It’s one thing to think of yourself as the right candidate for a job. It’s
quite another to imagine that your job offer depends on how you rank in
comparison to other candidates using a scoring system. However, when you think
about it, whether recruiters take the time to formally rank your skills against
a scorecard or not, they are doing it in their minds. They compare you to other
candidates in areas such as interpersonal communication, personal appearance,
and job knowledge. With optimization being used more and more frequently as a
way to make decisions in different industries, the concept of scorecard
decision-making will keep arising. Instead of using your credit score to
determine if you’re their ideal customer, employers are using your recruiting scorecard
to decide if you’re the right fit for their organization.
The Case of Outside Sales Recruiting
When big companies want to bring in an outside person to lead a sales team,
they want fresh ideas. They want someone with experience but perhaps with a different
vision for the company. They want someone who can fit in to the organization,
perhaps after shaking it up a bit. This can be difficult, as
Jake Dunlap points out in his recent article. They are experts at
interviewing, and they may get hired, but they aren’t really the people whom
you want working for your company one year from now or five years from now.
That’s why big companies use a hiring scorecard in the executive
recruiting process. They want to eliminate the need for pulling out the weeds,
a term used by former CEO of General Electric, Jack Welch.
The Strategic Use of Scorecard
Tools: Why We Need Them
Scorecards aren’t that helpful if they don’t help your senior leadership
team learn from current or past trends and make business decisions for now and
for the future. That’s why Dunlap recommends that, in hiring for a VP of sales,
your company look for someone who matches your current stage of growth. This
makes sense because your company wants the right candidate to come in and take
over while experiencing as few bumps as possible. That being said, in outside
sales, the same sales leader will probably move along in 18 months. The
company’s stage of growth may look different at that point in time, but its
sales ranks may also benefit from having a sales leader who sticks around
longer.
The Life Cycle of a Recruit
Scorecards also help companies make decisions that are appropriate not just
to their stage of growth but to the candidate’s present experience level. Jason
Lemkin identified these four stages as: The First VP (or The Player-Coach and
Brand Evangelist), The Second VP (or The Make It Repeatable Guy or Gal), The
Third VP (or The Go Big Specialist), and The Fourth VP (or The Dashboards
Master). When a company hires for its current stage of growth (i.e. the Second
VP), this person who fits could differ radically from the person who will meet
the qualifications of the Third VP.
Workers want to feel inspired by their sales leaders and by other leaders
within the firm. Today’s companies can use scorecards to effectively screen
candidates and to determine which leaders are a great fit. This requires a
sharp understanding of the present work climate and an assessment of what needs
to be fixed within the company. Although candidates may have valuable
experience turning around sales teams at past firms, they need the right vision
for leading a prospective company through its present stage of growth. They
need the skills to lay the groundwork for the next stage of growth.
