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CRITERIA TO HELP YOU DEFINE THE BEST AND BRIGHTEST TALENT
Before you even begin your search for people to join your organization, itâs important to define your key criteria for evaluating resumes and selecting finalists to come in to interview. This section describes the four key attributes I look for and why; feel free to choose your own. Before you delve into isolating the core competencies for a particular position and generating behavior-based questions that highlight those competencies, you need to identify your values that drive your recruitment and selection efforts. Once youâve done that, you then need to determine which interview questions help you determine whether a particular candidate meets those criteria.
LONGEVITY
Longevity represents the potential return on investment from a new hire relative to your involvement in that individualâs onboarding and training. In many cases, candidatesâ resumes display a rhythm or cadence in terms of how long they remain with companies (barring exceptional circumstances that are outside candidatesâ control, such as layoffs). Therefore, when interviewing candidates, focus on their reasons for leaving prior positions, because these reasons serve as the link in career progression that defines their values and career management strategies. Most important, ask why they are considering leaving their current company and how your organization can fill the need they are trying to achieve.
If the reason is because of layoffs, always distinguish between group layoffs and individual layoffs. Group layoffs can impact hundreds or even thousands of people, so thatâs clearly a no-harm, no-foul reason for leaving a company. But if employees appear to be individually selected for layoff, that could be a red flag: companies may be opting to lay off specific individuals and offer a severance package as an alternative to pursuing progressive discipline and structuring a termination for cause. Likewise, if a candidate can explain objectively how the layoff selection criteria were applied without sounding bitter or resentful, those objective career introspection skills may demonstrate a high level of emotional intelligence and business maturity. Finally, if someone survived multiple rounds of layoffs and was the last to leave and asked to âshut the lights offâ on the last day, that could speak to a high level of trust and loyalty from the organization and weigh very favorably in that personâs candidacy.
When candidates orchestrate their own moves and point to the most common response, âNo room for growth,â challenge their interpretation of what growth means to them. For some, it may mean promotion to higher levels of responsibility, and for others it may mean a lateral assumption of increased responsibilities (for example, an overseas rotation or exposure to other parts of the business). Still others view growth potential strictly in terms of salary increases and believe theyâre not paid their market worth. Candidates who expect your company (or any employer) to make up for their failure or inability to maintain market pay parity are making a mistake. Itâs not your organizationâs job to help restore candidates to their perceived level of market worth. So be wary of candidates expecting salary increases in excess of 20 percent.
PROGRESSION THROUGH THE RANKS
To identify and highlight candidatesâ penchants for promoting through the ranks, ask:
This question cuts right to the chase. It helps candidates frame their entire resume, demonstrating where they began and how they got to their present company and level of responsibility. It also helps you gauge their ability to summarize large blocks of information succinctly and accurately.
What if a candidate began in the role of controller eight years ago and is still in that role (that is, there has been no vertical progression)? Of course, thatâs absolutely fine in terms of the candidateâs credentialsâwho wouldnât want someone with eight years of dedicated service to a particular role within the same company? But this question itself may imply that there should be some sort of upward progression, and candidates may be embarrassed or feel bad about not being able to answer it within that context.
To allow for an easy out, simply add a follow-up question like this:
That follow-up question goes a long way in allowing the candidate to respond in a different way and explain the many challenges faced over that period of time and how the candidate adapted to them.
TECHNICAL SKILLS AND EDUCATION
Technical skills and education provide a foundation that helps justify hiring one candidate over another. After all, if candidates have the right software or equipment skills, medical licensure, educational certification, and the like, they certainly qualify on paper as finalists for the position. But like all things in life, having the paper certificate or the background experience alone doesnât tell you much about how well they perform in a particular area or how they approach their work on a day-to-day basis. Also, itâs perfectly acceptable to state, âPlease answer this in laymanâs terms, as I donât have my degree in microbiology,â or something similar. Candidates will always try to accommodate your requests for a simple explanation, as long as you volunteer your shortcomings up front and transparently. Therefore, engage candidates by asking questions such as this:
Expect a typical response of eight; most candidates wonât tell you theyâre a ten because they donât want to come across as arrogant or as a know-it-all, but they probably wonât grade themselves below a seven for fear that youâll screen them out as underqualified.
Your follow-up question, then, would logically be:
Asking the question this way allows candidates to highlight their skills gap and explain why accepting this position would help them learn new things and be motivated by the role. Additional follow-up questions might then be:
Again, ask candidates to explain why they want to join your organization, what motivates them most, and why they see this opportunity as an excellent move overall within the context of their own career management planning. Itâs a healthy opening exercise for any interview, and candidates generally appreciate your transparent interviewing style because youâre helping them connect the dots in their own career development.
PERSONALITY MATCH/X-FACTOR/PERSONAL CHEMISTRY
This criterion is often misleading. We all tend to hire in our own image, but initial likability doesnât necessarily equate with compatibility on the job. Since many managers tend to hire people they initially like and hit it off with, be careful not to make this your first criterion; make it your last. Compatibility is such a key element of successful new hires that it canât be understated how important this âmatchingâ feature is. Simply put, a successful headhunter or in-house recruiter knows how to match an individualâs personality and workstyle to the culture of the organization, department, or unit where that candidate will be working. When the fit works naturally and seamlessly, the chances of a new hireâs success skyrocket. Itâs totally within your control to develop a âfit factorâ mindset and approach to candidate selection from this point forward in your career. Even more importantâitâs fun and exciting.
Only use this issue as a swing factor once youâve delved into the first three objective criteria in a diagnostic and dispassionate manner. I address âpersonalityâ and âpersonal styleâ further in chapter 4 because itâs important to understand that the glue that binds someone to a particular job or company is emotional in nature more than it is technical or cognitive. Therefore, this aspect of your interview-questioning strategy will play a critical role toward the end of the interviewing process. Youâll also have a chance to confirm your initial instincts with a candidateâs prior supervisors during the reference checking process and before you extend an offer of employment.
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MAXIMIZING YOUR RECRUITMENT RESOURCES
Selecting outside organizations to help you identify and approach high-performance job candidates can be highly effective if you know how best to use their services. Following is a brief description of four types of resources you might consider.
OPTION ONE:
CONTINGENCY SEARCH FIRMS
There are two types of contingency recruiters: administrative support recruiters and professional/technical search recruiters. Traditional administrative support agencies place administrative assistants, staff accountants, customer services representatives, and the like: job candidates generally earn $75,000 a year and under. In contrast, professional/technical agencies usually specialize in individual disciplines, such as accounting and finance, data analytics and IT, retail, software engineering, and pharmaceutical sales, in which candidates typically earn between $65,000 and $125,000 a year.
Both types operate on contingency, meaning they get paid only if you, the client, hire one of their candidates. Contingency recruiters earn a fee based on a percentage of a candidateâs annual salary, typically 1 percent per thousand dollars of the candidateâs first-year earnings, to a maximum of 33 percent. For example, if youâre a semiconductor manufacturer looking for an early-career sales engineer who earns $85,000 a year, then your fee to a contingency recruiter who successfully finds someone for you is $28,050, or 33 percent of $85,000.
Contingency search firms also offer a safety-net guarantee period in case a candidate doesnât work out in the first quarter. Those guarantees usually come in the form of a thirty-day free trial period (where the fee you paid is totally refunded) and a ninety-day candidate-replacement period (where the agency replaces the candidate at no additional cost). Fees and guarantee periods may be negotiable, depending on your market and the demand for the particular types of candidates youâre pursuing.
The search firms that are the most successful at meeting clientsâ demands flourish. Therefore, working with contingency recruiters is a win-win situation: you pay only if you hire their candidate and the individual remains with your organization for a minimum period of time (i.e., through the initial trial period).
OPTION TWO:
RETAINED-SEARCH FIRMS, OR HEADHUNTERS
The retained-search business is much more exclusive than contingency search firms. Retained recruiters typically target candidates earning $100,000 and up. For example, if a semiconductor manufacturer is looking for a general manager with an MBA and ten or more years of power electronics experience in the international arena to become part of a $20 million company with eight hundred employees, then a retained recruiter would bid for the business and begin the search.
Of course, there might only be fifty or a hundred people in the whole country who meet your exacting criteria. That means that the headhunter w...
