How To Hire Right Employees

Hire people that genuinely believe in your mission and are passionate about your products.  The most important criteria for hiring are competency and fitting the company’s culture. Only hire people who share the values, passions and sense of humour of the firm. 

Always look for integrity. Often it is more important than experience. Key ingredient is learning attitude. Everything else I can train. Either your DNA has it or not. but a person’s personality and demeanour are very difficult to adjust. In addition to having a strong resume and technical background, attitude is very important. If someone displays flexibility, willingness to learn new skill sets, and is a good team member, that is invaluable. Having talented employees can make or break your company. Look beyond what is in front of you.  In addition to what a candidate can bring to your organization today, consider what they can bring as they and the organization grow. The best employees often interview the worst. Look for—and hire—humble, hungry and smart people! These are the key ingredients to building a great team, and when those traits are in balance, great things happen. 

Hiring the right employee matters more than most other decisions you or your management team will make. A bad hire can be downright destructive to a company. A desperation hire likely produces uninspiring results. But a great hire will lift your sprits as well as your profits. Knowing how to hire is as important as knowing your marketing, knowing how to innovate and knowing how to manage corporate cash. The key to having low turnover as well as high-performing employees is in the methods that you use in selecting and interviewing candidates.

 Start with knowing the role

Young companies often do not think through what they need in each role. This may be due in part to the ever shifting nature of start-ups; but not establishing the essential duties, and thus the critical capabilities of an employee, is suicidal. Start with knowing exactly what you want in a hire, and writing a well-defined job description. This includes both education and experience, and it may include specific knowledge, industry contacts, personality profiles and more. It is better to be too detailed than not detailed enough.

Engage many people, especially from outside the department

A few blind men may not be able to know they are touching an elephant, but by collaborating they could likely document the specimen completely.

Leaving hiring selection to a small number of people is the same situation. Everyone perceives things differently, and everyone sees different aspects of a candidate. Only by having an appropriate number of interviewers and a rational method of discussing and scoring the candidate can great hiring decisions be made.

Interview teams should consist of minimum of 3 people, with at least one being from outside the group for which the individual is being interviewed. That last point is significant. Most employees will have to work across departmental or team boundaries. What someone outside the group sees is something people within the group likely will not. Imagine you are hiring a new systems software developer. Other systems programmers and the department head will get the quirks common to this type of genius, and overlook things that might cause problems with applications developers, system admins and others outside the group.

Selecting the 3 or more interviewers is very important and needs to ensure that people with the right disciplines have a chance to interview the prospective employee. There is little use in having our systems programmer chat with anyone in the other dependent section; but not having him or her interviewed by the head of product support could be a deadly mistake.

Allow the candidate to open up

Where and how the interview is conducted affects the accuracy of the interviews.

Find a quiet and private location. Job interviews are stressful enough. Inducing loads of distractions and being subjected to roving onlookers doesn't relax anyone. Easing the candidate gives them a chance to have a personal interview process and, if the interviewers are warm and inviting, to open up about goals, experiences and even personal drawbacks.

Every interviewer should start by saying how much they appreciate having the candidate interviewing with your company. After all, they likely have alternatives. They decided your company was worth considering, just as you decided the candidate was. This mutual vote of confidence is a good start, and should be acknowledged.

Next, During the interview, let the prospective employee do most of the talking while you do most of the listening. Your mission is to find out as much as possible about the candidate, and you cannot do this if your mouth is engaged. The more comfortable the candidate feels while talking with you not only enhances your chances of getting the information that you need, but also the chances of the candidate wanting to join your team.

Learning what is important

Learning what a candidate knows is almost as important as learning who they are. This goes back to making the candidate comfortable and letting them speak. By asking difficult questions, you will make them feel uncomfortable and not expose their truest personality. You can also achieve this by monopolizing the conversation, coming to the interview with a less than positive attitude, or even by bad-mouthing the candidate’s current employer. Instead, by being welcoming, warm, and mostly quiet, you quickly discover what kind of a person they are. You get an idea of whether they will match your company's culture, be agreeable to other employees and meet your expectations.

And the judges score his performance as …

Every company should have a different set of criteria’s. We scored people on appearance, personality, written skills, technical expertise in the job being considered, cultural fit, verbal skills, an “overall” rating, and finally if the interviewer would consider the candidate for the hire (even if the interviewer was outside of the target department).

We looked for a composite score of 3 or higher to even consider the employee. If the primary interviewer – the likely boss – would not consider the candidate for the hire, the prospective employee was not picked unless the application was kicked up to the next level and the decision was made there (very rare and under unusual circumstances). Otherwise, at least 2 out of the 3 people doing the interviewing had to agree to hire the candidate and the candidate’s composite score had to be 70% or higher.

Knowing what you cannot know

There are some things you cannot tell in an interview, and that is why references are required.

Reference checks are mandatory and the employee should supply at least three qualified references, not including their own family or friends; and these people must be technically within the area being considered. Where possible, find two other references that a candidate did not list, be they former co-workers, bosses or even found with a deep scan of the employee’s social media accounts.

Hire above the wire

If you are lucky, you will have multiple, highly qualified candidates from which to choose. But sometimes you do not. Avoid succumbing to the temptation to hire less than the best. An employee who doesn't meet the minimum requirements, who doesn't fit the culture, who leaves interviewers feeling flat, will only slow down your company. Leave slots unfilled until the right person arrives.

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