Planning A Search

The goal is to hire the best possible person who will fit the best in to the position available. The best candidate for one position maybe the worst candidate for another position. There are no such thing as a universal best candidate. neither is there an opportunity that will be the best for all candidates. Each person has different career goals, priorities, values, talents etc. It is a good manager who has the interviewing skills and/or hiring process that will identify what the candidate wants and match them to the right position.

Some positions require steady, thorough analysis and other position need fast thinking on your feet person who always has the right words for the occasion. They are both highly successful executives and well respected in their industries, but if I had them traded jobs they would both be unhappy and most assuredly struggle to meet the minimum requirements of their new job.

The perfect hiring process takes all the possible candidates and sifts through them eliminating the weakest until the best candidate with the characteristics to match you job is the only one left. AND this candidate is still motivated and ready to accept your offer and come to work for your company.

The market will hire the best talent first so you need a hiring process that will be effective at hiring the first candidate you source as well as it can hire the last candidate you source. If you have a process that is losing candidates before you have them through your entire process then you need to shorten your process or give your candidates more reasons to not accept offers from your competition. I would say you probably need to do both.

On the front end you have talent sourcing activity that will find employed, unemployed, active and passive candidates (looking for a opportunity and not looking for an opportunity) How much time you have before you start losing candidates depends on the position, the industry and the economy.

Planing The Search

Define Success

• What do you want this person to accomplish?
  

• What activity will they perform to be successful?
  

• What challenges will they need to deal with in order to be successful?
  

• What is this person's goals and objective?
  

• What does the best do what dose the average person do?
  

Where might this person be found? (competitors, like industries etc.)

What other background could a successful candidate have?

You may want to supply your person sourcing these candidates with some specific question so that when you get resumes to review you can also have the information from these questions.

Personality

See section on how to interview the candidate if you are not sure how to identify the candidate's personality.

• Company culture
  

• Management style
  

• Manager's background
  

Is compensation competitive? Top end, add-on (bonus, incentive, etc.)

Is hiring process effective at eliminating the weak and maintaining the interest of the strong?

Selling points

The more selling points you have the more high powered candidates you will attract. Ask your team members for their view on selling points.You might be surprised and it will also help you to motivate them. Here are a few examples.

• Special products
  

• Competitive advantages
  

• Latest promotion
  

• What is unique or special about the company, manager and the position.
  

• What is the career path for this person if they excel in this position?
  

• Company / department growth
  

• Industry standing
  

What skills, background or characteristic could this person bring that would add value?

Are their any companies or industries whose training, experience or contacts that could be valuable?

Review these procedures or requirements with a critical eye and eliminate any of them that do not help achieve the goal of hiring the best possible talent.

Are you setting up obstacles to lower the number of candidates required to be reviewed while at the same time discouraging well employed people from applying? You could be losing your best talent before they ever apply.

Is every interview in your process necessary? The highly qualified, well employed has a harder time justifying time off work and has a greater sense of responsibility toward his/her work and their employer than the unemployed or unhappy person.

Top talent is harder to attract, more expensive to hire and more likely to move if you don't keep your promises. The best talent is the hardest to hire because they have the most options to choose from. In baseball if I am a 21 year old, left handed pitcher with a fastball clocked at 100+ mph I can pick any team I want. If I am a 45 year old knuckle ball pitcher, not so many options.

The Hanover Consulting Group

Executive Search for the Financial Service Industries