Stop Hiring Jerks – Determining If Your Top Candidate Is Also A Jerk!

Southwest Airlines CEO Bob Jordan said a candidate wasn’t hired after they were “rude to the receptionist.” Why? Because this CEO calculated the dollar damage that a “qualified jerk” in a key job could do to his team and its customers.

Unfortunately, most companies end up hiring a significant number of these “qualified jerks,” simply because most jerk candidates have learned to hide their jerk traits and behaviors throughout the hiring process.

So, unless you take proactive steps, realize that you won’t know that your new hire is an egotistical, self-centered, rude, or selfish jerk until long after they begin working! And I suggest that if you choose to act, you should develop your no-jerk campaign around the best practices of the two giants in this field: Southwest Airlines and Zappos.

You’ll Continue Hiring Jerks Into Key Jobs… Until You Realize The Tremendous Dollar Damage They Do

I have unfortunately found that most companies continue to hire these “qualified jerks” (or toxic employees) for two basic reasons. The first reason for this continued hiring has been that the recruiting function doesn’t track its “hiring failures” (which can average 46%). So it can’t identify the root causes (including being the jerk) of their hiring failures.

The second, perhaps more powerful reason that these qualified jerks continue to be hired is that no one in Talent Acquisition has taken the time to calculate the dollar amount of damage these jerks actually cause after they are hired into key roles. And for the record, those damages usually include the degradation of teamwork, collaboration, and team morale.

This frequently leads to lower team productivity, costly project delays (because teammates are reluctant to work with jerks), and dramatically less innovation. Over time, the team will likely also experience weaker recruiting and higher team turnover among the most frustrated teammates. And if the newly hired jerk employee also interacts with customers and strategic partners, a final, costly result will be measurably lower customer satisfaction and product sales.

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An Action Checklist For Determining If Your Finalist Is Also A Jerk

After literally decades of discovering ways to identify jerk candidates during the hiring process, I have put together a checklist of action steps you should consider if you expect to minimize the possibility that your finalist candidate for a key job will also be a jerk. Note: The most effective and easiest-to-implement approaches appear early in this checklist.

• Ask all employees that the candidate has interacted with to flag any negative behaviors – start by giving your finalist candidate an identification badge at check-in that makes it visually clear to everyone that they are a finalist interviewee. And then encourage each of your employees who interacts with them outside of the interview, when their guard is down, to report any indications that they might be a jerk. Normally, the employees the candidate might interact with include check-in staff, escorts who walk them, receptionists, secretaries, café workers, service workers, and security guards. So, educate each of these likely contacts and make sure that they are fully aware of what they are expected to do and how it will benefit the company. After the candidate has left the building, have these employees immediately report any red-flag jerk behavior.
• Ask your recruiting staff to identify any red flags – because the highest number of employee interactions with a top candidate (both formal and informal) are likely to be with the recruiting staff. It’s critical that you include this often-omitted step: specifically ask all involved recruiters, coordinators, interns, and sourcers to first identify and then report any negative jerk behaviors and/or negative attitudes.
• Schedule one-on-one informal meetings with a member of the team – candidates are likely to let their guard down during what appears to be an informal one-on-one meeting with a future teammate. You should schedule at least one “one-on-one” meeting between your target and one of the team’s key employees. Place it in a completely informal setting (usually over coffee or during a brief stroll).
• Give the candidate a facility tour – Zappos found that candidates are likely to be relaxed and themselves during a facility tour. So after the interview, give your top finalist one of these brief tours. And throughout the tour, listen intently to the candidate’s interactions with the employees they meet. Also, pay attention to the types of questions that the candidate asks during the tour. Use those questions to assess the candidates’ research on your company and their genuine interest in working here.
• Schedule a peer interview – consider supplementing your regular interviews with peer interviews. Because peer interviews have been shown to be particularly effective (without a manager present), and among so many of their colleagues. The candidate is much more likely to let their guard down and to be frank. In addition, because the teammates will realize that they may eventually work alongside this individual. They will be extremely diligent in identifying any potential signs that this candidate may be a jerk. 
• Schedule an after-work social activity – depending on your company’s policies and culture, consider after-work drinks or dinner. Zappos found them to be highly effective.
• Employee referrals can count as an added assessment step – your top-performing employees aren’t likely to make a referral of someone that they don’t know extremely well. So if your finalist is a referral from one of your top employees, you should treat the fact that they are a referral as another indication that they are not a jerk.
• Ask their Uber driver – if you will be supplying a candidate with Uber rides. Recruit a designated Uber driver and educate them about their assessment role for your company. Especially after rides to and from the interview, have the Uber driver call you when they see any red flags. And in the cases where you are putting the candidate up in a hotel, ask the desk clerk to report any troublesome or bad behavior after they check out.
• Consider giving them the “no asshole” test – most are unaware of it, but there has actually been a great deal of research (and a book) covering how to identify corporate assholes (i.e., jerks). So if you suspect that your finalist may be an “asshole,” consider requiring them to take some version of the ARSE test. 
• Finally, decide whether to include your normal cultural fit assessment – unfortunately, most corporate assessments of fit are severely flawed. Because corporate fit is seldom clearly defined, most of the assessment factors are painfully subjective. However, if you have data showing that your particular fit assessment method has been accurate. Add it to your jerk identification checklist.

The famous entrepreneur Richard Branson flew a group of top candidates to his house for an interview. He had an 85-year-old taxi driver pick them up at the airport. After the taxi driver unloaded the bags at the house, everyone sat down. Branson pulled off his mask. He was the taxi driver all along. And because some passengers had been rude, not knowing who he was. While others had even mocked him. No one got the job (source).

Final Thoughts

Over the years, I’ve found that most hiring managers and recruiting leaders pay little attention to the problem of hiring jerks. However, if you take a minute to remember all the qualified jerks you have endured throughout your career, you will instantly agree with me that even one of these jerks takes all of the fun, joy, and satisfaction out of work. So you should also agree with me that implementing this no-cost effort is a no-brainer. 

Thank you for finding the time to read and share this article.

Notes for the reader

This is the latest article from Dr. Sullivan, who was called “the Michael Jordan of Hiring” by Fast Company.

You can subscribe to his Aggressive Talent Management newsletter (which focuses on recruiting tools, current recruiting opportunities, and recruiting trends). Either here or by following him on LinkedIn.