The Real Reason Great Hires Still Fail (with Ashley Herd)

Most hiring failures do not start in the interview.

They start much earlier, when the role is poorly defined, success is unclear, candidates are not given the right context, and managers inherit a process that was never built to set anyone up to succeed.

In this episode, I sit down with Ashley Herd, former employment lawyer, HR executive at McKinsey and Yum Brands, and author of The Manager Method, to break down where hiring really goes wrong and what leaders need to fix before they open their next search.

We get into why most job descriptions fail to define success, how bad hiring decisions are often design failures rather than selection failures, and why the candidate experience so often promises one environment while the job delivers another. Ashley also shares her “tight jeans vs oversized sweatpants” framework for management, and we unpack what structured autonomy actually looks like in practice.

We also go deep on onboarding, executive failure, the role HR should play versus the role it often gets left with, and the question more leaders need to ask now: should this role even exist in the form we are hiring for?

If you hire, lead, or build teams, this conversation will change how you think about role design, interviewing, onboarding, and management.  

In this episode, Ashley Herd joins me to unpack why so many hiring decisions go wrong long before a candidate enters the process.

We explore the real root of hiring failure: poorly defined roles, vague success criteria, copy-paste job descriptions, and interview processes that generate very little signal. Ashley explains why most organisations are still hiring for tasks and years of experience instead of outcomes, future context, and the behaviours that actually drive success.    

We also get into one of the most useful frameworks from the conversation: tight jeans vs oversized sweatpants management. Tight jeans managers over-control. Oversized sweatpants managers create ambiguity. The goal is somewhere in the middle: structured autonomy.  

We cover:

• Why most hiring failures are really role-design failures
• What job descriptions miss when they describe activity instead of success
• Why unstructured interviews produce weak hiring decisions
• How candidates are often sold one environment and dropped into another
• Why hiring should be treated as the first phase of onboarding
• Why executive hires fail faster and more often than most leaders realise
• How to think about AI when redefining roles and headcount
• Why hiring works best as a partnership between HR and the business

Key ideas from the episode

• Most jobs are defined too loosely to hire well against
• Success should be defined at 90 days, 6 months, and beyond
• The interview process should reflect the real working environment
• Managers need guidance, not just responsibility
• If you do not define the role properly up front, the failure cascades later

Follow Ashley Herd: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashleyherd

Get The Manager Method: https://www.managermethod.com/book

Follow Konstanty Sliwowski on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/sliwowskik/

For more insights check out www.schoolofhiring.com and newsletter.schoolofhiring.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Getting talent right has two halves. The first is who you hire. The second is what happens after they walk through the door. How you lead them, develop them, and set them up to actually deliver the results you hire them for. Now, most organizations are decent at thinking about one of these. Very few actually get both right. My guest today has spent her career at the intersection of both. Ashley Hurd is a former employment lawyer and HR executive at McKinsey and Yum Brands, who has since built Manager Method, a leadership training platform helping organizations build stronger, more confident managers. She's a LinkedIn learning instructor, co-host of the HR Besties podcast, and has trained hundreds of thousands of managers across her platform and her nearly half a million social media followers. Her newly published book, The Manager Method, brings all of that into a practical framework for leading with clarity, confidence, and impact. What makes this conversation particularly interesting to me is that Ashley and I are working on the same problem from opposite ends. I spend my time on the front end, helping managers get clear on who they're hiring and why. Ashley picks up where that leaves off, making sure that once the right person is in the room, the manager actually knows what to do with them. Together, those two halves are what talent success actually looks like. So I'm really looking forward to this conversation. Getting talent right has two halves. The first is who you hire, the second is what happens after they walk through the door. How you lead them, develop them, and set them up to actually deliver the results you hired them for. Now, most organizations are decent at thinking about one of these. Very few actually get both right. My guest today has spent her career at the intersection of both. Ashley Heard is a former employment lawyer and HR executive at McKinsey and Young Brands, who has since built Manager Method, a leadership training platform helping organizations build stronger, more confident managers. She's a LinkedIn learning instructor, co-host of the HR Besties podcast, and has trained hundreds of thousands of managers across her platform and her nearly half a million social media followers. Her newly published book, The Manager Method, brings all of that into a practical framework for leading with clarity, confidence, and impact. What makes this conversation particularly interesting to me is that Ashley and I are working on the same problem from opposite ends. I spend my time on the front end, helping managers get clear on who they're hiring and why. Ashley picks up where that leaves off, making sure that once the right person is in the room, the manager actually knows what to do with them. Together, those two halves are what talent success actually looks like. So I'm really looking forward to this conversation. Ashley, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 3:17

Thank you so much, Constantine. Thank you all for listening. It's so good to be here.

SPEAKER_02 3:21

Absolutely. Now, you've worked with managers across very different organizations. I mean, obviously there's McKinsey and there's Yum Brands, but also small companies, big corporates, massive enterprises, scale-ups. Now, my question to you to begin this conversation is when a team is actually underperforming, how often does that root cause trace back to the hiring decision versus what happened after the hire?

SPEAKER_01 3:52

I found that they definitely play in together. And so in in almost every case, things do trace back to hiring. And sometimes that's the selection of hiring of who you picked. And oftentimes that's what the manager goes to. Oh, this isn't the right person. Immediately, you know, when I was HR legal, you'd have people come to you and say, we need to make a change. This is this is this just person isn't right for the job. And sometimes they trace it back to that initial person that they selected. But I also see it as a two-way street. At times when someone's underperforming or a team's underperforming, it can also be that when hiring, the right questions weren't asked, but also the right information wasn't given. I mean, it's amazing how many people start in a new job and they're so excited for getting the job, but they weren't even given clear information about what it's really like. Everything from what am I responsible for? What am I actually doing? Am I traveling? Am I in the office or not in the office? What's time off like? And so a lot of those root frustrations on both sides, both the candidate selected, which is what managers often go to, but also the information that the candidates were given or maybe not given in that hiring process. I see that happen all the time. And that tends to bleed into the first days of employment and doesn't tend to go away.

SPEAKER_02 5:08

Now, in my work, I actually see that at the root cause of hiring issues is the definition of the job. Most jobs are very poorly defined. They're defined by skills, tasks, maybe years of experience, or a job title that is quite generic. But that doesn't actually define success. It doesn't define what good in the job looks like in the short term, in the midterm, in the long term. And then because we lack that definition, it doesn't actually translate into the questions that we ask in interviews, how we assess people, how we actually engage candidates around that job. And then how do we gather the information, the facts, the evidence that we need in order to make a good hiring decision? And then that translates into issues later on. I'm sure you know the statistics. 46% of all hires fail within 18 months or less. Traces back, in my opinion, very much to how we define jobs. But is it about how we define jobs or how we actually then onboard people into those jobs and how we manage them in those organizations? Because let's be clear, not all organizations are great at managing people, at onboarding people as well. Otherwise, neither you nor I would have a job, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:33

Yeah, and I would love, I would personally love to be out of a job and have people not managers not need any more training because they're all buttoned up and everything's going smoothly. But that does not seem to be the case. And very similarly to your statistics on new hires, the statistics of managers that step into management and the failure rates for management are even higher than that, that new managers fail, meaning they either get let go by the organization or they voluntarily opt out because it's it just takes so much. And so I do think a lot of this goes down to selection. But one of the things I see is the common thread of organizations is not pausing to think about how can we make things better, like from job descriptions and hiring or interview questions. Job descriptions, it's often copy and paste. The same job description that's basically been used for years and years and years is used. Again, input, number of years of experience or things like that. And organizations don't stop to rethink how we can use this as a research and marketing tool for our candidates that want to have a sense of what it's like to work here? What am I responsible for? And then same the interview questions. I mean plenty of people see one of two things. Either one, you are given a specific list of interview questions you need to ask for your interview from HR recruiting, whoever, or you're giving nothing at all. So you sit in and you know, in the 30 seconds before they step into the interview, you're trying to quickly think about what to actually ask them. And that really continues into things like onboarding. I mean, again, just like in a hiring, plenty of people can relate to the experience of looking at someone's resume, their CV, right before they're stepping in with you. That happens all the time with new hires. You have all these plans and ideas of getting an onboarding plan ready, and then it's Sunday night, your new hire starts on Monday, and you're just gonna have to wing it and uh hope they can sit and do paperwork on their own. And so I just think for organizations, it is pausing to think about how much those things matter, both from from really getting into what is this job responsible for? Like, okay, if someone needs to do reports, that's really important. But what about that person that does reports, but then is a complete jerk to everybody they work with? Okay, so how do you how can we figure that out? I mean, there's ways you can ask that. Or an organization. You know, I I I've talked about this experience um in my book where I started an organization and I started in about August and it was it was sales. And someone said, like, oh, what are you doing with um the two, what are you doing over the holiday break? I said, like, oh, I don't know. I don't know for how much PTO I'll have. And they said, no, no, no, everybody gets two weeks off. And sales, we work so hard. We have to work like seven to seven in the two weeks leading up to the you know holidays around mid-December. And then we get two weeks off. It doesn't even count against your paid time off. I had no idea about any of this. Like I heard from a conversation. I didn't hear about it from HR, my manager. That's was really important information to know. Again, one for some people that us, you know, going from an eight to five to a seven to seven schedule is a real challenge for them personally. That may be the thing they jump to. I didn't have anything personally stopping me from doing that. So I focus more. I'm like, yeah, I'll work hard to get two free weeks off. That's great. And so even things like that, talking about what's the reality of when you're working there, what are things to highlight? What are things that maybe are lowlights, but you shouldn't hide and make those be a surprise when people start? And so that common thing, starting and hiring, but then continuing on, I I really do think it's it's just amiss that plenty of organizations and the people responsible for this don't pause to think about how much those matter.

SPEAKER_02 10:02

I think there's also the AI element in all of this. I was speaking to a leader at the end of last week, actually, where he was looking to hire someone for for his organization. And we sat down to build out what I call a hiring blueprint. So identify the mission of the job, its core purpose, the outcomes that the job will be responsible for, and then what are the behaviors, the competencies that will enable that person to be successful in that job. And what we very quickly found is that the person that they were hiring for was actually not the person they needed, because a lot of the outcomes that they required of this person could be handed over to AI. What they did need is to hire someone that could implement an AI solution to deliver those outcomes, not a person to actually do those by hand. And I think that is another dimension that we need to be very much aware of within organizations because how we work is dramatically changing. The amount of productivity is changing. We're now not hiring for volume of output, we're hiring for results within a business, within a specific context. And I think that matters a lot more now than it ever did.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

Yeah, I agree. And I think that question of AI is such a real one. And in even in that situation, it's it is also so important to pause to think about okay, is this a role? And what is like if we're hiring for something, I think that's a disconnect that happens all the time. What you're hiring for is not actually what you need. And then what can happen at times is someone starts and they are hired for a specific role, and then they've been in seat maybe not even that long, and then all of a sudden the company realizes or organization, oh, shoot, AI can do this. And so then you're letting someone go. So you've brought somebody on board who's trusted your career with them, and and now they've they've had a loss and they're entirely being replaced for AI. So really thinking about AI as a tool and okay, bringing someone on, but we need someone for this. Um, another way I've actually seen AI work really well in the hiring context for managers who are, you know, like all of us, like short on time, trying to figure out how to do things, is go to your team members. Go to your team members. And if you have like a recording, again, let them know, hey, like I want to record this because I want to put this together. Ask them what are the things that you wish you knew when you started. And again, maybe give them, ideally, give them a heads up, either have a conversation with them or have them email it to you, but get that input from different people. Say, what are the things you wish you knew? What are things you wish you'd done? And say what we're doing is we want to rethink it of what we can do for others, whether it's giving information, thinking about our hiring experience, what are some things you would have actually liked to have seen in person, shoulder to shoulder. But put all that together and then putting that into an AI tool to really rethink, okay, these are some of the things that we could do in the hiring process if you're really short on time and you're about to hire. Because I think overall, this pause to reconsider things takes time. It's mapping out competencies and all of that. But if you're listening to this and you're thinking, okay, we're hiring somebody this week, how can we do that? That's a really, a really quick way to also show your team you are growing and thinking of different options and improving things moving forward. And so again, in a pinch, that's something that I think can be can be really helpful that I've seen managers do and end up changing even just some small shifts in how they're hiring and how those conversations go.

SPEAKER_02 13:36

Yes, but I have to add the butt here because if you are hiring in a pinch, if you are hiring with your back against the wall, the chances and the probability of you making the wrong hire, of making a reactive hire, that is a plaster, uh increase dramatically. If you want to make the right hiring decisions, you need to have clarity around what are the results that you need this person to deliver. What does success in this job look like? And keep in mind that it's gonna take you three to six months to onboard someone into the job. So actually, the results you're hiring for, the outcomes you're hiring for, are really the outcomes you need in six months' time. Potentially even longer. I mean, in Europe, we do have very long notice periods in certain countries. Like three months is pretty standard in Germany. So you're hiring for future context, future results. The problem you're trying to solve right now, today, you're gonna have to deal with that with what you've got. But I wanted to talk about leadership styles with you because this is something that we spoke about earlier before we were recording the podcast, actually. You described managers as defaulting to one of two failure modes tight jeans or oversized sweatpants. Now, when you walk into an organization, what are the first signs you're looking for to see whether the organization is a tight jeans or oversized sweatpants organization? And actually, can you break down what this tight jeans oversized sweatpants thing is? Because I I found this brilliant.

SPEAKER_01 15:23

Yes. So tight jeans, I say, is, and again, first we'll start with the reality is think about putting a pair of tight jeans on straight from the dryer after you've had a big meal, and these are not stretch jeans. Like, ugh, the it will be a family-friendly podcast. We'll just say oof is the word that comes to mind. But it's restrictive, it's uncomfortable. Even when you get them on, it's not a pleasure to work in. Um, that's what that's what working for a tight jeans manager is like, which we you can think of as a micromanager. And the flip of that, that sometimes uh managers will will try to over-rotate, is say, okay, well, I'm I'm not gonna be such a micromanager. I'm gonna be hands-off and put all trust in my team. But what that can look like is oversized sweatpants. So that's the big flowing sweatpants I say, uh, I can see at my daughter's high school when I show up. Those seem to be the trend in high school fashion, but those should not be the trend in the workplace because that can be a trap, just like tight jeans. Often tight jeans is where a manager is promoted for being good at a job. So they're trying to make everyone do it like them because they know how to do it well. They're trying to save people time and not make people look badly or make themselves look badly. So they're trying to really control what's happening. And oversized sweatpants is often the opposite of you're trying to give freedom, but what that can look like is people don't know what to do. They don't know what's expected or where things stand. So that intended freedom turns into confusion and uncertainty and kind of winging it. And so in the middle, I talk about cozy joggers leadership. So to give people structured autonomy. Now, what this can look like is if I'm walking in an organization, even in the hiring process, one question is what is that manager's role in the hiring process? I just saw in a Facebook group I'm in, that's like an HR Facebook group of I have this hiring manager that insists in being part in all interviews, phone screens, in-person interviews, all of these things. And to me, that is screams type genes. And they say, you know, I don't know. Their question was, I don't know what to do. And you and I and those listening probably could say, okay, obviously this manager, something's gone wrong in the hirings now. They're gonna try to take it over all together. But a question often is, okay, what has gone wrong to all of your questions? What are the outcomes that we're trying to get? What are your concerns as you're, you know, while you want to sit in on everything, what are you looking for so that we could, you know, you can certainly be part of the hiring process, but not feel like you have to be part of everything and we can make sure that we're all more focused on what we really need. And so that's one sign is if you see a manager that's just all over everyone. These are the same types of managers that sometimes, you know, they say, you know, CC me on everything or send me everything before you send it to this person. And again, what they're trying to do to have quality control ends up being a bottleneck. And so that's that's a lot of what I can see. The oversized sweatpants, maybe on the flip side, and I'll talk from the hiring experience, is if you're if you have candidates that show up for interviews and you have people that the manager said, Oh, you take part, you know, you you take part of this interview, you know, do run with it, do whatever you want. And someone that's not trained in interviewing has no idea what's really expected, you know, if they show up to the interview and tell the candidates, yeah, I'm tell me about yourself. I'm not sure what I'm really supposed to do. And they're that they're vocalizing this uncertainty. And so, again, what a manager's intended as showing I trust my team often makes candidates think, okay, is this a place I want to work?

SPEAKER_02 18:47

Now, in my experience, most interviews are oversized sweatpants. They are unstructured, they are full of questions that are cliche questions, tell me about yourself, what's your greatest weakness? Where do you see yourself in five years' time, right? I mean, we've all heard these and they're absolutely horrid questions that give you nothing. But what tends to happen is those oversized sweatpants interviews lead into jobs that are more akin to those tight jeans. And that is completely not going to work, is it? Because candidates are uninformed about the job, uninformed about the context, uninformed about the environment, uninformed about what are the results that they're meant to be delivering, and yet all of a sudden they're being thrust into an extremely rigid environment where you know someone's constantly breathing down their neck. And that tells me that the candidate experience was not reflective of how the job actually is. And that then leads into a lot of what you have to deal with, which is how do we get managers to bridge that gap smoothly? So, while in my case, I can definitely help them structure their interviewing and hiring and ensure that they're making the right decisions, the follow-on is what you do.

SPEAKER_01 20:44

Yeah. And they play they both play a part. I mean, I think of it sometimes as um like people, like if people have gotten married and you are planning the wedding, you plan everything about the wedding and you're focused on that. Then you get married, maybe go on a honeymoon, do all that. Then all of a sudden you're married and you haven't thought about the realities of what it's like to actually be married to someone and making decisions together and all of these considerations. Very similarly to um, I mean, from personal experience, I have two kids. And when I was pregnant, I read like, I'd say probably three and a half books on pregnancy, especially with my first. And I kept reading things on pregnancy. Well, then my daughter was born, and I realized I had not done anything to prepare for actually being a parent. I had no idea. Like I remember being in the hospital. And in in the US, we are not in the hospital very long before they they send us out with, you know, very little maternity leave and other things. But but I remember like kind of laughing to myself, but totally thinking, I have done nothing to prepare for what I'm supposed to do to like take care of this child and then raise this child. And I I sometimes see that with organizations that it is so important. I mean, like you know, whether it's, you know, we'll move away from the pregnancy metaphor. But when you are thinking about your hiring process, how you're selecting candidates, how you're making it a two-way street to make your best candidates want to work with you and give them a real peek into things. It's so important. But then on day one, I think it's a very apt what you say of often it is like the oversized sweatpants, like, you know, well, free for all, not much specific information. And then people start and it's totally different. And so it's so important to think of those two in harmony of thinking about how we're rehiring, but then when we have whether it's uh Where we have managers, are we giving managers the information to understand why their role matters, how to do it? And then our team members, like you hear all the time, set people up for success. I have heard that term about a zillion times more than I've actually heard organizations talk about what they do to actually set people up for success, whether that's, you know, from from shadow, thinking about onboarding, from learning to shadowing to trying. Often it's go and read these things on your own and then go and do it. We'd love to do more. We don't have the time. And so I really do think those are in conjunction from hiring to onboarding to even when people are in seat, the the the training and resources that people really, really need that rarely get.

SPEAKER_02 23:14

This brings to mind a conversation I had on the podcast last year with uh Naveed. And Naveed is an executive onboarding coach. And what I found fascinating was the statistic that yes, half of all hires fail within 18 months or less. The percentage of executive failure is even higher, and it's not within 18 months, it's within 12. And I think that there is this expectation that because I hired someone that has the theoretically the skills to do the job, onboarding is kind of an afterthought. But the truth of the matter is they don't have the context of your organization, they don't have the network within your organization, they don't know the systems, they don't know the products, they don't know half the things they should know or you expect them to know. They're not set up for success. And what you do in those first 90, 180, 365 days of onboarding them determines how successful they are within your organization. This is also why my argument around hiring is that hiring is ultimately the first phase of onboarding. And unless you unless you have that thread that goes throughout, you're setting up people for failure, not for success.

SPEAKER_01 24:43

It's I I think it's true. And it's it is it's um and uh from an onboarding perspective, I mean, that very much rings true, especially for the executive level. I mean, I now you know from what I do, probably from what you do, I hear all the time from people in my life about their experiences. You probably hear a lot about the hiring experience. I hear a lot about people working, like you have hair.

SPEAKER_02 25:04

There's a reason for that.

SPEAKER_01 25:06

That's right. I used to uh, well, I'll say I used to have um I have gray hair, but you won't see that because I just went to the salon earlier this week. But I um I have people all the time that reach out about their experiences, including, you know, people that are in very senior, very executive roles at very well-known companies. And they'll, I mean, the words they say, again, I will not repeat as a family-friendly one, but the things they say, and it's so important for senior leadership to know with when these things happen, you know, whatever your process is like, people are reacting to it. And your executives, they are in in in every, I mean, from your most junior on the org chart team members to do the work to through the executives, they are walking billboards. And if they're not having conversations with you, they are likely having conversations with people in their lives, sometimes on social media. I see comments all the time about this. And so it's incredibly important to really think about your processes and what can we do. And really, I think a question to ask yourself is okay, for our roles, how are we setting people up for success? And can we just can we answer that question? And I actually think a lot of people in leadership roles at organization wouldn't really be able to articulate it. What they may say is, well, that's the manager's responsibility for our teams. We, you know, we trust that in our managers because our managers can set that up. And then you have the manager saying, this is an oversized sweatpants expectation that's turning me into a tight genes manager because I haven't gotten the guidance on what to do and say, how I can do and say that. And so I'm trying to give my teams freedom, but then I can't trust them because they don't know what to do. So I'm just dictating everything to them and they seem frustrated. I'm frustrated and have no time. And so I really believe that in the onboarding process, and then that doesn't go away just when someone starts. I mean, this is, you know, we're still uh towards the you know beginning of of the year-ish. And so many organizations say, oh, here's our goals for the year. But there aren't conversations with leaders about this is like what does it look like for your team? Your what is your team going to do towards these goals? How are they actually gonna get those done? And it's those how conversations that are so important to keep that going from hiring to onboarding to as an organization continually having those conversations about what it tactically looks like to get the work done and how are we developing our people while doing so.

SPEAKER_02 27:32

Absolutely. It just brings to mind a quote: if you don't have the time to do it right, when will you have the time to do it again?

SPEAKER_01 27:42

Yep. It's pretty powerful. It's it's it's true. Because you will, you absolutely will.

SPEAKER_02 27:48

Absolutely. Uh the statistics are against you on this one. But with that in mind, who's responsible for hiring?

SPEAKER_01 27:54

I I definitely see it as a partnership. So it's not I I don't think having isolated experiences is a good idea. Like people that will say HR, which you can substitute HR, recruiting, talent, sometimes it's a subset or even different department, people function, you know, whatever you want to call it. Like think about the traditional HR function. And I know plenty of managers that say HR, that's HR's responsibility. But no role is a wizard, including an HR. And if you leave processes just to one central function, generally HR teams aren't really staffed enough to do it well. And so it's going to be skirting by, they're not going to know the nuances always of resume reviews and things like that. On the flip side, I think it's very important. I don't think having then just managers and teams have, you know, have each processes on their own, because then there's just so much duplicate work or mismatch processes of, you know, just completely different experiences all across the board. I really do think a partnership of having a central hub of HR that thinks, you know, what is our hiring philosophy? So as we think about things like outcomes, what are resources, whether it's everything from job descriptions to interview questions, um to things that it's really important for candidates to know, you know, regardless of function, HR to play a real role in that, which can often include those initial screening interviews. But having the information for hiring managers and having the teams play that role for two reasons. One is a great question. I think HR teams can ask each of the different departments and functional teams is, you know, what are those outcomes? What are things that you wish we would know, even in those screening interviews or things like that? And so have that partnership. But also, candidates don't just want to hear from HR. They want to, you know, it's important and you know, they they care about that, but but often what they care more about is the team that they're going to be working with, the realities of that. And so that's where I do see a partnership between between the two of let's say your HR-ish function and then the the hiring manager in those specific departments. What do you think?

SPEAKER_02 29:58

I I agree that it is a partnership, but ultimately the decision to hire or not is with the manager. And the quality of that hire will be determined by the information and the contextual bandwidth that HR is made aware of around that hiring. The fact that HR is involved, yes, HR is definitely involved to smooth out the process, to make sure that candidates have the information, to make sure that the screenings are done properly, be that talent acquisition, HR, however you want to package that. But it's the manager that makes the decision in the end. It is the manager's responsibility to ensure that they are bringing on the right people for their department, their team, their business to flourish. So HR is definitely a very important supporting function in this. But it's the manager's decision.

SPEAKER_01 31:04

Yeah. I I I agree with that. I'll say a yes, but the it's important that whether it's HR or working with Constantine and others who can also remind, you know, managers being human, it's very, it's very easy to fall in some traps, like looking, for example, for a mini-me. So often as a human, we will say, Oh, wait, we went to the same college. Oh, wait, you know this person and is this bias? I mean, I am not a psychologist by training, but you you see and hear it all the time of people in the interview. They gravitate to people who remind them of themselves. And sometimes, I mean, sometimes that that can be a good thing. And sometimes you've seen that work out really well for organizations. But oftentimes in those situations, you're having, again, you're you're having just, you know, leadership by consensus, and you're not having people that do have a different but valuable experience and perspective. And so whether it's HR or otherwise, I agree. Someone has to ultimately be responsible for hiring. And um, rarely, very rarely should should HR be a decision maker one way or the other. Um there certainly are cases where HR may see a may see a red flag that they have to very strenuously object. But but I do agree it's for the managers, but but the gap is that managers left to their own devices, they they often just don't don't don't know what to do and how to do it. And that's what I think organizations and HR departments can play such a role in making the manager's job easier in making the right decisions.

SPEAKER_02 32:36

And that's why that partnership is so incredibly important. Yeah, and I think this also applies to onboarding. It's not HR's job to do the onboarding, they do not have the contextual awareness. Sure, yeah, they can do a lot as HR to provide the basics, to provide a smooth uh experience when people enter the job first, but that contextual onboarding into the organization, that's the manager's job. At least that's how I see it.

SPEAKER_01 33:10

Yeah, I do see it. I mean, some of the value I um, it's funny, I just record a social media this video this morning. That's a role play of a manager welcoming a hire on their first day, and they're just doing it for a couple minutes before the new hire goes to orientation. And I promise it is just as awkward as it feels to make role plays that you post on social media, but trying to give those as examples. But I, you know, overall orientations and new hire onboarding things like that, I do think can be very helpful to, you know, give common information. Also, sometimes the more lasting effect is building relationships. I mean, I know times that I had an onboarding and someone that was in a totally different department, we really didn't work together day to day, but I would reach out to them, we'd have lunch together, we'd, you know, we would talk. So some of that is building cross-functional connections, which can be really important. But when it gets to the experience of the job, I agree it is managers that said it, but then HR giving ways that managers can do that easier. Because again, left to your own devices without tools, managers really, you know, you know, managers don't know what, don't know what to do, or it's hard to find the time to do it well. And so um I I I do think again, from when from the perspective of the the candidates or new hires that are really have so much potential for your organization, considering their perspective. They want to hear from HR. I mean, like it's nice to build up a positive exchange with HR, I can tell you all too well. But also, you know, people want to really want that with the teams that they work with, and they want to feel valued and welcomed and needed by the actual team that they're gonna work with.

SPEAKER_02 34:48

There's an interesting statistic that I recently had also on a on a podcast exchange, and that is that AI is incredibly good at assessing someone's probability of success on the job. No surprise, it's very structured, it can follow a process to a T. However, the more AI involvement you have in an interview process, the higher the likelihood of the offer not being accepted. People hire people. People choose jobs based on who they will work with. So, yes, absolutely, we can delegate the screening and interviewing process to AI, but that will deter the right people that we want to hire from choosing us as an employer of choice.

SPEAKER_01 35:38

It is definitely a two-way street, and it is amazing how many I'd say organizations, but it's pe it's you know, people and especially senior leadership that really often make these make these choices. And I agree, while it's using AI to be more efficient, when you have candidates that show up, for example, to AI video interviews, you know, I I I will see I will get comments all the time on social media that say, well, that's that's the way the world is going. That's what things well, but that's not that's not the way everyone is going. And the the best candidates, if they show up to two interviews, one is literally an AI video interview that feels like you're uh, you know, on a reality show or a human interview where someone says, you know, it's important to us that we, you know, we we leverage things like AI, but it's also important to for us to have real human conversations, and and that's the way we work together. I mean, I can tell you, you know, everything else being equal 100% of the time, that person is not only going to be interested in that second job, they're going to be telling other people who are also good of their experience between the two.

SPEAKER_02 36:47

Yeah, absolutely. And it's one of the reasons why I'm still flabbergasted by the statistic that only 23% of managers have ever had any training around interviewing.

unknown 36:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:58

And most of that is risk avoidance and not asking the wrong illegal questions rather than helping them discern who they should hire, who would be the person that will actually move the needle with in the business. It's insanity to me, actually.

SPEAKER_01 37:12

It is. And I I mean, I work, I so with our manager training, I do it a lot. And again, having been a lawyer in an HR, there's certainly topics I have in my training that are things like risk avoidance, but it's not just risk avoidance for risk avoidance sake. It's as a manager and being an effective leader, it does matter if someone brings you a concern and says, like, you know, keep it quiet. I don't want anyone, I don't want anyone to know. I don't want to make a formal complaint. It's really important from a risk avoidance perspective that the manager knows that once you hear about something, you got to do something. But it's also important how to have that conversation with your team member to explain that and how that conversation impacts that team member's work and life and so many things. And it's it is interesting still, or probably other adjectives for it, of so many in HR I talk to that say, you know, we're trying to make the business case for manager training, business case, and the data just shows it consistently. When you have managers that from hiring through onboarding through, you know, every aspect of delegation, performance, for better or for worse, when you have managers that know how to do those, the business impacts are so very real. Um, everything like the retention, engagement, performance that are those bullet points that your you know board of directors and shareholders care about.

SPEAKER_02 38:29

Yeah, absolutely. It's it's insane the impact that this can have. I mean, uh just introducing structured interview training can improve your probation pass rates by over 80%. One of the customers I worked with was 86% improvement in probation pass rates. The cost of having to rehire someone in a white-collar job starts at two times annual salary. This is manager training that impacts bottom line. Yeah. Yeah, it's not a nice to have, it's an essential. Now, I've got a little bit of a tradition on the podcast about leaving some advice for managers that are listening to this. In your case, I want to ask you this. If there's a manager listening to this right now, and they're thinking of making a new hire, or there's a new hire that's going to be starting on Monday, and they want to get both halves of what we were discussing here right. The clarity before and the leadership after. What are the two, maybe maybe three things you'd tell them to do this week?

SPEAKER_01 39:42

There are three things that I would have them do this week. One is to reach out to that person and tell them how excited you are to have them join. In and even doing that before they start and not giving them any assignments, nothing like that. Just we're so excited to have you join and tell them specifically why. Either do that before they start or do that on the day that they start. But tell them uniquely. So if it's, you know, an experience that they had, a quality, something in an interview. But for people, oftentimes the new hire process really is all about paperwork and you know this, and people are often terrified. And rarely do people know that, you know, they hear congratulations, you got the job, and that's it. But telling someone why uniquely you're excited to have them join. That can do wonders for their first day and how they care about every day thereafter. Two is to talk to your team members about that experience and talk about what are things that we can have them shadow you on. So it's not going to take more time. If you're working on something, they can sit with you, screen share if you're if you're if you're remote, but leveraging your team members as well and existing things that they're working on. That can help your existing team members really start to think about their role in onboarding and explaining the things that they do. That can lead them to help lead training sessions and things like that. But just again, giving a real glimpse that can also help your new higher starting learn by learn from the different ways that people tend to learn and see how things really are. I mean, sometimes it's literally I've sat through sessions of like watching someone edit a document real time. Oh, okay. Then like asking questions and give those opportunities. That takes some of the pressure off you and gives real experiences. Um, the third is asking, asking yourself and telling the team member what's expected of them, like literally what those expectations are, what they have the opportunity to do, and um what when to when to come to you with questions, like having one-on-ones and things like that, but giving them permission to ask questions, verbally doing that. And when I say is that sounds super basic and it should be, but so many people really don't know what's expected. Like, and I mean like from this week, what's expected? Like if you're attending meetings, you know, you can watch. If you have questions, feel free to ask them. But don't feel like you need to like, we're not expecting you to lead any session. This is for you to learn. If you have questions, we'll talk about it afterwards so we can go through that. But giving those expectations and then building on that so that at every step along the way, that new hire and maybe your other team members as well know what's expected of them. That is something that so many people right now at work could say could not tell you exactly what's expected of them from an objective perspective of otherwise. But doing that are three things that don't really take any other time, but can help you set up for success without asking for more budget.

SPEAKER_02 42:31

Brilliant advice. Ashley, thank you so much. This has been such a pleasure having you on. And uh just before we end, where can people find you and all of your wonderful role plays on social media?

SPEAKER_01 42:44

You can you can go to managermethod.com, which is my website, and you can see a lot of my my links to social and thing from there. I'm at Manager Method on most platforms. Um, on LinkedIn is Ashley Herd, H E R D, and my new book, The Manager Method. Um, a practical guide to uh lead, uh lead support and get results, all three are important, is out wherever you like to get books.

SPEAKER_02 43:05

Amazing. Ashley, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 43:07

Thank you. Thank you, Castle.