Hiring “Great” … Hiring “Right”!

• Organization & team success and failures are mostly driven by collective set of people
• A leader’s capability mostly starts with the quality of people she can bring into her team and organization
• Hiring the right skills and attitudes not only gets the job done while exceeding expectations but also frees up the manager/leader to use her intellectual bandwidth on incremental more impactful matters.
• Consequentially, inappropriate skills & people end up being high maintenance, taking up more of their leaders’ time, delaying schedules & lowering the performance of the entire group
• General education, skill and awareness levels have grown but is not enough to meet the growth in skill demand – all organizations are competing more than ever before for a relatively small talent pool
• Hiring top talent requires the organization to get into the shoes of a prospective employee – differentiation is key! Differentiation can take many forms… offerings that are not common place & may not necessarily be linked to the function – recreation, work-life balance tools, education support, flexible work hours often end up being crucial differentiator between competing offers
• Given the supply crunch of top talent, I encourage my team to interview people as a habit not because there is an open req for a position. You will meet people you would like to keep in view. If you are lucky you will come across outstanding talents where it makes sense to ‘create’ a position just to get them in. Never pass over these opportunities..
• Leverage your current employees while seeking talent. Its cheaper and more reliable to hire through internal references rather than looking out. Make internal referral bonus attractive financially for the employees and internally market the initiative actively. I have seen many organizations where employees are gloriously unaware of this ‘easy money’ and are not being leveraged enough! If an internal reference leads to hiring, make sure that the employee who referred gets paid on time. Organizational credibility can be built or destroyed depending on how long it takes to respond to its 'reward' commitment
• Make a ‘first class’ impression about yourself and your organization the moment you meet the candidate. Most candidate perceptions about organizations and individuals are made in the first 30 seconds following an introduction.
• Treat the candidate like you would treat a top customer .. watch the magic of the chemistry unfold
• Most hiring managers forget that the interview process is a two-way evaluation & are too intent to ‘interrogate’ the candidate – I do not think this is terribly smart! The best interview results & candidate analysis are obtained when both the people are relaxed and at ease – the environment brings the best out of both the participants. Ideal, is’nt it?
• Once you have hired ensure that you have the ‘right’ on-boarding procedure right from the time the employee shows for the first day at work. I have seen and heard of many established organizations with absolutely pathetic on-boarding procedures. Many do not have one at all!! There are many instances of “excited” new hires who turn to mediocrity or worse just because of the way they are treated during the first couple of week at work
• Do ensure that the new hire understands the on-boarding, is guided through it by a nominated internal ‘buddy’ and the whole process is reviewed through a 2-way communication at predetermined stages of the journey & right at the end