Over the last few weeks I've gotten involved in hiring for two startups, a public agency and a non profit.  Part of each conversation was getting asked to help them put together a "job spec."

I had them leave with a pie chart.

——–

There must be something in the air. In the last week I had four separate groups through the ranch all wanting to talk either about hiring a senior exec or a senior exec looking for a new job. Having sat through these job discussions as an entrepreneur, board member, and now an interested observer, here's what I concluded:

Decide whether you're hiring someone to help search for the business model or to help execute a business model you've already found (same is true is you're looking for a job – are you going to be searching or executing?) Are you looking for a visionary or an operating executive?
The job spec's for the same title differ wildly depending on whether the job requires search versus execution skills. Founders search, operating executives execute.

If you're hiring an operating executive (CEO, VP, Executive Director, etc.)

Don't start with the candidate (board member x has a great VP of sales he knows, founder y wants this CEO he met at a conference, etc.)
Don't even start with the job spec

Since I've always been a visual guy, job specs with their long lists of job requirements always left me cold. My eyes would glaze over at these recruiter/board wish lists. I wished there was a way to see them at a glance. (Just to be clear this isn't the entire hiring process, just a way to visually begin the discussion.) So here's my suggestion: Start with a Pie Chart.

Draw a pie chart.
List all the job specs as slices
Adjust the width of the pie segments by importance. (Extra credit if you get the current CEO or internal candidate to help you write/draw the slices and weight their importance. Everyone involved in the hire gets to have an opinion on the slices and weights, but the person/group making the hiring decision gets to decide which ones to include.)
Now that you have this spec, evaluate each candidate by showing his/her competence in each slice by length


Compare candidates


Easy as pie!

Lessons Learned

Are you hiring for search or execution skills?
Show the job requirements visually as a pie chart
Prioritize each requirement by the width of the pie
Show your assessment of each candidate's competencies by the length of the slices
Now with the data in front of you, the conversation about hiring can start

Filed under: Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan, Customer Development, Family/Career, Technology