Johnny Boy Marketing
Great Work. On Time. No Hassles.
The Biggest Hiring Mistake Managers Make
I received a phone call from the CEO of the company for which I served as marketing director at about 6:30 p.m. on Valentine’s Day. I was waiting in the parking lot of a nice restaurant for my wife to arrive.
“John, our recent hires have been horrible. Why?” he asked. This was the same day he’d had to have someone terminate yet another failed hire.
It was a small company, so it wasn’t rare for the CEO to ask me questions outside my focus as the marketing guy. So I promised to investigate … after Valentine’s Day evening.
What I learned is something that wasn’t all that surprising to me. I’d been seeing the same thing happen over and over and over to mystified managers throughout my career. Otherwise talented leaders would routinely hire people who didn’t work out … and then either blame the failed candidate or the hiring process for the problem.
In truth, the culprit was neither the candidate nor the process. It was the manager, and in just about every case I witnessed, it came down to the same problem: Hiring the person you like instead of hiring the best person for the job.
In trying to figure out the answer to the CEO’s question, among other things, I talked with the two people most directly responsible for finding, screening and ultimately hiring the failed candidates. One was the director of operations. The other was the director of growth. Both talked about the amazing conversations they had had with the candidates who had flamed out, some in spectacular fashion.
But here’s the thing: The positions for which they were hiring were sales jobs. The director of operations was amazing at financial stuff, and the director of growth had a background in information technology. The fact that they got along so well with the hires was a red flag.
A sales person and a financial/techie person are cut from completely different cloth. If, as was stated to me when I asked the question “What was the biggest factor in hiring this person?”, a sales person is being hired because the interview was so conversational and free-flowing and left the financial/techie person feeling good, I would — and did — question the evaluator, not the evaluation process.
Confirmation bias is the tendency to interpret new evidence based on already-held beliefs or theories. In this case, the confirmation bias was that a new hire would work out because they were so similar to the person doing the hiring. This wasn’t being done intentionally or carelessly. We all like being around people who are like us. It gives us a greater sense of place in the world if we’re not feeling like the weird shaman on the outside of the village watching everyone else dance around the fire.
The problem is that the job that needed to be done was vastly different from the one being done by the people doing the hiring, and they weren’t looking past the feelings the candidates were giving them because the conversation was so good. I’ve seen this happen repeatedly throughout my career.
In reporting back to the CEO, I told him the story of Trevor, a candidate I hired at a job marketing benefits for a religious organization. When I told my colleagues I was making an offer to Trevor and not the other candidate we’d interviewed, I was met with everything from skeptical looks to laughter.
That just served to validate my decision. Every single person on that team was very similar. Creative, yes, and also extremely interested in interpersonal dynamics, if you catch my drift. Trevor was not. Trevor was quiet, introspective and laser focused on doing good work to start off his career right. He would most likely not talk unless someone talked with him first, especially in the first six months as he settled in, and he most certainly was never going to get into the interpersonal drama that beset our department.
More than that, he also could do the things that no one else in our department could do as well. I’d seen it in his portfolio of work. Trevor was a master at making videos that were engaging, tight and creative. I could make videos, but not nearly as good as Trevor.
Our other finalist, Sara, showed in that final interview with the team that she was very much like the rest of the department. She was creative, gave elaborate answers to questions and talked about past work situations in which she dove deep into the politics/interpersonal stuff I was trying so hard to avoid.
It wasn’t a surprise to me that my colleagues wanted to hire Sara. They could picture chatting with her, going out to lunch with her, hanging out with her after work and generally being in a positive social relationship with her. That’s not a bad thing. It just wasn’t anything I needed in this hire. I needed someone who could make killer videos and not contribute to the noise that made us less efficient and more divided.
So I hired Trevor. Within a year, he’d been promoted, and he continues to thrive there today.
What does this mean for those of you who are in a position to hire other human beings? Three things:
- Know what you need your new hire to do and stay focused on his or her ability to do that.
- Be cognizant of your own personality and talents, and purposefully look for others not like you when the situation calls for it or the department would benefit from a different style.
- Stand firm when your colleagues question your decision to hire someone different from themselves if you see that the person is best suited for doing the duties of the job.
At its core, hiring isn’t difficult. Asking the right questions and knowing your own biases go a long way to weeding through those who might be nice to be around but who aren’t the best people to do the job that needs to be done.
John Agliata is a marketing professional with more than 30 years of communications experience. Reach him at johnagliata@gmail.com or (352) 226-5852.
More From ‘That Marketing Guy’
Five Dumb Things About The American Workplace
Welcome to Issue No. 16 of Listicles, the feature that presents the Top 10, Top 5, Top 3, Top 100 or Top 1,000,000 of whatever it is you want to know about. Email your Listicle suggestions to johnagliata@gmail.com. Very few of us would actually continue at our jobs were we financially able to not. That…
What Type of Bosses Do Employees Leave?
If you accept the truism that people don’t leave jobs, they leave bosses, the next question is obvious: “What do bosses do that cause their people to leave?” The answers to that are as varied as the types of horrible bosses, but it’s possible to roll those individual reasons into just a few bigger buckets.…
Democracy and Newspapers
The three most influential people in my life as a journalist are, sadly, all part of the Great Newsroom in the Sky now. Professors Michael Perkins and Bob Woodward (AKA Bob Woodward-Not-That-Bob-Woodward) helped educate me at Drake University, and Lisa Warren was the best editor of the Dayton Daily News’ Southwest Ohio papers who ever…
Why Your White-Collar Job Is In Jeopardy
Far be it from me — a guy who struggled to get through high school algebra — to suggest performance on standardized math tests is the barometer by which we should measure a nation’s educational system. Yet it is true that those who do well in math and science move into more white-collar jobs than…
A Big Reason Your Workers Are Cranky About RTO
Here’s a workplace truth: Management often has no clue what the rank-and-file are thinking. This is often because employees suck at communicating directly, though their fear of doing so is often justified because of, shall we say, overzealous HR departments. Too often, however, it’s because managers are so used to being managers that they’re not…
How Data Is Ruining Baseball (And How It Can Fix It, Too)
Smart businesses allow data to guide their marketing. The ability to do this is relatively new and likely not to last too much longer. A firehose stream of information is available on a company’s marketing campaign performance, its customers and its potential customers. That stream is so strong that there’s a movement afoot to create…
Your Car is Selling You Out
On the dashboard of my car is a tiny square, just a little bit bigger than a postage stamp, that is worse than my sister ever was. If I drive too fast, it tattles. If I brake too hard, it tattles. If I accelerate too quickly — though I struggle to think how this would…
Top 5 ‘Thank-Yous’ To The Bad Bosses Out There
Bad bosses shouldn’t be. Of course, I’ve never met anyone who self-identifies as a bad boss, yet we all know they’re out there, and yes, indeed, without a shadow of a doubt, they do suck. I’ve had more than my fair share of bad bosses over the course of my career, from the one who…
Meet Johnny Boy’s Newest Client
There’s some humor to be found in the newest client on the Johnny Boy Marketing roster. Envision Benefits Group is an employee benefits, payroll and HR consulting company based in Buffalo, NY. Started just before the pandemic, it has not only survived by is thriving under owner and president Kristin Devereaux. Now to the humor:…
A Secret Look Inside a Nuthin’ Story
One of my clients is a former newspaper colleague who now runs his own marketing firm and who has more work than he knows what to do with. Truth be told, whereas once I was a mentor to him when he was a young journalist, he’s now a mentor to me as I seek to…
The Most Important Work Lesson I’ve Learned
I’m not quite sure when I went from being the working world’s wide-eyed newbie to the grizzled veteran I see in the rearview mirror when I start the car for my evening commute home, yet here we are. I’ll be 48 years old in a few weeks, and I’ve been doing this marketing/communications thing since…
WFH 4EVER? Not So Fast
It’s good to be the king.” Mel Brooks, History of the World: Part 1 I am currently sitting in an office that no one else wanted to fill. Two weeks ago, I started a new job with a company that had a zero-WFH (Work From Home) policy as one of the conditions of hiring. That,…
The Rise of Horny Marketing
RadioShack is taking a controversial approach to its social media marketing. It’s capturing attention. But will the new approach grow sales? “If you find a squirter, marry her.” RadioShack’s Twitter RadioShack getting horny with its marketing is kind of like walking in on your grandparents having sex, and yet here we are, standing in the…
Gamifying War: Where Are They Now?
Nearly 20 years after the U.S. turned Iraqi’s Most Wanted into playing cards, many of the captured have been released or died while in custody, but several remain at large. A U.S.-led coalition stormed into Iraq on March 20, 2003, ostensibly to seek and destroy the weapons of mass destruction our intelligence showed most definitely,…
Four Steps to Market Your Way Through a Recession (Plus a Bonus Tip!)
THE FOUR STEPSNo Axes 🪓Strengthen 💪Attack 🥷🏿Don’t Stop ⏳BONUS: 🥶🧊❄️ The go-to inevitabilities in American society tend to be death and taxes — and with good reason. After all, death is coming for all of us at some point, and income taxes were supposed to be a temporary fix to help fund the Union effort…
An Ugly Consequence When Abortion and Big Data Collide
Every decision carries a consequence. Economists call it an opportunity cost. Politicians often simply call it an opportunity. Parents sometimes call it grounds for punishment. Whatever it’s called by whomever it’s called, the fact is that every single decision we make sets us down a new path, a new timeline, a new reality wholly separate…
Top 5 Cringeworthy Marketing Mistakes
The Top 55. Solving Racism with Kendall 🏴4. Coke is a Feeling 🥤3. Fish > Death 🐟2. Arab Spring Ignorance 👳1. White Power PSP 🎮 As most people do, I made my first on-the-job mistake in my very first job. I was a blueprint copier for an architect who ate a pile of onions on…
It’s a (Dysfunctional) Family Matter
Top 3 questions to ask yourself before going into business with relatives. My wife, Carla, is an amazing woman. She is exceedingly brilliant, the owner of a whole lot more A’s in school growing up than her future husband had. We’ve known each other for nearly three decades now, the past 25 as spouses. And…
The Inside Story of Johnny Boy Marketing
Big things happen in odd places and at the strangest times. I met my future wife in the basement of a dingy college residence hall. The biggest boost to my career came when I had to cancel an interview with someone who could have been President of the United States. And I realized I could…
Why So Much Marketing Data Analysis is Wrong
Any idiot can gather data. In fact, idiots are gathering data all the time. Smart people are, too. So are ants and mosquitos. Every time I drive a car, I’m constantly gathering data. My brain is doing what human brains do to judge distance, speed and alignment and how each might be influenced by things…
The One Thing That Makes a Coach ‘Good’
What makes a good coach? Interesting question, but it’s the wrong one. Oh, that question has all the right words. They’re just in the wrong order. If you want to talk about what makes a good coach, we can list a bunch of coach-worthy attributes — things such as charisma, assertiveness, fairness, consistency. But again,…
Top 3 Super-Secret Event Planning Tips
I have absolutely zero formal training when it comes to planning events. Before this became part of my job duties, I hadn’t planned so much as a birthday party for my child. Of course, I have zero formal training for a lot of the things I do in my job as a marketer and communicator.…
It’s Not the Technology; It’s Us
It’s easy to say Facebook — sorry, Meta — is evil. They do such a good job of proving the point for us. They routinely violate their own privacy policies, they know what they do is bad for people and bad for society, and they lie when subpoenaed to testify before Congress because they know…
When the Popular Vote Doesn’t Matter in Marketing
⬇️ What’s Below ⬇️Marketing: Science or Art? 🔬🎨The nature of feelings 🤗😭😡How to measure success in marketing 📊 Here’s one thing that doesn’t impress me much as a marketing guy: The popular vote. This might seem crazy, considering the goal of marketing is, at its core, to inspire the most people to buy your product…
The BM Files – Goodwill/St. Louis Aquarium
Welcome to The Bad Marketing Files, the place where we look at marketing efforts ranging from the slightly off-message to the truly horrendous. The SettingA Goodwill/St. Louis Aquarium billboard on Interstate 70 The ProblemThe billboard sends messages neither entity wants associated with its brand. Today’s BM Rating💩 out of a possible💩💩💩💩💩(Translation: It’s not good, but…
Sharing My Story Via Podcast
When it comes to podcasts, I need a 12-step program. I counted this morning, and I regularly or semi-regularly keep up with 16 of them. There are dozen and dozens of more that had a limited run that I plowed through at some point over the last seven or eight years. My addiction is a…
Let Your Storytellers Explore Their Multiple Personalities
One of the best parts of being a professional storyteller is that, if you find the right environments, you can explore the many different facets of your personality. And it’s a storyteller’s obligation to explore them, as well as to find the parts that are hidden in the dark corners or are guarded by the…
The Dark Side of Marketing: Big Brother Really Is Watching
What if I told you… … that when you visited a certain website, every single thing you do is being monitored? I’m not just talking about what you click on or what you buy. Most of us have at least an inkling that companies are doing that. I’m talking about actual recordings being made of…
The Boy Scouts are wrong: Preparation is overrated
Back in college at good old Drake University (JO 92… T-Ders will understand), I had some pretty fantastic journalism professors. There was, of course, the legendary Bob-Woodward-Not-That-Bob-Woodward, who, though he worked in Washington, D.C., during the Watergate era, did not, in fact, do any of the reporting that brought down a president. More important to…
My Most Important Interview
I have interviewed hundreds of people during my career, everyone from professional athletes and presidential candidates to the woman promoting a charity bake sale. This past week, I interviewed my wife. Her dad — my amazing father-in-law — died early Sunday morning after a two-month fight with COVID and other complications. I sit here now,…
Patrick Ewing in a Jock Strap
When I was a wee-little storyteller of 17 years, I had the opportunity to go to the New York Knicks training camp to interview their rookie point guard, Greg Anthony. At 6’0″, I was able to look eye-to-eye with the just-out-of-UNLV star while I talked with him in the weight room. Five feet away, a…
Storytellers vs. Content Writers (and why your business wants the first one)
All storytellers can be content writers. Not all content writers can be storytellers. And if you’re running a business or a marketing department, you most definitely want storytellers. So what’s the difference? There are many, but the key one is the focus. Content writers are fine. The good ones will produce lots of copy that…