So how do you hire your staff? Are you using current best practices, a third party employment agency or do you have your own systems.
Recently I have been on both sides of the interview table, and I can assure you that there has been absolutely no consistency with the interview methods.
Currently there is a move to Behavioural Interview Techniques, these are working on the assumption that you can predict the way a person will deal with a situation, based upon their past dealings in similar situations. Personally I think this is wonderful (detect sarcasm here) if you are presuming that people are incapable or unwilling to learn from their past mistakes. Some of those who are diligent at their jobs, will analyze any situation and look for areas of improvement, especially if there are areas where things have gone less than spectacularly, it is very important that we look at how we can avoid making the same mistakes. Obviously you will want to do the same when something goes really well, so that you can emulate the behaviours that led to the desired results. So ? In My Humble Opinion, although this is a good method for determining a potential candidate, if you don?t give them the opportunity to explain what they have learned from those experiences then you are not completing the interview properly and will definitely be losing out on a potentially wonderful employee.
So what other methods are there, if we can?t predict the future, and the past may be misleading where does that leave us? Well honestly I wish that I had a Crystal Ball that worked, however I do have some guidelines that I tend to try and follow, and most of them don?t have anything to do with the answers to the questions.
My first impression is important to me ? a person who is late for their interview is already in my bad books, not that I wont hire them, but they are definitely not going to be my first choice. Their appearance is not as important as most think, I realize that I work in a Geeky culture and that we are maybe a little eccentric, I do prefer those who appear neat and tidy and have at least ironed or crease free clothes. Depending on the position for which I am hiring I have different expectations and as a result adjust my requirements.
Hopefully the candidate is pleased to see me, after all I am the most important person for their immediate future, their body language is how I judge this, as we all know, a persons words can be misleading, so I read the eyes and how they react to me (bearing in mind that I appear friendly and open to them at all times).
This happens in the first 2 minutes at the most. It is in this time that I have made at least 50% of the decision of whether or not to hire. For those who are going to interviews, think about that for a few minutes, half the decision is made in 2 minutes, the other half in the next 58 or 28 minutes depending on how long the interview goes.
So next we sit down and have a chat, basic interview questions. I get them to tell me about themselves, their hobbies, accomplishments, failures etc. I do of course check on technical ability, however I don?t ask really complicated questions, I am more interested in seeing if a person can think, is prepared to admit they don?t know, and how they take the feedback when I give them the answers. All of these are important traits in the environment where I work, and I would think are important anywhere. I pay attention to their ability to communicate, working in the Service Desk Industry, this is of paramount importance as we spend most of our day on the phones.
At the end of the day I am not as concerned with their ability to resolve issues as I am in their customer service skills. Believe it or not I would rather have a person with good customer service abilities and a willingness to learn, than I would a technowhiz who can fix everything yet has no customer service skills. Obviously in my ideal candidate they are both a technowhiz and a customer service whiz, but those are few and far between.
So do I compromise my requirements, of course I do, this is a very grey area with hopefully room for improvement on all sides, I trust my instincts a lot, yet when I think about it, the candidate has the ability to appeal to the instincts by showing their willingness to help the customer, skills they have attained and desires to learn new things to help.
So at the end of the day is this a good recipe, well so far I have been very successful, when others have not been as successful. Have I been lucky, am I better at picking up a person?s nature, or do I just get the better candidates? This I cannot answer for sure, however those that I interview in person have already met requirements that I set for phone interviews and online testing, if you cannot make those happen, then you are not getting to meet me in person. If you have passed those 2 phases then you are more than likely capable of doing most of what we require, I am mostly looking for personality traits that will go well with the teams we currently have.
Some final comments for those doing the hiring, get to know the team you are hiring for, if you don?t know the team dynamic, then the chances of you hiring a suitable team member are drastically reduced. Teams thrive on their ability to be synergistic, putting someone in the team who does not fit will only cause disharmony and as a result will probably end up in failure.
So is it Science, Art or Good Luck? Personally I think it is an art, failing that go to the scientific approach, if you rely on luck and you are consistently hiring well, then possibly you should be buying more lottery tickets as the odds of winning are probably similar.
Does this help? Let me know as I am more than willing to help you make the correct choices for your team.