Holiday season is over
and teams are gearing up to meet new challenges and goals. It is also time to
hire and look for great talent, some thoughts to help while you look to attract
and hire people.
First and foremost
always let your best people represent and hire. Your most equipped people have
to front end.
Great talent has to be
acquired, just like customers for your business. Being a
leading brand and consistently being rated high as employer of choice across broad
spectrum of publications and media is just entry pass to arena. Organisations
have to be at the top of their game, when it comes to attracting top talent. Begin
by putting your best foot forward. More often, we think that as long as final
interviews are being done by best people, it’s a great hiring process. In
reality, most of the damage has already been done by the time better equipped
people get involved in hiring.
It will be prudent not
to let front-line recruiter, recruiting analyst or HR assistant be the first
contact. Similarly candidates for wide spectrum roles or leadership roles being
interviewed piece meal for technical / skills screen is not smart idea,
although widely prevalent. Instead start with best interviewer and let them
candidly share the need for skill screen post their meeting with potential
hire.
Invest
your time and effort to communicate what you are looking for and what is
special about this opportunity. Only then you are going to get the special one.
When you are contacting someone, you have to make them feel good and wanted
(even if they are currently unemployed). People have to be able to trust you
with their careers and need to feel valued. (Leadership Hiring: Experiences &
Lessons Learnt)
Almost all articles,
presentations and advice on hiring talks about cost of a wrong hire. But hardly
any attention ever is given to talent lost during the process and it’s opportunity
cost.
Avoid staged behavior and environment during interactions with potential candidates. People are sharp
and perceptive, they are able to sense. This creates doubt in candidate’s mind.
Some people will take their cue and adjust their response to play ball but a
lot of them may not be comfortable in such situation. Net net you may not end
up hiring the best. People need to trust you with their career and feel valued.
Get
rid of your bias and conditioning to judge people as too eager, too
enthusiastic, desperate etc. When your sales team is approaching a customer to
acquire the account, would you want them to be less eager or enthusiastic? As
long as candidate meets your values screen and have required skill set, stop
guessing their motives and reasons.
So
many times when hiring managers or key stakeholders tend to add too many
reasons to eliminate candidates and end up supporting not the Best but most
acceptable one. (Tips on Talent Management /
Acquisition from West Wing)
Interviews are
conversation with purpose. They are not interrogation. Asses people based on
their response during conversation. Asking questions like, “give me an example
of out of box thinking on the Job”, will not help. Who knows person may have
applied out of box thinking just that one time and was too happy to share it
with you to cover for his/her lack of creative thinking.
Never use interviews to
coach someone in your team unless some coaching and one on one mentoring
has been done. Organisation train people on hiring skills through class room
training and certify them as Interview panel. People must be mentored and coached
one on one ideally in internal hiring or allocation discussions and interviews
before putting them in Interview panels.
People
are work in progress. Don’t look for best or greatest but look for better and
wanting to be better. They are better bet any day. Hire for Potential, remember, you are hiring
for future. It’s important to gather information and data for past performance
and achievements. But never forget you are hiring for future. (Tips on Talent Management /
Acquisition from West Wing)
“It takes a lot of hard
work to make something simple, to truly understand underlying challenges
and come up with elegant solutions"..... Steve Jobs
Warm regards,
Pankaj
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