Finding the perfect candidate is the desire when you have to hire a new employee. How often does it happen? I think if you look at how most define perfect- it never happens. It is like dating or picking a team for kickball or softball, you have to try to find the optimal person, given what is available.
What is the key? Ideally, it's having the information so you can most accurately and objectively predict future performance. And inside this predictive information, in each of the imperfect candidates, its being able to understand the full package -the good, the bad and the ugly so you can make the best decision.
Organizations that rely nearly totally on resume reviews and interviewing, in my experience seem to believe much more that they do find the perfect candidate. They describe "Sally Smooth", who was energetic, fun loving, "sincere' and a "joy to be around" during the interviews (often these are for marketing or sales or customer service oriented jobs). Then they describe Joe Determino, straightforward, knowledgeable, polite, nothing out of place….. These "Joes" are often for more technical or operational jobs. They say this not because they have much knowledge about their actual performance but largely because of the bias they picked up during the interview process and the assumptions they made as a result; however, when you broaden the discussion and involve others (and metrics), you often find they've only thought about the interview process and that many of these great interviewers are not much better than mediocre. Good "interviewees" do NOT necessarily make good performers.
Of course, you should have an effective interview process(yes a clearly defined and followed process) but now you can tremendously improve your selection decision making by looking deeply at the B.S.; Behavioral Suitability, that is. There are over 100 variables that underlie and help predict how we will behave under normal work stress and how we will respond to a lot of stress and these have been highly effective in predicting job-specific success. With a validated metrics on behavioral suitability and job-specific research to look at what really matters in each job, you can not only get closer to the ideal of finding the perfect candidate but also make a much more informed and effective decision between the imperfect candidates.
Hiring someone soon- we'll be glad to prove to you the benefits of this approach.
One of the most difficult challenges managers face is choosing the right people and understanding how to get them to perform at their best. During the last 12 years of our experience, we have found no other tool except the Harrison Assessment that enables this kind of capability with incredible accuracy and insight.
