Menu
close
Why is hiring time-consuming?
Skills make for good team members, but judgment makes for great team members: it makes delegation possible. Assessing judgment requires people who have been in the hot seat situations before. A recruiter can assess skills, but unless they have access to the discussions and decision-making process of the leadership team they will struggle to assess judgment. As a result, leaders must decide between spending their precious time interviewing or delegating most of the process–risking unqualified candidates in the final stages.
We worked with a SaaS company that wanted to build an enterprise sales team to land much larger deals and demonstrate growth potential. Although the team spent a lot of time on the hiring process, they uncovered few strong candidates–who they struggled to close.
We adjusted the qualification process to disqualify many candidates within the first few minutes based on factors that had previously been assessed later in the process. We also coached the leaders on how to use interview questions to challenge strong candidates in a positive way and how to build a relationship with the best candidates throughout the process so that they felt a strong connection to the team they would be working with rather than relying on HR to close.
Our value to the client:
The company was able to find and close three strong enterprise sales people within two months. These first members of the new enterprise sales division close deals 3x the size of other teams.
What prevents junior people from taking on more responsibility and delivering at a high level?
We worked with a shipping company that ran warehouses in multiple countries. The leader of the operations team created most of the strategies and managed execution closely. When this leader was not present, the speed and quality of work declined because the rest of the team was not strong enough to plan or execute at the level required. The bench was weak.
We assessed the strengths and weaknesses of the team by observing the operations in multiple locations to understand what the key processes were and how these were being implemented by the leadership on down. Many of the employees had the potential to grow and take on more responsibility; stronger talent was needed in only a few cases. We coached the leader on how to become more approachable, how to share positive and constructive feedback, how to show vulnerability and compassion, and how to delegate and communicate more effectively.
Our value to the client:
Six months later, four middle managers were successfully shouldering significantly more responsibility, driving results on their own.