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1-Page Summary of Hire With Your Head

Overview

This book is about how to grow great employees. The author uses the metaphor of gardening throughout the book, pointing out that we need to identify what makes a plant grow and then replicate those conditions with each employee. One outstanding worker can be worth more than many mediocre workers because they will help your business flourish. If you want to build a strong team and successful business, you should know how to hire.

Many companies don’t know how to hire the right people. They make mistakes that can be avoided if they knew what to look for. By knowing which questions to ask and how to write job descriptions, a company can avoid hiring the wrong people and wasting resources in managing those employees. This article will show you exactly what you need to do in order to get the best candidates possible so your team can perform better as a whole.

In this article, you’ll learn how to prevent your personal biases from affecting the hiring process; what great talent looks for in a job description; and one way to ensure people complete applications on your company’s website.

Big Idea #1: Recruitment is often misunderstood.

When trying to fill a position, you need to educate yourself on some common misconceptions about hiring. Recruiters often make mistakes in the interview process by giving too much weight to the interaction between the candidate and interviewer instead of focusing on the candidate’s abilities and motivation for that job.

Moreover, the interviewer can be swayed by a candidate’s personality and interaction right away. The interviewer may end up liking or disliking the person too much because of that interaction.

If you like someone, you’re more likely to give them an easy interview. You might not ask them difficult questions and assume they can learn the skills later on.

On the other hand, if you dislike someone from the start, you’ll probably be harsher on them. You might subconsciously look for their flaws to prove your first impression was correct. We also have a natural tendency to focus on candidates’ skills instead of their ability to do the job at hand. When we put too much emphasis on performance in an interview, we might lose sight of what the job actually involves. So remind yourself to focus on capabilities and not impressions during interviews. Aim for objectivity by waiting 30 minutes before making any hiring decisions after an interview or simply reminding yourself to ignore first impressions and judge based off actual abilities and experience.

The real key to ensuring that you’re hiring the right person for the job is creating a performance profile. Performance profiles are used to identify who will be successful in the role and how they’ll perform. You can read more about them here.

Big Idea #2: The traditional way of describing a job opening is not effective at attracting the best candidates.

Most people write job descriptions that list out a lot of the skills and traits they want in an employee. However, this isn’t the best way to recruit employees. A better method is using performance profiles instead of job descriptions.

Performance profiles are great for filtering candidates. They outline what the job is, rather than what it requires or who you want to hire. So don’t just say you’re looking for someone with good market research skills; instead, say that they should prepare a report on competition in their first month of employment.

When you focus on a candidate’s skills, rather than what they have accomplished in the past, you will be able to measure their performance more easily. It doesn’t matter if your employee has experience – it matters if they can use that experience effectively.

Hire With Your Head Book Summary, by Lou Adler