ARTICLE SUMMARY:

HIRING WITHOUT FIRING

Summary
Hiring has never been an easy task and todays economy makes it even more
tougher.Nowadays success of hiring depends upon competencies that are intangible
such as flexibility and cross- cultural understanding. Even though using interviews,
reference checks, personality tests infuse some logic and predictability still the
success of hiring process remains difficult to achieve. The global scope of business
has led to increase in demand for talented senior executives but the supply is

shrinking. The nature of the work is also no longer uniform. Organizational forms are
continually being invented and in some cases job responsibilities change overnight.
So finding the right person to fill a job has become even more complex.

The Ten Deadly Traps

Successful hiring is not impossible to achieve. It has been observed that a systematic
approach to key appointments has had a significant effect on successful expansion
of various companies like Sun Microsystems, AXA etc.
But hiring may go wrong as much as it may go right and in most cases it is due to the
company falling into one or more hiring traps. A few of them have been described
below:
1. The reactive approach:
The reactive approach tells that companies generally look for people with the
same good qualities as of the previous jobholder but excluding the defects.
This approach doesnt take into account the jobs requirements but rather focuses
the search on the familiar personality and effective competencies of the
predecessor.
2. Unrealistic specifications:
Generally search teams look for unrealistic specifications which can never be
filled. Like the candidate should be a forceful leader and a teamplayer. This may
result in not selecting the best candidate who might have all the qualities that are
needed for success but he may not meet some of the specifications, such as an
M.B.A or specified work experience. Also sometimes the specifications
mentioned may not take into account skills that already exist in the organization.
3. Evaluating people in absolute terms:
It is difficult for search teams to assess a candidates performance without
understanding the circumstances in which a statement has been made. Generally
in businesses, praise and criticism are used in absolute terms.
Even the answers that are given to absolute questions in interview process are
opinions rendered in vacuum and should be taken as such and not as facts.

4. Accepting people at face value:

Nowadays, people are very cynical and skeptical. Executives dont realize it and
they tend to believe all the answers that are given by candidate. During interviews,
people often adjust the truth to fit the question and also the resumes are edited to
highlight or remove successful experiences. So candidates are generally taken at
face value.
5. Believing references:
Just the way people accept candidates at their word, they believe their references
as well. Often the references given by candidates are of limited value. The reason

is that their former bosses usually provide generous references. Their motive is to
maintain a good relationship with the candidate and not to provide useful
information to some unknown recruiter.
6. The Just Like Me bias:
Stereotyping, halo effect letting one positive characteristic outshine all others,
generally led to errors in the hiring process. Executives tend to rate people high
who are just like them.
7. Delegation gaffes:
Most executives like to interview finalists and choose the winner by themselves.
But they generally delegate the critical steps leading up to that point. Delegation is
not bad if people creating the description are properly briefed on the nature of the
job but mostly delegation handicaps the overall strength of hiring process.
8. Unstructured interviews:
In a structured interview, the interviewer has a set of well prepared questions
that could reveal the candidates competencies like skills, knowledge and general
abilities. They should be carefully planned and executed. But usually the
interviews end up as loose conversations that dont cover important elements.
9. Ignoring emotional intelligence:
Most companies looks at a candidates hard data: education, IQ, job history.
But nowadays the focus is shifting on EQ. It improves your ability to lead others,
improves your communication. However most of the companies dont consider
EQ while their hiring process because it cannot be assessed easily. People are
trained throughout their life to show social competencies.
10. Political pressures:
People try all sorts of methods to get their friends, partners selected. Also in most
companies people advocate for weak candidates so as to not diminish their own
chances of getting ahead in the organization. Such kind of activities can not only
have a disturbing effect on the company but also on its morale.

Getting Hiring Right

To avoid hiring traps the executives must know not only the pitfalls but also
should follow a systematic process with two major parts:
a. Investing in the problem definition:
It describes the work that a company must do before it even starts
recruitment. The companys strategy should drive the requirements and hence
the search should begin from that point. Next the question should be asked

about the deliverables from the new job opening. Critical incidents that the
new hire would expect in that role should be identified and the hiring process
must focus on the type of questions pertaining to evaluation of the candidate
around those critical incidents.
New competencies emerge for the job as the company delves into the problem
defining phase. Some of these competencies which are entirely missing from
the new executives colleagues should be prioritized. Another point to be
included is the lateral point to view of his would be colleagues.
The next step is defining the competencies in behavioral terms which would
essentially impose clarity. In addition every job description should include the
emotional intelligence competencies that are critical to getting the work done.
The final step that closes the problem definition phase is to achieve a
consensus with all the stakeholders that the short list of competencies will
guide the evaluation process.
b. Doing the Homework:
It encompasses the acts of generating and evaluating candidates and finally
recruiting the right person. One of the very good strategies is to consider
high-leverage sourcing that requires to look for people who can provide
reference of strong candidates. This is specifically important when hiring for
high-level positions and is better than placing advertisements or requesting
friends and colleagues. Also it is important to look for people within the
organization for key positions and promote the person who fits in the job
description. If such the same is not feasible then hiring from outside is to be
undertaken. A second strategy to hiring is adopting a boundaryless mind-set
i.e. adopting a creative and open attitude while hiring. The interviewee always
tries to present himself in the best light during the interview. Hence it becomes
extremely important to test the candidates on business problems and emotional
intelligence during hiring and conduct the process in a vacuum without any
prior influence or impressions about him.
Hence, hiring well requires a disciplined and systematic approach. It is very important
for the companies to understand the significance of hiring and integrate it as a part of
their strategy. Hiring should be done cautiously so that there arises no need of firing
the employee at a later stage.

Critical Review
The article Hiring Without Firing speaks about the challenges involved in the hiring
process i.e. getting right people placed at right places. The writer of the article
Claudio Fernandez-Araoz is a partner at the executive search firm Egon Zehnder
International in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Claudio begins the article with the
statement that hiring is not easy and there is no science which describes the hiring
process. Claudio pens down his thoughts on the hiring process in a simple and

illustrative manner. He presents several examples to explain his points. He gives two
wonderful examples that necessitated the firing of the newly hired CEOs in two
companies. The CEOs had been successful in their past assignments but failed in their
current assignments due to lack explicit job descriptions and hiring done over past
reputations. These instances caution the reader that how organizations have evolved
over the time and have made the similar roles of companies within the same industry,
requiring entirely different skills.
The writer analyses some basic mistakes that makes the hiring fail. He calls them
Deadly Hiring Traps to stress their importance. These are ten in number and include
the reactive approach i.e. focussing on the qualities of predecessor without his
shortcomings, unrealistic expectations, evaluating people in absolute terms, accepting
people at face value, believing in references, biases due to stereotyping and halo
effect, delegating gaffes, unconstructed interview, ignoring emotional intelligence and
political pressures. He feels that falling in one or more of above traps is not deliberate
but these reflect many aspects of human nature. He cautions the reader to avoid them
due to increased stakes in hiring created as a result of economy moving at a very
faster that has increased the competition on a global stage. At this point, he also
brings in the need of executive search firms and their growing need when the hiring
fails. This highlighting of external search firms shows the bias of the reader but he
very cleverly also mentions when and how to avoid investment in them.
The article later describes how to get the hiring right. It presents a very interesting
perspective of investing in the problem definition before designing job description.
This is mostly ignored by the companies and this should be done to understand why
the hiring is required and what will be the benefit of hiring on the organization. It also
presents a metric of successful hiring i.e. whether hiring is bale to solve the problem.
The understandings of critical incidents within the organizations that relate to the job
descriptions are also very important as they help in evaluating a potential candidate
for hire. The candidate could be evaluated over his response on these business cases
that in turn could decide the candidates potential and his alignment to business
strategies of the organization. The article also mentions the need of using a wellstructured interview to make an effective comparison between potential candidates.
The article concludes with a need of systematic and disciplined approach for the
hiring. It forces the organizations to include the effective hiring as a part of their
strategy. It could make more impact if it could compare the costs associated with
hiring and firing and the qualities of agents involved in the hiring process. Overall the
central idea of the article is well articulated and sufficient examples have been
provided for better understanding. The reader is thoroughly convinced about wise
hiring and hitting the bulls eye by selecting the right candidates.