Improving your Aim

It’s been interesting over the years to witness how companies approach the hiring process.  Some managers adopt very lengthy, process oriented interview procedures that can extend beyond 60 days.  No stone is left unturned as they vet, grill, and in some cases almost interrogate candidates.  Other managers have a philosophy that you can make the same mistake with twelve hours of interviews as you can with two hours of interviews.  Others latch on to a pre-employment screening system that requires candidates to meet acceptable test results to even be considered for an interview.

My experience has given me a birds-eye view of these formulas and procedures.  I’ve also been able to see the results over multiple hires and sustained time frames. My conclusion:  There is no silver bullet.  I’ve seen “can’t miss” hires fail miserably and marginal, “we’ll take a chance” hires not only succeed, but eventually ascend to executive leadership.

The point is that there isn’t a fail-safe template when it comes to hiring quality people.  And the problem is complicated exponentially when companies need to build productive teams of people.

So what is the right answer?  None of these approaches are inherently wrong.  Each company needs to deploy practices that make the most sense for them.  Ultimately, the goal is increasing the probabilities of success with each hire.  If you hire people, here are a few ways to improve your aim:

1. Cut the fodder. Please, please, please stop padding your job profiles with inane and innocuous qualifications that simply take up space.  I often have to discard up to 90% of the information in a corporate job description as useless so that I can get to the meat of what is truly important. 
2. Be realistic. When creating your job profile, think in terms of what the “reasonable” success qualifiers are.  All too often there is a duality of candidate expectation attached to the job description and requirements.  There is the “official” profile versus the “acceptable” profile that is locked in the manager’s head.  The publicly shared, internally dispersed profile is a wish list … the ultimate superhero candidate.  The thinking is that setting expectations this high will somehow screen “undesirable” resumes.  Yet, the company still gets inundated with resumes that woefully miss the mark.  The perfect candidate doesn’t exist, and if he/she does, they are not likely to be looking for a new position.  Understand the core criteria that you need to see in every candidate – without equivocation.  Build your interview process around this foundation.
3. Determine quantitative and qualitative attributes. Quantitative attributes are specific skills that one brings to the job.  These usually come through prior experience (specific product skill, territory knowledge, sales training, etc).  Qualitative attributes speak to a person’s character and make-up (work ethical, passion, ambition, driving motivations and influence).  Discipline yourself to identify the top 5, essential qualitative and quantitative characteristics and prepare your interview questions to plumb these areas.  The quantitative information is usually more black and white, but the qualitative is much harder to discern.  The focus is often so heavy on quantitative skill set, that qualitative is reduced to a “gut feeling” or positive first impressions.  A case can be made that more time should be spent on qualitative.
4. Identify muscle and warts. Every candidate has strengths and weakness.  Look for strengths that add value to the position.  Be careful to ignore strengths that aren’t critical to success as they can often blind you from seeing more germane traits.  The same goes for weaknesses.  Know which weaknesses you can overlook and which ones you can’t.  You can live with a few warts, but a malignancy will cost you dearly.
5. Think team. One important thing to remember is that you are bringing a new piece of machinery into an already operating machine environment.  If the pieces don’t fit together – regardless of the newest additions finest attributes – then your will not only fail with your newest acquisition, but throw a wrench into the works!

I’ve never been a fan of assessments that are used to make human decisions.  But I am a fan of assessments that assist the decision making process and are fluid enough to help a manager evaluate both qualitative and quantitative data in the context of their specific hiring and team environments.  Our Performance Optimization solutions do just that.  Silver bullet?  No.  A sure way to exponentially increase your probability of success?  Without a doubt.

You can learn more here.