The Metiss Group's Blog

All too often leaders make hiring decisions based on a candidate’s hard skill set.  Hiring managers fall in love with the fact that a candidate possesses a hard to find technical skill and overlook other aspects of the candidate they may soon regret.

The fact of the matter is, most hires are made based on a candidate’s technical skills or experience and most terminations are for an employee’s lack of personal skills.  Your selection process should include an in depth evaluation of a candidate’s personal skills, at least including:

• how they get along with others
• personal accountability
• results orientation
• critical thinking
• self management

Think about the hard skills that impressed you about a hire you made two years ago.  How important are those skills today?  Are the hard skills from two years ago more important today than personal accountability or critical thinking today?  When most leaders are asked if they would hire someone again given what they know today, the answer depends on the employee’s soft skills.

Empower your hiring managers to select for soft skills, and you’ll have fewer terminations.

This entry was posted on August 23, 2010 at 12:28 am and is filed under Leadership, Selection. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.