Hiring Like It Really Matters

• Use tools. There is no shortage of useful screening tools from various types of cognitive ability tests to personality assessments to more targeted skill-based tests. Find them and use them. Bringing someone on board is far easier than letting them go, thus more data trumps less data. Conversely, don't use bad tools. Any screening devices must be defensible in the legal sense and valid in the scientific sense. For less than a pile of money, both can be ensured. The one thing you do not want to use though they are very common is any home grown tests. If you are using any internally generated tests, they very likely lack legal defensibility and/or validity. Stop that!

• Get applied. Interviews (done correctly) are great, so are various tests and assessments, but nothing trumps watching someone in action. If they are to be an engineer, give them one of your widgets and make them do something with it. If they are to be a customer service manager, tell them a real client problem you are currently facing and ask them to craft a strategy to address it. Whatever they are being considered for, attempt to have them actually work with it and make sure multiple pairs of eyes watch the effort.

• Involve more people. Who should be involved? Several, including: the leader who will be over the person, appropriate HR personnel, key colleagues, subordinates who will report to the new person, and potentially key suppliers or customers who will work with the person. To include them is to gain possible new insights. To not include them is to not only fail to gain useful insights but to create the risk of upsetting parties who would have rather had a voice in the decision.

• Don't settle. Yes, that hole in the team hurts. No employee likes increased workloads due to positions remaining unfilled. So what. Filling those spots too quickly with less than ideal employees hurts far more. If a search rolls on for months and months, isn't that acceptable given that the person, once hired, could remain with the organization for many years? Of course.

• Shake things up. Believe it or not, organizations hire people who "fit" the prototype of other successful people in the organization too much. When this is done too often the diversity of thought and the diversity of skills in the organization actually shrink. You need a solid minority who do not fit the mold. They offer great smarts and great efforts, but they do not fit the organizational stereotype of the common employee. These people represent one of the biggest hedges against lazy thinking and they spur innovative efforts if your culture is hospitable to them.