How to Spot High-Performing Jerks Before They Derail Your Business There are many well-known tips for hiring the right people, but I learned a phrase from an old colleague that completely transformed how I teach others to hire.

There is nothing worse than a bad hire. It's always easy to see why a hire was a bad one in retrospect, but it can be challenging to detect early signs of someone who will derail your company.

Years ago, I hired someone who had a substantial negative impact on my business. As a CEO and founder, I learned that while I had many leadership skills, hiring was one that I struggled with. This mistake led me to spend years studying the topic. Now, my company trains the world's top military units to become effective tactical leaders.

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The hiring process for elite military and law enforcement tactical teams is rigorous. I've worked with Delta Force, Seal Team 6 and the FBI Hostage Rescue Team. Although each selection process is different, it has several common elements. These include:

• Extensive (sometimes extreme) physical tests
• Psychological testing and personality profiling
• Several rounds of interviews, background checks
• And other activities geared at figuring out who you "really are"

There are many well-known tips for hiring the right people, but I learned a phrase from an old colleague that completely transformed how I teach others to hire. Despite years of research, I could never identify a foolproof strategy for effective hiring. That changed two years ago when my friend from one of these units shared a valuable insight with me during dinner.

I asked him, "What exactly are you looking for when hiring?" He first took several swings at an answer — they are smart, team players, good people, etc. But each time, his explanations were met with me saying, "Yeah, I get that, but I want to know exactly what you are looking for." He grew frustrated with my insistence and uttered a magical phrase:

"We are just trying to avoid picking high-performing a-holes!" (HPAs for short).

That struck me like a lightning bolt. It was exactly what I was looking for. The ideal selection for any high-performing team is not just about hiring high performers; it's about avoiding hiring high performers who cannot get along with others and will ruin the team culture.

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Identifying the HPAs

First and foremost, HPAs are usually very high performers. They score well on standardized tests, are often well-educated, have strong resumes and have spent much time cultivating their successful persona. HPAs were often the kids that everyone talked about in high school or college. They are usually the "overachievers" that everyone sees as uber-successful.

But this very high level of performance alone is not the problem. There are plenty of successful people who are not HPAs.

The second and essential element for an HPA is the "A." HPAs earn that title because they are selfish and narcissistic — they win by making others lose, and they are very happy to tell you why they are better than everyone else. Here are some examples:

• They take pleasure in the misery of others
• They usually enjoy dividing people, gossip frequently and view people as a means to an end that only benefits them.
• HPAs rarely have good friends (or any friends) and usually struggle to maintain personal connections.

Simply put, HPAs are toxic. They are toxic for their coworkers and, worse yet, they are toxic for their organizations.

My experience hiring an HPA

After my friend gave me this amazing definition, I instantly recalled the event that led to my search for the magic selection process. Early on in my career, I had the opportunity to hire a "superstar" sales guy away from a competitor.

He demanded more money than I wanted to pay, but the idea of not only growing my business but also hurting my competitor was too attractive. The problem was, I didn't like him. He was condescending and a jerk. I was very concerned that he would have a negative impact on the business, but in the end, he was extremely qualified, so I hired him. Bad decision!

Trading company culture for qualifications was a terrible deal. It wasn't long before we knew I had made a terrible mistake. While he certainly was good at sales, everyone in the organization hated him. He was a morale cancer, and it was clear I had hired an HPA and, in the process, had damaged our team culture.

Less than a year after he started, I found him berating a female coworker. She was seated at her desk, and he was standing directly over her, invading her personal space, and jamming his finger in her face while yelling at her. She was clearly scared, he was out of control, and I immediately realized how bad I screwed up.

His days with us were clearly numbered, but the damage had already been done. I had hired an HPA, and in the process, I had also flushed part of our team's culture and a lot of my credibility down the toilet.

How to avoid choosing an HPA

After learning the new term, I realized what I needed to do to learn an effective hiring strategy. Here are strategies that I use and teach to others:

Avoid using only objective tests—Objective tests are attractive when hiring. They are easy to score, they seem very fair, they are not as subject to bias, they give you a score to compare candidates, and they are often easier to administer than other measures.

However, objective tests are also the playground of HPAs. Any test based solely on objective criteria can be gamed by an HPA. They study hard and prepare diligently for these kinds of tests. Often, these tests are how HPAs validate themselves (i.e., "I am better than you because I got a higher score than you did").

The takeaway: Objective tests may measure hard skills, but they do not measure how good a teammate you will be. Use a mix of objective and subjective criteria and ensure the subjective portions are laser-focused on the personality types you want.

Hire culture, not skills—It is critical to remember that we are building a team, not a resume. We cannot hire people based solely on their qualifications and hope it will work out. Culture is everything, and they must fit into your culture.

Their values must align with the organization's values. Make sure your process specifically addresses culture. Hiring people who fit your culture and are also qualified is crucial.

The takeaway: If you must choose between culture and skills, choose culture every time. You can train people to do a job, but you cannot train them to be good people. From my perspective now, the HP can always be taught, whereas the A is an innate character flaw.

Conduct several interviews with different people – HPAs always struggle to get along with their coworkers — their kryptonite is people. While it may be easy for an HPA to get through one person in one interview, fooling a variety of people is much more complicated. This is why elite units expose their candidates to several rounds of interviews, usually on different days and with various interviewers from different demographic groups.

The takeaway: Exposing a candidate to different people and at different times increases the likelihood that they will reveal their true selves exponentially. It increases the odds that if they are an HPA, one of your people will catch it.

Simply put, it's like an inverse game of corporate survivor; although no single person can vote you onto the island, any of them can vote you off.

Related: Most Job Candidates Fail My Simple Interview Test Right Away. Here's How.

Conclusion

Looking back, all the signs were there before I hired my HPA. Before he started, we played racquetball together (yep, it was the 90s), and I beat him badly. After losing his third game in a row, he shouted the F-word and broke his racket on the ground. While it struck me at the time as inappropriate, he immediately apologized and played up his competitiveness. I thought, "That was bad, but wow, this guy is going to be great in sales because he wants to win." It was a big mistake. He was an HPA, and he just had an obsessive desire to make others lose. But, if I had simply looked at more subjective measures than his sales figures (like the fact that I didn't like him), had hired for culture or had used others in the interview process, I likely would have seen that.