Today many are struggling to figure out which direction to take next; others are hiring the pick of the crop. A better question to ask then is who can afford not to to take the time to hire great people?
“At most companies, people spend 2% of their time recruiting and 75% managing their recruiting mistakes.”
– Richard Fairbank, CEO, Capital One
Think about it. Thousands and thousands of people, thankful just to have any job, have been stuck in low-paying jobs offering little or no career growth. Many of these are excellent candidates who, having patiently bided their time, are now ready to move out and up to a higher-growth, faster-tracking company. Don’t miss out!
Mastering the Art of Assessing Job Candidates
“The more complex the job the greater the impact on productivity and a company’s bottom line between average and star performance. And therefore the greater the importance on hiring the right people.” —Egon Zehnder International
Also from Egon Zehnder … the difference between an average performer and a star performer to a company’s bottom line is 240% in insurance sales and 400% in professional technical roles.
Clearly then nothing is more important to your career success than making great people decisions. When you become a manager everything you do will depend upon the quality of the people working for you. Everything.
The paradox is that so few of us are trained or supported in these skills. Among the most common hiring mistakes is, and this is a very common and natural bias, we hit it off with, and therefore lean towards hiring, people with similar backgrounds or styles of thinking to ourself. The other is unskilled interviewers doing the screening.
People need to be skilled in interviewing in order to make accurate assessments and, equally important, to motivate qualified candidates to want to work with you and your team.
3 WAYS TO IMPROVE THE INTERVIEWING PROCESS
- Know what questions to ask that ensure the candidate has demonstrated the competencies you need.
- Use behavioural based interview techniques to assess competencies that are essential to the job, and to find out what they’ve done and how they’ve performed in previous jobs that demonstrate those competencies.
- Check references. Generally people believe (and will tell you) they are much better than they are. Reference checks are like a reality check on whether someone is as good as they say they are. When talking with references get additional feedback and input around those specific competencies.
- Executive Retained Search
- Contingency Recruitment
- Contract Staffing
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