Not Just Alphabet Soup - Reprinted by Permission of Mosaic Media, Inc.

Vicki Capalbo (vrcap@ aol.com) is based in Chicago and has over 20 years experience in strategic planning, project management, human resources, recruiting, and administration. She has also served for ten years as board president of a major Chicago arts organization and has extensive experience in fundraising.

What a relief… you found an IT candidate whose résumé contains that impressive alphabet soup you have been looking for: .COM, XML, CRM, MCP, HTML, DBA, CCNA, VC++, VB, MSCE, CORBA—plus years of applicable experience!

Think your recruiting process is complete? Actually, it’s only just begun. Finding people who will be successful in your company takes a lot more work than just finding a great résumé. If you aren’t sure where to begin, here are a few pointers on how to meet this challenge.

Understand your star performers. Take a look at the staffers who are the most successful in your business—those who always seem to be on the teams that function well, meet deadlines, and truly delight your internal or external clients. Beyond the level of technical skills, what makes them top performers? Are they assertive leaders? Are they good at resolving conflicts? Are they always focused on the client’s needs? What type of management do they respond to?

As you analyze, you’ll start to see an outline of attributes and competencies your most successful employees possess. Attributes are a person’s inherent qualities, what they bring to the table, their basic personality. You may see the following attributes, for instance, in one of your star team members:

• Comfortable being a leader

• Always takes initiative

• Adapts well in a changing environment

Competencies, on the other hand, are a learned range of skills, such as the ability to solve problems, handle clients, and manage others successfully.

An organization can also learn from employees who leave or are terminated. Identify the factors that contributed to their lack of success—the attributes or competencies that were missing.

Next, fit these various puzzle pieces together and match them up to the big picture of your organization. Understanding the business strategy for the short and long term will help you identify the types of people you need to hire.

Create a hiring profile by drawing up a comprehensive list of competencies and attributes a successful candidate will possess. Do this either on a universal basis for all company hires, or specifically for each position type. The list will be a standard for success in your organization. Remember, such a list isn’t static; when your organization makes major changes, update the list accordingly.

Dig deep in the interview. Now that these attributes and competencies are in place, you need a wellorchestrated interviewing process to determine if a candidate is a strong match.

• Always ask questions that require more than a “Yes” or “No.” Design questions to probe these areas and train your staff on how to conduct interviews. Here are some types of questions to pose to all IT candidates:

• Ask how they’ve handled specific types of situations in the past, or ask them to respond to hypothetical questions. Allow plenty of time to answer. Model questions on situations that have arisen in your organization, and that needed special skills or attributes to solve.

• Ask questions that require candidates to tell you how they’ve behaved when facing problems as part of a team. Such questions can help you determine their teamwork skills.

• Ask how candidates responded to clients’ needs in a crisis situation. This kind of questioning can help you understand applicants’ client skills.

• Find out what type of role a candidate most often plays in a team.

• Ask candidates to describe a good leader they’ve worked with, for insight on their attitudes about leadership.

• Ask applicants to describe how management should help employees develop new skills. Their answers can reveal how much initiative they might take to grow their career.

Solid decision making. It has been said, “You can never really know, you can only just decide.” This holds true for hiring decisions, which are easier with an established hiring profile and a solid method for determining which candidates best match the profile.

It is also key that employees involved in the interviewing process be well trained and comfortable participating in hiring decisions. It’s not about whether you like someone, but whether they will be a good match and contribute to your organization’s success.

There’s no perfect match. Of course, no employee is truly ideal or a perfect match, but you can make good decisions if you weigh the risks involved.

Suppose, for instance, that assertive leadership ability is important in your organization. You have a candidate who shows leadership skills, but has only worked in a restrictive corporate culture. Can you assume the risk of teaching him to be a successful leader in your organization? Can you spend the time to coach him or must he hit the ground running?

Understand your ever-changing recruiting needs. Workforce recruiting is a dynamic process. Each hire you make informs the process for the next. On the technical front, each new client or project dictates the skill set required to meet those needs. Quite often those technical skills are perishable or can be learned in a short time. Your hiring profile, however, is not meant to be so flexible. It should be general enough and reflect the core and essential characteristics and skills necessary for success. You want to spend the time to get it right so you won’t have to adjust it constantly. Knowing what is a fixed standard for hiring and what needs constant scrutiny will help you find and keep an exceptional group of people.