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How to know when you are hiring the wrong people

February 21, 2013 by

http://www.flickr.com/photos/9436716@N04/6166407348

 

If you sit down for an interview and you, as the employer or hiring manager, have all the leverage, you are hiring the wrong people.

When you only attract candidates who need a job, who are focused on saying what you want to hear, who have become professionals at interviewing, you have all the leverage. You are not trying to woo them, they are trying to woo you. You control the selection process, dominate salary negotiations and dictate start dates, job descriptions and other details. You have all the leverage. You are in total control.

Unfortunately, you are in total control of a completely broken hiring strategy and process.

You may get lucky and one of the candidates is great. The process will work occasionally, but not consistently. You are dependent on luck to deliver your next best employee and build a great team because your strategy and process is dependent on job seekers first choosing you and then you choosing them.

You need to flip the order.

When you begin to proactively pursue great talent, you will immediately improve the candidate pool. If you are really successful at this, you will improve the pool so much that you will lose your leverage. You will no longer be able to control the selection process, dominate salary negotiations and dictate the details. When you shift to choosing candidates before they choose you, you will have to start doing most of the wooing.

You have to pursue and win over the most exceptional talent. Are you prepared to flip the process and lose your leverage to build a better team?

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Posted in: Featured, Leadership

  • Paula IB & Internat. Manag

    ….and many articles says to canditates “you have to say this and that..bla bla bla”. So..my conlusion, there is No formula to find a good job or a good employee. You have to follow your own criteria in each situation…

    • http://www.itsworthnoting.com Levi Smith

      For both job seekers and employers, I believe identifying and pursuing the other party well before openings come up leads to better matches. If you are interviewing, by all means prepare as best you can, but if you consistently want a great match, you will have to do far more, far earlier, than interviewing well.

      If you are doing the hiring, you will consistently hire more exceptional talent and build a better team by recruiting talent well before you have job openings to fill. If you only go looking for talent when you have positions open, you are asking the applicant pool to choose you in response to your employment ads, etc. Then you choose who is best among those that already chose you. This forces you to make relative comparisons from a diluted pool.

      A few posts that dive more into certain aspects of this advice:
      It’s time to build a recruiting pipeline
      How to create a recruiting pipeline
      Pursue talent like you pursue customers
      Looking for a job? Consider doing some unsolicited work.

  • http://www.thadthoughts.com/ Thad Puckett

    Excellent article focusing on the right things. Having worked with you at Karis, I know that this works. We have benefitted greatly from this philosophy.

 
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