How to ensure you find the right person to meet the needs of the role and the company.
One of the biggest concerns clients express is how they can ensure they find the right person to meet the needs of the role and the company, who is not going to up and leave after 6 months so that they have to go back out to the market only months after hiring in the first place. Clients want to know how they can avoid hiring what seems to be a great individual with a excellent track record but who is just not going to work out long-term in the role.
The interview process can be incredibly subjective; we can base hiring decisions on finding individuals with relevant experience, who we like talking to (and therefore who we like being around) and who we will want to work with.
Key to a successful recruitment process:
- Define the specific measurable responsibilities of the role
- Define the specific measurable business objectives the role is expected to achieve
- Define the specific skills and abilities required to achieve each objective
- Interview candidates for the presence of each specific skill and ability by asking competency based questions designed to allow them to share specific examples of how they have successfully achieved similar objectives, or demonstrated the relevant ability
Understanding how candidates have achieved certain objectives is much more important than just measuring what they have achieved. Being able to measure the skills and abilities they have drawn on will help you understand if these can be leveraged into the role you have on offer. Whilst the role they may be looking to undertake may appear very similar to the role(s) currently/previously being undertaken, the environment and resources will certainly not be identical from company to company.
How does a manager achieve objectives?
A very good example of this is understanding how a manager achieves objectives, i.e. in one environment they may be required to be a hands on individual who works as part of the team, leading by example, yet in another environment achieving similar objectives they may be required to be far more of a delegator, passing responsibility to more junior staff. Different skills are required in each situation, yet the end objective may be the same.
The key advice is to take the time to formulate an objective and sufficiently detailed recruitment process and the result should be a considerably increased possibility of making a well-informed hire of a sufficiently skilled individual who will meet the needs of the role and business.