Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

What I Learned about Hiring Top Technical Talent

2009; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 52; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/08956308.2009.11657570

1930-0166

Igor M. Sill,

Human Resource and Talent Management

The ability to recruit exceptionally talented and capable management leaders is possibly the purest form of exceptional entrepreneurship and the key to organizational success. The correlation between today's most successful technology companies and their executive team is clearly the founder's ability to hire world-class leadership and management. Here are ten lessons I learned during 11 years consulting and recruiting for Larry Ellison, co-founder and chairman of Oracle Corporation, and several of the gifted entrepreneurs and CEOs spawned by the house that Larry built. The post-Oracle successes of people like Tom Siebel, founder and chairman of Siebel Systems, Marc Benioff, Salesforce.com founder and chairman, Bernard Liautaud, founder of Business Objects (SAP), and Marten Mickos, CEO of start-up MySQL, are a tribute to Ellison's recognition that Oracle's success was tied directly to the quality, intellect and ferociousness of its leadership. Up until 1992 every leadership role at Oracle required his personal hiring review and endorsement. Lessons Learned 1. Hire intelligent, driven people - These are the type-A over-achievers with an inbred fear of failure personality. You are clearly looking to hire people far more capable than yourself-people who are driven to prove to themselves and their peers. players hire A players, and B players hire C players. You spot these prospects by asking deep questions about their roles, their company's mission, and how they sought to fulfill their company's vision. Ask how they accomplished their mission. Look for strategic thinkers seeking to improve their employer's systems, processes and results. Ask what they actually accomplished while in their roles. Look for details accurately articulated, teamoriented descriptions versus the I did it by myself conceit. Look for people striving to continually improve themselves and their personal reach a la lessons learned. Look for those who give credit to their subordinates and other colleagues. 2. Hire evangelistic believers . -These are people who believe in your industry, your products and services. They see and get the full value proposition for customers. Of course, you need to establish that key accomplishments, appropriate education and relevant industry experience are a good fit for the position, but a genuine, burning passion for your company's solutions and offerings far outweigh lesser duties. Ask your candidate to describe your company and its products. You'll get a quick sense of how well your candidate prepared for your meeting and how likely he or she will prepare for critical company/customer meetings. Well-placed passion is a key ingredient for a long-term successful hire. 3. Hire ethical, high-integrity players - Ask situational ethics questions pertaining to such sensitive topics as personal integrity, revenue recognition, customer side letters, sexual harassment, customer promises, hiring preferences, etc. This is well worth taking some time to fully explore with every prospective new leadership hire. Not only do you sift out the marginally ethical, but you also send a clear message of your company's ethics expectations. Seek out candidates who are employed by highly ethical and successful companies. They'll bring that same sense of ethical behavior to your company. 4. Check references - You learn a great deal about a company, its management style, processes, and the prospective candidate's actual work ethic through good reference checking. good way to verify a candidate's credentials during the initial interview is to ask for organizational functions and responsibilities, and who held them within the candidate's last position. Take accurate notes of names and titles mentioned. These will generally not be the same names provided as references. If the candidate deserves serious consideration, first ask for a list of references so that you have permission to check references in general; then, pursue those individuals who worked closely with your candidate to verify actual work responsibilities, work style, leadership skills, communication skills, performance, etc. …