Janet Webb - Hiring for Fit: A Key Leadership Skill

Hiring for Fit

Hiring for Fit

A Key Leadership Skill

Janet Webb

Hiring for Fit: A Key Leadership Skill

Copyright Business Expert Press, LLC, 2020.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other except for brief quotations, not to exceed 250 words, without the prior permission of the publisher.

First published in 2020 by

Business Expert Press, LLC

222 East 46th Street, New York, NY 10017

www.businessexpertpress.com

ISBN-13: 978-1-95152-754-9 (paperback)

ISBN-13: 978-1-95152-755-6 (e-book)

Business Expert Press Human Resource Management and Organizational Behavior Collection

Collection ISSN: 1946-5637 (print)

Collection ISSN: 1946-5645 (electronic)

Cover image licensed by Ingram Image, StockPhotoSecrets.com

Cover and interior design by S4Carlisle Publishing Services Private Ltd., Chennai, India

First edition: 2020

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed in the United States of America.

Advanced Quotes for Hiring for Fit

I would highly recommend this book for anyone in a management role that needs to recruit top talent aligned to their companys goals. Hiring for Fit provides a system to ensure that leaders have the knowledge and foundation required to make great hires and retain them. The Trait Alignment Protocol (TAP) system outlined in the book is a pragmatic, results-oriented approach that ensures leaders understand and recruit the right fit for all positions.

Kim Hannan, CHRL

Vice President Talent & Culture
Cole Engineering Group

Hiring the right people for the right positions is an art and Janets book sheds light on how to do it right the first time. Having led teams in different parts of the world, Janets book addresses the most important piece of the puzzle Hiring for Fit . It is a great read for global business leaders.

Eric Wong, CPA, CA

Vice-President, Hospitality, Asia Pacific
Infor Hospitality

As an employment lawyer, I assist employers on a daily basis to deal with employment issues that arise as a result of hiring the wrong person. While not Hiring for Fit gives employment lawyers work, it can be very costly for employers, not only financially but also in terms of business productivity, employee morale, and wasted resources. This book provides a comprehensive guide to employers on how to hire the right person from the start so they can avoid the legal and other negative consequences that result when they dont!

Carita Wong, LL.B.

Partner, Israel Foulon LLP
Employment and Labour lawyer

Hiring for Fit provides actionable guidance in making great hiring decisions. Janet takes you through a structured process that clarifies the meaning of fit and how to find it. And the books Fit in Action stories and tips to avoid hiring pitfalls are very relatable. By applying Janets proven approach, I avoided what might be considered a safer same-to-same type candidate and selected a bright, curious person from another industry who was an excellent hire. The Hiring-for-Fit approach provides me the structure to support better decisions that repeatedly result in excellent long-term hires, and it will help you too!

Jim ONeill, CPA, CA, Acc.Dir.

CFO of public and private companies operating internationally

Hiring for Fit is a great resource for navigating the challenge of recruiting successfully, where hiring failures are costly in monetary terms, to employee morale, and, ultimately, to business purpose. If youre responsible in any way for hiring, having this guide to hand and referring to it over and over again will surely mitigate the risk of falling into the trap of hiring only for apparent technical compatibility and not paying enough attention to the right soft skills that play such a significant part in building great teams and providing excellent service, whatever industry youre in.

Lisa S. Becker, FCA

Chief Operating Officer
University of Toronto Asset Management Corporation

Janet Webbs Hiring for Fit is an exceptional guide for business leaders to acquire and retain top talent, and the approach has a proven record of success. I personally found the information about fit traits to be instrumental in hiring successfully, from assessing soft skills to ensuring cultural fit!

Penny Galanis

Senior Director, Employee Experience
Broader Public Sector of Ontario

Abstract

A key skill for any leader is the ability to hire a great team, and this skill requires a considerable depth of knowledge of the complex subject of fit. Most organizations talk about the need to hire for fit, but many go about hiring in the wrong way because their leaders dont fully understand the concept of fit. The results are poor performance and unnecessary and costly turnover.

Hiring for Fit goes to the heart of what fit really means and provides expert insight for anyone involved in making hiring decisions. In over 30 years of experience in executive search and career management, Janet Webb has studied the personality traits and attributes of successful hires in a wide range of roles and has developed a system to hire the right fit for any role. This system recognizes that each role is unique and requires specific traits for success. The entire process outlined in the book, from identifying and screening top talent to onboarding new hires and supporting the development of senior leaders, is an application of Janet Webbs unique Trait Alignment Protocol (TAP), which is the key to identifying fit and maintaining fit over the long term.

The book provides leaders with practical steps they can follow to apply fit successfully in the hiring process and explains the meaning of fit, how to develop the job description into a position profile that incorporates fit requirements for each specific organization and role, how to structure the hiring process to determine fit, and how to interview candidates to reveal genuine fit with the job and the organization. The book also details steps for maintaining a focus on fit after the hire by providing strategies for onboarding, performance reviews, retention, career development, and succession planning.

In addition, the book contains a Hiring-for-Fit Checklist, which is a tool for monitoring adherence to the key steps in applying TAP in hiring for fit, and a chapter on how to avoid common hiring pitfalls. Each chapter includes a Fit in Action feature with examples from real-life hiring challenges.

By applying the thorough and practical fit strategy described in the book, leaders will gain expertise in the complex subject of fit; replace seat-of-the-pants hiring with a reliable process; gain confidence in assessing a candidates fit; make well-founded hiring decisions that avoid common hiring pitfalls; and pave the way for employee retention, promotions, and succession planning that add to the bottom line.

Keywords

fit; hiring; leadership; interviewing; soft skills; recruiting; screening; candidates; employees; organizational culture; personality; performance reviews; retention; succession planning; talent; traits; job description

Contents

Acknowledgments

I am grateful for the opportunity to work with such a wide range of clients, in executive search, management consulting, outplacement, and career and business coaching. Their numerous questions regarding the challenges of ensuring the right fit gave rise to the writing of this book.