5 Key Essentials for Hiring the Candidate You Want

Thought I’d share my 5 key essentials-to-hire.

These pointers come up for me on a daily basis when it comes to working with hiring managers and helping them win against the increasing challenges we face in today’s competitive markets for top talent.

I use the words “to-hire” a lot in my tips, the idea is to keep focused on this as your goal and remember it’s not a fishing expedition, it’s a targeted exercise aimed at making sure you attract the candidate you want.

Have a read, hope it helps!

1) Lead a round table meeting with your team; speak freely about the kind of candidate you need to hire.

Let ideas flow and build a wish list that details team dynamics and where the gaps are. Think of this as your team’s holistic road map-to-hire.

The right hire starts with knowing and examining who you are as a company, team and, as a hiring manager.

If you have time and inclination, I recommend The Gabriel Institutes’s Role Based Assessments – I was blown away by this method’s accuracy . The concept is based on studying your current team’s dynamics and making management and hiring decisions based on the key character traits that you, your company and team will benefit from most – https://www.thegabrielinstitute.com

2) Build a candidate profile. This should be created by first developing an understanding of your fit-to-hire criteria. Your skills-to-hire should follow

Now that you’ve looked at your team holistically; you should be able to determine what background, accomplishments, traits and soft skills you want in your candidate. Map out the skills required last.

Skills are the weakest predictor of how well some one will do in a new role ( though essential ) .

Developing a consensus around interview questions is very important at this stage. It’s always helpful to do some prep first with with the help of books like, Ace The Interview http://www.acetheinterview.com/, and to state the obvious – you should go to Google for tips and blogs.

Remember, fit-to-hire always comes first and you’ll see that good interview guides artfully help you learn how to qualify candidates above and beyond their skills.

3) Develop a job description as an opportunity profile.

Your opportunity profile should reflect the personality of your team and the person you are targeting to hire. The copy should lead with who you are as a company and culture as well as what the role offers to the potential hire. Requirements should focus on the sought after backgrounds, accomplishments, and personality traits you’ve already identified in your candidate profile.

4) Create a short and efficient selection-to-hire cycle.

When your dream candidate shows up you need to act fast and show them the love.
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Book your short listed candidates’ interviews within 2 visits.
If possible schedule these no more than 1 week apart.
Plan the first interview for a minimum of 1 hour, the second for 2 or more.

First round? Confirm 2-team members- the hiring manager, a peer or subordinate.

Second round? Plan a company tour, confirm time with an esteemed C or VP level executive and finish with the hiring manager. This is your candidate’s chance to feel out your company and his or her new team. Introduce the candidate to prospective team mates who should be encouraged to offer your candidate their cards and make them selves available for coffees or follow up phone calls.

Note: Focused and targeted selection models portray a company who knows what it’s doing. If the market sees that your company is interviewing large volumes of candidates and engaging multiple recruiting agencies for your openings; your credibility goes down.

5) Pave the way for your offer to be accepted seamlessly. ( this is a bit of an art and it could have been a whole blog on its own )

Have the ” what would it take to get you here” conversation immediately after 2nd interview.

The goal here is to make a verbal offer, close your candidate.

This can be done over a casual coffee, lunch or dinner. Elect the best team representative to make this important gesture.

It’s important to work with the candidate’s schedule for this phase, it helps covey your enthusiasm.

Here is where a discussion about compensation, title, scope, and start date should happen – and if necessary references. Extracting details at this stage are key, make to sure talk about vacations, religious holidays, title, bonuses, non competes, office hours, scope etc.. Make sure you address and confirm as many potential offer details as possible so that when your candidate receives his or her offer, there are no surprises.

During your conversation, commit to follow-up the same day or early the next with a formal offer document. Always convey when and how it will be sent.

Have a draft offer approved and ready to go concurrent to scheduling this important meeting. That means having a wide compensation range pre-approved by your executive so that you can literally fill in the blanks with out causing delays.

Always put an aggressive deadline on offer acceptance, allow no more than 3 business days. You can always extend for lawyers schedules etc.

If your company policy is to conduct references and background checks, a conditional offer may be the way to go. If this is the case you will have to rally the troops to make sure these are done as quickly as possible. All background checks can be done in 24hrs, it will cost more but it’s worth it.

Hope my 5 essentials have helped you out; if you have any comments or feedback I’d love to hear from you.

Written by

I am the founder of i-identify inc., a Toronto-based recruiting company, founded in 2013. My research uncovers full-time, interim and contract professionals who are leaders in their respective fields. My early work was focused on the emerging tech - sector, and later expanded into retail and consumer packaged goods technologies. In the past five to six years I have broadened my expertise to include Canada's public and not-for-profit sectors, working on assignments as far north as Iqaluit, uncovering talent as senior as Deputy Ministers, Commissioners and executives at the C level. I've become a search generalist who specializes in identifying great talent.

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