Three Abilities Every Successful Candidate Should Have —Durability, Availability, Cred(a)bility
As physician recruiters working to match the best doctors with the best opportunities, we put our candidates through a battery of direct and indirect tests with one intention: to minimize the possibility of making a bad hire and maximize the likelihood that the doctor we present to a client hospital or clinic will be a rock star for them.
It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in. Hiring top talent takes a lot of time and money, but those resources are an investment—and it’s one that should be taken seriously. Companies spend millions of dollars on personality, psychology, and sales aptitude tests that try to give you the insight required to add that complementary piece to your staff. The Myers-Briggs and Jung tests predict how a candidate is likely to respond to a particular situation, but there’s no telling how someone will really respond until they face an actual challenge.
No matter what your process, after all of the shoe-leather networking, job postings, candidate mining, late evening cold calls, lead chasing, tests, reference checks and gut checks, you want to make the right choice. But whether you are a human resources manager, CEO, hiring manager, in-house recruiter, or outsourced head-hunter, anyone in a position to make a determination on a job candidate, there are three abilities any candidate must possess: Durability, Availability, and Cred(a)bility. If the person you’re considering doesn’t possess these three traits, you are setting yourself—and that candidate—up for failure. Here’s what I mean.
Durability (also known as stick-to-itiveness). A candidate’s work history often dictates their future, and so a resume that shows a pattern of brief stops at different companies is a red flag. A candidate that has demonstrated they are not willing to invest in an organization for long is probably not worth investing in. There are always exceptions to the rule, so asking questions designed to reveal the circumstances and motivations can help establish proper context.
Companies, like candidates, have ups and downs, but employees who bail out on situations that aren’t just-so tend to be unreliable at the times when they are most needed. Rather than cut-and-run, durable candidates are the ones who help solve problems and see things through.
Availability. Identifying candidates who are willing to make themselves available to help a company achieve a business objective is critical. This is not about looking for people who are willing to give every hour they have to the company at the expense of personal fulfillment, but about individuals who recognize that a big part of the work-life balancing act is being part of a team that is successful and building something every employee can be proud of.
There may be tight deadlines to meet, long business trips to take, and weekend branding and community involvement events to attend, and so finding the people who have learned—or are willing to learn—how to get it done and go home, proud of what they’re a part of, is critical. Without staff who are available, your company will never become the brand you envision.
Cred(a)bility. Candidates come in a wide variety of packages, but unless you are confident that they have the ability to be credible and will conduct themselves with integrity on behalf of your brand, you’ll never be comfortable with the hire. Credibility speaks directly to someone’s ability to, without question, represent themselves and represent your organization with honesty.
It’s been said that a good reputation takes years to build and a moment to lose, and when a person’s credibility is jeopardized, every action they take and every decision they make on behalf of your brand becomes a business risk. That’s why credibility is paramount to sustainable success both for the employee and for your company and is, of the three key abilities, the one that is foundational to the other two.
No hiring process is fool proof, and even the best of today’s algorithm-based tools have flaws and biases that may result in overlooking a potential rock star or choosing a disappointment. But over the long term, if you focus your efforts on identifying people who possess these three traits, you’ll do well. The hiring process is expensive, but it costs twice as much to correct a bad hire than it does to make the right hire.
Of course, if you expect your employees to have durability, availability and cred(a)bility, they have every right to expect the same of you. Be the standard by which they measure their own performance. Stand by them for the long run, be there for them when they need you, and be true to your word and ethics and—if you’ve done your work and hired good people—they will not let you down.
Van Allen ? 573-289-2824 ? [email protected]