Successful Hires - Insights

Question: Why does there need to be anymore than 2 interviews?

There are only ever 2 answers to this question...

Answer 1: The hiring manager doesn't have the interviewing experience required to assess a candidates' worthiness of an offer.

Answer 2: There are unfortunate psychological scars present, due to previous hiring gone wrong.

So lets start with the latter, "Hiring Gone Wrong"... Let's be honest we've all hired someone who we very quickly realised wasn't suitable or good enough. Agree?

I personally hired someone that I thought was fantastic during an interview and was very keen for them to start. It turns out they didn't want to do anything they were advised to do and genuinely believed they knew better than everyone in the business. Not going to work!

Look it happens, some people can take direction and some people simply can't. Some people can do what they say they're going to do and some people are experts in excuse making - usually due to a lifetime of never doing as they say they will.

Back to Hiring Gone Wrong...

What usually happens in this scenario is Hiring Managers like to 'keep face' and not admit they have hired the wrong person, whilst spending unnecessary hours bringing the new hire up to a level where they avoid being in the spotlight of other colleagues or even change or remove responsibilities whilst not being able to reduce their salary in line with what is actually being produced. Sound familiar?

Now what about interviewing experience... This is actually a lot more simpler than you maybe think. My top 3 tips for every hiring manager out there are;

YOU WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO FIND A LIKE FOR LIKE!

This drives me crazy! I recently took a job spec from a Manager, who unfortunately lost a member of their team (who had been with him for over 5 years).

He rang me up and said he needs a like for like replacement and then continued to detail what this person does on a day by day basis! A like for like is a myth. Yes you can get close but no one will be able to produce the same volume or quality from day one that someone in your team is producing after over 5 years with you.

Every time someone leaves after a long period of time it is a chance to see who internally is ready to step up and gives you a chance to reposition the role or create a new role and NOT ask a recruiter to find someone's twin!

Be positive and look at opportunities rather than being safe and looking for comfort.

Really, really, really understand what you want from a new hire.

This one is insanely simple but is only actually done by very few Hiring Managers. If you do not know what you are wanting from a new hire, or what their responsibilities will be or what their goals for the first 6 or 12 months will be, then how are you supposed to assess a candidates suitability?

Overlooked so often but so, so important!

Develop a system that makes it possible for you to confidently identify whether the interviewee can fulfil your 'wants'.

So this is slightly harder and requires a lot of trial and error to be perfected.

First of all look at what resources you have available to you and think about testing, yes testing out your interviewing system before actually interviewing. If you have a team of 5 and 1 leaves, you have 4 guinea pigs to test your Interview questions on right? 4 people who should be able to answer every question perfectly, right?

Wrong!

I guarantee if you gave one of your existing team members the chance to answer the interview questions you asked during your last interview you would be shocked by the results.

My recommendation - Get the team fit & personality required to be a success finalised as a priority, so that you know what you are looking for. Then look at just 5 skills that are needed for someone to be deemed a success. Tell the person interviewing what your 5 demands would be and give them the opportunity to give you an in depth analysis of what they can and can't do.

You'll find that the more transparent you are with your requirements, the more open and honest and appreciative the person interviewing will become.

My go to tip when you're hiring is and will always be actioned within their first month and aligns perfectly with the 5 demands mentioned above.

If someone 'got passed' your interview and was offered the role and on their first day you then remind them of those 5 demands. Again transparency. You then give them 4 weeks to show to you that those 5 demands can be met.

In order to do that you need to ensure there is a fool proof way of measuring (which is maybe an idea for my next article).

Should those 5 demands not be met or the new hire not show to you they are capable of delivering on those demands then act fast and simply let them go.

Ensuring transparency is available and consistent from interview, to first day you are going to totally eliminate any grey areas. Then, should the time come where you do need to let someone go, it will be perfectly justified once your share your measuring results that were in place.

To conclude, if you feel your hit rate with successful hires is low, you'd like a few additional tips or you ultimately would like to improve you interviewing skillset/improve your ability to assess a candidates' worthiness of an offer, then please let me know... I'd be more than happy to discuss your current go to interview processes to see if I can help fine tune these and add a couple of tweaks to improve future results.