The old adage of, ‘hire for attitude, train for skill’ doesn’t work anymore. A good attitude can’t overcome a lack of skills, and when you’re growing at 100% revenue growth a year, you need the people that will get the job done right away.
What should you do? I coach and mentor CEOs to go attract those who have proven skills and a personality.
Brad and Geoff Smart wrote an awesome book called Topgrading It’s one of the best systems for interviewing candidates and determining why you should bring someone into your organization. Topgrading recommends ‘leaning out’ two years into the future with every prospective candidate and determining what they have to achieve for you to be happy that you hired them at the end of those two years. Once you’ve started this ‘scorecard’ for the role, construct your job description around the milestones your candidate needs to have achieved after two years.
Once you have a tight job description, then you can interview against it to make sure that candidates have what it takes.
For information on this topic, check out: Leadership at 100MPH.