How To Keep Top Candidates From Falling Through The Cracks

Top people are scarce - just ask any organization how tough it is to attract the best, let alone select the best. At the same time, I'm willing to bet that more top people - the right people for the right jobs - slip through the cracks in the selection process than anyone could imagine or admit. After thousands of dollars in recruiting, interviewing, travel and all the other assorted expenses in time, effort and money associated with attracting top candidates, organization after organization drops the ball on top candidates. And they don't even know it!

Here are ten of the top, invisible ways those cracks occur:

• Failure to understand that recruiting is as much a selling process as it is an evaluating process. To get top people requires as much selling as it does evaluating. And top people are doing just as much evaluating as they do selling. It's a two way street - but it's amazing how many people don't realize that, and take a "I've got something you want" approach. Top people slip right through the cracks when they see that behavior.
• Organization's don't know a top candidate when they see one. That sounds funny, but it's not. It means time hasn't been taken at the front end of the process to identify and define what a top candidate will look like in terms of the really important things.
• Superficial knockout factors: A manager I know will not hire a person who smokes cigars - period. I don't mean someone who insists on smoking cigars at work. I mean recreational cigar smoking - away from work. Apparently this manager had a bad thing happen with a cigar smoker early in his career. Everyone of us has biases about the strangest things - they can and do get in the way of hiring top people. The beard, the frayed collar, the wrong college, speech patterns - you name it - they are knockout factors in many organizations.
• Poorly kept restrooms and break rooms and lunch/dining /meeting rooms. Nothing says a poor environment like a badly served public use area. Nothing can chase top people away more than the appearance of a poorly kept facility.
• Lack of preparation. Nothing speaks to this more than unprepared interviewers, repetitive use of the same questions/scenarios from multiple interviewers - the "tell me about yourself" question. Holes in the interview schedule. Lack of interviewing skills and preparation. Bad choices of interviewers.
• Secrecy. The " don't tell them anything that may tip them off to what we are looking for." If you treat a candidate as a mushroom, it speaks to how they will be treated as employees.
• Poor followup and lack of feedback. "What you do shouts so loudly I can't hear what you're saying." When that top candidate leaves the facility, how long before contact is made? It's amazing how often weeks can go by before a followup call is made to the candidate. The excuse is often that the candidate - if truly interested - should get back to the organization. True - but failure to keep that communication door open on the part of the company lets top people fall through the cracks - without a sound.
• Relying on staff people to maintain contact. If you're a candidate for a HR job, then a HR hiring manager should be the key communication link. But HR people should not be the key communication link for other functional areas. They can coordinate and pester and cajole hiring managers, but the Hiring Manager has to be the link.
• Lack of respect for the candidate's time. I had the misfortune to work with a manager who, as a matter of practice, kept candidates waiting for hours beyond the time set up for an interview. The worst case was a General Manager candidate who waited four hours before finally bowing out. We never saw him again - even though we tried to reschedule him. What a waste - of everything.
• Overly long process. There are so many pressing, proximate things that can keep pushing selection to the back of the line. Before anyone realizes it, months have gone by and no decision has been made. I suspect in many cases a fear of making a mistake in selection has a hand in this. In any case, top people don't have to wait around. They slip through the cracks - and then show up working for a competitor.

Take the time to audit your own process. If you see any of these conditions take action to correct them. Top people are tough to get in the first place, without adding self inflicted conditions as a barrier.

Written by Andy Cox, President

4049 E Vista Drive, Phoenix, AZ 85032 Ph: 602-795-4100; Fax: 602-795-4800; E Mail: acox@coxconsultgroup.com; Website: www.coxconsultgroup.com; Blog: http://multiplysuccess.blogspot.com
Copyright 2008 All Rights reserved

Ten Steps To Hiring The Right Person For The Right Job

Hiring the right person in the right job, whether through recruiting from outside, internal transfer, or internal promotion is, by far, the most difficult and rewarding challenge facing most organizations. It always will be. It is also the greatest opportunity to increase the effectiveness of any organization. Here are Ten Steps any organization should take to improve their batting average in this most critical part of their enterprise.

Step 1. Start with the end in mind. Start by answering the question " What would be the perfect match of candidate to job requirements?" Get specific - talk about the job, not the person. Determine the best possible skill, experience, industry knowledge, education and accomplishment combination that would make the best possible candidate. Ask the people with knowledge of the position - the stakeholders - to provide that information - in a structure where it can be captured. Don't let the applicant pool create the job requirements.

Step 2. Get to the heart of the matter: since success is most often created by the right mix of behaviors, attitudes and values, and personal skills, get the stakeholders to identify what mix of those three elements are needed for success in the job. This step becomes increasingly important at higher job levels. There may be a Job Description, but most of those documents simply aren't designed to capture that kind of information. And few are dynamic enough to reflect changes in content. This requires a structured approach to identifying those elements. It can be done - and done well. And if it is done well and becomes a part of the process used to select, it will increase success - a lot.

Step 3. Expand the pool of applicants: the Wall Street Journal ran a first page article on symphonies that had been plagued with a shortage of qualified musician candidates. One symphony started a " blind audition." The candidates played the audition music from behind a screen - the interviewers couldn't see them - but they could hear their music. Funny thing happened - lots more qualified candidates were identified. No more knockouts on gender, race, brand of instrument, hair style, school ties, appearance, fat, skinny, et al. Make sure your organization isn't knocking out people that can "play your music" at the beginning of the selection process.

Step 4. Train a team of stakeholders so they can effectively evaluate candidates in the interview phase of selection. Most organizations do no training in evaluation skills - big mistake. If you have had more than your share of mistakes in selection, continuing to do the things done in the past and expecting a different outcome doesn't make much sense. Provide the interviewers with full information on the position, and assign each interviewer specific areas of evaluation.

Step 5. In 99% of cases, no applicant will be a perfect fit. Define the "must have's," "good to have's," and "nice to have's" before the interview process. Don't let the interviewers rationalize those requirements based on the available applicant pool.

Step 6. Supplement interview evaluations, reference checks and other information with assessments to help define fit. If you currently use assessments, audit their effectiveness and the degree of trust and application they really have. There are great assessments and assessment processes available - the status quo is not a good reason to continue to use what was used in the past.

Step 7. Act quickly, decisively and with purpose in the selection cycle. Nothing impresses top candidates more than a process that communicates organization, purpose and decisiveness.

Step 8. Should the hiring manager say the candidate selected for employment is "the best we could find, " continue to look. That rationalization has caused more selection failures than any other.

Step 9. Select the person that the organization, based on objective measures and intuitive feelings, is convinced is the right person. Then help them succeed - but stay close - no people decision is ever 100% accurate. The best thing to do in a mistake situation is act on it as soon as it is evident that a mistake has been made. People in the organization will know within two weeks to three months if a mistake was made. Unfortunately, in many organizations, it takes a year or more for the "leadership" to acknowledge the mistake and act.

Step 10. Create a final feedback step in the selection process to evaluate what could have been done better or differently. Have successful hires participate in that evaluation.

Ten steps - sounds like a lot - it isn't. The organizations that use the Ten Steps in this process are much more successful in their selections than the ones that don't. If you can see ways to improve your own process by using all or some of these Ten Steps, then get rid of the status quo and change - today.

Written by Andy Cox, President

Cox Consulting Group LLC, 4049 E Vista Drive, Phoenix, AZ 85032 Ph: 602-795-4100; Fax: 602-795-4800; E Mail: acox@coxconsultgroup; Website: http://www.coxconsultgroup.com/

Copyright 2007. All Rights Reserved

What Makes An "A" Player?

I have a confession to make - I have been in situations where I was a "B", a "C", and, yes, even a "D" player. I suspect most people will admit that they have not always been considered "A" players.

My point? I don't believe there is such a thing as an "A" player for all situations. We've all seen it - the top person in one position gets promoted or transferred or hired to another position. And they struggle, and they either fail and move on, or worse yet, stay and survive and become that dreaded "C" Player.

What makes the difference - in one job a top person, and in another a failure or, at best, a survivor? The person hasn't changed - all the skills, knowledge, experience, behaviors, attitudes and skills that added together to create real success are still there, and maybe that's the problem. What works in one situation doesn't work in another - even though they may look like they should.

I submit when that mix of what the job requires and what the person brings to it are a close fit, an "A" player is made. When that doesn't happen, getting to be an "A" player requires adaptation, self knowledge, interpersonal skills and emotional maturity. Rarely do the elements of education, experience, technical skills and industry knowledge make the difference.

Some people have the potential andf ability to be "A" players in more situations than do other people. I submit that is true because of ability to recognize the need to change and adapt, knowledge of the key personal skills they possess and how those fit with job requirements. It's the ability to develop effective interpersonal relationships that can be sustained. It's the ability to see one's own behavior, attitudes and personal skills accurately, and deal with them realistically. It is the ability to maintain a high level of emotional control.

What is an "A" player? The right person in the right job - as measured by results. For some people, it seems they are always "A" players - don't fool yourself. It takes hard work for even the most gifted. But the fact is "A" player potential exists in each of us.

Written by Andrew Cox, President

Cox Consulting Group LLC

4049 E Vista Drive, Phoenix AZ 85032 Ph: 602-795-4100; Fax: 602-795-4800; E Mail: andycox@coxconsultgroup.com Website: www.coxconsultgroup.com

Copyright 2006 All Rights Reserved