Lou Adler - Hire with Your Head: Using Performance-Based Hiring to Build Outstanding Diverse Teams

1. Introduction
2. Chapter 1
3. Chapter 2
4. Chapter 3
5. Chapter 4
6. Chapter 5
7. Chapter 6
8. Chapter 7
9. Chapter 8
10. Chapter 9
11. Chapter 10
12. Chapter 11
13. Chapter 12
14. Chapter 13
15. Chapter 16

FOURTH EDITION

LOU ADLER

Copyright 2022 by Lou Adler. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Adler, Lou, author.

Title: Hire with your head : using performance-based hiring to build outstanding diverse teams / Lou Adler.

Description: Fourth edition. | Hoboken, NJ : Wiley, [2022] | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021033440 (print) | LCCN 2021033441 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119808886 (hardback) | ISBN 9781119808930 (ePDF) | ISBN 9781119808916 (ePub)

Subjects: LCSH: Employee selection. | EmployeesRecruiting. | Employment interviewing.

Classification: LCC HF5549.5.S38 A35 2022 (print) | LCC HF5549.5.S38 (ebook) | DDC 658.3/112dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021033440

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021033441

Cover Design: Wiley

Cover Image: DesignAB/Shutterstock

As part of my research on individual performance as described in The End of Average, I argued that modern science has conclusively shown that there simply isn't an average person. Instead of relying on this outdated myth, the principles of individuality offer a better way to understand how people perform at school, at work, and in life. The three principles of individuality are as follows:

1. The jaggedness principle: All characteristics we care about are multidimensional and those dimensions do not correlate with each other like we think they do, which means that we cannot reduce human performance to a single score.
2. The context principle: Human behavior cannot be understood independently from the immediate context in which that behavior occurs.
3. The pathways principle: For any outcome that matters, there are always multiple paths to achieving that outcome.

In trying to better understand how companies hire people given this definition of human performance, it became clear in most situations that there was too much of a one-dimensional approach to the entire process. As a result it was unlikely companies would be able to hire stronger and more diverse talent using traditional processes. In fact, I was concerned that little has changed over the years, with companies still depending on outdated competency models and relying too much on skills and experiences to screen and assess candidates. This approach eliminated highly qualified people who had a different mix of skills and experiences and totally ignored the context of the job.

My research in this area led me to Lou Adler and his Performance-based Hiring system. At the time I was trying to discover if there was any work being done that emphasized differences rather than similarities or emphasized the uniqueness in people based on the three principles of individual performance.

Performance-based Hiring does this by recognizing that individual performance is as much about ability to do the work as it is about the context underlying the work. Context in this case is considered the environment in which the work occurs, the culture of the organization, its level of sophistication, the pace and intensity of the situation, and above all, the people involved, especially the hiring manager. All of these factors will impact individual performance. For example, we've all seen situations where highly capable people underperform due to these contextual factors. And just as often, but less visibly, we've seen people who have what appear to be unremarkable backgrounds excel given these same factors.

Adler has somehow put all of this together and succinctly captured it in his hiring formula for success. Simply stated: the ability to do the work in relationship to fit is what drives motivation to excel. And without the right fit, motivation, engagement, satisfaction, and performance will suffer.

According to Adler, ability consists of both the hard skills (i.e., technical, creative, and problem-solving) and the soft skills (i.e., organizational, interpersonal, leadership, and managerial) required to properly handle the job. This is where Adler's Performance-based Hiring process begins to expand the talent pool and ends the notion completely that people are average. By defining work as a series of performance objectives rather than as a list of skills and competencies, everyone who can do this work is considered a potential candidate. People are then assessed on their past performance doing comparable work in similar situations. Given this approach, Adler embeds the three principles of individuality directly into the hiring process. This is why I find Performance-based Hiring so fascinating.