Are you familiar with the saying ‘people are your business’? Do you believe it to be true? We certainly do. And we believe that one of the most difficult, yet most important elements of any business is the hiring process. And as Einstein is saying, what got you here, won’t take you there. The message is simple … killer mistakes in hiring can have a big impact on the future of a business.
During the hiring process, you really must take into consideration many candidate behaviors, attitudes, and strengths. Even the person who is talented, sometimes don’t have the right personality and team chemistry to add to your team.
Bringing in exactly the right people is paramount for any
business and teamwork is one of the most important ingredients for most
businesses.
Tuning in during the interview process to gauge how well a
person would fit in the office every day, where they’d inevitably interact with
their colleagues and be part of the office ecosystem, matters quite a bit.
If you want to build an effective team, it starts with having the best people. Creating a talent advantage begins with smart hiring. That said, it never ceases to amaze me at the number of businesses that put little energy and time into mining for talent.
Smart leaders do more than just hire smart people – they have a smart hiring process and focus on the qualities they want.
Each year, Google gets over 2.5 million applicants. That’s equal to 6,849 per day and about 5 per minute – and Google reviews each one. Don Dodge, a current Google employee shows how thorough Google is with each applicant. What’s not important is the logistics of each hire, but why they hire this way and what we can learn from it. Because it’s the people that make Google what they are today.
When you get interviewed at Google, you’ll receive questions like:
“How many golf balls can fit in a school bus?”
“There are 8 balls. Seven of them weigh the same, but one is heavier. Using a balance scale, how do you find the heavier ball with just two weighings?”
“You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and your mass is proportionally reduced so as to maintain your original density. You are then thrown into an empty glass blender. The blades will start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?”
Google says the answer isn’t as important as your thought process and how you think under pressure. The worst possible answer would be a non-answer. Quickly saying “I don’t know” won’t get you a job at Google.
These interview questions may seem unnecessary to some, but they are one method Google uses to filter and find the smartest, most thoughtful candidates. If you want to run an extraordinary company, you need to hire extraordinary people. And to do that, you need to be very good at hiring and firing.
Put simply; people matter. The problem is that very few people actually possess the talent to identify talent. Identifying and recruiting talent requires much more than screening a resume and having a set of standard interviewing questions to guide you. There are issues of values, vision, culture, context, etc. that need to be creatively and intuitively addressed in the hiring process.
In today’s post we’ll recommend considering the most glaring
killer mistakes we use in hiring workshops with our clients:
Looking for the perfect candidate
The desire to find a perfect candidate will often lead to looking for more qualifications that a job may require. Hiring overqualified people usually end up in an unhappy employee because they are not sufficiently challenged. An employee gets very good at a job through experience. So trust this process, which will permit you to hire a 7 on your rating scale and growing them to a 10.
Familiar with the affinity effect? This effect
means we tend to hire people like ourselves. When we make decisions with our
gut like we often do, we are subconsciously evaluating in comparison to ourselves.
This is not what you want to do. Try to find people who think differently than
you in a way that complements your thinking.
Too cost driven
Don’t lose a highly qualified candidate because
they want more than you’re offering. While salary is rarely the most
significant factor in a candidate’s decision process, it is still significant.
But be aware of any potential internal issues in comparative salaries and, if
they are present, deal with them before you decide.
Don’t just focus on the tasks required to perform a job. Also, consider the skills and behaviors necessary to be successful in that position. Before writing a job description, draw up the list of competencies necessary for success. Can you picture someone who was in the job who did an average job as well as someone who was a star? That will help you in defining a profile of these success competencies.
Wrong interview focus
Do you know the biggest mistake in the hiring
interview process? It is the fact we spend way too much time on topics that don’t
help us in deciding whether a candidate has the requisite skills. Remember the
best predictor of future success is past behavior.
With this in mind, spend your interview time with
very specific, very behavioral questions. For example, ask the candidate to
tell you about a time when they had too much on their plate or to describe an
experience when they had to deal with an angry customer.
The bottom line
You can hire the best talent in the world, but remember that ‘best’ is a subjective evaluation largely measured within the context of a snapshot in time. Obsolescence can take root in anyone if growth and development do not focus points. Development needs to occur at every echelon of the workforce … the top, middle, and bottom performance tiers.
Hiring is a blend of
art and science. The reality is that those organizations that identify,
recruit, deploy, develop and retain the best talent will be the companies who
thrive in the market place.
Avoid these hiring killer mistakes. Never be done with your hiring and building your team, life is a continuous learning experience for you and the team. Team building and talent development take work and a consistent process, but you will be pleasantly surprised by the impact it will make on your business and service.
Need some help in finding ways to
hire the best employees? Such as
creative ideas to help the differentiation with potential competitors? Or
perhaps finding ways to work with other businesses?
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight
gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Do you have a lesson about making your continuous learning
better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add
in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.
More reading from Digital Spark
Marketing’s Library:
