happening and make recommendations on how to find hidden stars.

Why Hiring Managers Keep Blowing It

by Jeff Ogden, President of the B2B lead generation consultancy Find New Customers. We help companies improve sales leads using world-class lead generation programs.



New hires often don't work out. Why does that keep happening? Let's examine a scenario to see why hiring managers keep making bad decisions.

You are the hiring manager You're hiring for a large software company and you are looking for someone to own global responsibility for your largest customer - a huge global firm. Revenue has been stagnant and competitors are nipping at your heels. Time for a change.

You have three candidates under consideration:

• Candidate A - The current rep on the account. Has handled it for three years and is well-respected.
• Candidate B - New employee. He wowed everyone, but never handled this account and is new to the industry. Does not know the account or the industry.
• Candidate C - Handles that global account for our #1 competitor

Whom do you hire? Undoubtedly most would choose C - he has the experience in our industry - a safe choice. Many would choose A - she has experience too. Few if any would choose B - as he has no experience in our industry or with the customer.

You're in luck. All three did the job, so we have measurable results from all. It was no contest. But the results are not what we expect.

• Candidate A was up first- declining revenue. She was pushed to the side.
• Candidate B was up second - revenue shot up by 224% in the first 12 months. But after the company screwed the client, he resigned.
• Candidate C (the best choice) - After B left, we went out and took the rep from our top competitor. But he did not last 6 months - he was unable to touch Candidate B's results. We fired him.

Candidate B was the best choice by far. The one no one would choose.

In hindsight, we see that candidate B was very different from A and C - he worked differently. His passion, teamwork skills and creativity made him a star. He devised a brilliant plan and executed it to perfection. No one else had a plan.



This begs a question. If future stars are out there, how do we find them, especially when we cannot rely on standard measures of experience and industry knowledge?

The thing that needs to stop is the driving everything through a detailed job description. Problem is - critical information is missing.

I believe the answer is for companies, before they search for new employees, they look to their top performers. Since you want to hire a top performer, learn about what a top performer is a top performer.

Ask questions of your top performers to learn what makes them unique.

• What is about these people that makes them so successful?
• What are the personality traits?
• What are the interpersonal skills?

Use what you learn to create a very different job description. Maybe factors like passion, honesty and listening skills will make the list.

I was Candidate B, by the way.

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Article Tags: b2b lead generation, b2b marketing, btob lead generation, find new customers, hiring practices, lead generating, lead generation, lead generation companies, sales leads



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