Recently, candidates have become highly sophisticated at marketing themselves. Through LinkedIn and other forms of social media, candidates have become experts at framing themselves in a positive light with their resume, interview skills and persona. Unfortunately, that also means that it is becoming easier to hire another company’s rejects because some candidates are exceptionally good at selling their positives and hiding negatives.
Do you want to avoid getting stuck with the problem hire? Here are some suggestions to help you dig down to find the real capabilities, strengths, and attributes that candidates possess, and to get a true picture of how they will fit into your organization’s overall growth plan. The goal is to become a smart consumer who gets beyond candidates’ marketing hype and doesn’t “get romanced” by the wrong candidate.
Get Your Head on Straight
You need to think clearly about the role to be filled. Specify the duties, responsibilities, and results that you expect from the candidate – and not just today, but also a year from now. Write them down and discuss them with the candidate’s work team. This will help you understand the attributes and skills that will matter for success.
Next, you should take a close look at your value system; yours, the company’s, and those of the candidate’s department. It is much easier to hire and work with someone who thinks the same way you do and shares a similar work ethic, communication style, and attitude about life and work.
When you put this all together, you’ll have a good idea of the type of person you need. You’ll be far less likely to “fall in love” with a candidate because of personal chemistry or impressive credentials that don’t fit your business needs or values.
Be Alert to Warning Signs
Take a serious look at candidates’ resumes. First, ask the classic questions: Is the resume easy to read? Are there grammatical or spelling errors? Do the candidates know how to communicate the value they bring to each company they have worked for?
Next, look for deeper problems: hints of things that a reasonable, career-dedicated person would not do. Examples of red flags include short-lived positions, illogical career transitions, accomplishing too much in a short period (like becoming a fighter pilot while playing college athletics and making the dean’s list) and consulting assignments that are not identified by a specific customer.
Do candidates have a track record of staying three or more years in each position? If not, is there a reasonable explanation of why they left? ie acquisition, divestiture of business line, bankruptcy. Have they been promoted within the same company? Due to rapid market changes, the past three years have been difficult for many candidates; as a consequence, candidates may not have had a long tenure in their last one or two positions. If this was due to company closings or a shifting commercial direction, was it that the candidate’s skills no longer needed by the company or do the signs point to a bad hire, to begin with? Some candidates may have taken “consulting assignments” between positions – check that these consulting assignments are just that, and not short-lived positions from which they were terminated.
You also want to be sure you are working with candidates who are serious about their careers and have invested in it. Does the resume show that they were dedicated to learning more skills and to challenge themselves? Did they solve important business problems, save money, generate income or streamline processes?
Do Your Homework
This is a critical step, but it is often ignored when personal chemistry with the candidate is good. Skip it at your peril!
Verify the information on the resume, such as dates of employment, position titles, educational degrees, military service, etc. If candidates will handle money or sensitive information, seriously consider credit and criminal background checks. It could be worth the investment. Imagine how you would feel if something did surface that was relevant to the job.
Some companies also require a drug test before making an offer. When it is relevant to the job responsibilities some companies conduct assessments — tests that candidates take either online or with a psychologist — to determine their psychological profile, motivations, attitudes, propensity for lying and more. Choose ipsitive assessments – one that grades on a curve with skills related to other people in similar roles, not subjective assessments, which will skew results if the candidate is moving through a difficulty ( ie death of a family member, or financial distress).
One of the goals of recruiting is to make an informed decision. The more job-relevant information you discover about a candidate, the easier it is to make a sound match for your company and team.
You should also make a serious time commitment to reviewing references. Plan to speak with 10 to 12 people that have worked directly with a candidate.Especially now, that we have limited access to meeting candidates in person.
These references do not all need to be a current or former supervisor role; you may speak with clients, peers or employees. You can usually start with three or four referrals from the candidate and expand the list through your discussions with these given references. You also want to be sure that you get recent references, from the past one to four years, unless the candidate has worked with the same people for a lengthy period.
Get Personal
More than one interview is necessary, with an interview team as an ideal format. Start with a phone interview for screening purposes. If you are interested, invite them to come in for interviews – or now invite to Zoom Interviews. Be sure that the interview jury is prepared with questions tailored to the job specification and the candidate.
No one is perfect. Most people have something in their work history that they regret and have learned from. Formulate your interview questions to find out about these experiences. You want to know not only what candidates are capable of, but also what their Achilles heel might be, and if and how they learn from their mistakes.
The most effective interview questions are open-ended and behavioral because they elicit the most useful information predictive of future behavior. Commit to finding out how candidates have managed pressure, difficult situations, tough people and challenging negotiations. Include follow-on questions to get a detailed understanding of who did what, etc. in the experiences they describe.
In a competitive hiring environment, don’t wait too long between interviews, so that candidates know you are serious about them. Your goal is to have more than one candidate that is interested in working for you.
Practice May Not Always Make Perfect
Hiring is as much an art as it is a science, so there are no guarantees. You may review the resume, conduct thorough interviews, and reference checks, and still not get it right all of the time. But each step conducted thoughtfully and with insight exponentially improves the likelihood that the candidate will be a good fit.
The most important things to remember are to remain objective, really know what it is you want the candidate to accomplish before you start and be thorough gathering information about the candidate. If you can check these off, then you know you have done everything possible to hire the best candidate for the job.
