Hiring Preamble
Research shows that executive-level hires can impact business performance by as much as 40%, with positive effects up to 20% and, conversely, negative effects down to -20%. This level of influence isn’t limited to executives—it applies to senior specialist roles as well, where ripple effects on business outcomes can be substantial. Notably, 40% of new hires do not succeed in their roles. Properly mapping out your hiring challenge—including a clear job specification—will help mitigate these risks from the outset.
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1) The Common Denominator in Great Hires...
When it comes to senior hires—whatever your sector, role, or situation—the key to success is to identify and hire people with one thing:
➡ The ability to impact.
Your starting point should be to begin with the end in mind — what do you want someone to achieve, and then work backwards.
For leadership roles, think about what you want the person to achieve over 12, 24, and 36 months. For senior specialist roles, focus on what you want them to accomplish within a 12‑month period.
Working backwards from those outcomes, consider what your hire needs to do to meet or exceed them — their responsibilities, behaviours, actions, and accomplishments that will move them toward those objectives.
You can then determine what qualities are required of the job holder in order to make these things happen. Think educational qualifications, acquired skills and experience, track record and motivations.
Companies might weigh 20+ factors in a hire, but you can’t assess everything deeply. The smartest hirers get crystal clear on what matters most for impact and build their interview process around that. Some do this instinctively; the best are highly deliberate.
Once you've determined the most important outcomes and what matters most you can then:
➡ Identify the five to six most important attributes that matter most.
These are usually things like leadership, scope and scale of experience, track record, and ability to handle specific market or situational challenges. Separate the true “must haves” from the “nice to haves” so you don’t dilute your assessment.
It's likely you'll quickly develop a long list of 10-20 factors, qualities or criteria, some of which will be more important than others.
Pinpoint the 5–7 qualities that truly drive results. List and label these as your key criteria.
List your other criteria or considerations separately below the above.
➡ You can then develop and apply a meaningful question bank
One that will enable you to uncover candidates' capabilities in these five to six most important attributes that matter most. Use structured, outcome-focused questions tied directly to the results you need, so your interviews actually predict impact—not just polish.
2)Assessing & Benchmarking Candidates
And why you should hire for 80%
When evaluating candidates, it’s easy to get lost in an exhaustive list of desirable qualities. Instead, focus on assessing the few critical criteria that will drive your most important outcomes. You need to assess for the qualities that matter most.
That’s not to say other factors don’t matter—capture these separately when assessing. Just remember there is no such thing as a perfect candidate or job; everyone brings strengths and weaknesses.
What this advocates is that an 80% fit is usually your best-case scenario. In reality, most hires land somewhere between a 60% and 80% fit. A 60% fit isn’t a great hire, a 70% fit is more of a “B-player” profile, and 80% represents an “A-player” profile.
You’ve got to assess for (your most important criteria). Some may be more important than others, so you may wish to list them in order of importance and give them a weighting of 3–5.
Your most important criteria to assess for, is likely to include some (or all of the following):
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Competency in the job type area, and any areas of specialism.
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Market expertise or industry-specific experience and knowledge.
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Track record of success, including performance versus expectations, with seniority and scope aligned to the role’s dimensions.
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Depth and breadth of experience in relevant functions.
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Ability to perform in your environment and circumstances; for example, some people thrive in large companies but struggle in small ones, and vice versa, or prefer ambiguity and rapid change.
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Generic ability to be effective in the role – (gravitas, impact and influence) – such as relationship-building skills, influencing skills (getting things done through others, working well as part of a team), and emotional intelligence.
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Motivations, their alignment with the role, and their strength.
Your best outcomes depend on thoroughly assessing how well candidates meet the most important attributes required.
Ratings:
5) Excellent: Does the candidate meet all aspects of the characteristic?
4) Good / suitable: The candidate gave suitable responses – meets the standard well.
3) Satisfactory: The candidate gave suitable responses – meets the standard.
2) Poor / some doubts: Not an area of strength – responses lack substance.
1) Unacceptable: Evident weakness – responses did not meet the standard.
Broader Criteria & Notes
In addition to the 5–7 criteria that matter most, there will be other factors that are important to you—a broader set of qualities to consider. Note that you cannot assess everything, given time constraints, and no candidate is perfect—nor is any job. There may be a further 15–20 characteristics you wish to consider, so be prepared to make brief notes on these during your assessment. And place these miscellaneous notes or comments beneath rating form.
Watch Outs
While interviewing candidates, you or your colleagues may notice behaviours or patterns that raise red flags, or are simply worth keeping an eye on. It can also be helpful to note any knowledge or skill gaps, or ways of working, that may need to be supported, developed, or accommodated later on.
Don't Overlook the Basics
When assessing candidates, don’t overlook the basics—such as their availability to start. Some people will not move until a key event has passed, for example completing a major project or receiving a bonus. Notice periods also matter: in the US they’re typically around two weeks, whereas in the UK they’re often up to twelve weeks. Finally, consider how likely they are to receive – and succumb to – a counteroffer when they resign. Or alternative job offers.
3) Why You're Failing To Land "A" Player Talents
When it comes to hiring "A" player talents, most people in a hiring seat fail abysmally.
Most people don't know how to spot it, nor how to tune into it and when faced with it switch it off.
The majority of people who are new to hiring fail to tune in to the candidate perspective and their interests, many managers never learn to do so. Overlooking this isn't so much of a shortcoming when interviewing a poor or mediocre candidate who is out of work, but when it comes to "A" players, they're interviewing you as much as you are interviewing them.
When faced with an "A" player, you need to sell the opportunity to them without overselling it—recruitment done well means recruiting the right people into the right jobs for the right reasons.
4) Two Buying Cycles.
Confidence Needs to Build in Tandem!
You need to be conscious of the interest levels on both sides throughout the interview process.
Let me draw an analogy. At the outset, either you or the candidate might start with high enthusiasm — say, around 80%. You like their profile; it looks like a strong match. The candidate likely feels the same.
Think about a chart: on the left you’ve got the interest level, ranging from zero at the bottom to 100% at the top—a vertical line on the left.
Across the chart, think about the timelines - the duration of the interviewing process, from starting the interviewing process on the left, to getting to an offer stage on the right - progressing through a series of touchpoints - initial screening Zooms, first interviews, second and subsequent interviews, panel interviews, assessment tests and so on, and the delays, holidays, interruptions caused by other priorities, illness.
For specialist and leadership roles, these timelines may perhaps span 3 weeks to 3 months.
The levels of interest on both sides often change dramatically as the process unfolds - from high to low, from lukewarm to high, or any stage in between.
Interest levels aren't always constant - they're not always a flat line.
They can be rise and fall, like waves on an ocean.
As you progress through a series of interview stages and meetings, you develop a more complete understanding of the candidate’s skills, scope and scale of responsibilities, track record, values, motivations, and aspirations (or lack of them), and vice versa.
Understand, that they're assessing you too - this is especially the case with the most important talent that you probably most want to hire.... "A" player talent.
It's not uncommon for interest levels to start off quite low, perhaps as low as 50 or 60%. This may be because people are cautious or the merits of the match may not be immediately apparent. Your enthusiasm could be higher than theirs, or the other way around. Many variations exist.
There are three main reasons why interest levels are subject to peaks and troughs:
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As both parties learn more about each other, gaps or mismatches can become clearer.
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A drawn-out interview process — often lasting 4–8 weeks or more — can erode momentum. Candidates may see the company as slow or bureaucratic, while employers may perceive the candidate as hesitant or disengaged.
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The longer the process, the greater the likelihood that circumstances change for either side.
Here’s the key point:
If you fail to build interest in the candidate’s eyes and maintain momentum, you risk losing your top choices.
You need to appreciate that, to reach an offer that is both extended and accepted, both sides must continually build value and confidence in the match throughout what is often a multi‑stage process lasting six or more weeks.
Given there is no such thing as a perfect candidate or job, the best outcome you can realistically aim for is an 80% fit.
So by the end of the process, you want both your interest level and the candidate’s to be at—or to have risen back to—around that 80% mark.
5) Bringing simplicity to complexity
Hiring is an incredibly complex, distracting, and time‑consuming activity. To cut through that complexity, keep asking yourself three simple questions about every candidate. They will bring clarity to your assessment process and save you time:
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Can they do the job?
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Do they want the job?
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Will they fit in?
6) Structuring the interview process
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You and your business may already have a preferred approach to recruitment—how many stages you use and how you assess candidates.
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If so, you’ll already know who’s involved, who does what, and how the sequence runs.
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And how you assess candidates, meaning criteria, questioning etc.
I'm going to outline a process that works well - understand that this is intended specifically for making senior specialist hires.
The more senior the role, the more that's at stake - so best practice is that the more senior the hire - the greater the number of interview stages or touchpoints, by which I mean that an interview stage could be a screening meeting, first interview, second or subsequent interviews, panel interviews, role plays, assessment exercises or having candidates give a presentation.
For a senior specialist role you'll probably want a three or four stage interview process, and for a leadership one five to seven.
The principle of best practice being that as you progress candidates through your interview stages, you start with a larger number and end up with two or three at the final stage.
You'll be unsure about or reject some candidates, and the same applies candidate side - expect people to withdraw.
You'll need to decide what the most important questions are to be asked, at what stages and by whom.
For senior specialist roles, your best approach is likely to be to have:
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Screening meetings - done by you if you're the hiring manager, or an internal recruiter if you have such people, or by a recruitment consultant or headhunter.
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First interview - with the hiring manager.
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Second interview - by the hiring managers boss, with or without the hiring manager being present.
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Third meeting, possibly a panel one, and one involving some form of assessment exercise - like having them work through an exercise, talk through a problem and their approach to solving it or giving a presenting. At such a meeting you may wish for the candidate to meet colleagues or peers with whom they may be working - to give a broader perspective both for you as an employer and similarly for the candidate.
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That's four stages!
Logic suggests that whilst the hiring manager may wish to meet with the candidate three or more times, it would be good for the candidate to meet at least one other member of your hiring team without the hiring manager being present.
For a leadership role, you'll probably want candidates to meet as many as five, six, or even seven people as you progress from initial interviews, qualifying candidates in or out through each stage. The fourth or fifth interview would typically be the one in which you'd ask the candidate to give a presentation about how they'd approach the job or the most important challenges of the job.
Decide who will meet candidates at each stage. You'll need to determine which skills, experiences, capabilities, and motivations you want to assess in candidates.
Which questions will best uncover these attributes? In what order should they be explored—and who will ask which questions, at which stage?
How will you gather the feedback?
The simplest way is via an email - for the interviewer to feedback to the hiring manager their thoughts about how well the candidate meets the required expectations - listing the question followed by their feedback. Plus also to list what they think the positives of the candidate are, and a list of any negatives, plus any watch outs.
Finally, you've got the question of how you validate the perspective you've developed on the candidate i.e. references. You need to decide what type of references, and when you take them up.
