hiring as the first phase of performance management

made w/ midjourney

In a recent workshop on building scorecards, several folks mentioned that they might find the scorecard even more useful for hiring than for performance management. The scorecard model we use forces you to 

• Define the reason the role exists in the first place 

• Name the specific chunk of the organization’s mission that the role owns and 

• Specify how you’ll measure success in that ownership. 

You could easily call that list^ of stuff a “job description.”

Sounds good to us. We think it’s more effective all around to think of hiring as the first phase of performance management. Your job description and interviews are teaching tools you use to educate candidates about what success looks like around here and how we achieve it. 

We suggest this in place of what I see in practice in many organizations. Hiring is understood as wholly distinct from performance management. A mysterious endeavor, where luck, intuitions, and hazy hope predominate, where you can’t reveal too much of your inside stuff, where all the moves on both sides are somewhat artificial. No wonder

When you drive your hiring with a scorecard and make it the first phase of performance management, what you’re doing is less like fishing in a murky pond and more like teaching a new cook your restaurant’s take on a signature recipe. It’s more obvious for you what you should do and it’s much easier to identify and achieve success.

-ben and eric