Hiring the Right People

I am sure many can relate to hiring the wrong person and how painful it is after you realize it. I too have done my fair share of making hiring decisions that have turned out poorly.? That one decision can lead to months and months of negative impact on your company.??

In a recent WorkItDaily article, author Daryl Hancock insists that critical to a company’s success is not to hire someone until the right candidate is found. He emphasizes “Never waiver off this rule: Decide NOT to settle.” Yes, you need people, but you need the right people, those who are going to be an asset to your organization.?

Hiring the right people takes a commitment not to allow outside influences to cloud your judgment or pressure your hiring decisions. And one of the keys is deciding ahead of time the type of candidate that will benefit your business and what that looks like. With a combination of pre-planning and a shift in focus, you can make hiring a more goal-oriented process to increase the odds that new hires will make the impact you desire on your business and other employees.??

Here are some hiring practices that have helped me not to settle and will help you hire the right people.?

Quality Over Quota?

A major area to focus on when hiring the right people for the job is the quality of the candidate. The goal here is to find long-term employees who will add value to your organization over the lifetime of their employment.??

With an emphasis on workplace diversity and its many common misconceptions and misinterpretations, hiring for quality can present challenges for business leaders, as there is pressure to create a diverse workplace.?

According to a Harvard Business Review article, “Diversity should be understood as the varied perspectives and approaches to work that members of different identity groups bring...They bring different, important, and competitively relevant knowledge and perspectives about how to actually do work—how to design processes, reach goals, frame tasks, create effective teams, and communicate ideas, and lead.”?

Any organization wanting to enrich its ability to remain competitive and grow needs to consider the quality of diverse perspectives and approaches as a skill necessary to an organization’s overall health and processes. What this means is that you want to hire people based on their ability not just to perform the functions of the position adequately, but you want people who bring new ways of thinking, new ways of thought.?

Diversity of Thought??

While it is true that every company must decide on its own preferred qualities in employees, favoring diversity of thought as a quality in new candidates can help your organization to gain new perspectives, approaches, and points of view for problem-solving, innovation, and processes. Tackling these types of issues with new ways of thinking fosters growth and retention.?

Consider this, “Capturing the true benefits of a diverse workforce means not just hiring someone for their background, but also their experience, ability, and perspective.” To realize the benefits of diversity of thought, you need to begin to implement ways of assessing a candidate’s approach to the things that are important to your organization.?

Incorporate assessments and include a set of pre-hire questions for prospective candidates to address. What is most important is to seek out and utilize tools that are available to help you and your company evaluate a candidate’s quality of diversity of thought before the interview.?

Cultural Fit??

Remember, you are not settling. You are looking to hire the right people, not the best people, and it is important not to forget the aspect of your corporate culture and what makes a potential hire a good fit. This is where you really need to assess key indicators for long-term success in your company.?

This starts with you. What defining elements best describe the culture that makes your employees thrive? And not only as individuals but also as a collaborative unit that elevates your business every day.??

Before assessing cultural fit, understand your own company’s culture. What makes everything work and why. Is your company fast paced? Is it the team dynamic that everyone collectively thrives working well under pressure??

For me, a culture of accountability is the key to boosting engagement, performance, and growth. The right people are accountable, they take responsibility for both their performance and business outcomes. Instead of playing the “blame game” when something goes wrong. They step up and take full ownership. This is critical because nothing stifles growth and impedes progress more than a culture of blame and lack of ownership.?

Once your company’s culture is defined, you can then begin to incorporate evaluating for cultural fit in pre-hiring questionnaires and begin to assess and evaluate for cultural fit. Have new hires describe what type of environment they thrive in—does it match your company??

Reining in Your Unconscious Bias?

It is one thing to assess a candidate on paper, it is quite another to evaluate a potential candidate in person. We may have biases to overcome, especially during interviews.

There are two types of bias. We may have an unconscious or implicit bias wherein we react in ways that perpetuate stereotypes. There is also affinity bias wherein we tend to surround ourselves with others who look, behave, and believe as we do.

These biases include, but are not limited to, race, socioeconomic status, gender, age, and sexual orientation. You must purposefully and proactively rein in unconscious biases.?

One way to actively address unconscious bias is to standardize interviews. In a standard interview, each candidate is asked the same questions in the same order. The questions should be focused on the values and qualities for which you are looking—questions that help to assess the candidates’ capability for diversity of thought.??

With a clear objective, you can now go into each interview prepared to assess the best quality candidate that also brings a diverse perspective to your organization.?

Conclusion?

Hiring the right people is about focusing on hiring quality people that will benefit your business and its future growth. A quality candidate is one who can not only perform the job more than adequately but also brings a diversity of thought that can make substantial and significant contributions to your organization.??

Think differently about your hiring processes, strategies, and goals. Spend more time up-front and have a mindset of not settling.?