The Good Ones. Bruce Weinstein
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for the purposes of hiring and promotion: tests, work simulations, references, and interviews.
Tests
Companies like DDI create intricate tests to help determine whether a job candidate would be a good fit for a particular job. These tests are often web-based and can be taken on a candidate’s mobile device. But multiple-choice and true/false questions can’t delve deeply into the ten qualities of high character that we explore in this book.
For example, suppose one of the questions on a multiple-choice test is, “One of your company’s clients gives you an expensive watch. The policy at work is that employees may accept gifts worth $50 or less. What would you do?” The choices are:
A. Tell the client that you appreciate the gift but aren’t allowed to accept it.
B. Keep it.
C. Donate it to charity.
A problem with using multiple-choice tests for evaluating a job candidate’s character is that people sometimes lie about what they would do. Just because a candidate says she would tell the client she couldn’t accept the gift or would donate it to charity doesn’t mean she believes that’s what she would do. She might recognize that her employer wouldn’t allow her to keep the watch, so she might choose A or C on the test to demonstrate her high character, even if she knows she would do neither of these things. But even an honest response may not reflect how that person would actually behave in such a situation. A test taker might sincerely believe he would refuse the gift, but when this hypothetical scenario becomes real, he might in fact keep it. We don’t always do what we say we would do.
There is a place for multiple-choice and true/false tests in evaluating character, however. They’re useful for beginning a dialogue about honorable behavior and why some choices are better than others. This is how I use them in my speeches and workshops. We’ll see in a moment why and how conversation is essential to evaluating a job candidate’s character.
Work Simulations
Work simulations involve putting candidates into the actual context in which they would be employed and observing them. These work better for some occupations (say, teaching) than others (cardiac surgery comes to mind). Evaluating character on the job makes sense for employers who use the so-called temporary-to-permanent hiring process. “One bad seed can really have an impact on your culture,” says Mona Bijoor, the founder and chief executive of a wholesale company that hires people on a trial basis. Jon Bischke, the CEO of a recruiting software company, notes that a bad hire can kill a company with a small number of employees, like his, which is why he uses the test-drive model of employment.
But it’s difficult to see how companies that hire people in the traditional way could evaluate a job applicant’s character through work simulations. These organizations — that is, most businesses in the world — have to use other means.
References
References should be a helpful way to evaluate character in a job applicant, but often they aren’t. Several years ago, a woman whom I’ll call Nell applied for a position as my assistant. I was able to contact only one of the three references she provided, and the way this fellow described Nell, I felt I had stumbled onto someone with the charisma of Oprah Winfrey, the integrity of Mother Teresa, and the graciousness of several First Ladies. When I asked the gentleman how he knew Nell, he evaded the question for a while but eventually revealed that he was her fiancé. Small wonder, then, that he had nice things to say about her. I hired Nell, and shortly afterward she quit when a more attractive job opportunity came along. The moral of the story is that the references a job applicant provides can be deeply biased and don’t necessarily present an accurate view of the candidate.
By default, the only other option for prospective employers is to contact a job candidate’s previous employers, whether or not the job applicant has provided the information directly. The problem is that for legal reasons, many employers provide only minimal information about former employees, such as the duration of their employment.
Alan Murray, the editor of Fortune magazine and former president of the Pew Research Center, carefully listens to anything former employers have to say about job applicants. “Sometimes they’ll convey useful information about a candidate’s shortcomings even while soft-pedaling that information,” he told me. What Alan finds surprising is how rarely prospective employers contact him about employees who leave his organization. “I’ve been angst-ridden over what I was going to say when someone called me for a reference, but it’s seldom I get the call,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s laziness or a failure to understand the value of reference checks.” Alan’s experiences may be the fallout from the practice of employers’ giving little meaningful information during reference checks, which discourages prospective employers from contacting references at all.
Jeffrey Hayzlett, host of C-Suite with Jeffrey Hayzlett on Bloomberg Television, believes strongly in checking references, but only when those references are people he knows. He cites a book that had a big influence on him, his friend Bob Beaudine’s The Power of Who: You Already Know Who You Need to Know. The Wall Street Journal called Bob’s company “the top executive recruiting firm in college athletics,” so Bob knows a thing or two about how to find good employees. Alan Murray, too, has found that having a personal connection with references is a way to get information about job candidates that has played a decisive role in hiring decisions.
References are particularly useful when evaluating current employees using the 360-degree feedback instrument, in which colleagues, direct reports, and supervisors — that is, people from an employee’s immediate circle — review his or her performance. Until this method of employee evaluation came along, a manager gave a raise or promotion to an employee based on the manager’s own assessment of the person’s performance. But such a narrow focus can result in what I call the Eddie Haskell syndrome. On the classic 1950s family sit-com Leave It to Beaver, Eddie Haskell was ultra-polite to Mr. and Mrs. Cleaver, a wiseacre with his buddy Wally, and a mild bully toward Wally’s younger brother, the Beaver. If you judged Eddie only by the way he talked to parents, you’d think he was the most refined kid you’d ever met. But his good manners disguised the fact that Eddie could also act like a real jerk.
As Eddie Haskell’s conduct shows, you don’t get the whole picture by looking only at how someone treats those who have more power or influence. It’s just as important — perhaps even more critical — to find out how an employee treats those who have the same or less power.
Interviews
One of the best tools for evaluating the character of a job candidate or an employee seeking promotion is a direct, in-person, behaviorally focused interview. Although character is revealed by what we do, not by what we say, a manager who pays close attention to a candidate’s responses to questions like, “Tell me about a time when you had to stand up to someone in authority,” will get a strong sense of the candidate’s character.
Interviews are a two-way street, so we’ll consider how the interviewers’ biases may prevent them from getting an accurate sense of a job candidate’s character. We’ll also look at ways that interviewers can overcome these limitations.
Why “the Good Ones”?
In the mid-nineties, a friend of mine used the phrase “one of the good ones” to refer to someone he knew. I hadn’t heard that expression before, and it stuck with me. Who wouldn’t want to be known as one of the Good Ones? Around the same time, a dental professor I knew told me, “There’s nothing worse that you can be called than a bad person.”
This book’s title has two meanings. First, it refers to employees of high character. (It could apply to anyone of high character, but the focus here is on the workplace.) Second, it refers to the ten qualities that are associated with high-character employees. Those qualities are
1. Honesty
2. Accountability
3. Care
4. Courage