Enjoying Absolute Job Security – A Primer in Topgrading

You are lucky if your career has made its way through the pandemic. But do you know there are still many managers that worry about their job security? Are you one of them?

Many businesses and companies are forced to cut costs due to the pandemic. So does this means that most jobs are in jeopardy?

What can managers do to improve their performance as well as job security? The answer is topgrading. What is it? Topgrading is ensuring that your professional team includes high performers. In short, A players.

Let’s take a look at these facts –

Topgrading professionals have interviewed a gazillion executives. These executives have had ten management jobs on average. And those jobs included the teams of 25% A players, 50% Bs, and 25% Cs. Don’t you feel that more A-players means better job performance and ultimately more job security?

Many companies have now moved to topgrading. The average improvement in hiring A players has seen a commendable shift from 26% to 85%. It is not only the organization that benefits, but every manager enjoys more success having a team of high performers. 

Talent assessment – When hiring for the product manager jobs, rank your direct reports from the one you highly want to take this role to the one you are least like to take up this position. Rate them either A player or not. This will help you assess the hard-hitting talent.

Replace low performers – State them the goals of your company clearly. Provide them with the training and coaching as per the goals. If they fail to achieve the results, find other positions where they will perform better. If this also fails, then low performers are smart enough to take up another job rather than waiting for you to replace them. But then again, you want the replacements to do better, right?

Take the assurance of the candidates to face the next rounds – If you take the help of the recruiters, ensure to make the candidates aware of the final step, which is to arrange calls with their managers. This makes the low performers with hyped resumes back out, which is a good thing. Thus, you get transparency in hiring candidates.

Tandem interviews of finalists – Here is the secret to a successful topgrading: Tandem topgrading interview. Select a tandem partner from the prospective candidates. The two high-positioned personnel can then conduct a chronological interview with them. You can start with asking them about their education details and then moving towards the career. You can also ask some of the product manager interview questions. This will rightly help you determine their worth for this role.

Have finalist candidates arrange calls – In the last step, ask the finalist candidates to arrange calls with their bosses. Talk or spend at least 30 minutes with them. In this way, you can clarify the conclusions you have drawn during the interview.

To sum it up

When you select almost every first-class employee or player, you will feel that you would have top-graded earlier in your career. No wonder your work performance will go up, and you will prove more worthy to your present and future employers.