The Metiss Group's Blog

“If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.” – Anonymous

In the over 10,000 executives we have assessed, we have seen a wide range of assessment results for leaders.  It is shocking how poorly many leaders score.  When we ask those leaders about their results, they are not surprised.  They confidently confirm our findings demonstrating humbleness and self-awareness.  However, without exception those successful leaders have intentionally surrounded themselves with people with better skills than they have.

Though it seems obvious leaders would select direct reports who are smarter than they are, it takes a great deal of humility and self-confidence for a leader to do so.  These leaders enjoy scoring without the ball, perfectly willing to let their competent team run up the score knowing at the end of the day they will be successful.

Empower yourself to hire better people than you and you’ll be more successful.

It wasn’t all too long ago that when businesses needed to hire, they simply placed an ad in local newspapers.  Hiring managers only needed to decide how large an ad to run, what newspapers, and for how long.

Today recruiters rarely use newspapers and instead have moved to online job boards like Monster, Craigslist, and CareerBuilder for sourcing.  Now those sources are becoming less effective and hiring managers are being forced to get creative.

It’s okay to recruit candidates you encounter while they are working.  If you receive great service while dining or shopping, hand the associate your business card and encourage them to contact you about a great opportunity you might have for them.  Enterprise Rent-A-Car is known for developing great salespeople and has the “we’ll come pick you up” service offering; it’s not uncommon for hiring managers to recruit Enterprise sales associates while they are being “picked up” or driven around.

Be on the lookout for good people you might come across while you are out and encourage everyone on your team to do the same, and you’ll increase your chances of finding successful hires.

We’ve all experienced the frustrating wait server who just doesn’t seem to get it.  No matter how they try, they have a hard time working through complex orders.  Conversely, hopefully you’ve had the pleasure of being waited on by the sharp, quick thinking server who finds creative solutions for the unexpected curve balls.

Critical thinking aptitude is important in all jobs.  Unfortunately, many hiring managers do not bother assessing for critical thinking skills for lower level jobs.

A strong critical thinking aptitude may not be necessary to complete job functions and may not be a hiring criteria but that doesn’t mean hiring managers shouldn’t test candidates for it. Knowing the mental horsepower of every team member allows leaders to develop appropriate succession plans and assign workloads appropriately.

Empower your hiring managers to assess the critical thinking skills for all roles, and you’ll build a stronger organization.

Confirmation bias is our tendency to favor information that confirms our beliefs and dismiss information that does not support our views.  We all have confirmation biases that cloud our reasoning. The extent to which we can become aware of our biases and minimize them, will allow us to make better decisions.  As one unaware leader said, “My mind’s already made up, don’t confuse me with the facts.”

Hiring managers deal with confirmation bias frequently when evaluating candidates and rely on assessments to improve their objectivity.  If candidates are going to be assessed, the assessment should be administered early enough in the selection process before an opinion has been developed on a candidate.  Once the hiring manager decides on a candidate, the assessment may do little to change their mind.  In this case, by the time hiring managers administer assessments, the results are used to confirm their bias and dismiss information that does not support their beliefs about a candidate.

We recommend assessing candidates after the first interview, before reference checks and followup or group interviews.  This allows hiring managers to objectively analyze the assessment results and minimize their confirmation bias.

Empower hiring managers to assess candidates early in the process, and you’ll experience successful hires.