Hiring Smart Rather than Managing Tough is EASY

Jobs’ truly understood the essence of hiring smart and the importance of attracting A+
players, something many companies can learn from.

Too often, we see companies wasting enormous amounts of time managing C players, rather than investing in making smart hires.

So how do you AVOID hiring the wrong people, and ultimately hire the RIGHT people?

Here are 5 things the BEST hiring managers are doing:

1. Partnering with HR. Hiring managers can’t blame HR for all of the bad resumes they receive if they are not willing to give HR the time and guidance they need to understand the role they are hiring for. This means DO NOT just give them a job description and expect HR to know what the “perfect candidate” will look like.

2. Interviewing with a purpose. Many hiring managers interview by having a general conversation with the candidate OR a list of pre-approved generic “what are your strengths and what are your weakness” questions.

Ask yourself, what do those questions tell you? Are you measuring cognitive ability or past performance ability, two factors that predict future performance? If the answer is no. Then toss out those questions.

Instead write up questions that will focus on three things and ONLY three things:

1. Cognitive ability ? one of the best predictors of performance is the ability to problem solve, critical thinking skills, and new learning capability.

2. Accomplishments ? the best predictor of future performance is past performance. Focus on what the candidate accomplished in the past that will directly translate
to what you want accomplished in the job you’re hiring for.

3. Culture-fit ? Remember skills and experience can be taught. Motivations, behaviors, and culture-fit cannot. Make sure you have a clear “picture” of what the candidate’s ideal culture is, once you know that, you can determine if they are a good culture-fit with what you are offering.

3. Standardizing the interview process. Each candidate should go through the same interview process. That means they will have the same number of interviews, they will meet the same people, and be asked relatively the same questions. Don’t just have a candidate meet with whoever is available on that day.

What you will get with this is a more objective evaluation of the candidates. This results in an equal and not biased evaluation.

4. Never, never, never compromising on quality. Hiring the wrong person is tremendously costly and damaging to a company. Under no circumstances should the quality of your hire be compromised.

Even if you need to have that position filled yesterday, hiring the wrong person will “tell” the top performers you do have that “mediocre” is acceptable and ok in your organization. The result will be that your top talent will NOT stick around very long.

5. Knowing how to measure right-fit and culture-fit. Simply because a candidate has the skills and experience to do the job doesn’t ensure they will be successful in your organization nor guarantee they will successfully adapt to the environment, culture or management styles. Make sure you are NOT just hiring based off credentials, skills and experience.

Instead come up with a fact-based, unbiased, objective way to assess and evaluate your top candidates.

As the hiring manager, it should be your absolute #1 priority to hire the right people.

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We’d love to hear from you!

What Best Practices are you or your hiring managers are doing?

If you want to learn how to start attracting, engaging and hiring more A+ candidates shoot us an email at info@wejungo.com or comment below.

Amanda Inouye: Communications coordinator at Wejungo, Amanda’s passion lies with helping people and companies find the best solution to their business challenges.