Looking for High-Potential Traits in Unexpected Candidates

What happens when two candidates are nearly impossible to choose between? Sometimes, unconscious biases can slip in and influence a final hiring decision that may steer you wrong. To keep your hiring decisions structured and unbiased while also making the best hires for your team, it’s important to identify unique skills and traits that reveal high-potential candidates.?

This approach to interviewing also works well when you have candidates who don’t meet all the requirements. Of course, you want to weigh the pros and cons of gaining or losing significant qualifications, but looking for high-potential talent with these traits can easily be the decision that adds high-quality hires to your team:

They are comfortable taking the lead

While not everyone on a team can be the leader, it’s helpful to have several employees who are comfortable taking the lead on projects. This distributes the burden or responsibility for organizing collaborative tasks, which can lead to burnout if not shared in some capacity.

Often, when candidates are looking for entry-level positions, they don’t have experience in a leadership role in the workplace. Take for example, college graduates. Building questions into your interview process that assess for leadership skills that might not be evident on a resume helps you identify high-potential hires.

For example, a candidate may be have been a club president or team leader in college athletics. While that information may not be suited for a standard professional resume, opening the discussion to understand their responsibilities and how they came into their position can be helpful determining if they seek out leadership opportunities or if they can step into the role easily when needed.

They work well autonomously

Since 2020 – the global pandemic – most candidates have examples to share of how well they work independently. Whether in the workplace or classroom, they found themselves producing their work online. This experience has empowered a remote workforce like never before.

Working autonomously is not for everyone. You may want to find talent with strong evidence they can be productive and problem solve without supervision, even if your team has returned to work. After all, the companies that thrived through shelter in place mandates in recent years were those with workforces that could perform well working remotely or safely distanced from one another.

Asking situational questions that encourage candidates to expand on how they managed their tasks and time efficiently or troubleshot an obstacle on their own gives you insights into how self-sufficient they might be on the job.

They are resilient and adaptable

There are a few invaluable skills and traits candidates might possess that are nearly impossible to reveal on a resume or portfolio. Emotional intelligence (EQ), for example, not only determines how well a potential hire can control their emotions and make level-headed decisions when faced with challenges, but also it reveals how they impact the people around them.

There is an innate element to EQ but it’s not strictly a personality trait. It can be practiced and refined. Candidates should be able to share at least one experience in work or school when there was a problem they had to overcome with composure, whether their own or one affecting the group.?

Asking candidates to explain the emotional energy surrounding the situation and their understanding of the consequences if it escalated helps you identify candidates with high emotional intelligence and adaptability. It’s more important to recognize their ability to control their emotions and calmly compose the reactions of those around them than they have experience specific or even relevant to the workplace.

They build valuable relationships??

Candidates with impressive networks may seem like they understand the importance of establishing professional connections, but it’s more important that they are developing meaningful relationships in and out of the workplace. It’s important to look for evidence candidates engage with their network connections and provide value.

A candidate who has just a few dozen network connections but shares and engages on relevant and valuable industry information demonstrates they are invested in learning and growth. This is true not just for themselves but their peers as well. It helps to ask candidates about their experience networking and how their desire to develop their knowledge and skills translates to personal interaction with colleagues and peers.?

They are competitive and collaborative?

A healthy level of competition challenges employees to push themselves and break out of comfort zones. For example, setting sales goals for each team member. But employees who cannot also collaborate and contribute to team goals in a way that’s encouraging for everyone can be toxic in the workplace.

Ideally, you want to find talent with a go-getter drive that is equally invested in team spirit. People who enjoy participating in group activities generally exhibit these traits. You may want to ask questions like, “How important is it to win, and at what cost?” Or you could ask them about a time they let someone take a winning shot or lead a group presentation. How did it make them feel to see a peer succeed in an activity they would have liked credit for?

High-potential talent reveals itself in many ways. It’s not always quantifiable. Crafting creative questions that help get to the core a candidates’ ambitions, passions, and values is essential to finding the hires that can add value and grow with your team.

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