A Big Decision
When you are running a business, there are always important decisions to make: What should my sales target be? How much profit do I need? How should I position my products and/or services in the market place and which ones should I focus on? However, probably the single biggest decision a business can make concerns the staff that it hires. I am sure that you will be able to think of time when you worked with someone who had a massively positive impact on those around them as well as someone who was actually toxic to the company and brought the whole place down. Unfortunately, it is all too easy to hire the wrong person but extremely difficult and usually costly to get rid of them. So, with that in mind what are five key things that can be done to minimise the chance of a bad hire?
1. Properly define the kind of person you want.
There is no substitute for defining the responsibilities of the role and the associated characteristics of the person required for it. This should be documented in a Job or Position Description (JD/PD) and when written it should be reviewed by all those who will be working closely with this person – the boss, peers and direct reports. It’s amazing how varied the perspectives can be and a written JD or PD will do much to surface these and hence maximise the chance of aligning perspectives.
2. Train your interviewers.
Considering that this can be viewed as ‘a business’ biggest decision’, it is incredible how few businesses actually train those who do the interviewing. The result is an interview that tends to focus more on technical skills (which can often be learnt) rather than culture fit. The latter is much more important since while you can train someone on a particular tool or system, try ‘training’ them on initiative, work ethic or care for team members!
3. Understand their core values and motivations.
Item 2 above highlights the importance of cultural fit, but how is this determined in practice? “Cultural fit” is generally achieved through an alignment of individual’s core values and those of the company. There are a range of questions that can be used to elicit this such as: “what did you like/dislike about your last job?”; “list five key words that describe your character” and “describe a conflict situation and how you handled it”. Understanding why they really want the job is also of paramount importance since someone may be able to perform the technical elements and fit with the culture but it won’t last if the role does not really motivate the candidate.
4. Get evidence.
There are some people that are simply very good at interviews and may exaggerate things to put themselves in the best possible light, so how do you discern fact from fiction? One way that this can be done is to get specific evidence of a key behaviour. So instead of asking how they would handle a particular situation, better to ask something along the lines of “tell me about a time when you demonstrated….” and insert the specific skill or attribute you are looking for.
5. Be honest and open about the role.
There can be nothing worse for starting a role than a good new employee rocking up for work on their first day and finding that the job and/or company is nothing like what was described. For this reason, you should ensure that every candidate knows exactly what they are letting themselves in for warts ‘n all as part of the interview process. This does not necessarily need to be expressed negatively but for example if occasional after hours working is required, this would need to be made clear right at the outset. Failure to do so might lead to a very short tenure.
Ian Ash ACC, AinstiB
Managing Director OrgMent Talent Solutions www.omtalent.com.au