Getting the right candidate on board
Getting the right fit for a vacant position, who proves to be a loyal and productive employee is not an easy job. It takes years of experience to know the nerve of the person sitting on the interview seat in front of you. To hire the best creative and effective members for your team, these are some helpful strategies.
Start with some basic questions to evaluate the confidence and communication skills of the candidate. Ask where they want to see themselves in the next 5 years, what do they consider as their biggest accomplishment and failure, what are their strengths and weaknesses.
A small talk can also be added between the candidate and the interviewer regarding some common topic or similar interest to know their thought process and values. You hire the candidate when they seem energetic, skilled and a team worker. Soon after some time, they might start taking leaves or show signs of inefficiency.
Here are some basic principles that will help you to hire the right candidate:
Involve creativity
Usually, candidates are prepared for basic questions only so here you can involve some creative situation-based questions to identify their problem-solving skills and find new ways to understand how a person would process and perceive situations.
Create challenging situations
You may ask the candidate situation based challenging questions and analyze their problem-solving skills. This way the candidate will show their true self. You can even conduct group discussions to find out what type of solutions the candidate is providing.
Making candidate feel better
Never make the candidate feel demotivated for not knowing a certain thing. If you make the candidate feel important and comfortable, they won’t hesitate in giving the answers confidently in the interview. Their opinion should be heard respectfully and responded well even if you plan not to hire them.
Providing realistic situations
Gather a few selected candidates and place them in a group. Provide them a situation and some resources to solve it. Analyze the candidate who is more spontaneous and performs efficiently in the provided task.
Observe how they treat people according to their title and identify if they are taking interest in the task assigned. This shows their level of determination for joining the company. If you take your candidate out of the room and see them interacting with others, you can judge their personality based on it.
Take candidates for an office tour
Not all companies do that, but if your company can afford the time to do it, it is also a good way to comprehend the candidate’s personality. Check their curiosity and willingness to know what is happening around the office and how things work. As an interviewer, you should find out how they treat other people around them.
Ask tricky questions
Unusual questions will make the candidates open about their thought process and provide insights about what makes them tick a certain answer. Many personality judgement tests which can be conducted along with the interview.
It is very important for a candidate to be self-aware as this will allow them to grow into a better individual. Smart candidates will be prepared for all basic questions so that their vulnerability is not exposed. You can ask them tricky and some out of the box questions to see their thought process. You can ask them to place themselves in any business guru’s shoes and ask suggestions for a particular business problem.
To judge beyond the basic questions that the candidates may have rehearsed, employers have developed their own set of questions to ask candidates based on the nature of the business they are operating.
You can ask them their personal strength or what type of an animal matches their personality. It may sound funny but actually finding your personality attributes matching with that of an animal is not easy. Or you can ask what skills they have which will set them apart from the rest of the candidates. You can also ask them what the biggest misperception people have about them is. Answers to these questions reveal self-awareness. Usually these perceptions that others have are found to be true.
Taking second opinions
Taking second opinions from other people who are present in the interview room or asking their previous job employers proves to be very beneficial and accurate. Even if you feel that you have judged the candidate very well, taking a second opinion is always helpful. Other team members or colleagues might spot something which you didn’t even notice.
For a critical position, go beyond references. LinkedIn can also be helpful towards finding references for the employee and figuring out their true personality.
Look for diversity
This usually applies for marketing jobs where employers look for innovative and creative candidates so that they can add value to the company. Diverse employees have different perspectives for innovation, creativity and problem-solving.
Once you have been through the entire interview process, and taken into consideration the above mentioned suggestions, a decision has to be made. At this point, you can trust your instinct which is based on all the facts collected from above.
It’s always a tricky balance in hiring since you have the pressure to fill the vacant position but give this process some time and patience and rely on solid facts to make a decision about a certain employee. Nobody can have a perfect track record in hiring but risk can be minimized using some strategies given above.
