Topgrading

This short article spells out the quick and dirty “Cliff Notes” version of Topgrading methods that are truly best practices NOT just for hiring but for auditing your talent and for promoting people with great success.

We’ll start with Topgrading hiring: the 1 – 2 – 3 punch, the 3 most important practices any manager can use to hire better, and then you’ll learn the simple tweaks that can show you who are your A, B, and C players and can help you triple your success promoting people.

(Experienced Topgraders, please forward this article to managers who, as you well know, can literally use these methods today and immediately improve their hiring and promoting “batting averages,” and also to audit their talent to see who really are As, Bs, and Cs, and which of their people have the best potentials for the future.)

The Topgrading hiring advice that follows may seem like common sense but it’s not the common practice even in many Global 100 companies.  Hundreds of companies and thousands of managers have doubled and tripled their hiring success following these methods:

1.  Use the Topgrading “Truth Serum,” the TORC Technique.

TORC stands for Threat of Reference Check.  At every step in the hiring process let candidates know that just prior to a job offer they will have to arrange personal reference calls with supervisors and others you choose.

C players, who probably fudged their resumes, don’t want you talking to their former supervisors, and they know they can’t get them to talk anyway, so they drop out of the hiring process.  Good!  A players, whose resumes are accurate and complete, want to arrange calls with former supervisors. Good!

2.  No matter what hiring methods you currently use, add the Topgrading Interview.

Okay, I’ve written 4 books on this interviewing method and every manager we know of who achieves 90%+ high performers hired uses this interview.  And in our 2-day workshop the entire second day teaches it and gives managers coaching.  However, here is the essence of a Topgrading Interview in a nutshell:

Starting with the first fulltime job and coming forward to the present job, ask 7 basic questions plus follow-up questions:

1. What were your responsibilities?
2. What were your successes and how did you achieve them?
3. What were your mistakes — what do you wish you’d done differently and what lessons were learned?
4. What was your supervisor’s name and what did you like and dislike about him/her?
5. What’s your best guess as to what that supervisor would say, in a personal reference call you would arrange, were your strengths, weaker points, and overall performance?
6. Of your direct reports, how many A, B, and C players did you inherit, how many in each category did you end up with, and what did you do with respect to coaching, hiring, and firing?
7. Why did you leave that job?

What’s so brilliant about a thorough chronological interview?  It’s the patterns that are revealed about literally dozens of competencies.  Those patterns reveal what a candidate is really like today.

For example, suppose a candidate, taking the TORC “truth serum,” admits that her supervisor 10 years ago would criticize her for being disorganized, and she admits that her biggest mistake was lacking a follow-up system; so, she missed due dates and went over budget on 3 of 8 projects.

Okay, that’s useful, but the pattern is most revealing and as you discuss her performance in the past decade you will learn if she got organized or not.  Those patterns give you extremely deep and accurate insights into all key competencies.

3.  Ask finalists to arrange personal reference calls with supervisors and others you choose.

The TORC Technique is not an idle threat; you absolutely should talk with supervisors and others, but make the candidate do the work of arranging them.  After you have gotten descriptions of all supervisors (and others), you choose which ones you’d like to talk with.

Chances are you want to talk with all supervisors in the past 10 years (if the candidate doesn’t want you to talk with the current supervisor, okay, but ask the candidate to arrange a call with someone at the supervisor’s level who left the company).

THE WORLD’S BEST PRACTICES FOR AUDITING TALENT AND PROMOTING PEOPLE

Topgraders usually learn hiring methods first and find that with just a small tweak, they can promote with much greater success and they can audit their people to learn who is the most talented.

My first Topgrading project with GE was not to improve hiring, but to improve their success promoting people.  And it worked!

I met with the #1 Human Resource executives at Global 100 companies, and they said only 25% of the people they promoted into management turned out to be high performers, except for the Topgraders in the room, who said they doubled or tripled their promoting success using Topgrading methods.

How did GE and others do it?  Simple – train managers in Topgrading methods and instead of using external reference calls, arrange internal interviews with boss(es), peers, and subordinates. GE improved to over 90% of those promoted turning out to be high performers.

Finally, do you need deeper insights into your current managers?  In these problematic times former high performers slip and it’s common to wonder if they still have what it takes.  Or do you simply want to know who are your a, B, and C players?

The Topgrading audit methodology is exactly the same as the promoting methods just described with one tweak:  in promoting people you have one job in mind, and in the audit you look broadly at where someone can be an A player.

CONGRATULATIONS! If you use that Topgrading 1 – 2 – 3 punch, you may not achieve 90% high performers hired and promoted, but you will know you’ve been far more thorough, and you’ve gotten much deeper insights into candidates, than ever before.  And simply by using internal rather than external “references,” you can use the same basic methods to audit your talent, to get much deeper insights into who really are the high potentials.

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

Wow, do we have a recommended resource for you today!  It truly is the best product ever to teach the Topgrading methods that are the world’s best practices not just for hiring, but for auditing your talent and promoting with terrific success.  It’s 7 1/2 hours of high definition DVDs with all the latest Topgrading methods explained by me, with great graphics.  But also there is a real life case study so you learn the job scorecard for a real job, study the career history form of a real candidate named Erik, see me and Erik in split screen as I conduct a telephone screening interview with him, observe a tandem Topgrading Interview with him, watch and listen to a real reference call with Erik’s boss, and watch me coach him in a real life setting.

So, whether you are an individual manager wanting to master Topgrading, or you have a team needing thorough training, or you are interested in train-the-trainer, this is the total, total package with the DVDs, Topgrading Workbook, other books and guides, a 3-month license, on-line resources, and quarterly conference calls with Topgraders and me.

Click here to see the basic material, but you’ll want to click on where it says to learn more.