Business owners and managers need to be wary of these types

By Rick Crossland


A critical part of building a strong team is hiring only the right people to join your organization. You need to hire only A-Players. Hiring the wrong type of people on your team can quickly contaminate the positive, productive culture you have built. Fortunately, by using a rigorous half day interview, complete with a detailed positional agreement, job scorecard and being mindful of your company’s core values, you can very effectively screen out the wrong kind of people for your organization.

Here are five common types of people to absolutely not hire:

1. The Showdog. This type of person looks good on paper. Their resume is impeccable. They dress to impress. They even sound pretty good to an average person in a traditional 45-minute interview. However, if you listen closely, the Showdog has absolutely no results. All of their answers are vague when it comes to how results were obtained. They try to dismiss your question with a sweeping wave of the hand and a “of course you know how it is done…” answer. They may even try the royal “We.” The solution for exposing the Showdog is to ask detailed results based questions over their entire career history. Ask exactly what they did to contribute. They will show their true colors in this longer and more intensive interview format.

2. The Prima Donna. This candidate also looks good at first, but as soon as you get into the details of the interview process, their high maintenance side begins to show. Where A-Player candidates are flexible with travel schedules and filling out career history forms and assessments, the Prima Donna makes a huge deal out of the littlest details, whether it be the time and date of the interview, or their demands that they fly first class and eat at only the priciest restaurants. A great way to uncover the Prima Donna is to make your interview process challenging for them. The rigor will scare them off.

3. The Narcissist. This person is a Prima Donna on steroids. They will tend to impress you because they will be very forthright in stating their accomplishments. However, beware of the little clues of narcissism they drop in the entire interview process. Watch how they treat others. Do they tend to ignore your receptionist or talk down to the waiter at the restaurant? Often in a group interview setting they will ignore the junior members of the team and only focus on the senior people. Conducting detailed reference interviews, particularly to former direct reports is a great way to detect the narcissist.

4. The Job Hopper. This type of candidate can’t stay or hold a job beyond two years. The reason they don’t stay is because they either constantly on the lookout for something better or they get found out by their employer as an underperformer and are encouraged to leave. The Job Hopper is very adept at blaming the opportunity they were in for not working out. It is always the former company’s or management’s fault in their eyes. However, at some point they need to take responsibility for continually picking the wrong opportunities where they cannot thrive. The solution to not falling for the Job Hopper is to be very diligent about detecting job movement at the resume and phone interview stage. The other remedy is to build a rule not to hire people who cannot stay in a position at least three years. Beware of their siren song that they will finally stay with your company and let them establish career longevity with someone else!

5. The Check-the-Box Candidate. This candidate meets all of your baseline criteria in the interview. However, the problem is they don’t “wow” you. Most companies would hire this candidate, but you need to pass on them. The lack of wow indicates they are a B-Player and will not add the right energy, positive attitude and results to your team. My rule of thumb is that after an interview, you should be so excited about the candidate that you cannot wait to tell your significant-other about the fabulous person you interviewed, and all of the positive skills and attitude he or she will bring to your team.

Becoming a talent scout and adding only A-Player talent to your organization is one of the most important things you can do as a leader. To get great people, you need to pass on candidates that your competition is more than willing to hire. Having a structured and rigorous interview process is your foundation for success.

God bless you whitebread

I blame the youths of this country. No great country is great without passing through revolution. Stop being beggars to politifcians, to legislooters, to executhieves. Enough is Enough. We must be wise, resilient, defiant, hungry, and mad for revolution.
#NoToRestructuring #YesToRevolution

I am a Job hopper..
If they have probs with that, they can go fvck themselves...