5 Basic Steps to Hiring The Right Talent You Need

5 Basic Steps to Hiring The Right Talent You Need
Facebook Twitter Email LinkedIn

Hiring the Right Talent Can Make or Break Your Success
As you purposefully build your company and your corporate culture, hiring the right talent — the talent that fits the job and your organization — is critical. Fortunately, done right, the hiring process is far more rational and strategic than the blindfolded method in the cartoon above.

5 Steps to Hiring The Right Talent You Need
If you need to grow your workforce, hiring the right talent should be your number one priority.  Make these five steps part of your talent management process to attract and onboard top talent to set you up for success:

  1. Conduct a Job Analysis
    Before you begin your search for the perfect candidate, you need to do some careful thinking. Start by identifying the behavioral competencies needed to succeed in the job you are trying to fill. You should come up with a targeted list of the knowledge, skills, motivations and competencies needed to perform the job successfully in your unique workplace culture.
  2.  Prioritize the List
    Review the core competencies with the specific job in mind and determine which are most important for the job, your corporate culture, and your business strategy.

    Certainly, it’s always great to have someone who can be a team player but, if you are hiring for a sales position, it may be more important for them to be articulate and self-motivated. Someone who works best in a structured environment would not fit well in a more loosely configured organization.

  3.  Include Metrics
    Set up a way to objectively evaluate a candidate’s level of competency in the categories you have chosen as important. A pre-hire assessment can quickly weed out unsuitable candidates. Dig deeper during the interview process.

    Train all your hiring managers and interviewers in behavioral interviewing so they can ask questions and probe for the specific competencies you have decided you need in each particular job. Behavioral interviewing not only provides a structured, more objective approach to assessing applicants but also establishes a process for better predicting a job candidate’s future performance on the job.

    Choosing the right talent then becomes a structured, methodical, more objective approach to assessing each candidate’s fit, not a popularity contest.

  4. Make the Decision
    Gather the interviewing team together and assess each candidate vis-à-vis the job profile and competencies. Use some sort of balance sheet to look at the pluses and minuses of each interviewee. Do you have enough information to make the selection?

    If not and there’s sufficient interest, call the interviewee back for another round. But, whatever you do, don’t settle. You may be under some time pressure to fill a slot, but just think of the time and money you’ll lose if you select a less than “A” player.

  5. Make the Offer and Bring the New Employee On-board
    Hopefully you have done a good enough job throughout the interviewing process that your offer will be eagerly accepted . If you have made your criteria for hiring clear, if you have accurately described your culture, and if you have presented your company’s mission and corporate values in an honest and compelling way, you should have a new employee who is well suited to the job and the organization.

    Now don’t lose the optimism and excitement. Make those first few months of new employee onboarding full of learning opportunities and set out a plan for your new employee’s future development that will keep them learning and growing. Top talent wants challenges and a clear career path ahead.

The Bottom Line
Hiring the right talent matters.  Hire new talent carefully. If you believe, as we do, that a company’s employees can be its competitive advantage, the right talent will carry you and your organization past your competition.

To learn more about hiring the right talent, download Why Interviewing is the Most Flawed Process in Business

Evaluate your Performance

Toolkits

Get key strategy, culture, and talent tools from industry experts that work

More

Health Checks

Assess how you stack up against leading organizations in areas matter most

More

Whitepapers

Download published articles from experts to stay ahead of the competition

More

Methodologies

Review proven research-backed approaches to get aligned

More

Blogs

Stay up to do date on the latest best practices that drive higher performance

More

Client Case Studies

Explore real world results for clients like you striving to create higher performance

More