Hiring Issues – NFL Draft Style

Imagine you’re the hiring manager of a high profile company.

Your company competes in a unique industry with a limited number of competitors. Over the last several years, your organization has been consistently unsuccessful at becoming one of the top organizations. Your management and ownership is stressed over this lack of success.

It’s a talent based industry. Like many. Not dissimilar to what you face daily at your real world job. It’s a challenge to find and retain good people. There are more approaches than you could possibly digest. An acquaintance of mine uses a two dimensional map to evaluate talent: Skill & Will. Let’s borrow his for our story.

Now back to this fantasyland of industry.

Unlike others, you can’t directly recruit the recent college “graduates” you want to join your firm. Instead you have to wait your turn. The worst company in the industry gets first choice. This is an odd approach. In many industries the best companies get better because star talent wants to work for winning organizations. But alas you operate in a highly regulated industry with all sorts of regulations, protections, and choking jurisdiction. Your industry is ruled like an ancient appointed monarchy by a man with no votes, yet all the power.

The bottom line is your challenges in hiring are unlike any other.

But it gets worse. Your task is compounded. You don’t merely have to assess the incoming talent by their ability to do the job – the SKILL dimension. You have to assess them on their activities away from the job – the WILL dimension. In this case the willingness to be a good corporate citizen.

This second dimension really complicates things. In the past few years your industry has been marred by significant scandals. Spousal Abuse, Drug Abuse, Alcohol Abuse, Child Abuse. Injuries. Suicide. Murder. Theft. Prostitution. Rape. Blatant disregard of the rules by your industry leading organization. Bounties to injure employees of other organizations, also by a former industry leader. Vicious bullying among employees. Accidental self-inflicted gunshot wounds.

This year’s recruitment process provides no less concerns. There have been recruits busted for marijuana use, allegations of PED’s, potential of illegal benefits. To cap it off, the consensus best new hire has a track record that concerns everyone involved, including his own lawyer.

Imagine the dilemma is yours. You have an outstanding young recruit staring you in the face. His talent and abilities shine bright. But his personal conduct and allegations cloud the horizon, like a thunderstorm. Your industry is very image conscious. Success is important, but your brand is also very important. How do you decide.

Imagine it. On the new recruit’s first day of work you introduce him to a senior female colleague. She knows the new recruit is an alleged, yet uncharged, sexual assailant. You argue that the claims were unfounded and he wasn’t charged. His innocence should be accepted. Still, she wonders… did we have to hire him? Was there no one else?

Then you introduce him to another colleague who is an alumnus of the same college as the new recruit. This colleague has heard about the new hire jumping up on a campus cafeteria table and shouting lewd comments, at female diners, while grabbing his jewels. This colleague is immediately worried about what’s going to happen at the company’s next corporate off-site.

Next you introduce him to a junior female colleague. She too is quite new and from the same hometown as the new recruit. In fact she used to work at the grocery store from which the new hire was charged with theft. The new hire now claims that staff gave him free stuff because of his celebrity. Which effectively means he accused her of being the thief. She walks away praying that she isn’t on the same project team as him.

Lastly you introduce him to another new associate, who just joined after being with a competitor. At his previous firm they hired a new recruit last year to do the same job as your new protege. That recruit had a very similar track record, could not do his job, was always out partying, missed meetings, was allegedly involved in late night fights, and then had to check himself into rehab. Wow the new associate thinks, do I have to go through this again?

You have some big decisions to make. Amazing talent is hard to find. Your customers expect it. But a bad character can be fatal to your organization and your career.

It’s a very hard decision. Maybe the recruit has changed. Maybe he will mature. Maybe he will behave.

Maybe.