Hiring the Right Employee: Art or Science?

General Colin Powell in his leadership Primer submitted that “organizations do not really achieve anything”. Plans don’t accomplish anything ,either. Theories of management don’t matter much either. Endeavours succeed or fail because of the people involved. Only by attracting the best would you accomplish great deeds.

Make no mistake: recruiting the right person for the job is no easy task. The recruiter requires honed skills just as the applicant searching for employment. If you haven’t developed and refined those skills, you are destined to make hiring mistakes that you will regret.

Employee turnover can cause waste of time, can be disruptive and costly. Employers spend more than four times of a year recruiting new employees and filling new vacancies

Many managers complain on how difficult it is to find and hire good hands; but we must take the time to improve our knowledge and skills in this key area. We know the effect of a bad hire- money, time, and aggravation.

Let’s go on a journey of hiring the right person

Know what you are looking for

Define the role you are recruiting for. What are your expectations of the new hire? This begins with a job description. A job description is a guide to the right candidate. The job description is not only for you but also for the candidates to understand the company’s expectations.

Employees become lost when directions are not clear

Our job qualifications should contain desired qualifications- education , experience and skills. But is that really all that is needed to find the perfect hire? Are we just looking for a match to our pre-established description?

What about the soft attributes, attitude, company culture and potential? Beware of choosing someone with a great trainable skills with an unfit attitude. Being able to adapt into company’s philosophy and fit into the culture is as critical as having the education, experience and skill for the job.

The right Attitude- this attribute cannot be overlooked and should not be underestimated. People with the right attitude are far more productive and easier to work with than Prima donnas. People with the right attitude can pick up additional skills fairly easy; training someone without the right attitude is more difficult.

Vital key to hiring is searching for the perfect “fit” for not just the perfect skill

How do I choose?

We have seen the CVs of our most recent graduates during recruiting. Unfortunately, this is nothing to be excited about. Most of our graduates do not have the basic skill for employment search. CVs are cookie cut for every position and every organization they are applying for. CVs are taken to copy machines for mass distribution. Some organizations receive letter of applications addressed to other organizations.

Then how do we choose the lesser of the evils? There are some silent alarms. One of the things that ring the alarm is multiple university degrees of the same level that are not related. You say why? Many people did not study their first choice but what they were given. While the first degree may not have been the candidate’s preferred choice, the second degree should have been taken with a thought out plan. Two Bachelor’s degree unrelated, two master’s degree unrelated and PhD in view. The alarm is ringing-this job seeker is not a career seeker.

In the past recruiters were wary of candidates with several employers in their work history. But we know today that may employees are transient. Today’s employee is not looking for a retirement plan but a career development plan.

Studies have shown upper credit, lower credit is no guarantee for a perfect hire. Intel’s hiring policy did not accept candidates with less than 3.2GPA. In the book, The Pentium Chronicles: The people, passion, and politics behind Intel’s landmark chips, by Robert Colwell, the author writes the data did not bear this out. It was clear that Intel did not hire engineers with less than 3.2GPA but once someone was hired, a higher GPA did not predispose its owner to faster promotions.

OK, if not grades, then what?

Look for related experiences to your company, transferable skills and broad work experience. Broad experience can be packaged in many ways- length of service in the industry, multiple positions in the industry or multiple industries in the career path. Remember, this is the first screening.

Let’s talk- The Interview

The traditional interview approach is only 14 percent effective in determining the right person for the job? Most behavioural profiles only measure 36-38 percent of what can be measured. Behavioural interview based on the premise that the best guide to your future performance is your past performance.

When preparing for the interview, decide what skills and attributes are critical for the position and prepare questions accordingly.

During the interview, some of the key things to loo for are enthusiasm, drive, motivation and collaboration.

Enthusiasm, I want a person who is excited about coming to work- someone looking for new ways to do old things. A willingness to do new things is critical. Our teams are only as motivated as the least motivated individual.

Our organization needs people who will accept responsibility and accomplish great tasks. Look for people who see hurdles and jump over- not complain about how high the hurdle is.

Equally important is the individual’s ability to execute and not just talk a great game; don’t assume if someone can think and plan and sell their ideas, they can also deliver and execute.

You also want to hire people who can organize and plan their work and then execute it properly. If you don’t pay attention to this, you end up hiring people that require constant baby-sitting and you end up doing most of their work anyway. People who have demonstrated good judgement and have an ability to anticipate problems.

Collaborators, people who can work closely with others. Real team players, not someone who just goes along with everyone’s ideas; but someone who is willing to express his own opinions and disagreements but who also has an open mind to take in new information and reconsider their position if need be.

Whatever approach you use to interviewing- behavioural, traditional e-mail or telephone, ask questions to reveal these skills. Ask yourself : were they able to execute? Did they give up too early? Were they a hindrance to the team or did they motivate the team?

This is a roadmap to the journey of hiring the right employee. Along the way, you may fall into potholes, or stumble into a roadblock. Avoid the pothole of gut instinct-sometimes, it may lead us to a good talker and not an executer. Look out for the roadblock of the highest scorer who gets the job- check to see if they have the attributes you need to work in your organization.