“Topgrading Interviews Take Too Much Time”
June 12th, 2007 . by Brad Smart“TOPGRADING INTERVIEWS TAKE TOO MUCH TIME”
Recently an executive read the Topgrading handbook and learned that a tandem Topgrading Interview of a manager might take two interviewers three hours. “I don’t have that much time for just an interview,” he said.
He had just admitted that three out of four of his management hires were mis-hires, and so I asked him how much time he wasted on each of those mis-hires, and he estimated 100 hours each. Let’s do the math, adding up all the time for one high performer hired, with his results (25% success) vs. a Topgrader’s results (90% success). The Topgrader eventually will have a mis-hire, but for any given job filled the chances are 90% that the first person hired will be a high performer; hence – 10 hours wasted on the average, per good hire.
The non-Topgrader has three mis-hires before hiring the high performer. Hmm, 3 X 100 hours = 300 hours wasted with hiring, onboarding, coaching, training, disciplining, and replacing the three mis-hires. The Topgrader wasted 10 hours. 300 hours or 10 hours. This executive doesn’t have time for a three hour tandem interview but can waste 300 hours on mis-hires.
Topgrading is like brushing your teeth.
My dentist says you only need to brush the teeth you want to keep. By the same token you only need to conduct Topgrading interviews for the positions you wanted filled by an A player. If you love wasting money on B and C players don’t do a Topgrading interview.