Scorecard

Hiring: Stop Hiring

on Instinct

An effective scorecard is built in 6 steps. Start with the company's business objectives at 12-18 months, not with the candidate's skills. State the mission of the role in one clear sentence. Break it down into 4 to 6 measurable results (format: verb + figure + deadline). Identify the skills required, technical, business, operational leadership, and tie each one to a result. Prioritise 3 to 5 must-haves at most. Geoff Smart's Who method, on which this approach is based, claims a 90% success rate against around 50% for unstructured interviews. The most common mistake: listing generic skills before defining the expected results. Time investment: 3 to 4 hours for a complete scorecard. ROI: a failed hire costs between €50,000 and €150,000 depending on the level of the role.

Allow 1 hour of actual work with the right people in the room. That is the promise of the Scorecard method: 1 hour of structured scoping with the managing director, manager and HR director, and you have total alignment on the real need. Does that seem short? It is because the method is structured: we start from business objectives, work down to the missions, then the skills, then prioritise. No unproductive debate, no wish list. Result: 1 hour of scoping saves between 3 and 6 months of a failed process. In industry, the average time to hire an experienced engineer is 6 to 9 weeks. Rigorous scoping upfront reduces this time by 30% on average, because the criteria are clear from the start and interviews are targeted.

The difference is fundamental. The job description describes activities: “manage the production team”, “run the budget”, “ensure quality”. The scorecard describes results: “reach an OEE of 85% on line 3 by Q3”, “cut non-quality costs by €2m in 12 months”. The job description is an administrative document used to publish an ad. The scorecard is a strategic decision tool used for scoping, assessment, selection AND post-hire steering. In practice: 80% of the job descriptions we receive are unusable for assessing a candidate. They describe a generic role, not a specific need. The scorecard forces an answer to a question the job description ignores: “what will the company have achieved thanks to this person in 12 months?”

Let's take a concrete case. Company objective: increase production capacity by 40% in 18 months to absorb a new aerospace contract. Role mission: “Lead the production ramp-up of the Toulouse site from 120 to 170 parts/month while maintaining a service rate of >95%.” Outcomes: 1) assembly line OEE >85% at 6 months, 2) recruitment and training of 12 qualified operators by Q2, 3) ISO 14001 certification obtained within 12 months, 4) non-quality costs reduced by 30%. Must-haves: experience of industrial production ramp-up, team management of >30 people, mastery of lean manufacturing. Nice-to-haves: knowledge of the aerospace sector specifically, experience with SAP. This level of precision radically changes the quality of assessment in interview.

Do not use vague terms. Define operational leadership skills tied to a precise result. Example: if an outcome is “restructure a 25-person maintenance team, including 8 hires in 6 months”, the skill is not “good manager” but “demonstrated ability to recruit, onboard and make technical profiles autonomous in a context of transformation”. In interview, assess using the behavioural method: ask the candidate to describe a similar past situation, the actions taken, the results obtained. Check through reference checks. The key: every leadership skill must be verifiable through a track record, not through an interview impression. A convincing candidate can fail in the field if their skills have never been tested in a real industrial context.

The classic trap: hiring a “hunter” salesperson without checking their ability to build structure. For an industrial sales director, the outcomes are typically: a pipeline of X qualified prospects at 6 months, X new accounts signed >€500k at 12 months, a sales team of N people recruited and operational, a formalised and tooled sales process (CRM). The must-haves for industry: a track record of business development in long sales cycles (6-18 months), experience of structuring a sales force (not just “management”), the ability to negotiate framework contracts with industrial buyers. Nice-to-haves: knowledge of the specific sector, existing network. The frequent mistake: overvaluing the address book at the expense of the ability to build a repeatable sales system.

The 3 most costly mistakes we see at our industrial clients. First, defining the need by the degree instead of the result: “Centrale engineer, 8 years of experience” says nothing about what the person must achieve. Second, confusing technical expertise with leadership ability: an excellent process engineer is not automatically a good department head. The transition requires team management, budget management and reporting skills that technical expertise alone does not guarantee. Third, not involving the operational manager in the scoping: 40% of the hiring failures we analyse come from a misalignment between what HR understood of the need and what the manager really expects. The co-built scorecard eliminates this risk in a 3-hour workshop.

The scorecard and the assessment are complementary, not competing. The scorecard comes BEFORE the hire: it defines the success criteria, the expected results, the skills required. It is the “what to assess”. The assessment comes DURING the process: it is the “how to assess” (role-plays, technical tests, case studies). Without a scorecard, an assessment evaluates generic skills disconnected from the real role. With a scorecard, every assessment exercise is calibrated on a specific result or skill from the scorecard. A concrete example: if your scorecard includes “ability to arbitrate under pressure between quality and deadlines”, you can design a realistic industrial scenario around that dilemma. The result is infinitely more predictive than a generic personality test.