Three Most Important Things to Look for When Recruiting
We all know that the better the people the more successful the business. Which is why recruitment is such a vital component of success.
I’m sure as a leader we can all confirm just how different the experience is when working alongside a good team member.
Someone who knows what they are doing and is naturally motivated when compared to a team member who is struggling and is challenging to work alongside.
Just the hours spent on managing poor performance is enough reason on its own to justify why getting recruitment right is absolutely necessary.
In this week’s article, I want I share with you some tips on what to look out for when recruiting so that you can make sure that the people you work alongside are of the highest quality.
Talent
The first and most unavoidable thing to look for when recruiting talent is, does the potential candidate have the essential skills in order to add value to your business?
There’s no point in hiring someone who can’t do what you need them to do.
I know that most businesses overcome this by looking for people who have had direct experience in doing the exact same work that they are recruiting for.
But be aware that this may limit options which means you could miss out on exceptional candidates.
Candidates who have transferable skills but never had an opportunity to display them in the workplace.
A good tip is to make the recruitment process as close as you can get to the actual work that the candidate will be performing on their role.
The days of the traditional interview process of just asking candidates a series of questions is over.
All it did was tell you who was good at interviewing rather than who will be good for the role.
So, feel free to include exercises that replicate the common tasks required of the role.
The more talented the candidate the quicker they will be able to add value.
Alignment of values
A lot of recruitment processes fail not because the candidate isn’t right for the job but more because the job isn’t right for the candidate.
By that I mean they can do the job but they are not happy doing it which means they become demotivated and eventually leave. And this means you have to start recruiting all over again.
This happens due to a misalignment of values. The number one reason why people are not happy in their workplace is that the values they personally hold dear are not reflected in those around them at work especially in the leadership. This is why when you are recruiting you must spend time on the alignment of values.
The challenges when discussing values when recruiting is that if you ask someone if they are honest or hard working, they are of course going to say yes.
It’s not that they are necessarily lying, it’s more that people generally believe they possess the qualities that you usually find in a company’s values so you need to be smarter.
You can present common ethical scenarios that happen in the workplace and ask how would they approach them.
The key is to hire people that believe in what you believe in.
If you can achieve this, you can avoid dealing with disgruntled co-workers.
Teachability
The most successful workers are those who have the ability to learn, learn new skills and systems as well as learning from their own mistakes.
They have a desire for continuous improvement. You often find that new people find learning easy yet maintaining that thirst for knowledge is difficult.
And becomes more difficult the longer a person is employed in the same role.
This is why when you look at studies on employee engagement, people tend to become less engaged the longer they are in the same role. It’s important to differentiate between a thirst for knowledge and a thirst for education.
You don’t want people who want to collect certificates instead you want people who want to become a better version of themselves.
When recruiting, it’s common to talk about a candidates record of success and sometimes failure and that’s okay.
But when you do this it’s important that you dig deep into the process and philosophy behind their successes and failures.
It’s not so much the result they achieved but how they got to that result that counts.
If someone doesn’t know why things worked it’s not a good sign.
But if they can diagnose why something happened and what they did different as a result, then you have the basis of someone who has teachability.
I’ve always believed that in business you should hire slowly and fire quickly.
If someone is not working out then they need to be exited as soon as possible yet when hiring you need to take your time.
Too often I see managers recruit anyone who is barely good enough just because they want someone in quickly.
Yet they don’t realise that if you don’t get the best person then the time they believe they are saving by hiring quickly is nothing compared to the many hours that are wasted when dealing with poor performance or unmotivated individuals.
For a leader recruiting is the single most important task that they can do in order to positively impact the culture of the team. Get the right person and everyone benefits.
Laszlo Bock, Co-founder and CEO of Humu and Author of Work Rules said:
“Hiring is the most important people function you have, and most of us aren’t as good at it as we think. Refocusing your resources on hiring better will have a higher return than almost any training programme you can develop”