Use KPOs to Accurately Assess any Job Candidate

A CEO asked me the other day to help find a key vice president for her company. She then spent 10 minutes describing the person she wanted to hire. This included the traditional years of experience, academic requirements, industry background, personality traits and competencies. 

I looked at her, straight-faced, and said, “That’s not a job description; that’s a person description. A job is what a person does; a person description is what a person has. Why don’t we put the person description in the parking lot, and tell me what you want the person to do and what exceptional performance looks like?”

The CEO was speechless.

But after about 20 minutes the whiteboard was filled with a series of performance objectives similar to the following:

• Launch the new product line and build the organization and infrastructure to capture 10% market share within two years.
• Put together a comprehensive business plan and present it to the Board within 45- 60 days.
• Upon approval, build the core design and marketing team and execute phase 1 of the plan including field testing of the prototype within 3-4 months. 

She then said, these look like KPIs – Key Performance Indicators. I said they’re a bit different so I call them KPOs – Key Performance Objectives – since they define major tasks and the key subtasks required to achieve them. I then went on to say any job can be described by 5-6 KPOs like these that define the task, the action required and some measurable result. 

She then asked me how to interview people using these KPOs. I said just ask the person to describe a major accomplishment most related to each of the KPOs. I then pulled out my tri-fold “magic” Performance-based Interview pocket hot tips card from my wallet and showed her the fact-finding questions that needed to be asked to fully understand the accomplishment. (Contact me if you’d like the complete card). Here’s a sample of the questions: 

• What were the big challenges and what were the big changes you made?
• When did it happen and how long did it take to complete?
• Describe the planning process and how you managed to the plan. 
• Describe the environment, the team, and the resources available.
• Walk me through the biggest problem you faced.
• What did you learn from this? 

I told her it takes about 12-15 minutes to fully understand each accomplishment but if you divide them among the interviewing team members you can cover them all in 2-3 different interview sessions. I then showed her the back of the tri-fold hiring hot tips card and pointed out the factors we’ve seen best predict on-the-job performance.

She was convinced this was the right way to define the job and interview candidates. I then gave her a magic card.

Hiring great people is magical. However, to hire great people you need to start with a great job, not a laundry list of prerequisites.  This plus a little "magic" is all you'll need.

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Lou Adler (@LouA) is the CEO of The Adler Group, a consulting and training firm helping companies implement Performance-based Hiring. He's also a regular columnist for LinkedIn, Inc. Magazine, SHRM and BusinessInsider. His new Performance-based Hiring self-paced learning course - The Hiring Machine - is now available 24/7. His latest book, The Essential Guide for Hiring & Getting Hired (Workbench, 2013) is now being published in Korea and Japan. It provides hands-on advice for job-seekers, hiring managers and recruiters on how to find the best job and hire the best people.