INTRODUCTION: This article helps you answer the very common question, “What is different about Topgrading?”
For years we’ve said, “Topgrading hiring is just common sense on steroids.” That is supposed to be a cute way of saying that adopting Topgrading practices proven to hire 90% high performers is a lot easier than someone might think, and there is no magic – just applied common sense. But lately some executives have advised, “Don’t oversimplify Topgrading hiring methods – Topgrading is revolutionary, and before embracing it, people want to know how Topgrading values, principles, and tools differ from what they are accustomed to.”
Okay, here’s what is different about Topgrading:
1. Hire only high performers.
Companies dedicated to hiring exceptional performers tend to pay exceptional salaries, but that seems to miss the core value of Topgrading hiring: at every salary level there are high and low performers, and Topgrading strives to help you hire only the best performers – not just average candidates but the very best available.
This notion – packing teams with the “best of class” at every salary level – is highly offensive to two groups of people: 1. those devoted to equality of outcomes (“C players need jobs, too.”), and 2. C players (who realize their job will be in jeopardy with Topgrading). Hand out an article on Topgrading and just watch these two groups coalesce to undercut Topgrading!
2. “Topgrading” is a made-up word and concept.
In the mid-1990s, my son Geoff Smart (of ghSMART & Co.) and I collaborated on developing a more comprehensive approach to talent management than what existed at the time. We felt it was important to come up with a word that captured the essence of the spirit and principles that make up this concept. “Topgrading” was the name we picked.
After all, if you “upgrade” talent you might have a team of 10 C players and replace one with a B player. Whoopee – you’ve upgraded talent and you have a poor team. The word Topgrading struck me as capturing the essence – packing the team with all high performers, A players, stars.
“Upgrading” talent can be embraced by C players; Topgrading means no C players.
3. (Chronological) Topgrading Interview
The idea of a thorough chronological interview, asking a few questions about every job, is not new; every executive search report is the product of such an interview. But search reports tend to be light on disclosing mistakes, failures, and what bosses would say are weaker points.
What we call the Topgrading Interview has been fine tuned for decades and today there are 16 basic questions about every job, including every success, every failure, every mistake, every key decision, every key relationship, assessments of every boss, estimates of what bosses would say about a candidate’s strengths, weaker points, and overall performance … plus questions about leadership, talent, goals, self appraisal, etc. … plus follow up questions. Phew!
The innovation in the Topgrading Interview is to not overlook anything. To achieve 90%+ high performers hired, you need 1,000+ data points.
4. Focus on 50 Competencies.
In order to achieve 90%+ hiring success, focusing on 4 or 6 “key” competencies, which is what most companies still do, is inadequate. This partly explains why companies hire only 25% - 30% true high performers.
In hundreds of workshops we’ve trotted out our standard 50 management competencies and challenged the participants to cut the list by even one, with this criterion: you have to keep it if you would reject a candidate who is Poor or Very Poor on that competency. No one has been able to cut the list by even one. Conclusion: 50+ competencies must be accurately appraised.
But isn’t it impossible for an interviewer to accurately judge 50 competencies?
Nope! At the beginning of workshops almost all managers say they can’t possibly do it, but at the end of the workshop – they’ve done it! They amaze themselves!
So the good news is that managers trained in Topgrading can objectively and validly rate managerial candidates on all 50 competencies.
5. Threat of Reference Check (TORC) Technique, the “truth serum of hiring”
This technique is simple but it works, motivating candidates to be honest. It’s this: let candidates know at each step in the hiring process that in order to get a job offer THEY will eventually have to arrange for personal reference calls with bosses (and others).
C players drop out and A players are happy to tell the truth and to arrange those calls.
6. Topgrading Career History Form
Problem: Pre-screening from resumes produces a mixture of good and bad candidates, since resumes are too often incomplete and hyped.
At a glance the Topgrading Career History form looks like an application form, but it’s much more. It requests all the information NOT included in resumes or application forms but you wish you had – complete salary history, boss ratings, likes and dislikes in jobs, true reasons for leaving an employer, and the “truth serum” – the TORC Technique (#5 above).
The Topgrading Career History Form gets only the best candidates in for face-to-face interviews.
7. Research Base for Topgrading
There are now about 40 Topgrading professionals who have conducted tens of thousands of in-depth Topgrading Interviews on pre-screened candidates for executive positions. Literally hundreds of thousands of times we’ve asked interviewees the talent question – what did you inherit, what did you end up with, and what did you do in terms of hiring, coaching, firing?
The point: we’ve heard about every hiring method under the sun and never stop improving Topgrading methods.
8. The Most Credible Case Studies
My son’s company and mine publish unusual case studies in our books and articles: CEOs of NAMED leading companies state that their companies as a whole are doing better because of Topgrading.
9. Managers (like you if you are an A player) can achieve 90% high performers hired.
Thanks to Jack Welch (GE Chairman at the time) approving Topgrading methods including two interviewers, the Tandem Topgrading Interview, many companies wanted to copy GE. It’s now proven – trained A player managers can achieve 80% - 90% HIGH performers hired.
10. Important Measures of Hiring Success
The HR world has been measuring hiring success in questionable ways – “cost to hire” people and “time to fill” jobs. Trouble is, hiring goals are achieved if there are poor performers who are hired quickly and cheaply. Topgraders systematically measure percent HIGH performers hired.
The Topgrading Cost of Mis-Hires document is an original tool to quickly measure those costs; in only 15 minutes hiring managers become aghast at the high costs of their mis-hire, and that motivates them to learn the best hiring practices.
11. Ongoing Refinement of Interviewer Skills
Topgrading interviewers go through the Topgrading Interviewer Feedback Form, a checklist of a couple dozen good interviewer techniques, and simply give each other brief feedback and a couple of suggestions for how to do better next time.
12. Candidates Arrange Personal Reference Calls with Former Bosses.
This is the follow through part of the TORC Technique (#5 above), and it’s simple: after the Tandem Topgrading Interview, if the candidate and the interviewers want to proceed, the interviewers ask the candidate to do the work of arranging calls with the people the interviewers choose to talk with – usually 4 bosses, 2 peers, and 2 subordinates. Conducting these phone interviews assures that the “truth serum” worked.
13. Coaching New Hires Right Away
Candidates are promised coaching soon after they join, “to smooth your onboarding, assure you are productive quickly, and to begin a long-term development process right away.” Bingo – A players love it!
CONCLUSION: Topgrading is an organic set of hiring best practices, most of which destroy what had been common hiring myths.
RECOMMENDED RESOURCE: We’ve released a brand new Topgrading Workbook, the same workbook we use in our workshops. It has a clear explanation of each of the 12 Topgrading hiring steps, the same exercises to teach each step, and lots of new tools and methods. Click here for more information or to order.
FREE DOWNLOADS: 1) 50-page eBook, an overview of Topgrading – click here, 2) Cost of Mis-Hires Form – click here, 3) Topgrading Vision, listing the 12 problems Topgrading solves, the skills necessary to learn, and results – click here.
