Making the right hiring decisions

If you are a business leader, or a manager with leadership ambitions, your career will succeed or fail largely on your decisions regarding other people.

Great leaders assemble outstanding teams to help them to achieve their company's vision and to implement their strategy.

Here are 10 tips for making great hiring decisions:

-Make sure you have a standardised recruitment process

Every manager thinks that he or she can do well in interviewing candidates. However, they often overlook the fact that a standardised, disciplined process is needed to improve the quality of assessments. Senior line managers need to be educated and trained in proven interview techniques. If a wrong decision is made, the higher the candidate's hierarchical position in the company, the costlier that mistake will be.

As well as relevant line managers, the Human Resources Department needs to be involved in the interview process. Interviews need to be well-structured and behaviour-based.

-Specify clearly what skills and experience are relevant for the job

Don't rely on generic competency models. Discuss the job requirements with key decision-makers. Be clear about what qualities the successful job candidate should have.

Employee job descriptions provide an opportunity to clearly communicate your company's direction. They tell the employee where he or she fits, inside the bigger picture. Employee job descriptions should state clear expectations of what is expected from people.

-Look for internal and external candidates

If you always look only for external candidates to fill vacancies, your existing employees will lose their motivation and become frustrated. Look for internal candidates first. However, if you are looking for real change, because you are dissatisfied with the state of affairs at your company or within that area where the job vacancy exists, an outsider would be a better choice.

-Look for a candidate that will fit the company's culture

Make sure that the candidate shares the same values as your company and that he or she can relate to your company's vision. In my previous company, even our online-application form contained questions in this regard, in order to qualify or disqualify applicants for job interviews.

Some sample questions are: "How do you think you can make a contribution to our company's vision, which is...?" "Please give an example where you were able to create an innovation at your current/previous company, or at your university."

-Check the candidate's soft skills

I am a strong believer that soft skills play a very important role in the workplace and in a person's career success (also, of course, in one's private life). According to management guru and psychologist Daniel Goleman, soft skills matter twice as much as IQ [Intelligence Quotient] or technical skills in job success.

Soft skills relate to a person's EQ [Emotional Intelligence Quotient]. They are behavioural competencies. They are also known as interpersonal or people skills. They include proficiencies in effective communication, leadership skills, problem-solving, conflict resolution and negotiating, team-building skills, influencing skills, listening skills and self-awareness.

Soft skills are not a replacement for hard or technical skills, but they are complementary.

One of my favourite questions in interviews is: "Please describe a situation where you had to influence others without having the formal authority to do so".

-Consider whether it is the right job for the candidate

Don't think only about your needs and those of your company. Think also whether it makes sense for the candidate to take the job. Describe the job realistically to him or her. Don't discuss the positive aspects of the job alone, but also point out potential challenges.

Think about whether taking this job is the next logical step in the candidate's career. If I fail to see that, then I won't hire that person. Consider, also, the impact on the candidate's life and that of his or her family (issues like relocation, travelling time, sufficient time spent at home with spouse and children).

-Ensure compensation equity

Make sure that the compensation package offered to the job candidate is fair to other employees, bearing in mind internal equity and the compensation provided to others in line with the organisation's hierarchy.

Do a market-pricing analysis for the job candidate, considering external equity and compensation packages in line with competitors or industry standards.

In my experience, it always pays to go beyond market rates when top talent applies for a key position. However, that is something I would do only rarely and only in selected cases.

One more word of caution: be aware that job candidates who join you only for the money, will also leave you for the money. Such candidates will jump to the next employer as soon as they receive a higher offer, so always check out a job candidate's genuine motivation for joining you.

-Make sure you have a proper introduction system

Integrating a new employee into a company is an important step and takes a significant amount of time. A new employee's first day makes a lasting impression, on the positive as well as the negative side. Assigning a sponsor to the newcomer for the first few months and having a process where the HR Department checks on how the new employee is doing after one day, one week, one month, three months, six months and one year, proved to be useful at my previous company.

-Be consequent

Despite thorough consideration, companies as well as candidates make wrong choices. There is no point in companies hanging on to bad hires. If you realise that you have made a mistake in hiring a person (hopefully, this will be a rare occurrence, depending on the quality of your recruitment process), and after giving him or her a fair chance over a period of time, seek a conversation with the employee.

Let the person know that he or she is not in the right job or not in the right company. Don't shy away from this talk and this decision. It is not fair to the employee to let him or her continue to struggle. They will have noticed, in any case, that they are not getting recognition for their work.

Typically, it is a lose-lose situation (the employee is not happy and the boss and the company are not happy) that needs to be addressed. Although it is often a painful decision, I have seen many cases where people later become happy in another job that suits them better, or in another company where they find a better cultural fit.

To be fair (and caring), employees should be encouraged to reach the same conclusions, if they are unhappy at work. When I give a speech of welcome to new employees, they are always astonished when I say: "In case you are not happy in your work, don't just stay on. Talk to your boss, talk to colleagues, talk to the HR Department, or talk to me. Address the issue. But don't just keep silent. Life is too short to hang around in a place that you don't enjoy!"

-Hold line managers accountable for the quality of their people

It is important to regularly review recruiting practices. And in this context, all assessors should be held accountable for the quality of their evaluations.

Always keep in mind that the decisions you make about job candidates and about your employees are pivotal to your company. And they are the most powerful contributors to your career success.

Heinz Landau is former chairman and managing director of Merck Thailand. He may be contacted at [email protected].