According to Lou Adler, author of Hire with Your Head, “There is nothing more important—to your personal and company success—than hiring great people. Nothing.”  So, how do you do it? The answer isn’t always as easy as 1-2-3, but here are a few tips for heading in the right direction:

Before the interview process begins, spell out what it is you really want. Sit down and identify what the company ultimately needs in the person who will take on this position. If the ideal fit for the role isn’t well-defined to begin with, the person becomes impossible to find. Then, when the interviewing process begins and you get an idea of the candidate pool, you can make adjustments.

After observing people who consistently hire great people, Lou Adler offers 3 steps using a performance-based hiring process:

1) Remain objective throughout the hiring process, lighting the impact of first impressions, biases, intuition, prejudices, and pre-conceived notions of success. This way, all the information collected in the interview is relevant and unbiased.

2) Collect information across multiple job factors, rather than deciding quickly if the candidate is suitable for the job based on a narrow range of traits like technical competence, intelligence, or affability. Collecting the right information before deciding yes or no is key here.

3) Use an evidence-based approach to determine whether the candidate is motivated and competent to meet all job needs. This involves some formal type of decision-making process based on evaluating the evidence rather than using an up/down voting system.

Adler would argue that hiring managers making the most mistakes generally violate one or more of these rules. Hiring managers can lean too far towards personality and mistakenly hire someone who is strong in a couple areas, but too broad to handle all aspects of the position. On the other end of the spectrum, hiring managers can go overboard on validating technical competency, ignoring critical core skills like working with others, planning, budgeting, and meeting deadlines.

 Lou Adler says, “The key to hiring both competent and highly motivated people is to collect enough of the right facts.” Cover your bases by gathering facts about each candidate’s motivation, competence, and technical ability to avoid a future realization that the person you hired is only partially competent.

We would recommend reading Hire with Your Head to gain some invaluable insight into the hiring process. Tell us your own experiences and advice for hiring great people?

Happy Hunting!

Full blog @ The Hunt