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Selecting Top Talent: Improve Your Batting Average

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I recently gave a presentation to a group of business and community leaders on how to select talent to grow their organization. Given the expense associated with recruiting top performers and the high cost of making poor choices, you would think that those responsible for hiring would follow a systematic process that results in high quality hiring.

Yet, I am continually amazed, when reviewing staffing practices, how frequently I find the lack of workforce planning, inconsistent procedures, ineffective interviewing, indecision or a quick decision based on gut feel rather than good data. On the other hand, here are twelve best practices for selecting top talent.

Don’t shoot from the hip. Have a well-thought-out recruitment and selection process in place. Prepare in advance for interviews. Take hiring seriously.

Identify the interview team. Ensure everyone who will interview the candidate has been trained on interviewing techniques. Interviewing well is a learned skill.

Develop a role expectation or job description. It’s important to have everyone on the same page about what is required. If one person thinks a certain personality type is needed while another thinks differently, then there will be problems deciding whom is the best candidate.

Ask behavioral, open-ended questions. Use position requirements to guard against “would do” vs. “have done.” It’s usually not very helpful to ask candidates “can you do x?” Most likely will say yes because they think they can. Remember, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. Instead, ask something like, “Tell me how you handled dealing with x?”

Decide who will ask the candidate what questions. It’s usually best to divide the questions based on interviewer competency. For example, let finance people ask the finance questions.

Take notes and be consistent. I guarantee that you will either forget what the first interviewee said or mix his/her responses with subsequent interviewees if you don’t take notes. Ask each candidate the same questions so that you can compare answers and more accurately compare candidates.

Make the candidates feel comfortable. Sure, if you make the interview feel like an interrogation you’ll know how they respond to questioning under pressure but it’s unlikely they’ll tell you much revealing about themselves because they will be on the defensive.

Don’t talk more than 20% of the time. Allow enough time in the interview for the candidate to ask questions. The number and caliber of their questions will tell you a lot about how they think.

Be aware of ‘selection bias errors. These include hiring a person because he is the freshest in your memory or he made a good first impression or he is or is not the picture of what you had in mind for the position, e.g., male/female, color, height, school, country club, accent, dress, etc.

Avoid self-imaging hiring. It’s very tempting to pick someone because they think or act like you. That doesn’t make the candidate a terrific choice…it depends on the match between the person and the position.

Don’t over inflate the company. For example, if your company is struggling, don’t gloss it over. There really are people who would prefer to take on that type of challenge than to work for a mature predictable company.

Do extensive reference checking. Make sure the candidate has actually done what they say they have. Use prepared behavioral questions to verify “have done vs. will do.”

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