Mark Zuckerberg – The One Question He Asks Before Hiring A New Employee

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Interesting article over on ABC News re: Mark Zuckerberg’s hiring philosophy.

Image Courtesy of Creative Commons by © Jason McELweenie
Image Courtesy of Creative Commons by © Jason McElweenie

The Facebook CEO is quoted as saying:

“I will only hire someone to work directly for me if I would work for that person…It’s a pretty good test.”

I agree with Mark’s assessment.

One thing I was told early in my career as a Recruiter was that a good way to judge how a Hiring Manager’s competence was was to see who they hired.  Competent managers tended to hire strong candidates. Incompetent managers tended to hire weak candidates.  The reason for this – competent managers want to bring strong, accomplished employees in their departments because they feel that strong employees make for a strong organizations.  Incompetent managers see strong employees as a threat.

So while you may not agree with everything Mark Zuckerberg says, or you may not agree with every change in policy on Facebook, you have to admit that Facebook is a well run company.  And Mark Zuckerberg’s hiring philosophy is a good reason why.

Pay More For Top Talent – A Winning Bet

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Josh Linkner is a very successful entrepreneur, VC, and bestselling author.

He wrote a fantastic  article about the importance of companies paying top dollar to ensure they acquire top talent.

And here’s the thing to remember – Josh is not some academic theorizing about the value of top talent.  This is a man with a proven track record of building successful companies. He speaks from experience.

Image Courtesy of Creative Commons by © www.flazingo.com/creativecommons http://ow.ly/Isd6c
Image Courtesy of Creative Commons by © www.flazingo.com/creativecommons http://ow.ly/Isd6c

Josh writes:

As the companies in our portfolio continue to grow, the biggest conundrum for our leaders is hiring top talent. Many find high salaries hard to swallow, especially on a startup budget and when they’re not making as much money as the potential recruits they’re considering. Tough cookies. Paying more for A+ talent at your company is worth the investment many times over, 99.9% of the time.

He continues by writing:

While it’s easy to tally up your “savings” by settling for a B or C-level person, the upside that an A+ team member can bring will far exceed the near term cost difference. When you get down to it, the “risk” of paying up for the best and brightest is simply not a risk at all. Rather, it’s the way you’ll accelerate growth and ultimately win big.

Bottom line – when a person with a successful record of building companies preaches about the importance of paying top dollar to secure the best talent – we would all do well to listen….

To Hire Top Talent – Bring out the Big Guns

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In their book, The War for Talent, the authors (Ed Michaels, Helen Handfield-Jones & Beth Axelrod) wrote:

“What distinguishes the high-performing companies from the average performing was not better HR processes, but the fundamental belief in the importance of talent.”

While many companies subscribe to their belief in the importance of talent – their interview practices suggest otherwise.

One thing that companies need to do when trying to fill a key position with top level talent is to ensure that the “Big Guns” are involved in the interview.

Image Courtesy of Creative Commons by Laszlo Ilyes http://ow.ly/HFsn2
Image Courtesy of Creative Commons by Laszlo Ilyes http://ow.ly/HFsn2

If the position is important and the candidate is an “A” level performer, then senior management must be involved.

In an article from a few years ago entitled “Waging a War for Talent”, Ann Dowsett Johnston writes:

“Last month, Bill Gates went shopping for talent at the University of Waterloo, one of six universities he visited in three days…Call it a one-person career fair.”

The moral of this story?

If Bill Gates (who at the time of the article was still actively running Microsoft) was still leaving the friendly confines of his office in Redmond to help conduct interviews, there is absolutely no reason that anyone in your organization can claim that they are too busy to interview.

I have had a number of instances during my career where a mid level candidate was floored that a VP or President actually took the time to interview them.  And they later admitted that meeting senior management during the interview process was one of the key factors in their accepting the offer.

Obviously – this practice needs to be used judiciously.  A company can’t trot out senior management for every interview.

But when trying to fill a key position, bringing out the “Big Guns” can mean the difference between hiring the best person for the job as opposed to simply hiring the best person applying.

 

 

The Importance of Hiring Top Talent

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One of the great truths in life is that superior talent, whether on the playing field, in the Executive Suite, or in the laboratory, usually wins in the end.

Good Coaches – and good Managers – have always intuitively grasped this concept.

Alfred Sloan, the former head of General Motors once famously said:

“Take my assets, leave my people, and in 5 years I will have it all back.”

 

CC Image courtesy of Creative Commons -U.S. Army Photos by Tim Hipps - FMWRC Public Affairs http://ow.ly/Hzq1s
CC Image courtesy of Creative Commons -U.S. Army Photos by Tim Hipps http://ow.ly/Hzq1s

 

Yet, the question remains, exactly how much difference does talent make?

In the mid-1990s, consulting firm McKinsey & Company set out to answer that question. After interviewing hundreds of executives and extensively studying numerous companies, the consulting firm reported having strong talent in key positions creates huge improvements in performance.

For instance, top Plant Managers grew profits 130% while the lowest performing managers achieved no improvement; the best Center Managers in Industrial Service Firms grew profits 80%; and Portfolio Managers in Financial Services institutions grew revenues by nearly 50% while average performers’ portfolios remained flat.

But the positive effects of superior talent extend beyond improvements at the individual and/or departmental level. The most striking effect of talent is seen on the company’s bottom line. The consultants at McKinsey stated that the companies that excel in talent management achieved total returns to shareholders that were 22 percentage points better than the average in their industry.

The difference talent makes is striking.

The concept that superior talent enables superior results is not something that we need to only grasp intuitively.

The data shows that companies with better talent are not merely better than their peers – They are vastly superior to them. 

2014 – America’s best year of job growth since 1999

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2014 ended up being America’s best year for job growth since 1999 according to a post by Matt Egan and Heather Long on the CNN website.

According to the post:

“More than 2.95 million jobs were created last year, according to the latest figures from the Department of Labor.

It’s encouraging news as the U.S. tries to put the Great Recession and sluggish recovery solidly behind it. Many economists expect 2015 to be equally as strong, if not better, for job seekers….’American businesses are on a hiring binge,’ said Sal Guatieri, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets. ‘It clearly suggests the economy is on a much stronger growth track than the first four years of the recovery.'”

But the news wasn’t all good.

The article continues:

“While job growth continues to pick up steam, wages have not. The government said average hourly earnings fell slightly in December from the previous month.”

Nevertheless, while wage growth has been negligible, the overall jobs situation is still much stronger than it has been in years.

And that is good news for all of us….

Jobs Outlook for 2015

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According to economists, the job market will continue to strengthen in 2015.

Paul Davidson, in an article in USA Today wrote:

A strengthening labor market will not let up this year, economists say, with job growth approaching or exceeding the estimated 15-year high reached in 2014.

Later in the article, Davidson writes:

This year, many economists expect low gasoline prices and rising household wealth to drive consumer spending, offsetting weakness overseas and helping the economy to grow at least 3%, vs. an estimated 2.4% in 2014.

That, along with more bullish employers, should power average monthly job gains to 250,000 to 300,000, says Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist for The Economic Outlook Group.

This is definitely the type of news we all enjoy hearing….

The Importance of Talent

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I came across an interesting post on the Wall Street Journal site on how ‘Talentism’ is replacing Capitalism.   You can read the article here.

The post quotes Dr.Klaus Schwab (founder of The World Economic Forum), who stated at the opening of the 2013 event in Davos:

“Capital is being superseded by creativity and the ability to innovate – and therefore by human talents – as the most important factors of production. Just as capital replaced manual trades during the process of industrialization, capital is now giving way to human talent. Talentism is the new capitalism.”

The author goes on to write:

“Bob DeRodes, executive vice president and chief information officer for Target Corp., agrees. ‘In my 40 years in information technology,” Mr. DeRodes says, “I have never seen the battle for talent more heated than it is right now.” Asked why, he says, “It’s because more companies realize that technology talent is make-or-break in today’s world.’ “

Great business leaders have always understood the importance of Talent. Alfred Sloan, former head of General Motors once famously quipped:

“Take my assets, leave my people, and in 5 years I will have it all back.”

Bottom line:

No matter how well crafted company’s business model is, no matter how brilliantly conceived a company’s Manufacturing process is, they are worthless without the right people to implement them.

Superior talent always wins in the end.