HIRE THE RIGHT CANDIDATE THE FIRST TIME
An interview is a short window of time in which you have to discover the true character, skills, attitude and motivation of a candidate.

You have to see through the polite veil of a carefully constructed presentation to discern reality. You have to make an objective and insightful decision; can this person successfully accomplish the objectives defined for the position? Also, can this person become a functioning member of our team and work toward making the entire team successful? Many interviewers don’t know how to find the answers to the above questions so their hires tend to be people that make them “feel good” and people they like rather than the one who can be successful. This approach has about the same odds as a coin flip with a lot of heartbreak down the road. You have to resist getting emotional about the candidate, but instead dig to discover the true information. It’s there and can be revealed with the proper approach, questions and analysis. In the following paragraphs we will teach you an approach and evaluation technique than will allow you to learn what you need to know to make the right decision.

At the same time in this new millennium good people capable of being successful are harder to find than ever. There are several factors responsible for that and they have little to do with how good or bad the economy is doing. America had a baby boom after World War II. Between 1946 and 1962, 75 million babies were born. Then in 1962 the birth control pill came along and we had a baby bust. Between 1962 and 1982 only 35 million babies were born. That approximate level has continued until present times with a further slight decline in more recent years. At the same time the amazing job engine called the U.S economy has created well over 50 million new jobs since 1980. The net result is a severe crisis For U.S. corporations in finding good, qualified candidates to fill their needs.

The overwhelming evidence validating the above job market conditions can be confirmed by noting how many good candidates you interviewed in the past year also had other offers from other companies simultaneously with your interview. How many candidates to whom you offered jobs, also had other offers? Our experience in the executive search business tells us today, the overwhelming majority of good candidates we have offers for will have other deals to consider in competition with ours. We have to work very hard to make sure they accept our clients’ offers and not the competitions’!

The above information suggests a few rules you should follow in conducting a search to assure that you will understand the people you interview, you will make correct assessments of what they should contribute to your organization, you will be clearly defining for them exactly what goals and objectives you expect them to accomplish, you will at the same time be selling them on the opportunities and benefits of a career with your corporation so that if you decide to make them an offer it will be accepted.

One of the most common and biggest mistakes employers and interviewers make is that they define what background, education and technical exposure the candidate must have rather than what accomplishments must happen to insure success. What this does is give the candidate the totally false message that he will be selected because he “has” certain things and not because he can “do” certain things. He will be hired because of his credentials, not his capabilities.

Have you ever observed someone hired who had the correct “background experience” as defined by some position description but they were utterly unsuccessful in the job? I’ve seen that happen many times. This is very frustrating for all parties; the new employee does not understand why everyone is so critical, after all, he has everything the company asked for in the hiring process. The new boss can’t understand why the employee can’t get started and “do the job.” The problem occurred in the beginning when the wrong agenda was established by defining background requirements, education requirements and technical knowledge as the basis for getting hired rather than defining what accomplishments must occur to be successful. In addition, no clear follow up plan could be put in place since what you follow up on was never clearly established.

The Adkins & Associates strategy to hiring successful peoople:

1. Define goals to be achieved.
2. Establish a clear follow up plan to measure achievement.
3. Determine if this candidate can accomplish these goals
4. Determine if this candidate wants to do this job
5. Determine if this candidate will fit with your company’s culture.

This is how to hire a winner, everytime!

A person may very well need certain background experiences, education and technical knowledge to successfully accomplish our goals, but we must never give them the wrong message that our interest is because of these past exposures but instead we must clearly get the message across that they will be successful only by achieving the defined goals.

By learning to think in terms of what goals must be accomplished rather than what and how much background experience someone has will improve your successful hires by a huge percentage. It is easier to figure out what needs to be accomplished than to define a position description requirement list.

Sometimes it’s not so easy to figure out what are valid job objectives and what are smoke screen issues that will not have an impact. Develop a “bare bones” list of very specific things that must be achieved and are measurable. With each item you put on the list ask yourself if this does not happen but everything else does, will this person accomplish

What I need? If the answer is yes, take this one off the list. After you have the “absolute musts,” you may make another list of “other things.” Make sure you don’t confuse the two lists. By far, the most common reason for the failure of new employees is the failure to identify clear goals and specific accomplishments and following up on those objectives. The second most common reason is confusing and complicating the job by having nonessential requirements given equal importance with the absolute requirements.

Do some in depth analysis of the Goals that must be achieved to be successful. On these we cannot compromise! Do not include things that are not vital. If the wrong things are included, they can cause us to hire the wrong person. Define skills absolutely necessary to achieve these goals. Have two lists, one of the goals to be attained and one of the absolute requirements necessary and be prepared to measure the candidate against these two lists.

Now that we have what is to be achieved, we have to learn if the candidate we are considering can and will achieve it.

One of the strongest lessons I’ve learned in over 25 years in the search business is that

People behave in the future like they have behaved in the past.

If we want to hire a winner we must hire someone who has proven they are a winner by their past accomplishments. You learn this in two ways:

1. Through excellent and exhaustive background reference investigations. At Adkins & Associates the cornerstone of our opinion in recommending a candidate to a client is based on an in depth background investigation. We also strongly recommend that the hiring official personally call the references also. The way the questions are answered tell as much or more about the candidate as the words themselves.

Good reference questions:

- Were they successful in doing their job?
- What specific successes did they achieve?
- What benefit did the company get from that?
- Could you guess at how much that meant in dollars to the company?
- How consistently did this success continue over the entire span of their tenure?
- What strengths did they exhibit in achieving this success?
- In what areas would more strength have achieved greater success?
- In what areas is it important for us to get their help?
- In what ways did they come up short in getting all their goals accomplished 100%?
- In what areas can you assign duties and be confident they will be successfully handled?
- Tell me about their management style in dealing with people.
- With what group are they most effective: superiors, peers, subordinates?
- Did they have any conflicts with anyone while there?
- Tell me about their vision in seeing the big picture of where the company needs to go.
- Tell me about their leadership ability in conveying the company’s vision and getting others to act on it.
- What other kind of trouble did he/she get into while working there?