Many years ago, we found our services business at an inflection point. After a few years of high growth, our execution was slipping. Projects were delayed. Communication was choppy. Customers were grumbling. A company that had been humming was sputtering.

We assessed our issues. Projects staffed with a long-tenured team were still running smoothly. But projects with more newly hired team members were stalling. And everyone agreed that they were hampered by resource constraints.

As we dug in, we realized that our growth had changed the dynamics of our hiring decisions. For years, we had prioritized rigorous hiring standards over time to fill an open position. But with more rapid growth, teams were feeling the pain of being understaffed. They were desperate for help, and had often begun prioritizing making a hire over making the right hire.

This shorter-term focus was creating longer-term problems. For example, our best team members grew frustrated when people joined the team and couldn’t pull their own weight. That simply put more work and pressure on our top performers, which negatively impacted their job satisfaction.

It was a classic “No Man’s Land” problem. We had a hiring philosophy, but it was known only by tribal knowledge. As the organization expanded, it was being diluted, and even lost in places. We needed to develop a hiring playbook, and ensure that it was executed across the organization.

Creating a Hiring Playbook

Our hiring philosophy was to seek smart, curious people who were self-motivated to overcome obstacles and collaborate with their teammates. Our belief was that these traits were generally innate, rather than teachable. So, our hiring playbook sought to define these core competencies and provide questions to help an interviewer assess them.

Core Competencies (non-teachable):

• Business Acumen – Look for common sense, strategic thinking, and intellectual horsepower
• Self-Motivated – Look for self-awareness (and a lack of self-absorption) and a drive to make things happen (rather than waiting for things to happen)
• Intellectual Curiosity – Look for questions that seek understanding, the ability to handle complexity, and real-time processing of information
• Personal Character – Validate integrity and respect for others. No assholes.

For us, these competencies are table stakes for any hire. Why? Because they largely boil down to intelligence and judgment. If we trust someone’s intelligence and judgment, we trust them to operate with autonomy in their role. And intelligence and judgment are top indicators of a person’s upside for growth.

The other competencies we evaluated were things that we thought were teachable. So, if a candidate clearly had our core competencies, but needed work on a teachable competency, they were still a viable candidate for the role.

Teachable Competencies

• Functional Knowledge – Skills and aptitude required for a particular role. We developed tests to assess it for each role in the organization.
• Communication & Collaboration – Look for active listening skills, the asking of clarifying questions, and stories exemplifying being a team player
• Leading Change (leadership roles) – Look for courage, empathy, resilience, and other aspects of leading change in a constantly evolving organization

These competencies are also important for success in the role, but many can be taught. We trained interviewers to assess for some base level of competency, then apply judgement on what else could be taught. For example, in evaluating a software engineer’s functional knowledge, pattern-recognition is a key aptitude that should be present. But if the engineer has that aptitude, but is less familiar with a particular language like Java, we wouldn’t mind, as learning that language is teachable.

Providing Tangible Tools

When designing a playbook, the level of detail is important. Providing a high-level vision (i.e., a “north star”) is always important, but a playbook needs to provide guidance on how to execute to achieve that vision.

We lifted one idea from The Hard Thing About Hard Things. In that book, Ben Horowitz writes about helping people to understand “what good looks like” for performance in any role. So, for each key competency, we wrote up “case studies” of what that core competency looks like. For example, under “self-motivation,” we noted that people who are self-motivated have a positive attitude about identifying and overcoming obstacles, while people who are not self-motivated often wait for an assignment or ask to take action.

We applied the same concept to the interview itself, describing what a good interview looks like versus a bad interview for each competency. For example, someone who lacks self-motivation may struggle to articulate risks that they have taken to achieve outcomes.

When we reviewed a draft playbook with leaders and teams, multiple people asked for example questions to help them assess each competency. We believed that would also enhance our consistency in assessing candidates. So, we added 3-5 example interview questions for each competency.

Focus on Execution

As we implemented our competency-based hiring playbook, we developed some other “rules of thumb” to ensure that we executed the playbook to the spirit of the philosophy. One rule was “Don’t make excuses for candidates.” We emphasized that if you gave someone a low score on communication, but then made the excuse that “they were nervous,” then you are effectively removing communication as a core competency.

Another rule that became ingrained in our culture – if no one is willing to advocate for a candidate, then we should pass. This “no advocate, no hire” rule effectively served to raise the bar on the candidate that seemed to check all of the boxes, but wasn’t strong enough in any competency to inspire people to advocate for them. Before we made an offer, someone needed to take a stand that this was the right person for the company and for the role.

These “rules” became accountability mechanisms. While we put every hiring manager and interviewer through training on the new playbook, it was leaders asking validating questions and pushing the team to take a stand that really drove execution.

Foundation for Growth

In the months following the hiring playbook initiative, we saw the benefits of re-prioritizing making the right hire over making a hire. The number of “mis-hires” who lasted less than 12 months dropped significantly. Project delays declined and customer satisfaction improved.

In addition to those customer wins, the playbook created wins for our people. We’ve long held that infusing talent into an organization boosts the entire team. Top performers were happier when the new team members could contribute quickly and happy to spend time ramping up new team members when they could see the feedback applied immediately. Last but not least, happy customers always make for a happier team.