Hiring technical professionals is a science, whether that person is an investigator in the lab, an engineer in the pilot plant, or a salesperson out in front of your customer base. The process of hiring has as many fine points as any experimental practice you learned when you were at the university. Except, of course, for the fact that if you make a mistake, you can (almost) always perform an experiment again. With hiring, your mistakes haunt you years later.

In this column, I’d like to review a few of the key points of consideration that managers should be thinking about when looking at a mix of candidates.  Choose your new hire carefully, because if you don’t it will have significant downstream repercussions for your own career.

One Manager Can Make a Big Difference
There’s one thing we know about managing technical staff, and anyone with more than a few years of experience will agree: 80% of the success your department achieves will come from 20% of your staff. Similarly, 20% of the staff are the source of 80% of your headaches. Those kinds of numbers show you how important it is to improve your hiring process even in some small way — it can make a great difference.

Hiring is an area where individual managers can have a disproportionate effect on the overall performance of their companies. That is, if it were possible to put a “well-oiled machine” into action with all the best hiring practices — that one manager can have a huge impact on the positive direction of her entire company.

Here’s what one section head told me about his laboratory, which has an internal reputation for being the best-run outfit in a 300-employee biotechnology company: “When I took this job, I sat down with my top people and tried to determine what it was that they were doing differently from the rest,” he said. “Of course, there was a lot of raw talent there — some people just have more horsepower. But there were attitudes and beliefs that they had in common. I knew I needed to look for those same traits in others.”

His mission was to sew that common thread throughout the entire group of 20 people. “I spent some personal time with the others, and through a mentoring program I had my best people help identify those with solid potential,” he went on. “Within six months, we had reorganized our department and given new responsibilities to several junior team members who had the potential to shine — and they did. I was pleased to see that part of the issue was so easily correctable. The rest of the work was not so pleasant. I had two very difficult dismissals followed by months of recruitment activity. But we were able to hire new team members who carry these same seeds of success with them that I identified in my first high-performers.”

Are you interested in upgrading the results out of your department? If you are, than I promise that a few simple screening processes will help you will gain a good reputation both internally and externally that will follow you throughout your career.

Hiring Technical Professionals
One of my favorite books about managing scientific staff is Managing Professional People: Understanding Creative Performance, by Albert Shapiro. (Unfortunately, it is now out of print but still available from used booksellers like those found on Amazon.com and ABE.com.) I suggest Mr. Shapiro’s six criteria for hiring because I haven’t found a list that makes better sense to the technical hiring manager than his does.

Good hiring practices don’t always have to do with putting so much structure into place that it complicates hiring. In some companies, good intentions end up complicating hiring with outside psychological testing or rigid procedures that drag things out. Sometimes HR doctrine is so thick that it chokes the individual freedoms that managers need to choose their team members.

I would start by determining the traits your high-performers have in common, and work to develop those same traits in others. Then, use that same list to identify future hires. Despite the internal policies of how recruiting works at your company, these are the core issues you’ll need to be concerned about during the interview process. Here is the short list that Mr. Shapiro mentions in his book, coupled with my own commentary:

1 Capability for high technical performance
Unfortunately, this important criterion is often used by scientific hiring managers to the exclusion of all others. Of course you want to bring in the best technical people you can find. You’ve identified a list of skills and abilities that must be present in your new hire and during the interview process your team will screen applicants to find out who best fits those parameters. While you will be strongly tempted to hire the person perceived to have the strongest technical skills, if he does not lead in the following criteria, then he may not the right choice.

2 Ability to enhance group performance
Good managers know that excellent synergy between team members can mean a “2+2=5” formula for results. They also know that when you add a technical genius who has no people skills to the mix, the resulting loss of time for managers and the staff turnover that results can reverse any advantages that person may have brought to the table. Such a hire becomes a threat rather than a wonderful catch. You’ve got to ask yourself, “How does Susan fit into the lab with Phillip, Jenny, and Ahmed?”

3 Initiative-taking capability
Managers who surround themselves with professional staff members who have initiative-taking capability can increase their results accordingly, as well as increase the number of people they supervise. Everyone wants to hire the “self-starter,” but it is difficult to ascertain that ability during an interview. (A thorough reference check is the best way to determine such things). At the other extreme, just one new hire who relies on the manager extensively for day-to-day directions will reduce the boss’s available time dramatically.

4 Potential for development and renewal over time
You’ve got a job that needs doing, and you’re tempted just to look for someone who can do it with as little help from you as possible. But what is that new hire’s potential for projects you will be faced with in six months — or two years? Is he or she the kind of person who will grow with the job or someone who has already burned out in a similar, previous position and is simply looking for a change of scenery? Make sure that you hire people who have an attitude about lifelong learning and who will succeed over time as the job changes and new capabilities are required.

5 High probability for retention
Let’s face it: the hiring process is expensive both in time and money. Advertisements, recruiting fees, the cost of travel and interviewing, and relocation expenses all add up to make hiring costs average more than $70-$100K per professional staff member. Very serious consideration must be given to the probability of retaining that new hire. Is his or her track record stable? Will your position offer a continuing series of challenges and learning opportunities, or is it the same job that person has been doing elsewhere — the one he or she wants to leave behind now?

6 Creativity
Some people think creativity is a skill needed only by research laboratory personnel. But it is a required ingredient for any new hire. Once again, it is a hard quality to assess in an interview. Creativity demands the right mix of motivation and intellectual power — and of course the right work environment. Talk to references. Take cues from the presentation given on interview day, and ask questions that will draw out that person’s critical thinking ability.

Begin Today
Can you manage to improve your hiring process and bring those traits and habits of your top performers to a broader range of your people? One thing is certain: Achieving that goal would certainly move your team into the top 20% of the company that accomplishes 80% of the work!