Ideas for Making Better Choices | No BS Hiring Advice Radio
Who says hiring staff has to be difficult? (From the archives)
When I talk to Job Hunters, I say the skills needed to find a job are different than the skills needed to do a job. And of course, that’s true for them. But from the employer perspective, I think the biggest key toward making an effective change, and becoming even more successful, is being clear and focused on what it is that you’re trying to accomplish in the course of your selection process. Now, in my work, as I say on my website, I’ve evaluated more than 400,000 people my career. I know it’s probably higher than that, but higher than that, but that’s what I was able to figure out pretty quickly.
Competitive Forces: How They Shape Strategy
And with that, my work has resulted in over 1100 hires over the course of my career. And on LinkedIn, I say asked me how I’ve done it. And the answer is, you know, from the jobhunters’ perspective, I am ruthless in how I assess. I don’t just flip resumes like burgers at a fast food restaurant to a client, I’ve legitimately tried to evaluate and assess people, as my clients teach me how to do it for them. And from there, I try to work effectively with my institutional customer to understand how they evaluate assess how they screen people, so I can try to replicate it on my side. Now, I’ll simply say that, that requires some time and effort and requires patience and patience and a client that’s willing to trust me. But I thought with this show, I begin a process of talking with you, my listeners about different ways that you can improve your process, different ways that you can become more effective with hiring. Now, if you think the first show is going to have everything that you need, or what you might as well click off, it’s not going to do that, I can assure you that. But at the same time, I want to say listen with me and stick with me. The show is going to be on iTunes shortly. It will be in a variety of different podcasts directly. So if an iPhone is not your device of choice, be patient that will show up in different podcast directories and I’ll make you aware of it as time progresses.
Now, with this first show, I thought I would just simply talk about some real basic stuff to get that out of the way.
Your 2 Biggest Time Wasters In the Hiring Process
If you consider it basic, that’s the intention, because not everyone may be as skilled as you. So, my thought was to talk about some of the basics of job hunting and job hunting. That’s an old habit from the other show of staffing that I think will help you become more effective and help your organization be more successful. Now, the first thing I want to suggest is that when you interview, have the group be involved in the interview process. I know with a lot of firms, a hiring manager, and perhaps their superior are the only ones involved in the interview. But I encourage organizations to have staff members participate as well. Why very simply, part of what I think makes a successful hire is the ability to fit in. And whether you’re trying to have these people evaluate for skills, I also encourage evaluation for personality fit. And I encourage clients to take the time to ask the team did they like this person?
If not, why? What was it about them that made you uncomfortable? What did you like about them? And why? As part of the evaluation process, you see, ultimately for the leadership, you may only deal with your subordinates, under certain occasions can they perform can they produce can they deliver on time within budget. So all the important criteria that you use to assess and evaluate. From there, the staff is working with him day in and day out. Now, I remember, I used to be with a couple of fairly large recruiting firms, and management would have us involved with the staffing process, having us interview people, and then completely disregard our opinions about staff about the candidates.
I found it completely ridiculous to participate BS and opinion, have a number of us give pretty unilateral comments about staff or about potential hires, only to discover that management disagreed hired the person and with our personality. Now, one of the things to defend against here is the possibility of bias that whether it’s racism, ageism, ageism, sexism, bias toward people who are gay, queer, lesbian, transgender, whatever the bias maybe, you have to have the group conscious that what you’re looking for is talent, and skills needed to do the job and whether or not this person and they can get along. Do you expect perfect camaraderie of course no? But at the same time, you want to be in a situation where you have divergent opinions, people who generally like one another, can get along with one another, and have the skills needed to do a job. So you get the staff involved with the interview process and find out what they think of potential hire, before you make a commitment to someone.
The Disconnect Between the Job Market and Job Hunters
The second thing is for you get clear about what it is you want this person to have in the way of experience. Now I look at job descriptions these days, they can have 15 different criteria in it for what this person must have. Now, sometimes, all 15 are needed. And I’m not going to go into specific circumstances where they are. But most of the time, they really don’t get clear about what it is you want this person to know or have done, how you’re going to evaluate them for those criteria. Be consistent in your evaluation process. That is asking consistent questions of all candidates so that you know that these people can meet these benchmarks that you’ve established. And then from there
Once you’ve identified people who are qualified, ensure that the staff is on board with bringing them off. Often, what tends to occur is some people that ask some questions other people get, as
other questions.
Too much wind goes into the process, with the result being that you may get a good hire, or more likely, people will have questions about whether or not this person can do the job, because they haven’t covered the basics. So along the way, make sure you and your interview team are consistent with how they ask questions and how they evaluate. So for example, in it when someone says I need to hire a Java person, okay, Java is an enormous category. What is it about Java that you need them to really know, layout 5,10, 15 different qualities that this person needs to be expert in, that you can test against, become consistent with questions or provide a written test to ensure that this person can meet those conditions. One of my clients, a large firm, multinational, when trying to hire it, architects will send a written test to this person with the expectation that they deliver great results. It’s a consistent test that’s offered to employees, and the person doesn’t pass the test. Because going further, it’s real simple.
The Best Question to Ask When Interviewing (Manager and Above)
Another thing that you can consider doing when you’re hiring people, is making sure that you look for what I call the twinkle in their eyes. You want to hear them as they’re talking about their experience, display passion and enthusiasm, and a commitment to excellence when they talk about their successes, after all, so often, organizations make the mistake of hiring, good tacticians, we’re kind of tired and burned out and worn out and can do the job. But they don’t really inspire people who work for that. And when you think about what makes a successful hire, especially in leadership roles, that person who can make others better, just by their energy and enthusiasm and their care for what they do goes a long way toward making a successful hire.
Another criterion I want to encourage you to think of is can this person work in ways that are consistent with your firm’s mission? Now, many of you may not even know the firm’s mission. And this may be something that’s more consistent with small organizations. But when you think about how your firm is trying to change the world, how your firm is trying to make magic in the economy.
What is it that this person needs to communicate that lets you know that they’re on board with what you’re doing? Now, sometimes do use an example from the mutual fund industry, the best predictor of future success is past success. And they say that past success doesn’t guarantee for future returns. And they’re absolutely right. But people who’ve been successful in previous organizations are more likely to be successful in yours. What is it that they need to have accomplished? What stories can they tell you that will demonstrate their successes in the past, and then from there, watch for the twinkle in their eyes as they talk, the joy that they have in expressing what it is they’ve done, and how they went about doing that will go a long way toward allowing them to step up in leadership roles. Even if their staff, you could be a leader from a staff position. And thus, that expression of excitement and joy and happiness is something that you need to look for. So those are a couple of points that I want to encourage you to look for.
ABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a career and leadership coach who worked as a recruiter for more than 40 years. He is the host of “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” the #1 podcast in iTunes for job search with more than 2300 episodes. He also hosts Job Search TV on YouTube, Amazon and Roku, as well as on BingeNetworks.tv for Apple TV and 90+ smart sets.
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