I could argue, although many HR/Talent vendors don’t want to hear this, that hiring is still a black art.  Our reality is we, still in this day and age, have no idea how someone is actually going to perform in our environment in the position we put them in. Although, we truly believe we do know exactly how they’ll do.  Until they fail, then we blame them, not our own inept ability to select the right talent for our organizations.

I have two quotes from Seth Godin regarding expertise.  The first:

“It’s easy to pretend expertise when there is no data to contradict you.”

That’s all of us and our hiring managers who claim we are ‘great’ at hiring, yet have no concrete measures to back up this assertion.   We also allow ourselves to ignore what our data is telling us, if we don’t believe it fits the story we want to tell.  “Well, Ted is a one of our best managers, he’s been here a long time. Sure his 90 day turnover is twice as high as the next hiring manager, but that’s not Ted’s fault, he has high turnover positions.”

Here’s the other quote:

“Relying on the ignorance of a motivated audience, isn’t a long term strategy.”

These two quotes go together in my view of hiring.  Many times we allow hiring decisions to be made by very motivated people who need talent and are being pressured to get things done.  When you add these two things together, you have disaster.  Not in the short term, but in the long term.

Have you ever seen the resume of the HR Pro who tends to make it three to four years at an organization, then moves on, and on, and on?  Every three years or so? This is what happens.  Ignore data. Rely on the ignorance of a motivated audience.  Eventually it all catches up on you, and you need to go perform your black HR magic somewhere else!

Everyone knows how to hire.  Very few people know how to hire well.  The best are the ones who listen to their data, and don’t allow those incapable of hiring, to hire.  This isn’t easy.  This takes courage.  You will have some battles to fight within your organization to make this happen.  But it beats moving all of your stuff every three years.