The Metiss Group's Blog

If you are about to hire a candidate that seems perfect – the hard skills are ideal, they are smart, great soft skills, flawless cultural fit –  be prepared, you will likely be disappointed.  The fact of the matter is there is no unblemished new hire, we all have faults.  The key is finding those faults before the hire and determining whether or not you can live with them.

When screening candidates, look for weaknesses; we guarantee you there are some.  Determine if the drawbacks can be developed or overcome.  Be honest with yourself, your tendency will be to dismiss the shortcomings or assume you’ll be able to change them.

Since no there is no perfect hire, don’t kill yourself looking for the ideal candidate.  As part of your selection process, identify those key characteristics that are deal-breakers and those that are nice-to-have (hint: rarely are deal-breakers hard-skills; one of ours is personal accountability).  As you are evaluating candidates, those who fail the deal-breaker test are easily passed on.  If the candidate passes all the deal-breaker tests but fails one or two of the nice-to-have tests, you still may have a great candidate.  The key is you can prepare for those weaknesses and won’t be surprised after you make the hire.

Empower your selection team to look for limitations in new hire candidates, and you’ll make more successful hires.

This entry was posted on October 22, 2011 at 11:42 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.