THE PROCESS THAT CREATES THE REMARKABLE RESULTS
If hiring the right person every time was easy, no one would ever get fired, and no one would ever leave. (And we’d be unemployed instead of busy.) The truth is, making the right hiring decision that results in long-term, highly-successful hires (say 3+ years) — is very rare in most industries, but especially in the high tech industry where Delta built its initial practice.
And yet amidst the occasional carnage, the wild ups and downs of companies like Nortel, who were a major client for many years, all the buyouts, the failures and the acquisitions, and the pure dot com craziness, and our subsequent transition to serve the sustainability and clean tech worlds, our record over nearly three full decades in business has remained remarkably stable: in industries where the average stay is around 2.5 years, our average candidate stays with our client for over 7 years! And a number of our early and mid-1990s’ placements are still with our clients or their post-acquisition successors, twenty plus years later.
One reason it’s so tough for hiring managers / boards to make the right call on any given hire is that the people hiring can rarely see the candidate’s actual “on the job” before they start. And of course, once they start, by then it’s too late.
At Delta we have found a way to eliminate most of that risk. Without getting into too much detail, our process is exhaustive – but consistently produces spectacular results.
Essentially we first do an extremely thorough job of understanding our client’s company, the role and the responsibilities, including the critical objectives, the KPIs / OKRs, the possible failure points, and the person(s) to whom candidates will report.
Once we have narrowed down the candidate pool based on the superficial qualifications (experience doing x, knows how to manage y, ideally, a degree in z) every time we engage candidates, we do so in a fashion that will closely mimic the role itself — and assess every one of their responses to us against that backdrop. That typically leads to two or three exceptional candidates – or sometimes only a single candidate.
And then we start arranging meetings. Matching the needle to the application at hand, so to speak. Testing it in the process for fit and finish.
As you might imagine, we arrange a lot of meetings.
Remarkably, over our nearly 30 years, about one of every two of the meetings we have ever arranged has resulted in employment.
After which, our client typically turns to us and says, “Wow — I can’t make a bad decision here! Two candidates — both excellent. Who do you think is my best choice?”
And that is what makes us very, very special! Especially when you consider that the industry average runs between one-in-five and one-in-ten meetings resulting in employment.
That’s when we engage in a final process to faithfully mimic a critical part of the job – and with our clients’ involvement in setting up the scenario, have the candidates face-off to play that through. As part of the scenario, candidates face push back and bumps in the path similar to that prevalent in the role every day, and we stress them a bit. We judge everything about how they prepared, what they prepared and how well they did their homework, as well as post scenario follow up. In most cases a winner emerges.
Deep and detailed references are then used to compare and confirm a selection. Often, with our market knowledge and broad industry connections, we find the most valuable references are obtained from sources not necessarily listed anywhere on the candidate’s list.
By the time our we get to an offer, both sides have a really good idea of what it’s like to work together – we’ve validated claims and past performance, and so we’ve eliminated most, if not all, of the major potential failure points. And both sides can move forward with confidence.
And, as noted earlier- the proof is in the statistics: Over the past nearly three decades, fewer than 3 in 100 candidates have lasted less than a year for ANY reason (including corporate mergers and takeovers, significant layoffs that almost always most adversely affect new hires, spousal moves and personal health issues) and our average candidate stays with our client for over seven years. And we haven’t had a “replacement search” to do since 2007.
If that’s better than the hiring performance you’re currently experiencing, and you’d like to see how our unique process might help you in your next important hiring decision, please don’t hesitate to call me to discuss.
Gavin Pitchford, Chief Talent Officer
416-925-2005 ext.2300