Tag Archives: Evaluation

How Do You Interview New Tech Hires? Four Necessities

Situation: A CEO wants advice on hiring new technical staff. Important considerations are cultural fit, identifying the characteristics of effective people, assuring that the right people are hired, and evaluating people for specifics tasks. In the past hiring technical people has proven challenging and poor hires have inhibited company growth. How do you interview new tech hires?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • It is critical to be clear on the factors necessary to be successful in the enterprise. Once these have been identified, align the factors with existing individuals in the organization as role models. Also align these factors with those who will be involved in candidate selection. This facilitates identification of good candidates.
  • Develop clarity on candidate evaluation. Identify and develop questions that will allow candidates to describe what is important to them and what they want to get out of their career choice.  In addition to specific knowledge, candidates should demonstrate a personal value system compatible with the company’s culture. They must also demonstrate a high energy level.
  • Once there is clear articulation of desired characteristics of candidates work with others such as college placement organizations, friends of the firm, Craig’s list, and so on to assist with candidate identification. A well written position description not only describes the type of individual desired, but also why someone would want to join the firm.
  • It’s imperative to be able to give a sales presentation on the company including specific reasons why people should join it. Avoid getting so wrapped up in the selection mode that you fail to recruit. Some who have done this were stunned to find that after they have made their selection the candidate was no longer interested.

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How Do You Evaluate Management Team Performance? Four Points

Situation: As the end of the year approaches, a CEO is evaluating management performance over the year. An area of focus during the year have been evaluating new business opportunities and the impact of these on the company. The CEO has been uncomfortable with disagreements between departments which have slowed opportunity evaluations. How do you evaluate management team performance?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Breaking down issues of concern, there are two areas of focus.
    • Problems that should have been resolved by two people have required a referee (the CEO) to mediate the solution because the two parties could not work things out themselves.
    • Individuals who are otherwise highly skilled have become overly sensitive about minor issues that have prevented them from developing their own solutions
  • The most important step is to have the management team agree on a protocol for dealing with new business opportunities and the impact of new sales opportunities on development and support. A protocol will help to avoid the two issues of concern that have been identified.
    • Direct the team to come up with a protocol that they all agree to, subject to CEO review.
    • Once it is finalized, announce it with great fanfare as the new process that will guide the company. Make it mandatory.
    • Support this process with daily (short – 10-15 minute) or weekly (longer but 1 hour or less) team meetings to anticipate and remove blocks to execution.
  • Tension between sales, service and engineering are natural and healthy. This is because each is driven by different priorities, all of which are necessary to serve the customer.
    • Resolution of this tension requires a turnkey handoff protocol, involving checklists and flow charts.
    • The best protocols are not imposed on people but are developed by the people involved. This gives them ownership, and a stake in implementing and maintaining the protocol.
  • If, despite everyone’s best efforts there is ongoing dysfunction, it may be necessary to replace difficult people. As challenging as this seems, those who report to difficult top managers likely experience similar difficulties with them. Organizations often respond with relief after leadership eliminates a difficult manager.

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What is the Best Way to Utilize Excess Year-end Cash? Three Perspectives

Situation: A company has excess cash at the end of the year. Options are to distribute the excess in bonuses following a challenging year, or to invest in the company. Two questions: how should the company structure a bonus distribution, and how would the company best invest the excess cash? What is the best way to utilize excess year-end cash?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Evaluating bonus options.
    • One company uses a published step-function bonus program, with the steps tied to company profitability, and performance against individual objectives.
    • Include evaluation and scoring on company core values as part of the overall performance evaluation scheme.
  • What’s the best way to utilize the current cash surplus?
    • Use the current surplus to reduce debt or invest it in the future of the company. Build value. Retained earnings are fine even if the company’s accountant is concerned about tax consequences.
    • Consider purchasing life insurance, or other tax-favored deferred-compensation for partners and key employees. Cash bonuses get spent by recipients, whereas tax-advantaged deferred compensation programs build future value for the team.
    • Consider using the excess cash to buy the building.
      • The company can afford a sizeable down-payment.
      • Negotiate a favorable purchase price at a reasonable interest rate.
      • Doing this, monthly lease payments become monthly payments toward ownership of the building and additional value for the firm.
      • Consider purchasing the building under a separate corporate entity, even if ownership of this second entity is identical to current ownership. This may create tax advantages.
  • What do company owners keep in pay versus investing in the future?
    • Keep the cash needed to run the company, plus a bit. Focus on securing the long-term value of the company.
    • “If you take care of the company, the company will take care of you.”
    • If excess cash is invested in the firm, assure to retain long-term access to the value invested. There will be times when the company will need the cash.

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How Do You Develop Current Managers to Support Growth? Six Suggestions

Situation: A CEO is concerned that the current management team is not mature enough to support planned growth. Sales skills are necessary to start an office, but there is a wide range of business acumen and people skills among the managers. How do you develop current managers to support growth?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Company policy requires manager candidates to demonstrate competence in at least three of five areas: sales, technical skills, customer management, customer management, and business acumen. A coaching or mentoring process from senior management would be beneficial.
  • A minimum number of clients is required to start an office. There are important differences in the skills needed to grow and sustain an office. More evaluation of the managerial skills of manager candidates will help.
  • Another CEO shared story of a regional office with a manager who was technically competent but had poor business development skills. This created a growth issue. Clear, mutually agreed upon, written goals helped. Office growth requires good administrative performance as well as technical or sales skills.
  • Frequent group meetings with managers and a deliberate agenda help. There is merit in allowing the field people to contribute to the agenda, having a “round table” type of review, and peer dialogue. In addition to current individual weekly telephone conversations and quarterly operations reviews, there is an opportunity to modify the format.
  • Sometimes there is a double loss in taking a good individual contributor and making them a poor manager. For example, of a good salesperson may turn out to be a bad sales manager. The transition may not play to the person’s strength. A more rigorous selection process will help.
  • Another CEO shared a story of one of his plant managers who reached the limits of his competency and could not continue to grow the plant. He was moved to a support position and a new plant manager was hired. The former manager found new satisfaction in the support role and was successful sharing his knowledge and skill with the new manager and a broader audience within the company.

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How Do You Train New Employees? Five Suggestions

Situation: A young company is in the process of hiring new employees. Good customer service, including excellent communication skills and empathy are the most important qualifications. Good follow-up skills are more important than educational background. How do you train new employees?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Training new employees may be putting the cart before the horse. The first task is to solidify the company’s business model. The next task is to determine what roles and positions fill that model. Only then can the company determine how best to train employees.
  • Build an organizational chart for a $1 million company.
    • Who will the company serve?
    • What are the positions and roles?
    • This is future that the company will be building and determines how to select and train people to fill the positions.
    • Suggested Reading: The eMyth Revisited by Michael Gerber – a guide to envisioning the future of the company and how to build it.
  • A word of caution. As CEO, you don’t want to be training people like yourself. This is both difficult and risky. You may be training future competition. 
    • As an alternative, think of a series of distinct roles or functions that make up the business, then select and train different individuals to handle each role. It’s difficult to find people who can do it all. It’s much easier to find people who can bring in new clients, establish and nurture relationships with partners, network to develop a referral base, or counsel new clients on alternative solutions to fit their needs.
    • Organizing this way means training and creating experts in segments of the business, but nobody knows the full business the way that the CEO does.
  • Each position within the company will need individualized objectives and performance evaluation criteria. What are the key metrics for each position? This helps to build efficiency.
  • Think about both one-time and recurring income models. This may call for different employees or at least a different sales activity to build each business segment.

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Can You Effectively Manage Your Team’s Emotions? Six Ideas

Situation: A CEO recently attended a workshop on awareness of employees’ emotions. The message was that to effectively lead, the leader must be aware of both their own and their team’s emotions, and effectively address these in all communications. How have others acknowledged employee emotions? Can you effectively manage your team’s emotions?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • All companies have both cultures and ways in which employees and managers interact. These are either intentional or accidental.
  • It is important to develop a competency model for any company – skills and behaviors that reinforce company culture and guide both hiring decisions and personnel evaluations. Behaviors should be defined by competencies, including both technical and soft competencies.
  • Once a company competency model is established, position descriptions will be variations of the company competency model.
  • A competency model will help you to script candidate interviews. This works whether you use a panel or individual interview format. Questions should address past behavior in specific situations that the individual has experienced. Provide each interviewer with a set of questions that will help the interviewer understand how the candidate expresses soft competencies. Post-interview, get together and discuss how each candidate’s responses compare with the company model.
  • Supplement your interview results with a psychometric test which scores and effectively measure the key soft competencies expressed in your culture. Pair the psychometric test with cognitive testing to assess a candidate’s technical competency.
  • Use similar questions for employee evaluations or coaching situations. The difference will be that in the case of current employees, you will want to have the employee refer to situations and behaviors experienced at work or working with customers or company partners.

Special thanks to Maynard Brusman of Working Resources for leading this discussion.

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How Do You Craft an Effective Trial Offer? Five Suggestions

Situation: A professional services company has developed a new trial offer to promote their services to prospective clients. The offer includes a discount for an initial evaluation accompanied by a discount on services should the client choose to proceed with recommended solutions. They seek guidance on whether this is an effective approach. How do you craft and effective trial offer?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • The suggested approach is similar to what others offer to new prospects, but only goes half way. A discounted offer only works if you’ve convinced the prospective client that first, they need your services, and second, that there will be a positive financial impact to their bottom line if they agree to your trail offer. You need to add recommendations that will demonstrate a significant short term financial benefit.
  • Target your message. Give the prospect a reason to spend scarce dollars now.
  • Offer to apply all or some of the initial fee to future expenses if they contract you to solve problems that you identify in your initial review.
  • An example of a more targeted offer would be as follows – we will audit your accounts receivable as well as any debts that you’ve written off last in the last 2-3 years. Based on this audit, our past experience has been that you can boost short-term collectibles from these accounts by 30%. An offer like this demonstrates an immediate impact on cash flow.
  • Do you feel comfortable offering a guarantee? You will save the client $X over a guaranteed period or the service will be free.

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How Do You Attract Interns from Top Schools? Six Guidelines

Situation: A company has hired interns in the past and wants to upgrade their intern program to attract more interns from top schools. How do you attract interns from top schools?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Top schools want to build lasting relationships with the companies to whom they send interns. In addition, the ability of top schools to attract top students increasingly relies on the placement rate of the school, so this can be a win-win proposition for both company and school. Take the time to cultivate this relationship and let the school’s representatives know your intentions. Get to know the top professors in programs from which you wish to recruit interns.
  • Provide a high quality internship experience. Treat interns as though they were normal employees during internships. Give them a job, objectives and tell them that you will evaluate you as though they were FTEs. They will feel more like members of the team and will have a higher quality internship experience. They will likely tell their placement office and other students about their experience. Interns should understand that if all goes well, the company MAY have a job for them; no job is guaranteed.
  • If you want more applicants from top schools then view your internship program as an investment. Look at it as a recruiting tool, not as an expense.
  • Pay for interns may not be same as FTEs – frequently interns are paid less, and don’t get the same benefits as FTEs. Before you make an offer or hire, call the school from which the potential intern comes and check out the candidate’s representations as to expected salary, etc.
  • Hire more than one intern and compare their performance against each other.
  • The CEO of a technology company has hired many engineer interns. Many of these were subsequently hired as employees. Overall their success has been good, but not fantastic. Similar to a new employee, it takes time for an intern to get up to speed.

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What Are Best Practices for Selecting Business Development Staff? Four Thoughts

Situation: A company wants to expand its business development staff. What is your experience, and what has worked best for you in selecting among business development candidates?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Your first priority is your compensation plan for the new person. There are three basic compensation schemes:
    1. High Base/Low Commission
    2. Medium Base/Medium Commission
    3. Low to No Base/High Commission
  • Choice between these options depends on your own philosophy, as well as common practice within your industry. Compensation is central to candidate selection. The CEOs recommend asking candidates about their own preferences for compensation.
    • If they prefer Option 1, don’t hire them – they either lack experience or confidence.
    • They ideally prefer Option 3 – they can make more money, but cost you little unless they perform.
    • If they prefer Option 2, probe. They may be good but face personal obligations that make it difficult to choose the high risk/high reward option. Ask about past compensation and performance. Verify any claims made during the interview.
  • You want to structure sales compensation so that non-performers leave of their own accord – without costing you dearly in time or money.
  • What are the most important traits to seek in a good B.D. candidate?
    1. Understanding of customer’s requirements as well as purchase behavior.
    2. Understanding of your product or service.
  • How do you find candidates?
    • Use a Head Hunter who knows your industry and competitors.
    • Use written tests to evaluate the individual’s traits.
    • Let the recruiter find and screen prospects and present the top 2-3 to you.

Key Words: Business Development, Candidate, Compensation, Experience, Traits, Evaluation, Base, Draw, Commission, Industry Practice, Verification, Performer, Non-Performer, Selection, Head Hunter, Personnel, Recruiter, Test

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What are Best Practices to Develop your Staff? Seven Thoughts

Situation:  The CEO wants to build the team, identify leaders within the company, and develop managers. What are best practices to develop your staff?

Advice of the CEOs:

  • A great resource is “First Break All the Rules” by Marcus Buckingham. Among the key findings:
    • Great leaders are not the same as great managers. Good leaders are outgoing and goal-oriented whereas good managers are people-oriented.
    • Expecting good leaders to be good managers and vice versa is not effective. Only the exceptional individual exhibits both sets of talents.
    • The traditional business structure assumes that talented people will want to “move up” the organizational chart. The reality is that some people are very good at a particular level of responsibility, and are happiest with this responsibility.
  • How do to enhance your team’s leadership and management capabilities?
    • Evaluate your team for candidates who possess the qualities of leadership or management. Tailor your training to enhance the natural strengths of your candidates.
    • Draft agreed upon written responsibilities and performance objectives.
    • Regularly follow up and provide feedback.
    • Establish trial projects for new candidates that will allow them experience additional responsibility, and allow you to see how well they perform. Make the steps small at first. If they show talent, make successive steps more challenging.
  • Look at your organizational chart. Does it provide room for both leaders and managers? Does it provide room for the skilled role player who thrives in a particular role? If not, how will you fix it?

Key Words: Leaders, Managers, Staff Development, Advancement, Evaluation, Training, Objectives, Feedback, Organizational Chart

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