RUN WITH THE Big dogS™ newsletter
Volume 3, issue 43

Beware of hiring someone to fill a knowledge hole in your organization. How do you validate that your candidate really knows his stuff?....John

Management idea

An exciting aspect of growth is having the resources - and need - to hire a specialist leader. Bringing in a Marketing, Quality, HR, IT, or Legal executive can be an inflection point for your company. But beware,  the very fact that you're hiring someone to fill a knowledge hole in your organization means that you don't have the in-house knowledge to validate the candidate.

Many of our clients share a common, unhappy, experience.  They reach a point where they need Marketing leadership, an expertise that doesn't exist within the organization. They recruit someone who is all hat and no cattle, as our Texas clients would say.  Why?  Because the organization didn't have a base of knowledge to properly define the requirements for the candidate as well as interview questions to verify competence.

There is a special challenge in recruiting Marketing, Quality, HR, IT, and Legal positions.  If the leader hired doesn't have a clear business sense they usually create a completely self contained system.  Marketing plans, consumed by spending money on research, brochures, advertising, and other important marketing stuff that somehow never seems to lead to more sales. Quality systems, training, certifications, and process that never seems to improve quality.  HR systems that - well you get the idea.

One of our clients solved this problem by getting the help of outside experts who understood their business and the particular discipline they were recruiting for. They made sure that their selection criteria included business acumen and an ability to communicate and teach the rest of the organization the new specialty. The next hire was an immediate success.