Hiring Tips | Hire People Who Stick Around...And Get the Job Done

Welcome To The Hiring Tips!

Hello and thank you for stopping by. I’m Stan Dubin, the Executive Director of The Employee Testing Center.

Our employee testing service has been helping companies make better hiring decisions for over ten years now. Whether you use our service or not, I decided a running collection of “Hiring Tips” would be helpful.

These tips address the full scope of hiring: employee motivation, skills, pay, testing, and evaluation. There are tips on what to ask, what not to ask and how to avoid dangerous hiring mistakes. There are 20 plus tips on hiring and the law that our readers have found very helpful.

Most of the tips now also include a podcast version. Look for the audio player and click the “play” button on the right. If you’d prefer to listen on your smart phone, iPod, etc., subscribe via iTunes.

All in all, we want you hiring better staff.

Enjoy!

Will Your New Hire Improve Those Around Him?

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Now that’s an interesting question. If hired, will this person you’re interviewing improve the people around him?

And what exactly does that mean? In what way should the people around him be improved?

As a fast note, especially if you’re reading the Hiring Tips for the first time, I move back and forth between the gender pronouns “he/she” and “him/her”. I can’t tell you it’s a 50/50 split, but a genuine effort is made. Some feel it’s an unnecessary task, others feel differently. I believe I understand both sides of the discussion, so there it is.

Back to this question of should a new hire improve the people around him.

Well, it would certainly be a strong quality if a new employee comes to work and the following changes are seen in the people working in his area:

They are more energetic.
They are friendlier to each other and your customers.
They take more pride in their productivity and actually produce more.

Is this asking too much of a new hire?

Perhaps.

But I don’t think it’s an inappropriate question to ask. It could go like this:

“Mary, if you’re hired to the accounting section, how would you improve the work life of the others in your section?”

If Mary needs to think this over a great deal, then I’m not sure she has experience having done this before.

Then again, Mary may answer immediately with, “Oh, wherever I’ve worked, people seem to enjoy their work more and don’t mind going the extra distance to get things done.”

The person that has difficulty answering the question or delays quite a bit in answering versus the person who knows just what you mean—those are two fairly different candidates.

All in all, you’re looking for someone who possesses the skills the position demands, but it couldn’t hurt if this person also also has a positive effect on those around him.

That would be a very nice bonus indeed.

Information in this post and on this site should not be construed as legal advice.

Do You Have a Hiring Eye to the Future?

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Let’s say you’ve got just the right people working for you. Every key position is filled with someone that you trust and competence abounds! Even the less key positions are filled.

Now you can put all of your attention on the other areas of your business. If something comes up, if someone wants to move on, then you’ll put your hiring hat back on and get the hiring process going again.

If your company expands in the next few months and you need additional personnel, at that point you can also put your hiring hat back on.

But for now, hiring can definitely take a back seat, right?

Well, if you do have your ideal employees working along, doing well and your business is flourishing, then that would make sense.

However, here is another perspective to consider.

What if you were to put a little time each week into looking for other possible employees? You understand you don’t need anyone right now, but if you put a few feelers out there, perhaps you run into someone that would be great for your business.

“Well, I don’t need anyone right now, so even locating a ‘great person for my business’ would be a waste time,” you say.

On one level, that’s absolutely correct. But let’s look at how this could be valuable for you.

If you locate someone you think highly of, you could reach out to them and let them know you’d love to consider them for your company, but not right at this time. They also might not be ready to make a new move at this time, but the two of you putting a possible future there and exchanging contact information could prove very valuable three or six months down the road.

It’s possible the timing on this will not work out, but what if you had a few of these future candidates “on reserve”? You don’t need them right now, but with a little communication back and forth, you’d like to set up the possibility of their availability a bit further down the road.

That’s one idea where hiring for the future could make sense.

This next idea is based on what I’d like to call your “sixth business sense.”

Let’s say you do find a new candidate who would be perfect for an area of your company.

You’re not interested in letting anyone go, because things are going really well.

But is it possible this new person could come in now and increase production to such an extent that you cover her salary many times over?

In this scenario, you are definitely doing a bit of a juggling act. Do you keep things the way they are, which is a humming scene? Or do you risk bringing in someone new who might disturb this smooth operation. Is the risk sufficiently small and the potential rewards great enough to consider the new person now?

Whether you pull the trigger on this new hire or not, I think it’s a good idea to put some time into locating who else is out there that could be a great fit for you.

As my Jewish parents said more times than I can count, “It couldn’t hurt!”

Information in this post and on this site should not be construed as legal advice.

Group Interviews?

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I mentioned in an earlier tip how you can utilize other staff to help you in the hiring process. In that tip, we discussed getting input from your key staff after an applicant had filled out a questionnaire. I believe getting other perspectives on an important hire can be very valuable.

But what about bringing some of your staff into the interview room itself?

Well, that could have some positives and some negatives.

On the negative side, the candidate may feel he’s in an interrogation. And this may get a bit overwhelming. I guess if you’re hiring for a very high pressure position, you might want to see how the person handles a bit of pressure right in the interview.

But I see how this kind of interview might have a strong positive: If you cleared it with the applicant first.

For example: “Sally, if we hire you for this position, you would be working with three others in that department. Would you mind if I asked those three to come in and participate in this interview? You could ask them any question you like and they would be free to ask a few questions of you. Is that acceptable to you?”

If Sally says, “yes, by all means,” then this kind of interview could be very helpful to you and to the applicant.

Your staff could ask a variety of questions and they don’t all have to be serious questions. They could ask: “who’s your favorite singer?” or “Do you love or hate the Yankees?” And of course, they could and should ask more serious work-related questions.

This kind of group interview will give your staff a first hand look at the prospect. Afterwards they will likely be able to give you valuable feedback.

However, if Sally says she’d rather not be interviewed by a group of people, then of course I wouldn’t force it on her. But I also wouldn’t see it as a good indicator.

All in all, if you get your applicant’s agreement, you’ll likely learn things you would not have learned in routine interviewing.

Information in this post and on this site should not be construed as legal advice.

Attitude Versus Skills, Revisited!

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An article by Mark Murphy, entitled Hiring for Attitude was a Q&A with Mark on the importance of attitude when considering new candidates. I found the first question and answer particularly interesting:

Question: “We hear it a lot… company X did a great job hiring a highly skilled worker, only to later discover that the new hire was a terrible fit for the organization. Why do so many interviews fail to assess whether a candidate will be a good fit?”

Answer (from Mark Murphy): “When our research tracked 20,000 new hires, we found that 89% of the time new hires failed, it was for attitudinal reasons, not lack of skill. One of the reasons is that most organizations have no test by which to assess attitude, and many have no concrete idea of what the attitudes they should be hiring for even are. You can train for skills and technical competence; but you can’t train for ‘attitude.’ You have to interview and hire for attitude.”

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I’d say that’s pretty powerful research. At least, in terms of the clarity it brings.

Essentially 9 out of 10 of those 20,000 new hires failed as a result of attitude, with the remainder failing due to lack of skill of some kind.

This research doesn’t surprise me. I’ve written hiring tips before on this subject.

What does this mean for your company?

Well, if you’ve been in business for awhile, you’ve likely established a “culture” in your workplace.

There’s a certain way you and your staff go about doing things. I imagine there’s a certain tone or atmosphere that you promote.

If this culture works for you, then hiring people who “fit” into that culture is a worthy objective.

To some degree you can test your candidates for this. Our personality test will provide you with definite clues as to how people act and interact in the workplace. Proper testing can help you weed out bad apples.

But, in the final analysis, I’m going to say your perceptions are accurate. If the person sitting across from you doesn’t appear to have the attitudes you’re looking for, or if you feel this person will not really fit into your culture, then so be it.

Don’t invalidate your perceptions. Too often we see something we don’t like about a candidate and then we brush it off. We tell ourselves there’s so many other things we do like, we don’t let that one nagging thing get in the way.

And yes, we do need to carefully weigh the positives and the negatives of every candidate. When it comes to attitude, though, let’s start giving it the weight it deserves.

Information in this post and on this site should not be construed as legal advice.

“Your Company Needs To Be A Bit Spiky!”

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I was listening to a podcast today. Chris Brogan was interviewing Nolan Bushnell. Here’s a brief bio on Nolan:

Nolan Bushnell founded both Atari and the Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza-Time Theaters chain. He was inducted into the Video Game Hall of Fame and the Consumer Electronics Association Hall of Fame. He was named one of Newsweek’s “50 Men Who Changed America.” Bushnell has started more than twenty companies and is one of the founding fathers of the video game industry.

Another claim to fame for Bushnell: he hired Steve Jobs at Atari and was an influence on the creation of Apple Computer.

Bushnell also just published a new book, entitled How To Find the Next Steve Jobs. The sub-title of the book is How to Find, Keep and Nurture Creative Talent.

Not too shabby of a guy.

So with that backdrop, I wanted to mention a few things he said in the interview.

The first of course is the title of this tip: “Your company needs to be a bit spiky!”

I looked up “spiky” and it has a number of definitions: grouchy, aggressive, even ill-tempered.

The sense I got from Mr. Bushnell was you’re looking for folks who do not want a cubicle existence for their entire work life. You’re looking for people who want to get out there, try new ideas, do a bit of innovating, be creative. And if they have to be aggressive to get these new ideas accepted, then so be it.

In describing a company that Nolan would run, he said: “It has to have some outliers. It has to have some rough spots. You don’t get the next great product by sitting around the campsite singing Kumbaya. It’s just a whole different world out there and you have to get people who are outliers.”

So, do you need spiky people in your company? Could you use an outlier or two? Someone who is not necessarily going to toe the company line and do only what he is told to do?

Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t have this idea that, in order for someone to be creative and come up with new ideas, that this person has to constantly rub you and your staff the wrong way.

I also never bought into the notion that true art can only come from an extreme non-conformist or someone crazy as a lune. One can be perfectly sane and very easy to get along with and still be intensely creative.

But for the purposes of building your company, you may want to keep your eyes open for that “spiky” guy or gal who aggressively looks for new ways to get things done. That person may end up being a tremendous asset for you.

Information in this post and on this site should not be construed as legal advice.