What are you selecting for?

“Looks good to me” may be something that you have heard yourself of a colleague say about a new hire.  But why does this person “look good”.  What have you measured about the person and what tells you that he or she can do the job and if so, is she/he the best of your candidates to do the job?

All too often we measure soft cues that we get from people, with these sometimes, or often, outweighing the harder or more objective measures.  So what are these soft cues?  The eye contact, the handshake, the tone of voice and the body language of the individual who is applying for a job.  But what, if anything do these have to do with the ability to do the job?  If you are hiring for a sales rep to sell to a mass market  maybe there is some validity but for most jobs there is no relationship.  In addition, the factors that I have listed are not generally related to personality or ability.  Rather, they are related to culture, the right or wrong way to meet or greet a person etc. in a particular cultural environment.  So, by getting a negative “feel” about a person based on eye contact and demeanor, you may have lost the opportunity to hire a great machinist (if that is what the job is).  So how can you select based on the ability to do the job?  Well, have a person show that they can do the job.  How?  These are some suggestions:

• Have the person actually perform the duties for a short time (20 minutes or ½ hour, not a week, that is not legal) see that they can actually do it.
• Have a formal test of the job duties in a simulated environment
• Check the certifications of the person, for example a class 3 driver’s license supplemented by a driver’s abstract.
• A portfolio of accomplishments in his/her previous job where you can ask for explanations of what was done, why and what results were generated.
• The previous item also relates to international work experience which is often entails transferable skills to what you are looking for.
• Depending on the job and skill set you are looking for, present an issue of problem that the incumbent in the position would be dealing with, and ask the person how he or she would deal with it, step by step and justify each step.
• Detail how he/she worked with others in a particular situation in the job.

Notice that each of these focuses specifically on the job, on the ability to do the job and to produce positive outcomes in the job.  Hire on this basis and you will find that you will not hear yourself or your colleagues say “He/she looked so good in the interview, I don’t know why they did not work out”

We would be pleased to help with hiring challenges that you may be experiencing.  Find us at YJBconsulting.ca.