Are you ready for a star candidate?

"Let your top performer walk away"

"Do not hire the best".

"Candidate is too good for us"

We have heard many such gospels. What matters is context. Hiring is not always for the best. Hiring is a "best-fit", scientific hiring! But is JD is a good boundary for defining a best-fit? What is a quantifiable measure of a good-fit?

Have you heard of the term, "scientific hiring"? Wonder what is this? Is this a robotic exercise of hiring by putting candidate under every test battery and finally stamp it out "Tested", "EC" (Europe Compliant), etc.

It is actually not. Scientific hiring is the process that is consistent and integral and does not change due to context.

I have heard people questioning the validity of”JD based" interviewing” and times sanctity of a “Resume based interviewing” too?

What shall be done? Do we do a “candidate based interviewing”? How do we do that?

·        Ask a candidate, what motivates/excites him to apply for this position?

·        What does he think this position will offer him?

·        What all skills and experience he thinks, he will learn and hone on this job?

·        What all factors will define success of this role? How does he measure his success on the role? What does he think is detrimental to the success of this role/position?

·        Talk about achievements?

·        Talk about risks he/candidate took in his professional role ?

·        Talk about a serious conflict he had with his seniors/points of disagreement, where he had a different view, at times contrarion to the senior's views/views largely held by higher up/s? Talk about conflict with the team that he managed, his approach and why that approach?

·        Where does he think his seniors should have helped him and he rather did not get that support?

·        Who does he attribute his success to and why?

Most of the people will say, 'team', boss, peers, mentor, many people at different times and at times my gut feel, strong belief, etc. This is good, talk about a situation where he attributes his success to his gut feel and strong belief? These questions differentiates deeply between a task-jockey against a thinking and application guy, a learning and un-learning guy, an adaptable and success oriented guy, a person aware of eco-system and sees in them a code and support mechanism to succeed, etc.

What are the types of fit in hiring?

·        Culture fit. - Lives by the values that core values, core principles define and appreciate. May not stipulate as rules. Not prescriptive but reflective.

·        Team fit- Can be a great team player

·        Technology fit- Quickly learns technology and yields the best out of it to meet requirements, can leverage and optimize

·        Customer fit- Empathetic, compliant, responsive, dependable, enslaves client

·        Geography fit-Culture neutral, highly pervasive, socially apt and highly

·        Manager fit- Can be a best complementing factor to manager, meets her/his needs, can ease out manager of lower end responsibilities thereby helping manager climb up and create/innovate

·        Process fit- Perfect fit for the current process, a machine, robot, loves process, has no life outside process.

Decide what suits you best to have an objective subjective assessment!