As we get ready for the week ahead, I want to talk to you about hiring. One of the most expensive mistakes a growing business can make is hiring someone who interviews brilliantly for a job they were never going to do well.
As a CMO, I'm involved in hiring decisions and conversations about hiring within the companies I work with. But let me tell you about a hire that went horribly wrong for me, in my own business.
Back in my agency days, I interviewed a guy who was brilliant. He was confident, he answered every question well, and he had a great story for everything. Back then, I'd give people the benefit of the doubt, hire on attitude and what they told me, and go with my gut most of the time.
So, against my better judgement, this guy got hired, and a few weeks into his probation, the penny finally dropped. This man was a brilliant salesman. The problem was that I hadn't hired him for a sales job. He sold himself so well in the interview that I believed every word, and very little of it showed up in the work.
He ignored procedures and pushed back on direction. He was always thinking about himself and what was in it for him, and he wasn't a team player either.
None of that came out in the interview. To be fair to him, I hadn't done the work to find it. My reference checks weren't thorough, and I hadn't done my due diligence.
Due diligence is so important, and there's a trap here that a lot of us fall into, which is focusing on the job title. When you hire from a job title and an interview, you end up hiring the person who performs best in the interview. That's sometimes a different person from the one who'll actually do the job well.
I've learned this the hard way. We need to define the work that needs to get done, rather than just the job title. Write down the outcomes this person must own. What will be different in 90 days if they're doing the job well? What decisions will they make? What will they be measured on? That's what a good job description should be built on. When you start with all of that, the job title, whatever you're going to call this role, becomes almost an afterthought.
Then really interview against the job description you actually wrote. It's surprisingly easy to drift in an interview. Somebody's background is impressive, they tell a story, the conversation flows, and before you know it, you're assessing them for a job you don't have. I like to keep a simple scorecard next to me, built from the outcomes, and apply it to every candidate.
And this is a big one for me now. Look for evidence over stories. Anyone can tell you they've grown a business, led a team or got certain results. Ask them for the specifics behind it. Ask what they did, how they did it, and who can confirm it. Then actually call the references they give, and do the checks.
These days, I ask that question before any hire, whether it's a senior position or not. "Can you show me the evidence, rather than just telling me?" It's changed the quality of the people I bring into the roles I'm involved with.
There's one more pattern I see a lot. Businesses advertise a big, broad job title because it sounds impressive. Sometimes it attracts strong candidates, but it can also have the reverse effect. Interviews start, and they keep circling around a much narrower and more urgent issue.
That's the signal worth listening to. It usually means the real job hasn't been written properly yet. You've written a big job title, and you want one person to do everything. You're looking for a unicorn. When you notice the urgent and important things that really need to be in the job description, stop and rewrite the role before you do more interviews, and certainly before you make a hiring decision. It's far easier to fix a job description than it is to fix a hire.
This is about being fair to the people you're interviewing, and also to your team and your business. When someone joins knowing exactly what they own and how success will be measured, they have a real chance to win. When they join on the back of a vague title and a great interview, everybody's guessing, including them.
So as we get ready for the week ahead, if you've got a hire coming up, try this. Write the outcomes first, and build a scorecard to score every interviewee against. Have set questions you ask every single person, note their answers, and ask every candidate for evidence. Make the reference calls too. Even when your gut says yes, check that what they've told you is true, and get those references back from people who know them.
See you in the next episode.
If you'd like to talk more, email me at cmo@anthodges.com. Subscribe wherever you're listening, and find every past episode at cmofieldnotes.com.
