The Best Candidate for the Role
Every employer seeks – The Best Candidate for the Role
With almost full levels of employment, perhaps it is time to review the hiring process. In a tight market, all employers are competing for the best candidate for their role and they usually needed them to start two weeks ago!
The process sounds simple but it can be clouded by a series of questions that are often poorly resolved and undermined by time and the rush to fill the position.
Employers want the best possible candidate but what does that actually mean? What do they look like? Can the hiring manager describe what the role does? Can they identify a person within the team who has similar skills as a comparison, or who could be trained to do the role?
Hiring good people is the single most important thing managers can do and it is the one thing that managers avoid doing the most. Why?
Managers often feel that their time is better spent delivering for their clients rather than working through the recruitment process, it is often difficult to express what is actually required for the role and yet time and again senior managers will implore their (hiring) managers to focus on recruitment as a valuable component in growing their business.
It is a common misconception that an applicant from the market is better than an internal candidate – is this true? If we look at staff turnover figures most organisations will show that their highest turnover of staff is within the first two years of employment regardless of level. This demonstrates that employees are self-selecting out of organisations that they have only recently joined.
The factors against promoting from within can include; expertise in their current role, time to train, we 'think' we know what's right for the individual. New people are different and ‘exciting’ new hires do not yet have apparent flaws (the grass is always greener). Recent studies have shown that internal promotions have a higher success rate with longer retention and better performance in the new role. Firms talk about support and progression within the organisation and then fall for the lure of the new rather than delivering on expectations.
The time to train existing employees to new roles is significantly less than that for a new employee. Recent research also highlights that existing employees are far more adaptable than their managers believe. Remember your existing staff are in your company because they were the best candidates for the role and they choose to stay there – why wouldn’t they be able to grow, did you?
Is “Culture Fit” code for – we do or don’t like the person. For companies like Google, they have likely spent the time researching and defining what their culture is and what personality traits work best in their organisations. For others, Culture Fit will likely be a ‘gut feel’ based on the interviewer’s unconscious biases.
“I think companies really have to be careful,” Rachel Bitte, who has over 20 years of HR experience working at Apple and Intuit, tells Business Insider. “What do you mean by a ‘fit’ for your company?”
It’s easy enough to say that you’re hiring based on certain personality traits that match your organisation’s stated values. But Bitte says that it’s also easy for hiring managers to allow unconscious biases to seep into their definition of “fit.”
“There are unconscious biases around, ‘Hey this person went to the same university that I went to,'” Bitte says. “There’s a gender bias. There can be a race bias or a language barrier.”
Left unchecked, a warped understanding of culture fit could prompt organisations to justify hiring people who look, think, and act just like everyone else in the office.
A recent discussion highlighted that unique personalities were often found in their best staff. Is Culture fit a term used to reject candidates who would otherwise exhibit the knowledge and skills required for the role, but who do not 'fit the mould'. Is it like art, we know it when we see it? Is having a monoculture the best way to handle changes in the business environment anyway?
We will consider these and other elements of recruiting in future articles.
If you are looking to recruit or have other HR needs People2Growth can help, contact Damien Berglas (mob 0417 625 491) for a confidential discussion of your HR businesses needs.