Go Back Up

Company Hired Over 80% HIGH Performers and Became Most Valuable in the US

Case Studies Interviews Mar 19, 2019 12:00:00 AM Topgrading Team %

up and to the right This blog is about a case study with the most impressive hiring improvement perhaps ever. The company’s hiring success shoots up from 25% to over 80%. During those years, that company became the most valuable company in the world. Can you guess the company? This case study shows that YOU can:
  • If you’re a CEO, you can improve your company performance by dramatically improving hiring success at all levels.
  • If you’re a manager at any level in any size company, you can turbo-boost your career by using hiring methods to create your team(s) of A Players.
  • If you’re a Human Resources professional, you can understand how the HR managers in this company became highly respected globally.
Click here to watch the vlog. This is not a case study about Amazon. This case study is “old,” but the hiring methods used are fresh and innovative today. You’ll assume I’m biased because the case study is of a client firm, and the method of hiring is Topgrading, which I created. Mea culpa! But in this blog, you’ll see the evidence that Topgrading is the most proven, most effective hiring method. Jack Welch, the super successful CEO of GE, took the company from $14 Billion in market capitalization in 1981 to $400 billion when he retired in 2001. And GE’s hiring success improved from 25% to over 80% A Players hired, using Topgrading. After Jack left, Topgrading evaporated and the stock… well, you know what happened. But recently Larry Culp, former CEO of Danaher (which equaled GE’s stock performance during the Jack Welch years), took over as GE’s CEO, and the stock is bouncing back. Get this: in 2001, after this GE case study was released, Larry hired me to train managers at Danaher in Topgrading methods, which are still used today. The General Electric Case Study: GE was initially achieving only 25% high performers hired. Our research over the decades shows 25% to be the typical result of hiring high performers for big and small companies alike. Jack (as he insisted that people call him) was dissatisfied. So he sent HR out to find a better hiring method, and Topgrading was chosen and rolled out. I trained about 60 Human Resources executives who trained a zillion managers. In a couple of years, GE’s success hiring A Players doubled to 50%, twice the success rate of most companies. Jack had been using Topgrading Professionals to interview finalists and more than 90% of the candidates we interviewed and recommended turned out to be A Players. But I had a Ph.D. in Psychology and had interviewed thousands of executives; how could super busy managers who only occasionally interview do as well as a professional? Jack pressed me to think of some way “ordinary managers” could get better hiring results. I had designed the Topgrading Workshop training, so I tried an experiment: We started using two interviewers. I was sure “two heads are better than one” would make the Topgrading Interview both easier (for both interviewers) and better (because they would back each other up). It worked. With Tandem Topgrading Interviews, GE leaders’ success shot up to over 80% A Players hired and promoted. The GE case study changed our business model. Sure, Topgrading Professionals still interview candidates for high-level positions, where a bad hire would be too costly, but the Tandem Topgrading Interview proved that managers, trained in the 12 Topgrading methods, can dramatically improve the talent on their team. So, Topgrading Inc. added Tandem Topgrading Interviews to the workshops, and managers who were trained in solo interviews were retrained. In his books, including Winning, Jack writes what all famous leadership authors say: Talent is everything! Nothing great happens in companies without high performers thinking of and implementing it. Improve talent dramatically and you will improve results. Since the GE case study was published, hundreds of companies have successfully Topgraded. At www.TopgradingCaseStudies.com you can see that the average improvement is from 26% to 85% high performers hired. This includes big, global companies like GE, start-ups like Mint.com, not-for-profits like the American Heart Association, and mid-size companies like Culligan. And something else is unprecedented – in each case study, CEOs express in their own words their confidence that Topgrading has made the company more successful. We’re not aware of any other hiring method producing a fraction of Topgrading’s success, and we’re not aware of any other hiring method that has a testimonial like ours, saying that the hiring method made the company more profitable. Conclusions:
  1. Talent is EVERYTHING
  2. Topgrading infuses companies with almost all high performers
  3. So, companies achieve better results
  4. Tens of thousands of managers, trained in Topgrading, have enjoyed more successful careers, with almost all of their team members A-Players
  5. The most respected Human Resources and Talent managers are Topgraders
Want to learn more? Hopefully, this has been helpful advice. If you would like to receive weekly blogs about how to create teams of high performers, subscribe using the form on our homepage.
Improve your hiring success with Topgrading. Our proven hiring process will transform your selection methodology so that you get better hiring results.  Our leadership and candidate assessment tools will help you assess, hire, retain, and grow outstanding team members. Contact us to learn more!

Topgrading Team

Ready to Transform your Business with Little Effort Using Brightlane?

Register Now