Conclusion

As I said at the beginning, this book is about attitude. It’s about how to select for attitude, interview for attitude, recruit for attitude, assess peoples’ attitude, and even teach attitude. Because whether you’re hiring your next hourly employee, your next CEO, or something in between, attitude will likely be the issue that determines success or failure.

Brown Shorts and Word Pictures are big concepts. But if you break them down, step-by-step, you’ll find that you can succeed fairly quickly. As a reminder of everything we covered (and I always like a quick recap of what I just learned), here’s a distillation of the big points in this book:

• The attitude that works for your organization is unique (Chapter 1). Your organization’s culture, and the attitudes required to succeed in that culture, are unique. This means that the “right” attitudes that define a high performer will vary from culture to culture. Find your Brown Shorts and you will find your secret source of competitive advantage.

• Standard interview questions don’t assess attitude (Chapter 2). Most interview questions are useless for assessing attitude, and some can even put your company at legal risk. So eliminate the four types of common interview questions that undermine your ability to assess attitude.

• A few simple questions will reveal if someone’s attitude is right for you (Chapter 3). The only interview questions that reveal whether or not a candidate is a match for your organization are those targeting the attitudes that matter most to your organization. So create your Brown Shorts Interview Questions and start learning whether candidates have the right attitude for your organization.

• There’s an answer key that will grade a candidate’s attitude (Chapter 4). What’s the point of asking a question if you have no idea how to grade the answer? Build your Brown Shorts Answer Guidelines and never again hire on a hunch.

• The grammar that people use (pronouns, verbs, and adverbs) predicts whether they’re a good or bad fit (Chapter 5). You’ve got great questions, and you’ve got an answer key, so use them to consistently evaluate your candidates. Listen to the words people use and how they use them—word choices reveal tremendous amounts about attitude.

• The way most companies recruit chases away the best people (Chapter 6). The talent pipelines at most organizations are filled with everyone but the right people for that organization. So use your Brown Shorts and the recruiting formula to fill your talent pool with the people right for you. And avoid the people who aren’t right for you.

• Hiring for Attitude will make your current employees even better (Chapter 7). You want to hire for attitude, but the quest for high performance shouldn’t stop there. You also want to develop more high performers from the folks you already have working in your company. So use Word Pictures and propagate the right attitudes throughout the whole organization.

Hiring for Attitude gives you a new set of tools for making great hiring choices. And when you’re ready for the next level, you can become certified in Hiring for Attitude. It’s an online or live program that will give you (and every hiring manager in your organization) an advanced skill set for selecting stars with great attitudes. Plus—it looks good on a résumé should you ever find yourself on the other side of the hiring equation.

Stay in touch with us and get all the latest research updates (and learn more about certification) at www.leadershipiq.com/hiring.