Founder Institute Session

On
Hiring and Onboarding

Faiz Bashir,
CEO, FlexiSAF
 “I completely disagree with and unequivocally
reject the notion that people are the greatest
asset an organization can possess. As a matter
of fact, nothing can be farther from the truth.
A more realistic view is this: People can
potentially be the biggest liability an
organization can have.”

Bolaji Olagunju
Founder, Workforce Group
 Zappos Example

Zappos lost £76m to bad

hires
 Barings Example

Nick Leeson single-handedly caused the collapse of

Barings, the United Kingdom’s oldest merchant bank, in
1995.

Through fraudulent, unauthorized and speculative

trading activities he managed to lose the bank £825
million, after which the once-thriving company was sold
to a rival for a nominal price of £1.
 Uber Example

Uber lost over $20m & its reputation to

employees’ bad conducts
Mass company leadership firings

High-level resignations

Removal of its CEO

Backlash among users uninstalling their apps and switching

over to Lyft
 Wrong Hire - A Lose-Lose Proposition

1. Customers 4. The Wrong Hire

The Manager of the Other People in the

2. 5. Organization
Wrong Hire

Colleagues of the Wrong 6.

3. The Organization
Hire
Greatest Hiring Decision of All Time
Re-Hiring of Steve Jobs as CEO in 1997

Apple is worth $3bn in 1997

$355bn in 2011 (> Exxon Mobil)

$1.15T in 2020
Nothing an organization does can be more important than hiring the right people. Absolutely
nothing!

Hiring right is literally a matter of life and death for business owners, executives, and their
organizations. Businesses have died because of wrong hiring decisions. Business owners have lost
everything—their health, their relationship and even their lives—because of wrong hiring decisions.

Bolaji Olatunji
Our Hiring Objective

Attracting and retaining

Smart Creatives
A Smart Creative
They are multidimensional,
usually combining technical in-
depth with business savvy and
creative flair
A smart creative has deep
technical knowledge in how to
use the tools of his trade and
plenty of hands-on experience
Is Analytically Smart

He is comfortable with data and

can use it to make decisions
 Is Business Smart

He sees a direct line from technical

expertise to product excellence to
business success, and understands
the value of all three
Is Competitive Smart

His stock-in-trade starts with

innovation, but it also includes a lot
of work. He is driven to be great,
and that doesn't happen 9-to-5
 Is User Smart

No matter the industry, he

understands his product from the
user or consumer's perspective
better than almost anyone
Firehose of New Ideas
 Is Curious Smart

He is always questioning, never

satisfied with the status quo, seeing
problems to solve everywhere and
thinking that he is just the person to
solve them
 Is Risky Creative

He is no afraid to fail, because he

believes that in failure there is
always something valuable to
salvage.

Even if he fails he can pick up

himself and get it right the next time
 Is Self-Directed

He doesn't wait to be told what to

do
 Is Open Creative

He freely collaborates and judges

ideas and analyses on their merits
and not their ownership
Is Thorough Creative

He is always on and can recite the

details, not because he studies and
memorizes, but because he knows
them. They are his details.
Not all smart creatives have all of these characteristics, in
fact very few of them do. But they all must possess:

● business savvy
● technical knowledge
● creative energy
● and a hands-on approach to getting things done
Hiring Scorecard
Hiring Scorecard
Why is Wrong Hiring
Prevalent?
 74% £132,015
Wrong Hires in Waste
For a wrongly hired
Hiring Managers/HR
line manager with a
admitted they often
salary of £42,000
made wrong hires

Source: 2017 Harris Poll survey of the 2257 hiring managers and HR professionals
The reasons for wrong hires

● Failure to understand and align with organizational context

● Absence of clearly defined and documented hiring process
● Failure to develop and use Success Profiles in the hiring process
● Untrained interviewers or recruiters
● Hiring biases
● Relying on interviews and not using a variety of assessment methodologies in the hiring process
● Lack of clear accountability
● Poor allocation of resources
● Failing to deal with the issues raised by the talent shortage
● Murphy’s Law
Using generic job descriptions as the basis for making hiring
decisions is illogical, dangerous, and doomed to failure.
Organizations must stop doing this and adopt the best
practices

Bolaji Olatunji
“A company should limit its growth based on its
ability to find and keep enough of the right
people.”

Jim Collins (Author, Good to Great)

Context is Everything
To consistently hire right, an organization must ensure there is a
“fit” between its business context and the people it is hiring. This
is absolutely non-negotiable.
 Our Core Values

Be Passionate and Unleash Your Potential

1. 5. Through Teamwork
Committed

Pursue Growth and Make Life Exciting By

2. Learning 6. Solving Customers’
Problems

3. Be Productive While
Having Lots of Fun
7. Be Socially Responsible to
Make a Lifelong Impact

Build Open and Genuine

4. Relationships
 Context Based on Business Lifecycle

i
Startup Phase Growth Phase
● Pioneering Spirit ● Been there and done that
● “Insurgency Mindset” ● Expertise to build scalable
● Lean Orientation structures and systems
● Drive Success

Maturity Phase
i Turnaround Phase
● Manage difficult situations
● Can stabilize and ● Making unpopular and tough
consolidate choices
● Sustain the business ● High levels of clarity and
decisiveness
● Innovate for the
● Capacity to execute and manage
future complexity
Saturn is the ringed planet. It’s
a gas giant, composed mostly
of hydrogen and helium
 Peace vs War Context

Peacetime in business means those times when a company has a large advantage over the
competition in its core market, and its market is growing.

In wartime, a company is fending off an imminent existential threat. Such a threat can
come from a wide range of sources, including competition, dramatic macroeconomic
change, market change, supply chain change, and so forth.
Who is responsible for hiring?
Recruitment is everyone’s job
 But a core responsibility of the manager

A manager can do his individual work,

Manager’s output = the output of his organization and do it well, but that does not
+ the output of the neighbouring organizations constitute his output.
under his influence.
 As a manager, your focus should be:
● To find candidates that are better than you.
● Setting the bar high and never make compromises
● To give candidates reasons to want to join the company
● To assess candidates objectively, take detailed notes and compare with peers

Andrew Carnegie (US steel company, first $1b)

Success Profile - The Hiring
Need
 What is a Success Profile?

The combination of the knowledge, skills, and characteristics required for success or superior
performance in a particular role or area of endeavor
Top performers tend not to stick exactly to job descriptions. Instead, as they learn exactly what it
takes to do their job really well, the best employees expand their activities beyond the boundaries of
the basic job description they were handed at the beginning.

They do new things or old things slightly differently. They learn new skills. They make new contacts.
What is a Success Profile?
 Success Profile - Key Takeaways
● Most organizations have staff performing at very different levels.
● Do whatever it takes to find out what differentiates successful people in your organizations (your Top
Performers) from the rest.
● Use the information to create Success Profiles.
● These are essential recruitment tools, but can also be used to raise the performance bar across the
organization.
● Identify and study your Top Performers while they are embedded in and committed to the organization. If
you leave this process till after they have decided to leave, you will not be modeling best practice.
● A simple Success Profile looks at skill, knowledge, and characteristics of the incumbent in a particular role.
● Of these, characteristics is the most important.
● There are a number of ways of creating such Profiles. These include job analysis interviews, resource panels,
behavioral event interviews, and direct observation.
The Interview
Process
Behavioural and Situational Interviews
A tip guide for an effective interview process
Steps/Checklist for the Interview Process
Bias in Hiring
Bias Leads to Poor Hiring Decision
 Bias Triggers

● Trigger 1: First Impression

● Trigger 2: Confirmation Bias
● Trigger 3: The “Halos and Horns” Effect
● Trigger 4: Similarity and Affinity
● Trigger 5: Jumping to Conclusions
● Trigger 6: Turning a Blind Eye to Red Flags
● Trigger 7: Appearance Bias
● Trigger 8: Bandwagon effect (Groupthink)
● Trigger 9: The Bias Blind Spot
● Trigger 10: Overconfidence
 Avoiding Hiring Bias

● Follow a Uniform and Proven Process

● Examine the Red Flags
● Do Preliminary Interviews by Phone or Email
● Do a Second Interview
● Do a Group Interview
● Make a Pros and Cons List
● Keep an Open Mind
● Take Detailed Notes
Variety: The
Spice of Hiring
Right
 Variety Is The Spice of Hiring Right

● You should never base your hiring decisions on interviews alone.

● Even if you have thoroughly eliminated all the Bias Code, there is always an element of
subjectivity in interviews. Interviews can be “gamed” by smart candidates, who are increasingly
often better prepared for interviews than the managers who are supposed to be assessing them!
“A Day in a Life” Tool
 References
Whatever You Do, Make Sure You Check References
THANK
YOU
Questions and Comments?