The Metiss Group's Blog

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 who 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 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.

Empower your hiring managers to evaluate the quality of their candidates’ references and they will make better 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 nothing beats knowing how they actually behaved in real life situations and talking to past associates can provide this insight.  This is why reference checks are important in the selection process.

Unfortunately, fewer and fewer hiring managers are conducting reference checks today.  Maybe they are not getting meaningful feedback, maybe they are too busy, maybe they don’t think they matter.  For whatever reason, they are missing out on crucial information.

The best way to conduct an effective reference check is to begin the conversation with the reference explaining why their insights are important to you.  Here’s how we recommend setting up the conversation:

“James has made it very far in our selection process and we are seriously considering him for our company.  It is important for us to make sure we set him up for the best possible chance for success.  To do that, we need to know when we might need to provide support and when to get out of his way. I’d like to ask you a few questions to better understand how we can make James successful.”

Then ask the reference similar behavior-based questions asked in the interview.  You’ll be amazed how much you can learn about a candidate from the reference.

Empower your hiring managers to conduct reference checks and you’ll make successful hires.

“If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.” – Anonymous

In the over 10,000 executives we have assessed, we have seen a wide range of assessment results for leaders.  It is shocking how poorly many leaders score.  When we ask those leaders about their results, they are not surprised.  They confidently confirm our findings demonstrating humbleness and self-awareness.  However, without exception those successful leaders have intentionally surrounded themselves with people with better skills than they have.

Though it seems obvious leaders would select direct reports who are smarter than they are, it takes a great deal of humility and self-confidence for a leader to do so.  These leaders enjoy scoring without the ball, perfectly willing to let their competent team run up the score knowing at the end of the day they will be successful.

Empower yourself to hire better people than you and you’ll be more successful.

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 CareerBuilder for sourcing.  Now those sources are becoming less effective and hiring managers are being forced to get creative.

It’s okay to recruit candidates you encounter while they are working.  If you receive great service while dining or shopping, hand the associate your business card and encourage them to contact you about a great opportunity you might have for them.  Enterprise Rent-A-Car is known for developing great salespeople 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.

Be on the lookout for good people you might come across while you are out and encourage everyone on your team to do the same, and you’ll increase your chances of finding successful hires.

We’ve all experienced the frustrating wait server who just doesn’t seem to get it.  No matter how they try, they have a hard time working through complex orders.  Conversely, hopefully you’ve had the pleasure of being waited on by the sharp, quick thinking server who finds creative solutions for the unexpected curve balls.

Critical thinking aptitude is important in all jobs.  Unfortunately, many hiring managers do not bother assessing for critical thinking skills for lower level jobs.

A strong critical thinking aptitude may not be necessary to complete job functions and may not be a hiring criteria but that doesn’t mean hiring managers shouldn’t test candidates for it. Knowing the mental horsepower of every team member allows leaders to develop appropriate succession plans and assign workloads appropriately.

Empower your hiring managers to assess the critical thinking skills for all roles, and you’ll build a stronger organization.

Confirmation bias is our 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’s 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.

We recommend assessing candidates after the first interview, before reference checks and followup or group interviews.  This allows hiring managers to objectively analyze the assessment results and minimize their confirmation bias.

Empower hiring managers to assess candidates early in the process, and you’ll experience successful hires.

When it comes to hiring sales people, you may enjoy the interviews more than a more technical interview.  That’s to be expected – they’re sales people. If they’ve spent at least a year in sales, they should be able to make the conversation comfortable and easy.

The hard part is being able to peel the onion back and find out what’s really underneath.  Keep in mind: no one is perfect.  The selection process must be designed to uncover the weaknesses to determine if they are deal-breakers.

The best way to do this is first to be clear about what you need up front so the sales person doesn’t talk you into buying something you don’t really need (or hiring someone that doesn’t fit). Assessments can help you see the potential issues the salesperson would rather you not see.  Those results allow the hiring manager to explore those issues in further conversation and reference checks.

If your organization is hiring a salesperson, empower your team with a robust selection process that includes assessments to create the best chance of success for the new hire.

The first week in January has historically been considered the best time to post recruiting advertisements if they are ever likely to attract somewhat passive candidates.  The idea is there are a lot of people who make the New Year’s resolution to improve their lot in life, work for a better boss, or find an organization whose culture matches their core values.

These people begin to look online or in print right after New Years – perhaps even before they have updated their resume.

Of course, not much actual hiring gets done in December because people are waiting for, or perhaps hoping for, a holiday bonus and don’t want to leave until that’s in the bank.  That makes December the perfect month to prepare for hiring in January or February.

If you anticipate the possibility of hiring in the first quarter of the year, prepare now!  Get some clarity around the needs in the open position and what the ideal candidate looks like so you are ready to post the position on January 1^st or 2^nd.  Creating clarity around the role now also allows you and your team to spread the word during holiday gatherings for the best type of sourcing: referrals.

Empower your direct reports to build a superstar team by encouraging them to spend time now in defining their future hiring needs.