Are you a hiring manager torn witless by the number of resumes flowing into your inbox on a daily basis and yet, no shining star has appeared?
You are not alone! Most hiring managers meet with an internal talent acquisition representative to formulate or revise a job description for a resource need. The talent acquisition representative goes to the market to find a candidate with the skills to fill the requirement. You receive the resume and see the relevant skillset. You meet with the candidate and walk away underwhelmed…knowing they will not be successful on your team.
“Hmmmm”, says the talent acquisition representative…”how could that be”? And back out to the market for another candidate and the cycle continues.
What is missing? The cultural “fit”…not just within the overall company, also within your team. Once you get past the skills assessment, what is it that makes an individual successful in this position within your team? Successful broadly meaning, not only successful at the results they are producing, also successful in how they feel about the results they are producing.
The answer to this conundrum lies in the definition and quantification of this cultural piece. It is every bit as important as the skillset required and should hold a place of honor on the job description. All of us have seen some of the “quality” attributes on a job description – excellent communication skills, critical thinker, adaptable, etc. While this is fine to include, perhaps a more productive targeted way to get a quantifiable read on a candidate’s cultural “fit” would be to include a list of questions that would indicate a candidate’s suitability and test for the “success factors” for a particular opportunity?
As a matter of fact, one could say in today’s fast changing world of technology, the skills needed today are the skills of tomorrow as quick as you can blink an eye. Finding people who are a “fit” and will stay with your organization, is perhaps more important than one skillset today.
Some questions or “TO DO” TIPS…
- Can you articulate your organization’s culture?
- Do you have a list of questions to test for a cultural “fit”?
- Who on your current team exemplifies a great “fit” and why?
Answering these questions and turning them into guidelines will go a long way to ensuring hiring for success and longevity!
At The Resource Collaborative, we understand how costly turnover and attrition can be both in hard dollars and in productivity. Therefore, we take the time to learn about the cultural “fit” for each position we are asked to fill and we offer to work with the hiring manager to determine what this “cultural fit” looks like so that we can formulate the appropriate questions for candidates to address. Give us a call today to learn more about this service.