For hiring decisions, Curt MacRae (http://tinyurl.com/mr2mc6) suggests listening closely to your gut.

I can’t argue with that advice. It’s sound and rarely wrong. But I like to use mine as a “double check.” More on that in a minute.

Many years ago, I took a class on the Kepner-Tregoe (KT) (http://tinyurl.com/maxkqd) decision making model, a tool for prioritizing and evaluating information. A short-cut, self-developed, version has served as the basis for my critical thinking ever since.

Basically the decision process goes like this. The first step is to develop a list of Musts and Wants. A ‘must” is an element that all potential choices absolutely must have be considered further. For example, if you’re hiring a physician, you can toss all resumes from plumbers, artists, IT professionals, and the like. It’s surprising how often we don’t consider the “musts” and thus end up trying to fit the proverbial round peg into a square hole.

Next come the “wants.” These are the elements we would like our “best solution” to have. Sticking with the physician example, some “wants” might include excellent bedside manner, keyboarding skills (computerized medical records are either here or on the horizon), graduation from a particular medical school, years of experience, and so forth. Each of these wants is assigned a weight from 1 – 10, with 10 being “most important.” It’s a mistake to think that every one of your criteria is a “10.” Some are clearly less important than the others.

With your list of “wants” finished, you can begin your interviewing process. Bring in the first qualified applicant (remember that each one must pass all the “musts”) and ask whatever questions are necessary to determine how well he or she meets each of your “wants.” Then give the candidate a score for each want (from 1 to 10, with “10” meaning the person meets the “want” perfectly). Multiply the score for each item times the weight for that item and add the results. Presto! You now have a numerical value to compare one candidate against the other.

While I’ve described the process for evaluating potential employees, this simplified method works for a whole host of decisions.

Now, back to my gut… Once I have all the options (potential employees in the case of my example) ranked from highest to lowest, I carefully consider the one with the highest score. In theory, this should be my candidate. But, what does my gut say? If it says “Are you kidding?” then I need to examine my weights and my scores. What caused this person to rise to the top? Perhaps I was too generous with his score or perhaps, there are additional criteria I should have considered. Sometimes this analysis will reveal where the tool went astray and it will become clear that the best person for the job is really second or third on my list.

Next time you have a decision to make, consider how a tool can help. And, then, get a second opinion. From your gut.

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