Uses
Hire for the team, not just the role
A good hire compounds for years. A wrong one costs far more than the salary, and you find out slowly.
Hiring on a CV and gut feeling alone leaves too much room for failure
Write the posting, find the most impressive CV, hire the one who feels right. It is how nearly every role gets filled, and it leaves four of these open at the moment you decide.
The feeling answers a real question, just not one of these: whether you would enjoy working with them. Worth knowing. It is also the answer most easily mistaken for the others, because people who feel right in a room often feel right because something about them resembles you.
| The question | The CV | The feeling | Success Profile What Attune builds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where have they worked | Answers this | Does not answer this | Does not answer this |
| What did they do there | Answers this | Does not answer this | Does not answer this |
| How do they work when the plan changes | Does not answer this | Does not answer this | Answers this |
| What will have drained them by March | Does not answer this | Does not answer this | Answers this |
| How do they land in this particular team | Does not answer this | Does not answer this | Answers this |
| How do they work with this particular manager | Does not answer this | Does not answer this | Answers this |
Most of what matters, you find out after you have hired them.
How someone works under pressure. What drains them by the third month. Whether they land in this particular team, with this particular manager. All of it surfaces, eventually.
The question is when.
You usually know by month two
A hire that is not working rarely announces itself. It surfaces slowly, and three people live inside the gap while it does.
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Month 1
Keen, and already out of their depth.
The person we hired
-
Month 2
Something is off.
You
Quietly covers the gaps.
The team
-
Month 3
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Month 4
Working twice as hard to stand still.
The person we hired
-
Month 5
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Month 6
Stops raising it, because nothing changed.
The team
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Month 7
Fairly sure, with no good way to say it.
You
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Month 8
Dreading Mondays, and not saying so.
The person we hired
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Month 9
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Month 10
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Month 11
The conversation.
You
Leaves. For them it is a relief.
The person we hired
Absorbs the work again while the role sits open.
The team
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Month 12
Three people spend a year on one decision.
Somewhere in that year sits roughly half the salary again, in advertising, onboarding, lost output and starting over. It is the smallest of these costs, and the only one that reaches a budget.
Success Profiles
It does not have to be a guess.
Define what the role actually needs
A Success Profile is built from the role, the team it joins, and the manager it reports to. It gives you something to hire against: how a person works, rather than where they have worked.
It also changes what you are looking at. A name, an age, a photograph and a former employer are not in the frame, so the things that quietly steer a shortlist have less to steer with.
Candidates are then read against all three dimensions of fit – the job, the manager, and the culture of the team they are joining. How the FIT model works
Illustration of Attune's Success Profile Wizard
Success Profile
Customer Success Lead
- 1. Role
- 2. Team
- 3. Manager
- 4. Review
Review suggested profile
Accept, modify, or reject each suggested talent.
- Individualising Must Have
Twelve accounts, each wanting something different. Reading them accurately matters more here than running one playbook well.
- Problem Solver Must Have
Escalations arrive without warning and rarely resemble the last one.
- Organising Nice to Have
The team already runs on two strong Organising profiles. This role can lean on them rather than duplicate them.
Bring your next open role
A 30-minute demo, built around a role you are actually hiring for. You will see the profile it produces and what you would screen against.
Request a demo