What’s Results Got To Do With It?
Why not just create an interviewing scorecard based entirely on competencies—why bother listing the results expected at all?
We got (a variant of) this question recently in a consulting call, and I think it’s a good one.
To be clear, a purely competency based framework alongside the remaining Talgo methodology would absolutely be a significant improvement over the way most companies interview.
But there are some clear reasons to take the time listing out the key results you need from this individual.
- Business outcomes and needs are the driving reason why you need to hire an additional person in the first place. By starting here, you clarify that you do in fact need to hire someone and you lay out the business rationale of what needs to get done. This forces strategic clarity among all team members and can have a positive ripple effect throughout the org.
- Needing to frame things as specific results (within the SMART goals framework) forces a level of intellectual discipline that helps team members go beyond fuzzy words and lazy thinking. It is very easy to assume that you and your teammates have the same picture in your head when you only use competency-based language. Results are where the rubber meets the road.
- Results help provide a counter-balance clarity (via specific examples) in a way that purely descriptive competency language never can. Oh you want this person to be ultra-gritty—that’s great. But where is the “so what” — what is the mission-critical thing that they are going to get done for the business. Results are where you capture that.
- Results do a good job of showing where the “bar” is. Sure someone may need certain traits/competencies to be an effective sales person. But you need someone to scale the sales team up to 20M ARR within 6 months of starting. That’s the type of magnitude that gets made clear through an expected result.
Don’t brush off defining the role well. The 30-60 minutes you put into thinking clearly about this will pay massive dividends in your hiring accuracy.
