Entrepreneurs Guide to Hiring The Best Talent
Published on Dec 23, 2015
The entrepreneurs guide to hiring the best talent - how to hire the best talent so that your company can gain a competitive advantage
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PRESENTATION OUTLINE
hiring the best candidates to make our business more efficient
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Having brilliant or average employees can make or break our business.
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If we want to grow a strong team and a flourishing business, we had better know how to hire.
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The problem is that too many people make the same hiring mistakes over and over again.
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They don’t know how to conduct interviews or write good job descriptions, so they end up hiring the wrong people and wasting resources managing and firing them.
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Then they have to start the whole process over again.
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Enticing and hiring the best candidates.
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the interview trick that’ll prevent your personal biases blocking the right hire;
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what great talent looks for in a job description
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How do you attract the best candidates when trying to fill a position?
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First, educate yourself on some common misconceptions about hiring.
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Recruiters often make mistakes in the interview process.
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They sometimes give too much weight to the interaction between the candidate and interviewer
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most hiring decisions are overly influenced by the interaction at the start of the interview.
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An interpersonal relationship develops between the candidate and interviewer right away, and that can end up swaying the interviewer too much.
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If you immediately like a candidate, you’re more likely to ask them easy questions as the interview goes on.
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If the candidate lacks certain skills, you might dismiss this, thinking they’ll be able to learn them later.
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On the other hand, if you dislike someone from the start, you’ll probably be harsher on them
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You might subconsciously start looking for their flaws to prove that your negative first impression was correct.
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We also have a natural tendency to focus on candidates’ skills instead of their ability to actually do the job at hand.
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When you put too much emphasis on a person’s performance in an interview, you might lose sight of what the job actually involves.
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So remind yourself to focus on your candidate’s capabilities, not the impression they give off.
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Aim for objectivity.
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You’ll pay more attention to performance requirements when you push yourself to be more objective.
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How can you do this?
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First off, wait at least 30 minutes after an interview before you make any hiring decisions.
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The real key to ensuring that you’re hiring by performance is to create performance profiles.
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Traditional job descriptions aren’t effective at finding the best candidates.
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Most people recruit by writing a job description that contains a long list of desired skills or traits.
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That’s not the most effective method,
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So don’t rely on job descriptions.
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A performance profile outlines the goals of the position, rather than the skills and qualifications it requires.
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So don’t just say you’re looking for a candidate who’s good at market research, for instance.
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Say you expect the person to “prepare a comprehensive competitive analysis report in the first month.”
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When you emphasize specific tasks, you’ll turn the job’s requirements into measurable objectives.
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Focus on what your candidates can do, rather than what they have.
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The employee’s skills aren’t what matters
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it’s what they can do with them that counts.
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When you’re preparing your performance profile, set a benchmark for the ideal candidate.
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How would the best possible employee do the job?
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Giving candidates a task is much more useful than having them respond to a job description.
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The best candidates look for positions based on what they’ll be doing and learning, not the skills they already have.
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An ambitious person won’t be attracted to a job description that’s just a boring list of duties
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so use performance profiles if you want to bring in the best people.
Be creative with your recruitment methods.
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Many businesses struggle to develop a recruitment process that’s efficient.
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We sometimes forget what the true purpose of a recruiting department is supposed to be.
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Recruitment should be about finding the best candidates in the shortest period of time at the lowest possible cost.
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Instead, businesses put out lackluster ads full of boring details and hope they’ll somehow attract the right person.
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Don’t go down that path. You’ll just end up shooting in the dark.
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Average job descriptions will bring in average people.
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If we use the same recruitment strategy as everyone else, our position and company won’t stand out at all.
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Strive to use a variety of interesting recruiting techniques instead.
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Remember: the companies that win in recruitment are those that have the most creative and aggressive recruitment programs.
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Here’s a tip: treat our candidates like potential customers, not future subordinates
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Interviews should be a fact-finding mission, not a popularity contest.
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Don't use interviews as tests to see whether the candidate will fit in with the company or not.
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It’s not a good use of an interview.
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An interview should really be about testing to see if the person can do the job well.
So use performance-based interviews instead.
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Performance-based interviews are about fact-finding.
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Ask the candidate about the most important things they’ve accomplished in their career.
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If you’re interviewing for an entry-level position, ask them about a project they felt proud of.
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There are many ways you can phrase this.
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For example, you can ask, “Can you describe a project or task you were involved in that made you feel proud?”
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A good answer to the MSA question tells you almost everything you need to know to make a good hiring decision.
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So if the person tells you they’re proud that they once patched up a disorganized team and led them into giving a great presentation, you’ll know they’re a natural leader.
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The second most important thing to ask is the how-would-you question.
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Do that by describing a problem to the candidate and asking how they’d solve it.
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It shows you how well they can improvise and solve job-specific problems.
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Imagine you’re interviewing for a sales management position.
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You might want to know how they’d approach selling a new product, for instance.
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Sometimes interviewers don’t ask follow-up questions because they’re afraid of appearing confused.
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Details are important, however, so make sure you get as many as you can.
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first impressions can be deceptive in interviews.
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It’s easy to get hung up on emotional prejudices when hiring – you should actively strive to avoid that.
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So here are some good tips for staying focused on the right things during the recruitment process.
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First off, use evidence-based assessments.
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Evidence-based assessments ensure that you’re judging candidates using solid evidence, not just your gut feeling.
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If you’ve made your performance profiles, you’ll already know what the ideal candidate looks like.
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Draw up assessment charts too.
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Hold debriefing sessions after your interviews so you can share information and compare your thoughts.
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First, they’re more objective and goal-oriented.
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You can’t get sidetracked with trivia when there are three people conducting the interview.
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In one-on-one interviews, you sometimes spend so much time thinking about the next question that you forget to listen to the person’s answer.
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When there are more people in the room, you can alternate the questions and focus more on the candidate.
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Panel interviews can be intimidating for the candidate
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If you’re going to use a panel, warn them beforehand.
Check your candidates’ references and backgrounds.
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Interviews are important, but don’t hire anyone because of their interview alone.
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That shouldn’t be the only way you assess our candidates. Take care to check them out thoroughly.
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If not, you’ll just waste more time and resources training and firing someone you shouldn’t have hired in the first place.
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It’s a bad sign if your candidate doesn’t have any references.
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But positive references aren’t necessarily a good sign either – that’s why you need to check them.
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Be thorough. If a referee says the candidate has good people skills, ask for specific examples.
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If you really like a candidate, you might unintentionally shy away from asking their referees tough questions about them.
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You should also do a background check on your candidates.
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Check their degrees, employment history, driving record and criminal record.
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You might think this all sounds like a lot of work just for recruitment, but remember:
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Do the work in the beginning instead of finding out when it’s too late!
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Great recruiting is a process of buying and selling.
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Some people get confused about where the recruitment process actually begins and ends.
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it starts the day you announce the vacancy, and continues until the final interview.
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In the beginning of the recruitment process, the candidate is selling and the company is buying.
They have to prove they fit our profile.
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So learn as much as you can about your candidates before you commit to buying them – just as you would with any other major purchase.
You become the seller and they’re the buyer.
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When you make someone an employment offer, you’re really trying to sell the idea that our company is the best place for them to work.
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If they have other opportunities, you’ll have to work harder to show yours is the best.
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You could entice a strong candidate by offering them a mentor in the office, for instance
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A mentor might be able to convince them that our company is good for their professional development.
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Never sell the job on the money alone.
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Always make it about opportunity!
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Other companies can always pay more – that’s not what wins great candidates.
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in our experience the best people rarely take jobs for the money.
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Instead, they take them because they want to fulfill their personal goals and ambitions.
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Recruitment is one of the most important elements of our company. After all, our company is defined by our employees, so it’s essential to find the right ones.
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So strive to be objective, give thorough interviews and background checks, and negotiate well once you’ve found the right person
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Recruiting the best people will pay off enormously in the end.
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