go better than others, but overall, he notes, he is much nicer to be around and much less prone to lose his temper.
Is it possible for Joe to develop the high-character traits that Mike already displays? Yes. With the right management and a willingness to acknowledge his shortcomings, Joe may be able to change. But for this to happen, both Joe and his company would have to make an investment in him that one or both might not want to make. Yet if Joe doesn’t change and is promoted to a more responsible position, his problems may have profound consequences for the organization and the people it serves.
Smart companies seek to hire and promote high-character people like Mike for five reasons:
• They make coming to work a more agreeable experience for everyone, which is good for employee morale.
• They contribute significantly to the organization’s financial health by being highly productive and developing strong relationships with clients.
• They tend to be loyal to their employers. People like Mike stick around.
• They advance the company’s mission of enhancing people’s lives.
• They reflect well on the company, which is valuable for its own sake and also promotes positive word-of-mouth.
Assuming that Mike and Joe have the same knowledge and skills, Mike is the more desirable employee, because, at least at work, he is a person of greater character. Mike is one of the Good Ones. But how can a business determine whether the person they’re considering hiring is more like Mike or more like Joe? Let’s take a look.
Evaluating High-Character Employees
Even if we agree on the qualities that comprise high character, the question remains: How can managers determine whether job candidates and current employees possess these qualities? It’s especially difficult to assess the character of job candidates, but there are also some surprising obstacles to evaluating the character of current employees.
Scott Erker, senior vice president at Development Dimensions International (DDI), notes that there are four ways companies can gather information for the purposes of hiring and promotion: tests, work simulations, references, and interviews.
Tests
Companies like DDI create intricate tests to help determine whether a job candidate would be a good fit for a particular job. These tests are often web-based and can be taken on a candidate’s mobile device. But multiple-choice and true/false questions can’t delve deeply into the ten qualities of high character that we explore in this book.
For example, suppose one of the questions on a multiple-choice test is, “One of your company’s clients gives you an expensive watch. The policy at work is that employees may accept gifts worth $50 or less. What would you do?” The choices are:
A. Tell the client that you appreciate the gift but aren’t allowed to accept it.
B. Keep it.
C. Donate it to charity.
A problem with using multiple-choice tests for evaluating a job candidate’s character is that people sometimes lie about what they would do. Just because a candidate says she would tell the client she couldn’t accept the gift or would donate it to charity doesn’t mean she believes that’s what she would do. She might recognize that her employer wouldn’t allow her to keep the watch, so she might choose A or C on the test to demonstrate her high character, even if she knows she would do neither of these things. But even an honest response may not reflect how that person would actually behave in such a situation. A test taker might sincerely believe he would refuse the gift, but when this hypothetical scenario becomes real, he might in fact keep it. We don’t always do what we say we would do.
There is a place for multiple-choice and true/false tests in evaluating character, however. They’re useful for beginning a dialogue about honorable behavior and why some choices are better than others. This is how I use them in my speeches and workshops. We’ll see in a moment why and how conversation is essential to evaluating a job candidate’s character.
Work Simulations
Work simulations involve putting candidates into the actual context in which they would be employed and observing them. These work better for some occupations (say, teaching) than others (cardiac surgery comes to mind). Evaluating character on the job makes sense for employers who use the so-called temporary-to-permanent hiring process. “One bad seed can really have an impact on your culture,” says Mona Bijoor, the founder and chief executive of a wholesale company that hires people on a trial basis. Jon Bischke, the CEO of a recruiting software company, notes that a bad hire can kill a company with a small number of employees, like his, which is why he uses the test-drive model of employment.
But it’s difficult to see how companies that hire people in the traditional way could evaluate a job applicant’s character through work simulations. These organizations — that is, most businesses in the world — have to use other means.
References
References should be a helpful way to evaluate character in a job applicant, but often they aren’t. Several years ago, a woman whom I’ll call Nell applied for a position as my assistant. I was able to contact only one of the three references she provided, and the way this fellow described Nell, I felt I had stumbled onto someone with the charisma of Oprah Winfrey, the integrity of Mother Teresa, and the graciousness of several First Ladies. When I asked the gentleman how he knew Nell, he evaded the question for a while but eventually revealed that he was her fiancé. Small wonder, then, that he had nice things to say about her. I hired Nell, and shortly afterward she quit when a more attractive job opportunity came along. The moral of the story is that the references a job applicant provides can be deeply biased and don’t necessarily present an accurate view of the candidate.
By default, the only other option for prospective employers is to contact a job candidate’s previous employers, whether or not the job applicant has provided the information directly. The problem is that for legal reasons, many employers provide only minimal information about former employees, such as the duration of their employment.
Alan Murray, the editor of Fortune magazine and former president of the Pew Research Center, carefully listens to anything former employers have to say about job applicants. “Sometimes they’ll convey useful information about a candidate’s shortcomings even while soft-pedaling that information,” he told me. What Alan finds surprising is how rarely prospective employers contact him about employees who leave his organization. “I’ve been angst-ridden over what I was going to say when someone called me for a reference, but it’s seldom I get the call,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s laziness or a failure to understand the value of reference checks.” Alan’s experiences may be the fallout from the practice of employers’ giving little meaningful information during reference checks, which discourages prospective employers from contacting references at all.
Jeffrey Hayzlett, host of C-Suite with Jeffrey Hayzlett on Bloomberg Television, believes strongly in checking references, but only when those references are people he knows. He cites a book that had a big influence on him, his friend Bob Beaudine’s The Power of Who: You Already Know Who You Need to Know. The Wall Street Journal called Bob’s company “the top executive recruiting firm in college athletics,” so Bob knows a thing or two about how to find good employees. Alan Murray, too, has found that having a personal connection with references is a way to get information about job candidates that has played a decisive role in hiring decisions.
References
