Hiring the Right People

       HIRING THE RIGHT PEOPLE

In the current technological world, all the social changes that are happening in How we do things, along with the convergences of 3 different generations in the workplace who view the world from different generational perspectives, can provoke many questions for management. One in particular can be a game changer:

HOW DO YOU HIRE THE RIGHT PEOPLE?  

What a great question. I have already suggested that the first thing you need to have in your mind is what kind of culture you are building. If most of the work that needs to be accomplished is individually managed and there is very little group collaboration required – then you will be looking for someone with a totally different personality and skill set than is needed to work in a highly collaborative and integrated culture. The First thing is to know your culture.

Once you are aware of the culture, you can then move on to the basic question of what type of skills are required. The second thing you need to define is whether the skills trainable, or do you need a level of skill experience. The point to this is, if the skills are trainable you can put more focus on the Personality-Talents-Curiosity-Empathy-and-Fun human traits, knowing that training the skills will be easy – if you hire the right attitudes.

So how do you hire a person that has Personility-Talents-Couriosity-Empathy-and-Fun as their core personality?

The Way to understand the person you are hiring is to know the right questions to ask. I assume that the hiring process has the requirement to submit a Resume, and that once you form an opinion, you will call references [I will discuss this later in this post], so – what are the right questions? Here are my favorites:

1] I have looked at your resume and it has some very strong experiences- Tell me what you would like me to know about what your resume says about you?

2] What are the best two things you have learned in the last two years?

3] When your supervisor has not been clear about defining your role in the organization –                    What do you do?

4] Describe an experience you have had working in a team environment and tell me what you learned from that experience.

5] Describe a situation where you were managing a project, and what you learned from that experience.

6] You are sitting in a team meeting discussing a problem; you know what the solution should be, but a different solution seems to be winning – What do you do?

7] When you disagree with a co-worker – What do you do?

8] What will your references say about you when I ask– Tell me what it is like to work with you?

9] Any questions for me about this opportunity?

REFERENCES- HOW TO APPROACH

References are usually individuals that will say good things about the person you are checking on – so in most cases they will just provide conformation about your personal opinion you have developed for the hiring process. I would suggest that you might put a small speed bump into the final hiring element – I would suggest that you ask for at least 3 references: A person who they have worked for, A person who they have worked with, and finally, A person who worked for them. This approach allows for 360 degree feedback on the individual – and will serve as a confirmation that people all throughout the work environment see the same person at work.