Hiring Top Performers not Top Charmers

We’ve all been there. On paper the candidate looks like a top performer and has excellent experience, impressive knowledge about your company, and is relatively comfortable - a good first impression. In the interview they are able to hold their own and even provide insight on how the job could be brought to life to support company goals. They were even charming and the fit seems perfect. Once on board, however, you begin to realise you’ve made a bad hire!

So, in a brief encounter, how do you uncover the truth behind the words, the paper and the acting? How do you trust that the candidate will perform to your expectations and standards? How will you get their references to tell all? A challenge indeed! There are many overly clinical and prescribed approaches, but we like to keep things simple but systematic. One system that seems to make sense is that of Brad Smart, author and organisational psychologist. He says that the following steps will ensure you hire a stellar performer:

• Identify the areas in which you need the candidate to be a star
• Identify candidates through your networks of people
• Ask each one to say how their past supervisors would rate their effectiveness in each of the areas you identified
• Ask the candidate to arrange for those past supervisors to call you and in those chats, ask about the candidate’s abilities in each of the areas you identified

While important, these steps are too simple for our liking. Trotting out the age old hypothetical questions asking candidates to provide solutions to real life issues associated with the job can be revealing. Target the scenarios that would and likely have made you worry. They can give you a sense of how well the person understands key behaviours required for success in that job and with your company.

And, a few more obvious omissions from this list that will make your approach even more robust include the use of an interview guide for each interviewer to follow step-by-step. Not rocket science - but make sure the questions are based on the areas you identified in #1 above. This is likely the most important step in giving you an edge.

Oh, and we mustn’t forget what might be seen as that pesky score sheet related to the guide - this will aid enormously in keeping you from forgetting how well each candidate did. It will also stop you from over-rating interpersonal charm.

Those of you who are tightly into process may want to put a little more metrics in here, but to us these are the simple and needed ingredients in hiring winners every time - charming or not!

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