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Amazing Possibilities!

  • Writer's pictureMatthew Kelly

You Were Never Taught This About Hiring



We spoke earlier about how the average person’s life is becoming more dysfunctional. This dysfunction can largely be linked to the fact that society is doing everything within its power to cast patience and discipline out of our lives. The more impatient and undisciplined we become, the less capable we become of excellence in any aspect of life, and hiring requires the patience of Job and the discipline of an elite athlete.


If you want to get really good at hiring, you will need the patience to wait for the right candidate, the willingness to go out and find the right candidate, and the discipline to say no to candidates who are not a good fit for the role or culture.


Do not rush. Become the most patient person you know. Don’t act out of desperation. Always hire from a position of strength, never from a place of weakness (even if you are desperate and weak). Stay mindful of how you felt the last time you had to let someone go.

Over a ten-year period, 80 percent of money managers underperform the S&P 500 Index, because we have a bias as human beings toward action. We have a bias toward doing something versus not doing something. Sometimes there are long periods when the best thing for a money manager to do is nothing.

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to do nothing. The discipline not to do anything, not to act, not to hire when you know a candidate cannot deliver on the Role Description and the Scorecard is not easy. There are very few organizations, recruiters, and Hiring Leaders who have that very specific discipline, but it can be the difference between extraordinary success and second-rate mediocrity. Depending on the size, age, growth rate, and hiring rate of your organization, this one factor could be the difference between building a Dynamic Culture where people love coming to work to accomplish great things together and a culture where people are deeply unhappy.


The people you hire and the way you recruit and hire new employees sends a message to everyone in your organization.Use that to your advantage. Hire in a way that sends a message, “This place is different.” You can hire in a way that says, “This is a place where lazy people can come and hide, work like a minimalist by doing the very least to get by, and never be called to task.” Or you can hire in a way that sends the message, “This is a Dynamic Culture where people are hungry for best practices and continuous improvement, a place where we strive to be the very best at what we do by being committed, coachable, and aware.”


As people go through the interview process, they should very quickly get the sense that your organization is different, that it values rigor and excellence. In fact, you should tell them up front once they get beyond the screening interview that this process is going to different. The process has to be long enough to discover if a candidate is the right person for the role and the culture, and once you get your culture to a great place, people should truly want to work there.

The discipline of hiring and firing is essential to the health, culture, and success of the organization. It is a discipline that requires tremendous patience and intentionality, one that will pay dividends to your culture every single day if it is embraced.


Matthew Kelly


From The Culture Solution

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