The Metiss Group's Blog

It wasn’t all too long ago that when businesses needed to hire, they simply placed an ad in local newspapers.  Hiring managers only needed to decide how large an ad to run, what newspapers, and for how long.

Today recruiters rarely use newspapers and instead have moved to online job boards like Monster, Craigslist, and LinkedIn for sourcing.  Now those sources are becoming less effective and hiring manages are being forced to get creative.

It’s okay to recruit candidates who are still working.  Hiring managers who received great service while dining or shopping can hand the associate their business card and encourage them to contact them about a great opportunity they might have for them.  Enterprise Rent-A-Car is known for developing great sales people and has the “we’ll come pick you up” service offering; it’s not uncommon for hiring managers to recruit Enterprise sales associates while they are being “picked up” or driven around.

Hiring managers should be on the lookout for good people they might come across while they are out and encourage everyone on their team to do the same.

Empowered hiring managers are always on the lookout for top talent to make successful hires when the time comes.

Confirmation bias is the tendency to favor information that confirms our beliefs and dismiss information that does not support our views.  We all have confirmation biases that cloud our reasoning. The extent to which we can become aware of our biases and minimize them will allow us to make better decisions.  As one unaware leader said, “My mind is already made up, don’t confuse me with the facts.”

Hiring managers deal with confirmation bias frequently when evaluating candidates and rely on assessments to improve their objectivity.  If candidates are going to be assessed, the assessment should be administered early enough in the selection process before an opinion has been developed on a candidate.  Once the hiring manager decides on a candidate, the assessment may do little to change their mind.  In this case, by the time hiring managers administer assessments, the results are used to confirm their bias and dismiss information that does not support their beliefs about a candidate.

Candidates should be assessed after the first interview, but before reference checks and follow-up or group interviews.  This allows hiring managers to objectively analyze the assessment results and minimize their confirmation bias.

Empowered hiring managers assess candidates early in the process and experience more successful hires.

Effective leaders are always “trolling for talent” and meeting and qualifying prospective new hires.  Effective hiring managers keep a file of potential new hires they have met in the last year – just in case they have an opening.

Good and bad economies provide opportunities for leaders to be meeting with potential new hires.  Even though the leader is not in a position to hire, meeting new potential candidates and “building a bench” is an on-going process.

Hiring managers should set aside time each month to meet with potential candidates and grow the bench.  This will increase the new hire success rate when a position opens up.

Empowered hiring managers who are constantly looking for new talent will make more successful hires.

Past performance is always the best indication of how well a candidate will likely perform in a new role.  Interviewing and assessing candidates provides useful insight, but If you have ever applied for an advanced area of study (or know someone who has), you know submitting references is a major step in the application process.  References play a significant role in the school’s admittance decision.  The prepared applicants have been cultivating their references well before the time of application.  Much thought is given to choosing those references that will be both respected by the school and can best attest to the candidate’s abilities.

The quality of references submitted by job candidates says a lot about them too.  Having bosses or senior associates as references indicates a candidate who has left jobs on favorable conditions.  Having quality references might indicate how well a candidate maintains their network.  The best references are those who have had frequent and significant interactions with the candidate.  They have had the opportunity to see the candidate’s many facets and worked with them through the rough patches.  Candidates with poor quality references may be a future headache.

Empowered hiring managers evaluate the quality of their candidates’ references and make successful hires.

Have you ever heard the phrase opposites attract? It’s wrong. It makes sense to us, but it’s still wrong. The data on relationships are completely convincing – people who are like one another tend to be attracted to one another.

The problem with this “opposites attract” mentality is that leaders are naturally attracted to hiring people who are like them. And, if they only hire people like them, they will end up with a team of people who have all of their strengths, and all of their weaknesses.

What’s the danger in that? If a leader makes a mistake, the other people like them on their team are less likely to catch it. In fact they’re likely to not even notice it is a mistake.

The best way for leaders to solve this problem is to benchmark their jobs and determine the specific profile to be successful in the job and then hire against that profile.  This unbiased, objective job matching approach reduces the chance a leader may hire against their own personality profile.  If very early on in the selection process, they’re “totally in love with” a candidate, chances are the candidate is similar in style to the hiring manager. They may work out fine, or they may be adding to their weaknesses in a way that they don’t expect.

Hiring managers should add empowering behavioral tools to the selection process for future success.