Assessing Intangible Qualities that Make a Great Recruiter or Account Manager

I’m an ex techie turned tech recruiter. Back in my tech days, I must have hired and managed upwards of 150 people. Of those, maybe 1-2 were bad hires. However, since moving into recruiting, and having been involved in the hiring and managing of over 50 people, the good ones are definitely the minority.

There are so many intangible qualities that are difficult to assess and measure in an interview – even how people define words can end up being very different from one's understanding when reality hits.

I want to assemble a list of questions that can help me to assess a deeper level of what drives a candidate. Things that delve into ethics, a person’s definition of hard work, basic manners and professionalism, if a person knows the difference between being aggressive and assertive, if they can concurrently focus intently, yet juggle the balls we all have to juggle.

I have searched on the web for some good examples, but they all seem really trite. If anyone has created or used any successful questions, personality assessments, etc, that have helped them to have a great hiring batting average for Recruiters or Account Managers, please share!

Thanks!

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Permalink Reply by Seth Lidren on February 6, 2013 at 11:56am

My suggestion would be to do a behavior-based assessment which generates a list of questions that do generally focus on the areas in which you're looking to gain insight. There are several vendors out there that are pretty cost-effective. I've found that the vendor our company uses is pretty priceless when it comes to the depth of the questions that are generated and has actually contributed us being able to weed out those candidates that are fantastic on paper and talk a good game, but lack those values such as ethics and professionalism; thus leading us to make better hiring decisions.

My two cents at least.

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Permalink Reply by Eileen Wheeler Sheehan on February 7, 2013 at 9:32am

My practice is to ask for concrete examples of the interviewee's claimed skills. Within the story is the attitude toward work and toward coworkers. The best predictor of future performance is past behavior. The interviewee is not trained to interview well. Nor does he/she attach the same meaning to common descriptions like "education" or "good job". It is our job to listen actively.

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Permalink Reply by Janine Davis on February 7, 2013 at 11:29am

Thank you Lidren - would you mind telling me your vendor name so I can check them out? Thanks! Janine

Seth Lidren said:

My suggestion would be to do a behavior-based assessment which generates a list of questions that do generally focus on the areas in which you're looking to gain insight. There are several vendors out there that are pretty cost-effective. I've found that the vendor our company uses is pretty priceless when it comes to the depth of the questions that are generated and has actually contributed us being able to weed out those candidates that are fantastic on paper and talk a good game, but lack those values such as ethics and professionalism; thus leading us to make better hiring decisions.

My two cents at least.

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Permalink Reply by Janine Davis on February 7, 2013 at 11:32am

Hi Eileen - I see your point, and of course do this. The problem I have found is that with Recruiters and Account Managers, sales people tend to have slicker answers. Even the concrete examples can be "spun". We are extremely picky about the staff we hire, so want to take our interviewing/assessment to another level of depth if at all possible. But thank you for your input - I could not agree with you more that future performance is predicted by past behvior!

Eileen Wheeler Sheehan said:

My practice is to ask for concrete examples of the interviewee's claimed skills. Within the story is the attitude toward work and toward coworkers. The best predictor of future performance is past behavior. The interviewee is not trained to interview well. Nor does he/she attach the same meaning to common descriptions like "education" or "good job". It is our job to listen actively.