A friend of mine prides himself on his hiring skills and says that if you hire people who must be managed, you yourself were a bad hire. He believes that hiring is the ultimate business skill, and I’m inclined to agree.

 I’ve always said that one should manage the environment, not the people. When I talk about managing the environment, I’m usually talking about establishing the values and structure that let ambitious, competent, self-motivated people enthusiastically apply their talents in service to the organization. But a more basic requirement of managing the environment is to fill it with ambitious, competent, self-motivated people in the first place.

 Think about your best, most independent coworker. Now imagine if you had more like him or her. Chapter 9 of The Essential Drucker (Harper Business, 2001), a collection of essays by Peter Drucker, is called Picking People – The Basic Rules, and the friend I mentioned above reviews it before every hiring decision.

 In addition to making the case for why hiring is the most important management function, Drucker describes the decision steps as he sees them, including:

1. Think through the assignment. Drucker notes that the job description and the current assignment are not always the same thing. A sales manager who needs to build a new team and one who needs to develop a new territory with an experienced team have different assignments and require different strengths.
2. Look at a number of potentially qualified people. Here the emphasis is on the word “number,” because out of quantity comes quality. Give yourself real choices. For an executive position, my friend is not afraid to review 200 resumes and interview 10-20 people, some of them repeatedly.
3. Think hard about how to look at the candidates. Having studied the assignment, focus on the candidates’ strengths as they relate to that assignment. Drucker notes that known weaknesses might disqualify a candidate, but “…effective executives do not start out by looking at weaknesses. You cannot build performance on weaknesses. You can build only on strengths.”
4. Discuss each of the candidates with several people who have worked with them. The experience and opinions of others provide valuable insight about the candidate’s proven performance and abilities.
5. Make sure the appointee understands the job. Here Drucker points out that you must help someone in a new position distinguish between the past performance that got her the job and the future performance required to do the job well.

 To these I would add some of my own observations. For one thing, I think credentials often mean very little. Someone can have more degrees than a thermometer, but if he is a bad fit for the assignment, failure is assured. Don’t let an impressive collection of parchments overwhelm your common sense.

 When I interview a prospective coworker, I’m trying to get a true picture of the person’s attitude, self-discipline and motivation. And here is where political correctness and I diverge: I always found it useful to have a couple of adult beverages with a candidate, for as the saying goes, In Vino Veritas – in wine there is truth. I ask very general questions and let the candidate gab away.  I want to hear how he or she manages money, because if someone cannot handle his own money responsibly, do I really want him responsible for mine? I also like to hear about family, because you learn a lot about someone’s character when you hear about their family relationships. After all, you can pick your friends, but you’re stuck with your family. How you deal with that says a lot about you.

 And for long periods of our lives, most of us spend more of our waking hours with coworkers than with family members, so hiring well is not only important for the performance of the organization, but also for our personal happiness.