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Hiring success starts with
better job descriptions

What’s the most common hiring mistake? According to Vistage speakers Barry Deutsch and Brad Remillard, it’s using inadequate job descriptions to guide the hiring process.

After conducting a survey of 225 executive-level hires in 134 different companies, the two partners found that a staggering 93 percent of searches that resulted in new executive failure made this critical mistake at the outset of the process.

“The first thing most companies do in a job search is throw together a very generic job description,” notes Deutsch. “Or worse, they pull an old, outdated job description off the shelf, dust it off and pronounce it fit for hiring the new executive. Nine out of ten times, that’s a sure recipe for failure.”

Most traditional job descriptions consist of vague, nebulous terms that lump together a mishmash of skills, knowledge, abilities, attributes, responsibilities, experience, education and behavioral adjectives--none of which are consistent predictors of on-the-job-success.

“Traditional job descriptions don’t help to align organizational goals with individual or departmental goals,” adds Remillard, “and they don’t help to clarify expectations or create a roadmap for the hiring process. Worse, when you define a job in mediocre terms, as most traditional job descriptions do, you tend to attract mediocre candidates. When all you have to interview is mediocre candidates, you end up hiring mediocre people.”

Success factors

The solution, suggest Deutsch and Remillard, is the Success Factor Snapshot (SFS), a powerful hiring tool that breaks down a position’s requirements in terms of specific and measurable deliverables, benchmarks and timetables.

The SFS serves as the cornerstone of the Success Factor Methodology, Deutsch and Remillard’s trademarked hiring system, and offers several advantages over traditional job descriptions. The SFS makes it easier to define a position in terms of the candidate you need rather than the skills and experience someone has gained over the years. The SFS methodology serves as the foundation for a compelling marketing statement, and provides a description of the job designed to attract top candidates. It provides a scorecard to evaluate nd compare different candidates, leads to a final, specific set of verification questions to ensure that the candidate can accomplish the established goals, and allows a new hire to start the job knowing exactly what is expected. In addition, the Snapshot provides a vehicle for managing the performance of individual employees and retaining top performers.

Assembling an SFS helps the recruiting process by prompting hiring managers to think about where to look for top talent. It shapes the structure of the job interview and helps the hiring team focus on what needs to be done. Finally, the SFS provides the substance for core interview questions that ensure a high-quality interview.

Creating your Snapshot

To create a Success Factor Snapshot, Deutsch and Remillard recommend that you first abandon your outdated, generic job description, then use the SOAR methodology to define success for the position: SUBSTANTIAL GOALS. Identify the major goals you are trying to achieve in the position. OBSTACLES. Identify the obstacles standing in the way of accomplishing each substantial goal. ACTION. Identify the quantifiable, measurable action items that the person needs to take to accomplish each substantial goal. RESULTS. Identify the metrics you will use to measure success in the position.

What does a Success Factor Snapshot look like? Consider the following example for a vice president of operations:

SUCCESS FACTOR 1: Improve on-time deliveries from 90 to 95 percent within 12 months; develop and implement a vendor qualifications program that will achieve zero defects and 100 percent on-time deliveries in six months; improve machine utilization to 98 percent in three months; and implement quality controls and procedures to ensure less than two percent defects in the same timeframe.

SUCCESS FACTOR 2: Consolidate plant operations within 18 months; develop and present to the CEO a plan to consolidate two plants with no down time in three months; complete a new plant layout that includes work cells for all manufacturing processes within four months; have the first cells up and running and producing at levels prior to the move within nine months.

SUCCESS FACTOR 3: Reduce manufacturing costs by 10 percent; conduct a SWOT analysis in the first three months and present a plan of action to reduce costs by 10 percent based on this analysis; reduce machine setup time by 30 percent in six months; identify main drivers of overtime and within six months present a plan that will address these issues and a timeframe to eliminate them.

“Clearly, this looks very different than your typical job description,” notes Deutsch. “With the Success Factor Snapshot, both you and the candidate know exactly what results are required from the position and what actions must be taken to achieve them. More important, because those results are closely aligned with the company’s most important objectives, achieving them means that everybody wins.”

“The underlying principle here is that you get what you define,” concludes Remillard. “If your job descriptions focus on minimum performance (as most do), you will attract people who can only achieve that minimum. In contrast, a compelling Success Factor Snapshot will attract those who are driven to achieve clear and challenging descriptions of success."

Examples of Success Factor Snapshots can be found in Deutsch and Remillard’s book, You’re Not the Person I Hired, and on their website, www.impacthiringsolutions.com.

Larry Deutsch and Brad Remillard of Impact Hiring Solutions are veteran recruiters, national trainers, and hiring coaches to CEOs across the country and speakers for Vistage International. Deutsch can be contacted at (310) 378-4571 or barry@impacthiringsolutions.com. Remillard may be reached at (949)310-5659 or brad@impacthiringsolutions.com

Copyright 2006 by Vistage International, Inc. All rights reserved. Additional Copyright 2007 by Lighthouse Consulting Services, LLC. Redacted and used with permission.

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