Imagine yourself at a barbecue this weekend and it turns out your neighbor just happens to be the best search professional in the entire world. While casually chatting, she asks you, “So, how are things going at work? Every time I see you, you looked exhausted!” You explain to her that you have been heads down, doing your own job plus the job of a vacant position, plus trying to recruit for that critical open position. It suddenly occurs to you that you have been presented with a perfect opportunity to get some advice from the best of the best. You tell her, “I’m looking for a top-notch Sales Director who will boost the company’s revenue.” She offers some thoughts, but you leave the conversation a little deflated—your neighbor didn’t seem to understand what exactly you needed. In this situation, not laying out the specifics of your goal resulted in a dead end.
Here at Aesop, we are experts in helping companies hire the right person. Part of our secret sauce is using the Cipher – a structured framework that helps you better define exactly what success looks like and therefore what strengths and skills the candidate must possess to accomplish the goals of the role.
The Cipher
At the heart of the cipher is the CODE – this simple acronym reminds you of everything you need to unlock the secrets of hiring. CODE, stands for Charge, Outcome, Deliverables, and Efforts.
- Charge: The charge is that one sentence that describes the essence of the role; that one sentence that nails what is this person really going to do and how will they impact the business.
- Outcome: The outcome is the #1 way you will measure whether or not the person you hired has been successful! This is typically a very tangible metric or specific result that describes “what success looks like” if you hire the right person.
- Deliverables: The Deliverables are the most important 5-7 accountabilities that the employee must accomplish in order to achieve most of the Outcome.
- Efforts: Finally, under each deliverable you’ll have efforts to define how success will be achieved for each deliverable. Again focus on what is unique about this deliverable and keep it these to most critical.
The Interview
Now that you’ve got a strong understanding of what’s needed in the role, you’ve got to focus on getting the data you need to transform that vision into reality. The best (and most predictive) way we’ve found is by using a structured interview (Campion, Pursell, & Brown, 1988; Krajewski, et al., 2006).
Structured interviewing is doing the same thing the same way every time to gather the facts you need. This way any variation comes from the candidate, not the interviewer.
The Decision
We recommend using a specific grading scale to challenge your mind to make a defined choice so that you can more accurately measure a particular candidate’s strengths and weaknesses. It is also why we advocate for a four-point scale when grading Ciphers: there is nowhere to hide between a thumbs up or thumbs down. Rather, a decision must be reached on whether the data collected suggests strength or weakness for every
Deliverable and Outcome. You should evaluate each deliverable independently and avoid letting how the candidate scores on one deliverable affect your rating of another.
We highly recommend working with a team of people, all of whom have interviewed the candidate. Each person should grade the Cipher independently, then come together to talk about any discrepancies and discuss how best to support any gaps.
Conclusion
The Cipher is the vehicle that guides leaders towards removing uncertainty. It helps identify what is most important when hiring by breaking down one big decision into a series of more-definable decisions. This methodology can help you successfully navigate uncertainty so that you can properly contextualize circumstances, making sense of potential hazards and avoid costly hiring mistakes.
Sources:
- Campion, Pursell, & Brown. (1988). Structured interviewing: Raising the psychometrics properties of the employment interview. Personnel Psychology, 41(1), 25-42. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.1988.tb00630.x
- Krajewski, et al. (2006). Comparing the validity of structured interviews for managerial-level employees: Should we look to the past or focus on the future? Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 79, 411-432.
