The Selecting Winners Story

In 1980 I got hired at Bank of America as a corporate recruiter. I was hired by Bert Mastrov who was Vice President of the employment function. Bert was and still is one of the top minds in the world on the subjects of recruiting and selection. The reason I took the job was for the opportunity to work for the best.

Bert's an early riser and liked to get in the office early so he could get a lot of work done before the day disintegrated. Little did he know I was a morning person as well. He would come into the office early in the morning and there I'd be, sitting waiting for him.

I'd start picking his brain by asking hundreds of questions. I really wanted to learn from the best. After a while, Bert would just hand me a book off his shelf. He had this magnificent library on the subject of recruiting and selection. He'd say, "Here, Go read this book."

Basically, he did that to get rid of me.

Little did he know, that I would be back the next morning: "I've read the book and I've got about 100 questions." He'd patiently answer all my questions, pull another book off the shelf, and say, "Here, go read this."

This went on for about six months until I thought I had drained him dry. Finally I went to him and said, "Bert, I'd like to get some formal training on the subject of interviewing."

Even though I'd been recruiting for years at this point, I had never had any formal training in the subject. Bert set me up for some training workshops and seminars. I ended up going to three or four different training sessions covering recruiting and selection.

When I was done, I came back to Bert and said, "Do you know what? I'd really like to teach this subject."

Then he sent me off and had me certified in a couple of different programs as an instructor. All during this time, I was still holding down my job as a corporate recruiter. I was interviewing hundreds and hiring dozens and dozens of people every single month for the bank in their I.T. group.

Most days I had my day job recruiting I.T. folks for Bank of America. Occasionally, I would take a day and go teach my constituents - my teams - how to interview. I was running formal classes in the various programs that I had received my certification.

This went on for two-and-a-half to three years but I continued to be really, really frustrated. The reason I was frustrated was I was teaching these programs and deep in my heart I just knew there was something missing. My managers were not using the principles I taught and they were not getting better at choosing people

You could say the problem was with the instructor, but I'd like to believe that wasn't the case.

I started spending most of my free time - as a matter of fact, it took me almost a year - developing my own recruiting and interviewing process. I looked at everything that wasn't working and searched for a better way.

It is important to note that I started with a clean slate. This was not going to be a modification of an existing program. You see, if all of the programs were showing the same problems, the only answer was they must all be built on wrong assumptions.

So I took my clean slate and my laboratory (my day job hiring people in the real world) and created my own process. I would develop a tool or a technique and then go try it. Interview a couple hundred people using a specific techniques and you realize real quick if it works.

The ones that worked, I kept; the ones that didn't, I discarded. This went on for a year until I developed a soup-to-nuts system on how to recruit and choose top people.

Another problem I had noticed in all the other systems that I had tried was that the managers wouldn't use it. I talked to dozens of them to try and find out why. Why wouldn't they use it?

The most common reason was because they were really busy. Everybody was busy back then, just as people are busy today. All of a sudden their busy day got a new spike in pressure when they had to hire someone.

When they get this new task added to the their plate, none of them sat down and start running through a system they may or may not have believed in? The truth of the matter was that these busy managers did use the material. Instead, they reverted back to whatever they were doing previously.

They weren't using the material because it was too formalized, it didn't make sense, and it was too hard. Besides, every selections system that I had studied to up to that point had one fundamental flaw. That flaw was that the system forced these managers into a position they weren't qualified for.

They had to "figure something out".

They had to get into somebody's head, to find out what makes somebody tick, to read a person. Do you know what? Even though we'd like to believe we're good at reading people, the truth of the matter is we're not. That is an uncomfortable place for all of us to be.

So I decided when created the Selecting Winners System - this was back in 1984 - that, "I will never put my managers in a position they're not qualified to be in. I don't want them to have to figure anything out. I definitely don't want them to have to read people. We'll give them tools so they can choose great people without figuring anything out!"

The other major piece of feedback I got from talking to all the Managers was that they were looking to cut corners. They wanted a system that made their life easier not more difficult.

That's when I decided that at every step of the Selecting Winners process I would figure out how a manager was going to try and cut a corner. Then I developed a tool or process that let them cut the without losing any of the value of the program. I anticipated their moves (lazyness) and found a way to get the job done without losing effectiveness. To believe that a busy Manager is going to fill out a bunch of forms and use a complex, unintuitive process is just naïve.

That's how I differentiated Selecting Winners. We give busy managers the tools to cut corners without losing value. We show them how to recruit and hire in the least painful way. And finally, I created a program designed to never put a hiring manager in a position where they're not qualified.

That's the history of how the program was developed. Then I took the big leap. In 1984, I quit my corporate job (and guaranteed paycheck) and started marketing my new Selecting Winners program. I had known some people, who took a shot and let me train their management team. And lo and behold, it worked. From 1984 to 1990, it was just me. I was Selecting Winners. I was very careful to take time every year and incorporate new ideas and tools into the program.

In 1990 I started expanding, and have grown into what we have today, which is a truly global organization. We've had more than 70,000 people trained on the program in just about every industry you can think of. And, we have delivered Selecting Winners in 54 countries.

That's where we came from. It was a very humble beginning. Our design philosophy was and continues to be at the heart of the success of Selecting Winners. It's also what really separates us from every other program out there.