What's Important Here?
by Neil I. Clark
There are so many things to consider when hiring a new employee,
it’s easy to miss some of the important ones.
The pity of it is that, when all else fails, some managers go on "gut
feeling" when it comes to staff selection.
If hiring staff is actually your full time job, that’s one
thing, but most people have some other function as their major activity.
Hiring, therefore, is usually an ancillary function — just
part of "being a manager".
What are the Factors?
The relative importance of the different elements of hiring vary
according to the type of position you are filling. Following, however,
are some of the major factors:-
- Knowledge and Experience
- Motivation
- External Factors
- Personality
By these things you are, of course, seeking to find out how effective
the candidate will be at producing the results required of the job.
You need to realise, however, that (alone) these things are actually
inferior to the achievement of results. So let’s look at how
each one fits.
Knowledge & Experience.
This is what you see in the candidate’s CV. You have to ignore
the "advertising material" and opinions in the CV and concentrate
on:
- What type of work have they been doing in the past?
- What formal qualifications do they have, if applicable?
- Does their knowledge and experience indicate that they are worthy
of consideration?
If the job is a highly technical one, or if it requires very specific
and detailed knowledge of certain areas, then this alone can
be the
overriding factor. But, in most cases, you are simply looking for
the right background for your work.
And don’t become influenced by the covering letter which often
accompanies a CV. This is a selling document and may be quite persuasive.
Look for the facts. Ignore the opinions.
Knowledge and experience is usually the starting point. It’s
a quick way of eliminating candidates who would be quite unsuitable
for the position. But even when you have a selection of candidates
with the right backgrounds, you are still a long way from deciding
which one will be best for you.
Motivation.
This refers to the reasons they have moved from job to job — in
particular, why they left their last job and why they want yours.
In the final analysis, it’s actually up to you to make the
ultimate judgment here. U-MAN sets the groundwork by carefully checking
several key indicators:-
- What was the candidate’s original intention when taking
their previous job?
- How did that work out once they got established?
- Why did they then leave that job?
One of the best reasons a candidate could give for moving from one
job to another would be because they had
grown out of it.
If they became so good at producing results that they hit a ceiling
and had nowhere else to go, that’s probably the best
motivation for leaving. And, if they see your job as the next step in their
growth, that’s an excellent reason for wanting to work for
you. But you really won’t find all this out until you actually
interview them, and that’s at the end of the process. So, motivation
for your job has to be left to last.
Watch out for false claims here, by the way. Some candidates can
sound very enthusiastic, but it may not be genuine. Animated enthusiasm
is not necessarily a clear indication of motivation. A genuine interest
in the challenges the job poses is a much more reliable way of detecting
potentially motivated candidates.
- Do they ask questions about the job?
- Do they want to know what the end result of the activity is?
- Do they show keen interest in how it has been running?
These are all healthy signs of someone who could get a real kick
out of performing your job. They may even wake up in the morning
looking forward to coming to work. That’d be pretty motivated,
wouldn’t it?
External Factors.
By this we mean those things which can influence a person’s
ability to perform well. These include such things as:-
- A crashing personal problem.
- The distance they have to travel to work.
- The money they need to make.
- Some type of physical disability.
Some people are affected more than others by such things. One may
fall apart completely, whereas another may show no detrimental signs
at all.
There are, for instance, some very productive people who are physically
disabled. They get the results despite their physical shortcomings.
As an example, there was an Administration Manager who was confined
to a wheelchair. Not only did he do an incredible job on his post,
he was known to go down to the garage and give his car a grease and
oil change during his lunch break! How’s that for overcoming
seemingly insurmountable external factors?
Personality.
How does the candidate respond to the problems that life, or the
job, throw at them? What is their general demeanour? Do they have
the right approach and style for this job? These are all questions
of personality. And, yes, they are important, but they are certainly
not the overriding factor in making a hiring decision. They are the
icing on the cake.
The U-MAN Job-Fit Analysis gives a very accurate profile of the
candidate’s personality. This is particularly valuable when
you are looking at a person’s future capability. For example,
if you are hiring a Customer Service Consultant, you may want to
know if they would be capable of eventually taking over as the manager
of the department. They may have good previous results as a Customer
Service Consultant, but no prior people management experience. The
Job-Fit Analysis can tell you if they have the right profile to be
able to develop management skills.
Of course, you can define the "right" personality profile
for any job and judge your candidates on how closely their profile
matches this benchmark. But you have to watch this one because it
is also true that some people with the "wrong" personality
may well be the right choice. You would simply need to know about
their "quirks" so as to manage around them.
Proven Results.
The candidate’s ability to perform is the primary factor in
all this. Consider the following scenarios:
- The candidate has certain knowledge or experience missing from
their background. They have enough to be considered, but not as
much as
other candidates do. If, however, they have done this type of
work before and achieved outstanding results (far greater than
the other "more
qualified" candidates), what does it matter if they don’t
seem to have the same knowledge and experience as the others?
- Consider the candidate who would have to travel further to work
than other, equally qualified, candidates. But suppose they had
to travel just as far in their last two jobs, and it never affected
their ability to perform at those times. If they achieved excellent
results, despite the travel time, this external factor is obviously
not a problem.
- Consider also the sales candidate who appears to be much less
enthusiastic than the others. Their personality is such that they
do not express
their emotions in a highly visible manner. But their sales results
were at the top of the list in their previous jobs, so this aspect
of their personality (their outward appearance) is obviously
not a barrier to production
The point is this: of all the factors you consider when looking
at job candidates, their proven record of results is, by far, the
superior item. If they got results, despite their shortcomings, then
the shortcomings are not important.
From this you can see that you cannot run on any sort of "fixed
formula" when it comes to hiring. You can’t say, "I’ll
only consider people with more than 10 years experience," or, "They
have to live no more than 20 minutes from the office." Imposing
such arbitrary limits on the process could mean you eliminate candidates
who may have actually turned out to be very good performers for you.
Having considered all of the above, the only thing remaining for
you to check (when you conduct the interview) is how motivated they
are for your job. And if you would like some specific tips in this
area, there is a separate document on this subject: "Interviewing
Tips for U-MAN Candidates".
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