It’s a common mistake to place the weight of an executive hiring decision on the interview, says Bert Hensley, the CEO of executive search firm Morgan Samuels.

Interviewing isn’t inherently wrong, but it is overvalued, he shared during a From Day One webinar on executive recruitment. Naturally, we tend to favor people who resemble us in background, philosophy, working style, and that’s what interviews often reveal, but the C-suite doesn’t benefit from homogeneity. Companies would be well advised to pause and look backward, at the candidate’s career, and forward, at the candidate’s potential.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Even before candidates are brought in, the hiring team must be in agreement on what success looks like—in great detail, Hensley says. A CFO candidate must have acquisition experience, sure. But how many deals? Of what size? And in what geographies? And on top of that, when they get to your company, what should they be prepared to accomplish? “Be crystal clear on the specific things this human being has got to get done in the next 24 months for us to say, ‘Wow, they were a great success.’”

This becomes a scorecard everyone on the hiring team will use. “Otherwise, you’ll end up hiring people that are eminently well qualified for what they’ve done, but not necessarily what you need,” he said.

Candidate evaluation begins with a retrospective look at their career, asking “not just what they’ve done, but how they’ve done it,” Hensley said. And anything on their resume is fair game. He goes back as many as 10 or 15 years to probe at how a candidate reduced turnover or cut costs, asking, “how did you think through the problem? Give me the framework of analysis that you used. What data told you this was a problem?”

Unique to the process at Morgan Samuels is the written self-assessment, which was born from an unusual request many years ago. The vice chair of a global banking company asked Hensley to subject candidates to a lengthy, written self-assessment of their accomplishments. Hensley assumed the request would never fly among those making upwards of $2 million per year and working 100-hour weeks. “I was completely shocked at how easy it was to get the candidates to do it,” he said.

The self-assessment helps companies avoid arrogant candidates, “which is really just a cover for extreme insecurity,” Hensley said, and can hurt a company. Arrogant people are more likely to conceal problems or fail to disseminate information that should go around, and “if you get a self assessment back and it says, ‘I did this, I did that, I did this,’” then you’re not looking at a team player. “The best leaders are those who talk in terms of ‘we.’”

When it’s time to look forward, candidates are handed a real problem to solve using real company financials (under an NDA, of course). The transparency and the accountability benefit both sides. Candidates can’t later plead ignorance about a debt problem or a customer retention issue, and they can start planning their first actions in the role, being very frank about the resources they need.

You may be surprised who wobbles at this stage. Hensley said he’s seen heavily credentialed candidates with enviable pedigrees request millions of dollars to build teams “without any proof of concept of how he would gradually grow the sales team.” They ask for blank checks, but won’t bother to make a plan for using the cash. This is what Hensley calls a “presider,” who simply issues orders from a distance. “We’re always looking for world-class operators who will roll up their sleeves and get stuff done.” 

Executives often fail because they’re not suited to the company culture, he said. It’s worth it to take the time to assess their working style, their leadership style, and even their emotional makeup. “Are they a drill sergeant just barking orders, or are they going to be collaborative? Are they going to inspire your workforce and collaborate with the team?”

It’s easy to overvalue great performance in the interview, or even a big stumble, but “your entire decision should not be based on one score. We’re talking about human beings, who are very complex.”

Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Morgan Samuels Company, for sponsoring this webinar. 

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism. She is the host of How to Be Anything, the podcast about people with unusual jobs.

(Photo by milorad kravic/iStock)