Hiring: Do You Like People?

Do You Like People? 

Kind of hard to hire the right ones if you're natural tendency is to avoid them. If you feel your true intentions are misunderstood, and you really don't enjoy the intricacies of human relationships then do yourself and your organization a huge managerial favor:

Hire someone who likes and understands people, to hire other people. 

We're not good at everything. It's great to know what you're good at, and what you're not. If you need help with this, I suggest the Meyers/Briggs test. It's very accurate, and quite awesome. 

Do you have an ex?  Hard to talk with your mother/brother/father/sister (fill in blank)? Ever have a bad interview and still got the job?

This is because you're human. We don't do everything well, and neither do the people around you. Some things we do amazingly well. Stephen Hawking is maybe our most brilliant Astrophysics brain ever. Probably doesn't know all of the band Tool's lyrics...  Don't ask him.

Everyone's different. It's hard to remember when someone is in front of you, but these differences are one of the many things that make interviewing others for jobs rewarding, and challenging.

Does this hiring scenario sound familiar?

1. interviewed a candidate on the telephone, in person, evaluated on a team, shaped offer, delivered, hired.
2. during interview process asked candidate about skills, they described challenges, they solved puzzles, they told stories, they showed charm, they left you feeling pretty good and resolved.
3. hire person, find out later that they have some character defects that make it really tough to work with them, or they were lying about their actual experience, or they quit suddenly to use your job as a ladder to the next.
4. wasted time. Rinse, repeat... 

Liking vs. Understanding:

Notice above I said to hire someone who 1. likes people, and 2. understands them. These are two different things. 

It's easy to like people, but it's not a prerequisite for understanding them.

wikipedia definitions: 

• to like (verb): Like can be used to express a feeling of attraction between two people, weaker than love and distinct from it in important ways
• to understand (verb):  Understanding is a relation between the knower and an object of understanding. Understanding implies abilities and dispositions with respect to an object of knowledge sufficient to support intelligent behavior.

Both liking and understanding people ARE prerequisites for great hiring decisions. 

Liking and Understanding are also prerequisites for a huge and tough to comprehend ability that is incredibly important to successful hiring: Empathy. 

Empathy is the innate ability to possess an understanding of the core motivations of others. It is not the common understanding of the term which sometimes is confused with feeling sorry for someone, or sympathizing -- these are actually counterproductive to true empathy. 

Skipping to Suggestions List: (repeated at end):

1. Find or Hire a Commander Troi: they pay for themselves  with their first recommended hire
2. If you don't like and understand people, don't interview them: delegate to Troi
3. Recognize your personal skill limitations and gifts as a manager or contributor
4. Don't wander outside of your "gifts" when interviewing: stick to a plan
5. Treat your Commander Troi with incredible respect: after all, they know what you're thinking

Going back to an ultra-nerdy Star Trek Next Generation reference, Coamander Troi was the ship's Counselor and Ambassador to creeps like the Farenghi, etc.

Her job was to figure out intentions and remove the ambiguity for the other emotionally limited crew members like Number 1, obviously Data, or the "I'm sealed off, conflicted, and also angry" Worf. They never doubted her, and she was never wrong about her area of expertise.

I'm obviously a geek but why the Star Trek reference? Back to Empathy ...

Empathy is not a judgement, nor is it an attempt to subject another's life time of motivations and experiences through our own filter and our own emotional programming. Empathy means to deeply feel in yourself the true motivations of someone else, and then find words to interpret those into communicable conclusions about their character. 

If you have this ability, you can empathize with a sadistic murderer on death row, but still retain the understanding that they deserve their punishment and have no feelings of loss for them. 

People used to be scared of this type of skill. Seems like psychic abilities on late night TV. Those who don't have it, can't see it or comprehend it. Those who do, can't stop it, can't remove it, and have a tough time feeling understood themselves. Thus the need to have someone else in your organization who does. 

Behavioral Interviewing Requires Empathy:

Behavioral interviewing has become ubiquitous as a means to achieve understanding human behavior through a set of questions. We offer scenarios, observe behavior, and make assessments about a person's propensities, or attitudes, or career trajectory.

Huge problem: most people don't understand human behavior -- not the interviewee, and certainly not the interviewer.

Deeper: Most people suck at properly reading people and their underlying intentions. Don't try if this isn't your gift.

Every Company Needs a Commander Troi.

I've received at least 20 interviewing training sessions over my career from nearly every company I've worked for. It was a deluge at Intel, with re-training every 6 months to a year when you were a Hiring Manager there.

Year after year as the training changed at Intel over my 17 year career there, the content changed, but rarely was there a leap of understanding that eclipsed a primitive reflection of basic human behaviors other than skill differences -- until late in the 2000's. Intel developed it's "Valuing Differences" campaign, which was aimed at creating an understanding of cultural differences between people.

This bled into interviewing, where it was recognized (without the Star Trek talk) that the interview process always needed someone who was a Commander Troi.

If you can find one person who is gifted in this area, who is empathetic in their nature and abilities, then viola: they are your behavioral interviewer. Do whatever it takes to retain them.

Example Interviewing Scenarios: 

Technical interviewer's candidate summary: "The candidate was able to write an elegant C# program in the time I gave them, has the requisite skills, and were polite and answered all of my questions without hesitation. We think similarly and I think we should hire them."

Troi's candidate summary: "The candidate is very self-centered, defensive and not at all the team player that we envisioned. There is a tendency to self loath, which seems to have bled into their other jobs because their pattern is to leave after 1 - 3 years when they're bored or have run out their welcome. They have 13 years of experience, and their only references are their brother, and a teacher from college. Their resume is brief to the point of being terse, serving their purpose of vagary so that we fill in the blanks for them and espouse more skills to them than they possess. This candidate will be a black hole in the development team, and we'll lose all the productivity they created after their first 6 months to a year. Don't hire."

Valuing Troi's Differences:

You may notice that your Troi (the empath in your company) likes peace and quiet and alone time. The world is very  loud for them, because other people's motivations keep interrupting. They remember faces, not names. They can mimic voices, and can probably come up with a story about them on the spot that puts the person their describing in a play or script that was never written. They are creative first, analytical second or last.

You can hone this skill if someone has it, but you can't teach it. It's innate.
This skill is highly valuable, and applicable in every area of business: negotiations, communication, managing, interviewing, business ventures, forecasting.

Give them space.
Call on their expertise. 
Let them know they're valued for their contributions.
Give them equal voice.
Use them everywhere they suggest, and anywhere you want to.
They can exist in any role: engineer, manager, janitor, salesperson. 
You probably already have a few: start looking.

Conclusions and  summary of 5 suggestions for successful behavioral interviewing, successful hiring decisions, and an overall lower stress level in onboarding people:

1. Find or Hire a Commander Troi: they pay for themselves  with their first recommended hire
2. If you don't like and understand people, don't interview them: delegate to Troi
3. Recognize your personal skill limitations and gifts as a manager or contributor
4. Don't wander outside of your "gifts" when interviewing: stick to a plan
5. Treat your Commander Troi with incredible respect: after all, they know what you're thinking

Empathy hires successfully: not sympathy, not likability.