SuperVision

Journalists sometimes need reminders that some things matter even more than the next newscast, newspaper edition or Web site update. For managers, one such thing is hiring.

Even in an industry with as much turnover as ours, the average employee is around a lot longer than almost any single story, program or edition. It's hard to come up with anything that says more about a leader's long-term influence on an organization than the people he or she hires.

A record of good hires means more than awards, exclusive stories, even improvements in ratings or circulation -– because it means all of those things and more. It means the capacity to attain and sustain success. It sends a powerful, positive signal to colleagues, customers and competitors.

A pattern of poor hires is a proven recipe for lousy morale, product deterioration and sometimes system failure. It would probably be possible to trace most of journalism's epic failures to bad hiring decisions.

So why aren't we better at hiring, and what can we do about that?

We tend to hire only those who are looking: Many of the most successful hires I ever made were people who weren't looking for new jobs. The best performers in a newsroom often aren't the most aggressive about marketing themselves. The converse is also true. People who are focused on their current jobs, rather than on their next big career moves, are the kind of employees you want: not devoid of ambition, but more interested in doing their best at what they do now. Of course, those people are harder to find, especially when...

We tend to recruit only when we’re hiring: If you look at clips, watch resume tapes, or grant interviews only when you have a current vacancy, you're missing a lot of good candidates. The best hiring managers I know have people always "in the pipeline." They know who's likely to be ready in 90 days, six months, a year, or two jobs down the road. The longer you've known someone before you make a hiring decision, the less room for error there is. Tracking prospects for months or even years also gives you the opportunity to coach performance and to watch how a prospective employee responds. Maybe best of all, it makes the final stages of the hiring process a lot faster and easier when the job opening does develop. You don't have to start from scratch. Starting from scratch often means...

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Hiring in haste: This may be the biggest mistake of all. It's easy to understand. In newsrooms that are strapped for staff -– and what newsroom isn't? -– there's great pressure on managers to fill vacancies as quickly as possible. Every open position strains the staff you have. It can also mean higher overtime costs, a lower-quality product, or both. A hiring decision deferred can mean weeks or months of more stress on the staff. But a hasty hire can haunt a newsroom for years. We've all made one. Probably more than one. Think about how much effort and time it took to rectify –- unless you just got lucky. Colleagues are quick to get over the inconvenience of waiting longer than they feel they should have for the right person –- if you hire the right person. They will quickly forget the shifts when they were short-staffed –- if the person you finally hire was worth the wait. If not, your troubles have just begun.

Cutting corners and skipping steps: These habits are as bad in hiring as in journalism itself. One critical consideration common to both practices is the quality of sources. We know bad sources lead to lousy reporting, yet we sometimes hire relying solely on references provided by the applicant. How thorough is that? Saddam Hussein could have come up with three people to say he was a great humanitarian. Unless you have a personal relationship with somebody you see on a reference list, set those names aside and do some digging. Our business is so small that if you've been in it more than a few years, a few phone calls should be all it takes to find somebody with firsthand knowledge of your prospective hire –- somebody who hasn't been handpicked by the person who wants the job. In today's litigious climate, checking references is harder than it used to be. That means you need to do more, not less.

Forgetting about fit: Sometimes just hiring "the best athlete" works, but only if you're ready to move other members of the team around to accommodate that new player. More often, if you need a nose tackle, you won't be happy with a pole vaulter, even one of championship caliber. Something similar can happen when you need a general-assignment reporter and hire someone whose heart is set on anchoring, but who's "willing" to report until the right opportunity develops. Upward mobility is an important motivator for most people. We all need goals and dreams. Just make certain you aren't hiring someone who is interested only in the next rung on the ladder.

Unreasonable expectations: Nobody bats a thousand. Even if you do everything right, sooner or later you'll make a bad hire. Accept it. More important, learn from it. The good thing about a bad hire -– maybe the only good thing –- is that it provides a living reminder of what went wrong. That should reduce by one the number of mistakes you are likely to make in the future. Don't forget to learn from your good decisions, too; they probably can teach you more.

Effective leaders try to see beyond the horizon, not just to the next big story, but to the future of the organization. Hiring well has a huge effect on the legacy such leaders leave. And, in the meantime, it makes for a much more pleasant, productive workplace.

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