Cannabis Companies: Hire Like the Israeli Military

This is not a political post.  Any comments in this direction will be deleted. 

Poor hiring processes is a common denominator of operationally challenged cannabis firms.   For many, it’s the casus belli of management failure.  

There are many recruiting fails.  I regularly see these 3:

1. Prioritizing the wrong experiences, competencies and traits i.e. Is coming from the alcohol sector enough?

2. Poor evaluation mechanisms i.e. You love cannabis.  You're hired!

3. Weak efforts i.e.  A friend of a friend recommended a friend so no need to call references

The issue goes deeper than that. Many problems occur when there is a mismatch between the role definition (assuming it's accurate), and what skills & behaviors are really needed to perform the job at a high level.

Secondly and more commonplace, the people making hiring decisions are biased (e.g., I employ who I like) and the appraisal heuristics are flawed. 

Cannabis businesses looking to improve their recruiting batting average may want to consider learning from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).  The IDF are trailblazers when it comes to maximizing available talent.  They need to be.  The country has a small population with an enticing private sector and a mobile workforce. And in their neighbourhood, no organization has a thinner margin of error to screw things up.  

Here are 3 of the IDF’s recruiting best practices:

1) Getting the profile right

When you fight as much as the IDF does you quickly learn the best mix of traits and behaviours for different positions, particularly the specialized, elite and leadership roles where professionalism, brainpower and toughness matter most. 

2) Use objective testing

Back in the 1950s, the IDF knew what a good soldier was; they just didn’t know how to easily find him/her. Daniel Kahneman (of behavioral science fame) was an IDF soldier at the time.  He created a series of objective, independent attribute-based tests to measure a person’s suitability for combat.  A candidate’s test feedback was evaluated through a set of rules based on the IDF’s ideal criterion for a certain type of soldier.  This algorithm of sorts weighted these trait-scores to determine the overall ranking for each candidate. Kahneman's algorithmic evaluation of candidates proved to be more correlated with combat success than the previous approach of ad hoc, biased interview impressions and selection rules.

3) Cast a wide net

The IDF is the gold standard for recruiting diversity. They were among the first countries to draft women and deploy them into combat. They also don’t pass on recruits that other militaries will skip (e.g., those with cerebral palsy, autism and vision impairments).  Non-Jewish citizens are also encouraged to enlist and lead.

#recruiting #management #hiring #IDF