Recruitment Spotlight: Don’t Hire Anyone without Doing This First

Continuing our summer focus on recruitment and HR issues, how many times has your group tried to hire someone, only to end up arguing over candidates because you don’t all agree about what the new person is there to do?

Hiring smart means doing some work on the front end to make sure you have a good understanding of your open position before you bring people in to attempt to fill it.  The first step is to determine your business requirements.  What are the core products, services, initiatives, and financial circumstances that will impact this new hire?  What are the business problems the new hire will need to solve in the first 90 days or the first year, and what are the major projects he or she will need to complete to this end? 

Next, you’ll want to do some in-house interviewing.  Your mission?  To uncover a profile of the top performer in the open position.  Talk with and observe in action those who are already doing excellent work in the same or similar jobs, and/or get input from the person you’re replacing on the traits, skills, behaviors, attitudes and experience that make them successful. 

It will also help you to understand the role that your corporate culture plays in finding the right candidate.  However, insiders rarely have an objective view of their culture or business, so consider recruiting someone external (a consultant or partner) to ask the tough questions, interview key employees, and create an accurate, objective assessment of your company’s work environment, values, and style.  They would also be in a better position to speak to past employees who have been unsuccessful in the position and learn about the reasons behind their failures.  You never know – they might give you an earful that helps to explain why you’re experiencing turnover in that particular job.

Comments

[Tim Brennan]

Your advice is bang on Alexandra. Your article came up thanks to Google Alerts when you mentioned our company name in your blog. We believe that the traditional hiring system is broken so we created a different way of doing it. One that incorporates many of the points that you made but goes further to eliminating resumes (they are B.S. tools) and fishing where the fish are. You can meet us and some of the people who are HiringSmart at our website or visit us at www.YouTube.com/HiringSmart

Tim Brennan
Chief Visionary Officer
HiringSmart Canada

[Alexandra Levit]

Tim, thanks for your introduction to Hiring Smart! Do you have any suggestions for how readers can effectively interact with your company?