Hiring is too important to expect a magic answer

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The other day I received a phone call from a manager who was about to begin interviewing candidates for a key job in his company. The interviews were to start in one hour and he was in a big rush. "You must know some important questions to ask," he said. "You know, the perfect questions that will tell me which person to hire."

I explained that there was a lot more to hiring a key person than the questions that were asked. "Yeah, I suppose there is," he replied, "but I don't have time for that kind of stuff." Then he went on to tell me that he had had some "bad luck" in the past with some of the people he hired. No surprise.

After we hung up, I thought about how representative he was of hundreds of other managers out there. Short staffed, expected to do twice as much as they were doing just a few years ago...the very reason why hiring smart is more important than ever before.

Can he afford not to take more time? Hiring the right people is one of the most critical responsibilities a manager has. Every day we see in our office, first hand, why that is so important. On a daily basis, we get calls from owners and managers who are spending hundreds of hours cleaning up the messes of a bad hiring decision. They've spent thousands on training, endless hours on feedback, done damage control on customer relations...and now they just want to get rid of the person. In fact, 30 percent of all the calls coming in to our Coach-On-Call Hotline for managers are asking for specific help with these kinds of situations. It's no surprise that after the situation is resolved, they hire smarter the next time.

Here are some guidelines for hiring people who will contribute to your organization and fit in to your culture.

1.      Collect input from people who are stakeholders. Gather employees, peers, executives, even customers and suppliers together and ask them what the ideal candidate's specifications should be. Job descriptions are a good resource but they are usually out of date or provide limited information. You want a detailed and current picture of the skills, experience and personality.

2.      Develop behavioral questions about each key area of responsibility and let the stakeholder group participate in the interviewing. They'll probably ask tougher questions than you would.

3.      Don't be shy about asking the candidates to demonstrate their skills in an important area. For instance, ask them to demonstrate how they'd handle a difficult customer, coach an employee or make a presentation.

4.      Don't hire a clone. Too many mangers go into the interview thinking, "If they're just like me they can't be all bad." These managers fail to consider the real needs of the organization and the job.

5.      Be careful about over-emphasizing your "gut feeling." Most people see themselves as a good judge of character. They think they can just sense when they meet the right person. "We just clicked." Unfortunately, if they like a candidate, they will tend to ask easier questions and spend more time giving them information about the job. They will avoid the tough questions.

6.      Make sure that you, and everyone else who interviews, understands how to ask open-ended questions and then how to follow-up with probing questions. Often, a manager will spend the entire interview selling the candidate on the business and the job. Or they will ask such easy, predictable questions the answers are self-evident.

The quality of the products and services of any business are directly related to the quality of the people who work there. Taking the time to hire smart will pay big dividends for years to come.