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Eight essentials to make the right hiring decisions.
Define. Say short, say sweet. Keep it simple. Specify roles and duties.
Study. Do a study of your best people (past and present) and find out what characteristics they have in common. One of the best ways to do this is by using a tool called the Profile XT. The Profile XT is much more than an assessment. It gives you customized Job Match patterns, suggests relevant interview questions, yields a percentage match when comparing a candidate to your top performers, provides a detailed positive analysis of the individuals you assess, and can provide thousands of "experienced" Job Match Patterns for use in developing your own patterns. With this tool you will come up with a job match pattern that will provide a benchmark for prospective candidates.
Demo Pit. Get your prospective job seeker to demo his skills for you. Give him a short assignment. Assign a desktop in your office to him and ask him to execute a piece of code if you’re looking for a software geek, ask him a to source a few profiles from a database site should you be looking for a recruiter, ask him to make a couple of live cold calls impromptu to judge his selling skills should you be looking for a business developer. The key is to get every interviewee into the demo pit so that they can showcase their skills while you take notice.
Double Trouble Check. Mistakes can lead to disasters. To avoid making a disaster of yourself, you need to look back at people you’ve hired in the past (who didn’t work out for your organization for whatever reason) and ponder upon what common problems did you encounter? What traits or qualities are you SURE you NEVER want again?
Think Tank. Setup a Think Tank. Get a couple of your peers, seniors, juniors, cross functional staff to casually interact with your prospective employees. Always remember you’re no Superman. At the risk of being terribly clichéd, I’d like to reinstate, you can’t quite judge a book by it’s cover. Involve people you trust to talk to your potential candidates.
Interview. Interview. Interview. How many interviews will you hold for each candidate? Some companies hold several interviews for the short list of three to five candidates. The first might be with HR and yourself. The second may be with the department manager and the third might be after you’ve done an assessment or two. Assessments will always pinpoint areas you may want to question or clarify with the candidate.
References Galore. Always ask for, and check references. A very small percentage of employers do this. Look over the list of desirable talents and skills you’ve identified as well as the ones you know you want to steer clear of. Develop a list of four to five specific questions you’ll ask those references. If you don’t get acceptable answers from the referees, it may be a clue that this applicant is not someone you want to hire.
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7 Comments
Dear Nik,
While I respect your opinion, I'd like to state that the research, that I've done might not be scientific, but it is *practical* and holds good for the long term.
While putting forward our points, we've got to look into great companies who truly are world class, who hire the best people in the industry, whose attrition is low and whose products / services are held with high regard in the society.
I'd like to quote Google here for instance. The following piece of information is taken from Google's website where in they describe their hiring process:
"Virtually every person who interviews at Google talks to at least four interviewers, drawn from both management and potential colleagues. Everyone's opinion counts, ensuring our hiring process is fair while maintaining high standards as we grow. Yes, it takes longer, but we believe it's worth it. If you hire great people and involve them intensively in the hiring process, you'll get more great people. We started building this positive feedback loop when the company was founded, and it has had a huge payoff."
Complete article link: http://tinyurl.com/yddldj4
Adil,
Well captured. I would vouch that "demo pit" and "Think tank" practices are something we practice internally and have found to be effective tools.
I tend to agree with Nik where he mentions that some time a five minute interaction can give enough glimpse (akin to the theory mentioned in BLINK by Malcolm Gladwell)..... but never the less this is only a gut-feel and hence should be used sparingly especially when we are dealing with organization requirements.
Interesting debate. Check out the Watson Wyatt Human Capital Index. In terms of return on investment, recruitment excellence beats all others. Relying on gut feel is alright if you are looking for a one night stand, but those of us who have seen more rigorous recruitment processes in play, can vouch for their ability to raise the bar.
At the end of the day, all hiring decisions are gut feel, the trick is to educate your gut feel. Noting sucks like ignorance. Uneducated gut feel will get you an average workforce, again I can cite references if you like. An average workforce is fine if you are in the government sector, or run a monopoly of a remote grocery store and filling station. But if you are in a competitive market and really care about your business, you should strive to hire the best. You need to use all available skills and tools to do this.
The better the manager, the higher the standards. In reality you should only hire as good as you can manage. If you manage by the seat of your pants, then gut feel should be good enough for you. But it wouldn't meed the needs of the real winners.
I know many gut feel managers who are known as a soft touch. Easy to get a job from and gain great experience, because of their crisis management style. But don't mistake activity for output.
On the matter of references, statistically a good reference check is more predictive of success than meeting the candidate in the first place. I recommend asking candidates for about 15 referees, not that I plan on calling them all, but so I can pick the ones I want to call, rather than the prepared and pre-briefed ones the candidate supplies. Ask for colleagues, bosses, direct reports and customers. Don't make it easy to get the job or they will think it is an easy ride to the next pay cheque.
Dr.Bandukwala, good work.. :)
Good article, Aadil. Just a thing - with due respect, all that you said appears interesting to the candidate only if you pay him well enough. When you are creaming your intakes with this big a magnifying glass you better dont expect paying him peanuts:) You get only what you pay for!!
Interestingly, that appears to be total overkill to me. Research published in the New Scientist (so it is actual research, to a scientific standard) demonstrated that this kind of overblown approach to hiring, is no more effective than a decision made in the first five minutes of interview, providing the skill set was correctly evidenced on the CV.
And that's far more cost effective.
Evidence is my criteria, I am yet to see a scientific reaction elsewhere, just a gut reaction from google.
Many things make HR practitioners feel better about themselves, and thus they percieve themselves to be adding value. This just isn't the case, the objective of a business is to make money, recruitment is a loss making activity, and therefore the value add is to minimise the effort placed on this activity whilst retaining maximum benefit.
And there the 5 minute interview, gut feel approach wins hands down, unless you have evidence to the contrary. You know a little science?
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