Three Areas To Focus On When Recruiting

It’s the part of a Leader’s job which if they get right it can dramatically increase the chances of success yet if the Lead­er gets it wrong then just this one decision can completely derail the team.

I’m talking about recruitment. To put this into perspective, just for a moment, think about all the peo­ple within your organisation and in your mind think about someone who’s really a good employee, a star performer who may even be you and just imagine if everyone within your organisation was at the same level as this star.

Now consider what impact this would have on the organisation and how it would be transformed. Now let’s look at the opposite sce­nario.

Imagine the worst employee you know within your organisation and just ponder on what the or­ganisation would be like if every­one was at that low level. It would be chaos.

This is what is at stake when you recruit. So it’s vital that you get the decision right.

So how can you do this? In this week’s article I want to highlight the three main areas that every leader needs to be aware of when recruiting.

I don’t consider myself an expert in recruitment. I don’t run a re­cruitment agency.

“I do however run an interna­tional Leadership consultancy business and during this time I worked alongside many Leaders and I’ve seen how great Leaders get their recruitment right and I want to share this Tip with you.

In order to get your recruitment right a Leader needs to focus on finding three main abilities in can­didates.

Those abilities are technical, psy­chological and transitional abili­ties.

If you can find these qualities in a candidate then you will have found people that will not only make your life as a Leader easier but will also make a valuable con­tribution to the business.

Technical ability

The most important thing is to determine if a candidate has the technical ability to perform the job you are advertising.

If they fail in this area then noth­ing else matters.

To get recruiting right you need to challenge your perception of what recruitment should be which with most people is sitting in a room asking questions about whether the candidate can do the job.

If they answer positively and you are convinced then they get the job. This is the traditional method but it doesn’t mean it’s the best method.

Times have changed and the ac­cess to information has changed drastically. Now people generally know what questions are going to be asked at an interview and they know the answers you want to hear.

The huge risk is that it’s easy to recruit the person who’s best at in­terviewing rather than the person who will be best for the job.

“I know people who are fantastic but struggle at interviews so they miss out on roles and I know peo­ple who are very poor workers but are great at interviewing and end up getting good jobs.

To fix this you need to ensure that your recruitment process identi­fies skills necessary which are as close to what they will actually be doing in the role.

Take some duties from the role you are advertising and get the ap­plicants to perform some of these tasks during the recruitment pro­cess.

Psychological ability

The second area you need to fo­cus on is the candidate’s psycho­logical ability.

By this I mean two particular are­as which are emotional and social intelligence.

In simple terms emotional intelli­gence is how much a person knows about themself, and how and why they react to situations while so­cial intelligence is how much a person knows about other people, their personalities, what to say to people and how to get along with people.

It’s one thing to have the techni­cal ability to do the job but if the candidate has no psychological ability then it will be very hard to get along with people and this will cause problems in the workplace.

I had a phone call last week from a leader who wanted some advice on how to deal with an employee who kept on getting into argu­ments with other people in the team.

The employee was rude and shouted a lot and was generally disrespectful and not well liked.

“I wondered why he needed a so­lution as I thought this was a sim­ple situation to resolve, you just get rid of the person.

The Leader then replied “well he’s good at his job so I can’t get rid of him.”

This answer highlighted a com­mon problem which is that this Leader and many other Leaders only focus on technical ability when recruiting and even when rewarding employees they fail to recognise the importance of psy­chological ability.

Never forget it’s easier to teach technical skills than it is to teach someone to become a good per­son.

Transitional ability

The last area to focus on which is the most overlooked and often mis­understood yet when combined with the two other areas can vast­ly improve your recruitment, is a candidates transitional ability.

This is whether a person has the ability to perform well in a new en­vironment.

We all know people who were good working for one team yet they move to another team or com­pany and even though they are do­ing the same type of role they end up failing.

When recruiting you are not look­ing for someone who can do the job well, you are looking for someone who can do the job well for you.

What you need to look for when trying to identify transitional ability is how was the work envi­ronment when the candidate was happy in their role and how were they lead when they were perform­ing at their best.

This will give you an idea of whether the candidate will per­form well for you because if the workplace they described when they were happy sounds similar to your workplace then that’s good news yet if the candidate is not go­ing to fit within your culture then it’s never going to work.

A lot of recruitment fails not because the company selects the wrong candidate but rather be­cause the candidate has selected the wrong place or environment to work in.

Recruitment is a vital ingredient for success so be prepared to chal­lenge your perception of what to look for when selecting the right candidate.

To be successful, look for techni­cal , psychological and transition­al ability.

Feedback: maraia.vula@fijisun.com.fj