HIRING PEOPLE WITH PARTNERING COMPETENCIES

Finding people with partnering competencies, people who will drive a partnering culture, is crucial for reliability and sustainability in a company that aspires to become a Powerhouse Partner. Corporate charm schools nestled among pines and brooks cannot undo the ruin wreaked by a crummy selection. Lose-lose mis-hires can cripple a partnering organization and rapidly undo its investment in smart partnering. People with a scarcity mentality hatch underground plots to steal away resources and run from reasonable risks. Employees who resist change undermine creativity and responsiveness. Breeches of trust act as relationship wrecking balls. The cost of poor selection can be enormous.

This chapter introduces the concept of the Partnering Interview, an interviewing protocol we recommend in conjunction with structured behavioral interviews and technical interviews. Among Fortune 500 companies, behavior-based interviewing techniques now dominate as the preferred selection methodology. However, the most common practice is to conduct one-on-one behavioral interviews. In the companies that do encourage or even mandate team behavioral interviews, the interviewers typically ask the behavioral questions in such a choreographed manner that the so-called team interview turns out to be no more than a series of brief one-on-one interviews all conducted at the same venue. The Partnering Interview, on the other hand, provides an innovative approach for determining the breadth and depth of a job candidate's partnering competencies. Partnering with colleagues to conduct both a Partnering Interview and a structured behavioral interview provides a substantive advantage over conducting only one-on-one behavioral interviews; simply put, a Partnering Interview models partnering as "how things are done around here." Later in this chapter are examples of the kinds of questions to ask during a Partnering Interview, and a process for evaluating a candidate's Partnering Intelligence as an additional basis for making a sound selection decision.