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What do you look for when you hire? Hard lessons have taught me to hone in on one area in my questioning: weakness.

Why is weakness so important? Shouldn’t we be focusing on a potential employee’s strengths?

Yes, but everyone does that. I believe strengths are overrated. They are also overshadowed by character – if the character is weak, many times strengths will become liabilities. If the character is strong, the person’s weaknesses will be assets, and their strengths will multiply.

People surprises never quit

Because people constantly surprise me, I’ve had to throw out most of my intuition, personality tests and rote interview questions. They only serve me half the time – in other words, no better than chance.

Here are some colorful case studies that illustrate this. I was involved in hiring every one of them – people that matched the job description to a tee. But then the system failed.

• A manager attempted to start an affair with an administrative assistant. Her unhappy husband sent blistering e-mails to all the executives, threatening to come by and settle it in person.
• One of our high-potential employees cracked, blowing up at her boss and colleagues, while at the same time dealing with outside family court battles and mental instability.
• A disabled young man continued to promise but never deliver, leaving us in an awkward position.
• A top manager tendered his resignation suddenly one day, citing pressure and unrealistic expectations. I was devastated – this was a good friend, someone I was proud of. Fortunately, we talked through it, and he stayed.
• An executive who worked out of her home baffled us with a lack of results, so my colleague visited her home office. When he tried to talk to her, her eyes darted to the television over his shoulder every few seconds. The place was a mess. Despite her glowing resume and references, she nearly sank us.

People, of course, are like a crapshoot – you never know what you’re going to get. Like fruit, they can suddenly go bad after being ripe.

No matter how stable my staff seems today, one thing is certain: they will continue to surprise me. New hires will flop, long-time employees will develop into stars, or some will come out of nowhere to take us to a new level.

With so much unpredictability, how can you maximize your chances of a successful hire?

Getting to the heart of new hires
 
Since “man sees what is visible, but the Lord sees the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7), how can we understand the heart of the people we interview? Must we roll the dice every time, or are there ways to tell what’s on the inside?

I’ve been deceived more than once by the sincerity of new hires. We’ve wasted a lot of time dealing with the effects of my faith in the wrong people.

You’d think experience would teach me. It does, but the problem is each situation is so unique that I often can’t find anything like it in my past experience. People are just too unpredictable.

The lesson I’ve learned is that I can’t possibly know the heart of someone I’ve just met in an interview situation.

More often than not, the seemingly weaker people we’ve hired have outperformed the superstars. Several started slow but have never stopped improving over the years. Their loyalty has translated into longevity. I now look harder at candidates who don’t toot their own trumpet. The best ones come across somewhat weak despite their impressive resume.
 
Does that mean I’m only going to hire weak people from now on? Of course not. But an article in the Harvard Business Review called “In Praise of the Incomplete Leader” exhorts us to hire people that do embrace their weaknesses: 

It’s time to end the myth of the complete leader: the flawless person at the top who’s got it all figured out. In fact, the sooner leaders stop trying to be all things to all people, the better off their organizations will be…. Only when leaders come to see themselves as incomplete—as having both strengths and weaknesses—will they be able to make up for their missing skills by relying on others.

Based on this thinking, a great interview question might be, “How have you relied on others as a leader?” or “How do you compensate for your weaknesses?” (Don’t ask, “What are your weaknesses?” They’ll respond, “I just can’t seem to stop being such a perfectionist!”)

When a candidate projects only strength, there’s usually a significant weakness hidden beneath the pride. If you can get him or her to admit their weaknesses first, the character question has been answered.

There is no more important question in the hiring process.


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