The document discusses the concept of "Moneyball" recruiting, which is hiring talent based on objective data and metrics rather than subjective opinions. It provides examples of how Billy Beane implemented this strategy for the Oakland A's baseball team. Some key aspects of a Moneyball recruiting world discussed include having a consistent hiring philosophy focused on data, removing human bias from decisions, integrating measurable data into the hiring process, clearly defining what constitutes talent for the role/organization, and defining success based on the organization's goals rather than external opinions. The document argues that assessments are important to obtain objective data and get buy-in on the Moneyball strategy from all hiring managers.
2. What is all this Moneyball stuff?
• Billy Beane, GM Oakland Athletics
• From 1988-1990 had highest
payroll in MLB.
• New owners in 1995, told to slash
payroll.
• Became a disciple of Sabermetrics.
• He is credited with changing the
way MLB teams now evaluate
talent.
3. What did that look like in his world?
• High school players overvalued,
most teams draft them to high.
• Sign guys that fit what they were
trying to do – defensive, on base
percentage, not flashy.
• Philosophy built around you
don’t need all stars to be very
good.
• Like most of us, he didn’t have an
unlimited payroll!
7. “We only hire the best talent that is
available, when we have an opening,
that shows interest in our organization,
our average salary, benefits and work
environment.”
8. Moneyball recruitment is:
• Hiring for your needs
• Hiring what you can
afford
• Hiring ‘proven’ talent
• Not leaving work undone
• It’s about hiring the right
talent for you!
10. #1 – One Consistent Philosophy of Hiring
• That was really all Billy had to go
on. His passion around an
educated idea.
• It was simple and everybody
understood it.
• If you don’t like it, you need to
make a ‘happiness’ decision.
11. #2 – Take out the Human Element
• No more ‘Gut’ decisions!
• We don’t make ‘gut’ decision, we
use behavioral interviewing!
• Can you show me, specifically, why
candidate A is better than
candidate B?
• We all have hidden biases.
12. #3 – Integrate Measurable Data Into the
Interview Process
• The hardest part of using
Moneyball recruiting techniques
in a real world work setting is
knowing what data to use.
• It never hurts to be smart.
• You have tons of data in your
organization. What makes your
best, better than another, in
terms of data?
13. #4 – A Clear Definition of What ‘Talent’ Is
• Amazon has become known as a
poster child for an awful place to
work…
• By those that don’t work there!
• Amazon’s hiring managers have a
clear definition of talent is in
their environment.
• You might not like it. That’s okay,
they don’t want you.
14. #5 – Success is how we define it.
• Moneyball critics point to the
fact that Billy didn’t win World
Series.
• Yes, he wants to win World
Series.
• Success was defined as being
able to compete at a world
series level, given the payroll
they could afford.
15. What would be the single
hardest part of
implementing a Moneyball
Strategy in your
organization?
17. Assessments are a key!
Pre-hire:
•Used a knockout punch
•Before the interview
•Draw a line
Post-hire:
•Different than Pre-hire
•Peformance metric driven
18. Why you need Assessments?
• The science is unbiased.
• The science is smarter than
you, and your hiring managers.
• Fall in love with the
technology, it will change your
life!
19. Hiring Science and Hiring Analytics
• Google found out that interviewing
was a waste of time. 99.4% of the
time is spent confirming the
impression you got in the first 10
seconds. (Can only predict success
14% of the time)
• Best predictor of success are work
samples. (29% -measurable data)
• Next best test – straight cognitive
ability (26% - measurable data)
20. You Need Everyone to be True Believers!
• If your hiring managers don’t
believe in your science you
only have two choices:
1. Change the science.
2. Get them to Believe!
21. Case Study – Selection Science -
Cognitive
• Applebee’s –
• 125,000 employees
• 2,000+ locations
• Over 1 million assessments
• Results –
• If all else fails, hire smart
• Smart will trump past
experience, all else being equal.
22. What’s your Magic Metric?
• Cognitive is always a good
place to start, but that won’t
work for everyone.
• It’s not one size fits all. (3.9%
men are 6’2”, 30% of Ceos)
• Start with the positions that
you hire for most, or that have
most financial impact.
23. No More Gut Hires – Period!
• Who has Veto power in your
organization for hiring?
• Constant education around hiring
bias. Yours & Your Hiring
Managers. They lie to you
constantly.
• If you can’t talk about your biases
internally, you’ll never change
them.
25. Get Comfortable With Testing
• Every organization will do
Moneyball differently – on
purpose – it’s specific to you and
your vision of talent.
• Use the words – “Test”
• It might fail, it might rock, give
yourself an out.
26. There is no “i” in Team…
• Any new program only succeeds
with strong ownership and a sense
of “We”!
• Billy/Brad had constant pressure to
go back to ‘what’s worked in the
past’.
27. True Innovation is hard to do
Best Practice Defintion:
Crap someone came up with a few
years ago. Did it. It worked. Now
we are doing it.
28. Success Trumps Culture
• This is a tough one to get around,
because ‘Fit’ is so big in talent
acquisition right now.
• Moneyball doesn’t say disregard
culture, it says first consider
objective data.
• You can find great talent hidden in
horrible culture organizations, many
times who will be more success than
those coming from great cultures.
(Hire Googlers Syndrome!)
We saw this in the most recent NBA draft – finally teams weren’t willing to pay for potential with many young players.
The reality is Moneyball isn’t about sabermetrics, but about finding market inefficiencies!
Is that truly the best talent?
Can anyone share a great single vision philosophy of hiring? “We only hire people who will always put the customer first” – imagine how that would drive all actions and decisions in your company – including who you hire! “We only hire people who want to create products that will change the world for good.” Again, specific enough to know what you’re looking for when comparing candidates! Applebee’s gave people a ‘gift’ – to those great people that just didn’t fit ‘us’. Moneyball recruitment is about giving some folks a gift – be great someplace else, maybe just not here.
Moneyball recruiting is not about your “Gut” it’s about actual performance, measured actual performance. The benefit of using a moneyball type approach is it takes out most of the bias in selection. When you’re focused on results, that becomes the key mearsurable, not the fact they were white or black, girl of boy, state or tech.
Getting you and your hiring managers to agree what is successful in our organization. Then only hiring that! The key to great moneyball recruiting is this. Having one definition of what a great recruit, what great talent is in your environment. Not having each manager have their own opinion – that is where most organization are now, and it’s why almost all of us struggle with consistency in our talent.
You might be in an organization that is never going to compete for the best talent in your market – you need to redefine what your ‘new’ success will look like. Sparrow Diversity Nurse story – the board wanted to match the diversity of the city – we were already over the diversity of percentage of diverse nurses within our area. Our ‘success’ had to be redefined to them, using metrics, to show where we should be, based on the money we could spend. Too often these competing definitions of success, cause the organization to lose focus on where we are trying to go.
Your assessments should be giving you information on how to best develop the individuals you are hiring and tie into your performance management. Post hire assessments – used in promotion, to help with development
HireVue Insights – 15,000 attributes, 100K more than a resume. Word choice, how it’s used, when it’s used, tone of voice when it’s used.
In my own shop – I have potential recruiters call and interview me. (work sample) We aren’t trying to launch the space shuttle, can you carry on a conversation and get info out of me or not?
Your biggest hurdle is getting to get everyone to believe this will ultimately help us select a better individual – hiring 100’s, 1000’s, not 1. Never allow a hiring manager to pull out one example and argue assessments – you’ll lose. Assessments are built on science which is built on percentages – nothing is 100% perfect in assessing – and if you have a manager you can’t understand that, you need to get a new manager!
TA at Applebees had a ton of data, we tested over 1 million potential managers. What we found was that experience, in that environment, was almost meaningless – while core intelligence almost always proved to provide a higher level candidate – obviously we wanted both. Managers constantly tried to skirt the system and get us to hire low scoring candidates – the failure rate was giant – to the point we finally went to a black and white cut off line, and used it as a screener. Even on internal hires!
At Applebee’s we found that the time it took someone to complete the personality assessment, was more important then the results!
GPAs, Degrees, Certifications, etc.
In TA and HR we have this great access to being able to call a spade a spade and not get in trouble! Use this power for good. Getting others to understand their bias is key to making them better leaders and hiring better for their teams. I’m a big picture guy. I’m an idea guy. I don’t like to get bogged down in the details. It would be very easy for me to hire others like me because they make me feel comfortable – but I don’t – I hire the opposite of me – I hire high detaisl, high rules individuals!
Billy Beane only looks at stats when hiring. This could lead to hiring that is disaportionately not diverse. Would this be good or bad for your organization. Show of hands, if you answer yes to this – Diversity hiring is always good for organizations? If you say yes, some very smart executives, people who get business really well, think you’re an idiot. Here’s why – it’s the secret that Diversity and Inclusion people don’t want you to know. It’s not popular, but it’s been proven in study after study – Diversity is not always the best for every organization to get the best performance.
I did this constantly as an HR pro – I would find a champion in one department or division – and we would try stuff out, we would test it! If it went great other leaders would be sending me messages saying ‘hey I want to do what Mary is doing over in her area!’ – I always had very high user adoption of programs because I would test first, sometimes doing A/B testing. Testing always gives you a way to stop – the test is over, we are going to reevaluate. The test was successful, we’re going to expand the test!
If you’re in HR and you don’t have others supporting you, you have a tough uproad journey ahead of you! You can’t launch something as big as Moneyball Recruiting without full “We” – so how did they do it? They had to convince a lot of people. They had to show pieces of it being done in other areas that were successful. They had to have executive ownership of this is right for us!
So, basically we are years behind our competition. Best practice isn’t innovation – it’s what someone did who was innovative a long time ago. For many this is a great starting point. So, don’t let chasing best practice discourage you – it’s a first step. BUT – don’t confuse BP with Innovation. It’s not.
This is the key to Moneyball Recruiting – finding what’s next, not what’s everyone else doing!
We all want to hire the big name company talent. The reality is, those people rarely have to face disappointment, pressure, challenges. If you grew up inside of Disney World, you would have a pretty warped sense of the real world. I love to hire great talent from really bad companies. They have been to battle. Find someone who is success at a bad company, and you mind find that diamond in the rough.
With any change – winning solves a lot of issues. Success trumps culture. If you ever tried to turn around a bad culture, it’s almost impossible without some level of org success. So, attempting to start something like Moneyball recruiting – you need to build in some small successes to get the momentum going in the right direction.