Month: September 2019

September 3, 2019

Three interview questions to ask when recruiting General Managers

If you focus on collecting the relevant facts, the appropriate action becomes obvious.

Following are the top 3 criteria we cover right away when evaluating General Manager talent.

#1 Experience is not equal to Proven History of Success. Be aware of the experience trap. Professionals holding the position over several years is not a leading indicator of success. Financials don’t lie.

Interview question:

What was the P&L you inherited and what did you grow it to?

#2 It’s about the People. The level of leadership revolves around the quality of people they can attract, develop and promote. Young smart people want to be mentored – some leaders are good mentors, some are not.

Interview questions:

How many people have you recruited, developed and promoted?

How many were in their 20’s when you recruited them?

#3 Nothing else matters. Look for repetitions of #1 and #2.

Hire Smarter – Tony

Work Rules! by Laszlo Bock

Laszlo was the senior HR Leader for Google, responsible for growing the company from 6,000 to 60,000 people, while maintaining the ridiculous high standards. How high? It’s 25 times easier to get into Harvard than Google. Google hired 0.25% of the people who applied – by comparison Harvard admits 6.1% of its applicants.

Battling Regression to Mean as the business scaled up was critical to their strategy.

The “Why” is proven by their 4.76x stock appreciation, $168 per share when he started and over $800 when he left.

The “How” is compelling and the book goes into great detail, providing an insightful read.