Topgrading

The single most common complaint about Topgrading, and one that only comes from non-Topgraders is, “The Topgrading interviews are too long.”  No way!  Hiring high performers saves a huge amount of money and time!  We’ll soon roll out the Topgrading Quick Start Program, sort of “Topgrading for Dummies,” but that’s a different topic.

Hear Brad explain how Topgrading can save you $60K per hour.

After 30+ years’ experience seeing companies triple their hiring success and save zillions of dollars and zillions of hours wasted on mis-hires, I (finally) decided to run some numbers and got this conclusion:

Alhough Topgraders do spend more time in final interviews, when you think of how many hours interviewing it takes to hire one high performer, even beginning Topgraders save $1 million and 172 hours.

RECOMMENDATION:  if you hear that complaint, explain the following charts:

Let me walk you through the logic.  The goal is to hire high performers, am I right?  And as you have read the research many times, most managers are 25% successful, hiring 3 people before finally hiring a high performer.  That might have been your success rate before Topgrading.

The super Topgraders hire 90% high performers, but for this analysis let’s assume the Topgrader is a beginner, merely 50% successful, so she has to hire 2 people (and fire one) before ending up with one high performer.

To repeat:  typical managers hire 4 people vs. the Topgraders’ 2 people in order to hire a high performer.

Look at the charts and you’ll see, sure enough, to get that one high performer hired the tandem Topgraders spent 48 hours in final interviews (interviews that lasted 3 hours) and the non-Topgrader spent only 32 hours (in 2-hour interviews).

The Topgraders only had to hire half as many people as the non-Topgrader (in order to hire one A player) but the Topgraders had two interviewers (tandem) and longer interviews (3 hours vs. 2).

That’s how Topgraders appear to spend “too many hours in interviews” and in this analysis, 16 hours more than non-Topgraders.  “My gosh,” non-Topgraders gloat,“you Topgraders spent almost half a week more in interviews!”

We’re all so busy, who can afford to devote 16 additional hours to interviewing? We all should!

WASTED MONEY

When the average cost of a mid-management mis-hire is $500,000 (very conservative) and the non-Topgraders have 3 mis-hires for every high performer hired, hmm – they have wasted $1,500,000 vs. $500,000 the Topgraders wasted, because the Topgraders had only 1 mis-hire, not 3.

So, 8 hours more for the 2 tandem Topgrading Interviews saves a million bucks!

WASTED TIME

We’re not done – let’s look at the number of wasted hours you spend sweeping up after your mis-hires.  Last year 500 of you Topgrading Tips readers said you wasted 200 hours on each mis-hire.

The non-Topgraders had 3 mis-hires X 200 hours = 600 wasted hours.  But the Topgraders wasted 200 hours, saving 400 hours.  To be precise, Topgraders saved 400 hours minus the 16 extra hours in interviews, so that’s 384 hours.  That’s 172 hours saved!

So here’s the reality:  the non-Topgraders rush through shallow interviews so they can spend 200 hours fixing problems each of their mis-hires caused.  The methodical Topgraders spend 16 more hours getting A players on the team, and the Topgraders are able to delegate so they go skiing, wind surfing, or maybe yoga classes.  That’s a joke but Topgraders definitely have more discretionary time.!

SUMMARY

Although the Topgraders took 16 more hours interviewing until a high performer was hired, they mis-hired only 1 vs. 3 for the non-Topgraders, so they saved the company $1 million and they saved themselves 384 hours … or 172 hours each for the tandem interviewers!

Topgrading interviews take too much time?  No way!

RECOMMENDED RESOURCE

If you resonate with the logic that high performers, A players, really do save time and money, perhaps you might be interested in an on-site workshop.  In this down economy a LOT of talent is available, and it might be the best time to Topgrade a few jobs,  replacing C players with A players.  To discuss please call Margaret at 847-265-7415 (or mbrask@aol.com).