How to hire the right manager

The pinnacle of any employer’s recruitment goals is to have a strong, skilled team where each individual embraces the organisation’s values.

Central to achieving that objective is hiring the right managers.

Whatever the size of the team reporting into them, managers are often looked upon to reinforce the organisation’s values, offer support, guidance and lead their team to achieve their goals.

These responsibilities, for many organisations, are also synonymous with leadership. And great leaders for your business can often be hard to come by.

So, what can you do to attract high calibre managers, who can lead as well as manage processes and operations?

The first step is to be confident in what your organisation’s values are. Create a guiding principles document that outlines the culture of your organisation, from what makes your organisation successful through to the at- titudes your employees embrace.

With this document in mind, you have the foundation for hiring a new manager that fits with your organisation.

Ensure your recruitment agency fully understands your organisation’s values and can confidently communicate them to potential candidates. Anyone recruiting for your new managers should be real brand advocates, giving candidates a flavour of what they can expect from your organisation from the very first steps in their job search.

When you begin the recruitment process make sure you are clear on what personality traits and qualities you require for each specific managerial role.

Consider the team they will be leading – what sort of individual will work well with them? Will this manager need to be a problem solver, a great motivator, and a decision maker?

If possible, ask those who have previously worked in the role for anything they found particularly challenging as a manager. Keep this feedback in mind and base interview questions around them to understand more about how potential candidates would cope in those scenarios.

Avoid generalising what you require from managers across your organisation.

Although you will want managers to embrace your company’ s values in each department, they will face different challenges and be working with different teams.

Finally, great managers are often great leaders. It’s notnecessarily about limiting your candidate search to individuals with the right sector experience but it’s also about looking for those who have a track record of leading teams, influencing others, accepting criticism in apositive manner and, perhaps most importantly, who you can imagine being a part of your organisation.