How to Hire A-Players: Finding the Top People for ... - GIT home page

The Paid Interview
Interviewing and the Economic Value of Good Looks 171
A-Player Principle: If these exercises sound like too much
hassle to implement, just consider the wasted time, lost
money, aggravation, and heartache that you incur every time
you have to fire someone.
Vita Burdi, vice president at DJ’s Home Improvements (introduced in
Chapter 6), has taken the interview process to the next level by conducting
what she calls a ‘‘paid interview.’’ When Vita likes a candidate,
she often asks the person to work for a few (paid) hours doing
tasks similar to the ones he or she would be hired to do. Vita feels
that in the matter of an hour or two, she and her managers can determine
if these people are worth hiring. Do they jump in enthusiastically?
Do they catch on quickly? Do they communicate well? Can
they multitask? Instead of just relying on a standard interview to
answer these questions, Vita allows people to prove their skills to her.
Be careful on this one. Talk with an employment attorney to
make sure that your implementation of this exercise doesn’t create
any liability for your company.
A-Player Principle: Figure out how you can spend time
working side by side with people before you hire them.
Interviewing this way helps to remove a lot of the guesswork
about how effective they will be as employees.
Have Them Create an Action Plan
A company that I work with requires final candidates for sales positions
to create an action plan for their first 90 days on the job before
they are hired. At this point in the interview process, the candidates