Recently, Lawrence Kellner, the CEO of Continental Airlines, laid out his secrets for recruiting. Kellner's secrets are those every professional should understand because they show you how to manage your career--in case of job loss--more effectively. Although Kellner obviously gets involved only at senior levels, his recruiting guidelines are typical all the way down the hierarchy with most of my clients.
Kellner doesn't believe you can figure out in a one or two hour interview whether anyone is going to be a success. Talent is not very easy to identify, and the smart managers recognize this. Pfeffer and Sutton point to research that indicates that though most think I.Q. is the key performance issue, the notion is quite suspect. Intelligence acounts for no more than 16% of the variation in performance. In short, "for most jobs in most organizations, assessing talent and ability is fraught with error and bias." Recruiting is a crapshot. Bob Sutton's comments on bosses fills you in on the kind of boss humility that's important, not only about recruiting but other stuff as well. Still, if I were interviewing for a job, I'd do a lot of preparation for the interview. Same if I was recruiting.
Kellner's second approach is to go through his rolodex to figure out whether he has worked with someone who'd be really good for filling the job. What that means to me is that most professioals need to focus on performing well and self-advocating to the relevant managers so they'll know who you are and how well you perform. This is not rocket-science, but so few professionals self-advocate and keep managers up to date on their performance that it's no wonder there are so many high-performers on the street.
Third, when there's no one in his rolodex, Kellner widens his search to people he trusts and asks them about people they've worked with. "Who do you know that can . . . .?" is a common strategy among successful managers. If they know you as a high performer, you're liable to get an opportunity.
The final strategy is to find someone he trusts who knows the person he's thinking of hiring. Kellner believes, like all the managers I know, that "the best possible interview is miniscule in value compared to somebody who's got even a couple of months of work experience with somebody."
With flattened hierarchies and constant organizational changes, a number of implications surface from Kellner's conclusions--that is, if you want to manage your career successfully.
Make it a practice to get outside your work silo and narrow area of expertise. Needs and opportunities change constantly and your expertise may be of little value unless you've got the experience and smarts to leverage it in different ways.
Second, learn to self-advocate without being perceived as a "careerist," someone who's always trying to "play the game." I refer to self-advocacy in a post about Gen-Yers managing Gen-Yers, but astute self-advocacy is always a necessity.
Third, maintain a shoulder length network, not merely defined by your friends--the birds of a feather syndrome. Get to know people outside your organization and outside your expertise and keep building that network. I rant about this networking issue regularly, and hope to see more and more professionals take-charge of their career by networking.