process, and if I really needed somebody and the candidate's skills looked good but I wasn't sure the candidate was a perfect fit, I would tend to give them the opportunity.
I hope I have become more sophisticated about understanding the experience that I'm looking for, so that I have more confidence in my assessment of whether somebody can actually do the job. At this point, my focus is on really understanding the match between the chemistry, the capabilities, the experience and the task we need done.
Is hiring instinctive, or can you teach people how to make good hires? Do you consider yourself an instinctive hiring manager?
I think you can teach people how to hire. Much depends on the training and interview processes. If there's an instinctive aspect of hiring, it focuses on the chemistry-will that person be able to work with the team, colleagues and supervisors? The part that's not instinctive focuses on what the candidate has accomplished.
How do you determine whether a candidate has the needed skills and will be a good fit with your IT group and your organization?
We look at educational accomplishments and credentials. That's very important to us as an academic medical center. A director in our organization must have a bachelor's degree in the field in which they are now working. We prefer people with master's degrees at that level. Virtually all of our directors either have master's degrees today or are working on them. I have a PhD and that gives me a certain entrée into the organization. I also happen to be an associate professor in bioinformatics and computational biology, which also gives me credibility with my colleagues and customers.
Beyond academic credentials, we also look for certifications. If someone is going to come in as a senior IT project manager, they must have a certification as a project manager. If you're coming in to work in a clinical area as a business analyst, your position may actually require that you be a nurse. We're getting to the point now where we're developing exercises for our technical staff. It is not enough for you to tell me you're good at your job. I may give you an assignment and tell you to come back and show me that you know how to complete it. We're increasingly looking for evidence that you not only are who you say you are, but that you have accomplished what you say you have.
What do you consider a successful hire?
In many ways, if we make a successful hire, chances are that person will stay for a while. When I look at people who I think have been successful in the organization, they are-by and large-people who have come in at the right level and progressed through the organization. Every couple of years, these people are looking for promotional opportunities. We have a strong emphasis on continued education, so if you've been a successful hire, I want to know that you've gone out, looked and taken advantage of our educational opportunities. We have people who come in on time, take an hour for lunch, and leave at 5 p.m., and they are important people in the organization, but a really successful hire is somebody who is hungry to learn, move in the organization and embraces all the aspects of change that we have. Working in a place like M.D. Anderson is like working in quicksand; things are constantly shifting under your feet and you have to be fairly fast to keep up with that. People who are successful do that very well.
What is the biggest hiring mistake you've made, and what did you learn from it?
I like to give people the opportunity to demonstrate their capabilities even if there is not a perfect match and I've been disappointed after hiring someone who didn't step up to the opportunity. I'd like to tell you that I made that mistake once,
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