The JobSync Blog
Hiring with Your Gut: Pro's and Con's
December 20, 2011
In an earlier blog piece, we introduced you to Robbie Thain, the Hawaiian founder of a successful marketing firm who infuses his hiring practices with island savvy. Thain also believes that people don’t rely on their gut as much as they should when it comes to making a hiring decision.
And this is where Geoff Smart would beg to differ.
Smart is the founder of ghSMART, a leadership consulting firm based in Colorado. In a recent interview featured in Business Insider, he outlined the reasons for his opposition to hiring an employee using one’s gut. Although most people hire with their gut, Smart maintains this results in failure 50% of the time, according to a half a century worth of data. Instead of letting one’s gut dictate recruiting, he believes in a four-step approach that makes the process more objective and systematic:
1. Scorecard: In this step, determine what your future hire is supposed to accomplish in the relevant position.
2. Source: Where will you find candidates to fulfill the objectives in the first step above? Smart conducted a study and claims that 78% of great leaders find their best talent through their own personal and professional networks. (We go even further to say that we believe you can expand this pool of people when you sign up for JobSync because you will be able to specify the best fit personalities and backgrounds for each job you post and a large network of diverse candidates will be matched to what you are looking for.)
3. Select: During this step, you learn more about the candidates and narrow the field down to the final one.
4. Sell: Finally, you close the deal and sell a candidate on joining your company.
Smart insists this approach works 90% of the time, as it takes one’s gut out of the game. He believes so many hiring managers fail because instead of concentrating on outlining what they want an employee to achieve, they focus on what kind of personality they want to hire. He also feels they talk too much about themselves during the interview, limiting what they learn about a candidate’s accomplishments in prior jobs.
So who’s right, Smart or Thain? If you dig a little deeper, it turns out they both are.
Smart concedes that although you should hire a candidate based on the results they can bring, when character concerns such as trustworthiness and integrity emerge, you should listen to your gut. Interestingly, Smart wants to limit reliance on one’s gut because it encourages hiring managers to employ similar, like-minded people. Thain thinks companies should rely more on their gut, but it shouldn’t be the sole factor. In fact, like Smart, he also wants to discourage the hiring of people like those he already employs, as he believes there is strength in diversity.
The bottom line? Use your head and your heart when hiring, and don’t always be gutless.
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