Identifying a Candidate Fit: What to Look Out For

 

The importance of hiring the right candidate cannot be overstated as selecting the ideal candidate for a job can lead to reduced turnover, increased productivity, and increased engagement. While recruiting for technical skills can be vitally important, soft skills are equally critical to success and matching the needs of a role to a candidates interpersonal abilities is as important aspect of the search effort. In addition, there must be consideration as to how each candidate fits within the company’s culture and values.

The benefits and importance of proper candidate selection cannot be overlooked, and the idea of role fit is a two-way street. Here, the organization should not only consider their needs, but also be aware and mindful of the candidates desires as well as the latter has a large impact on goal achievement. In fact, our global Teamwork study revealed that 85% of those on high-performing teams were in a role where they were encouraged to use their individual skills and talents. These results aren’t automatic and it can undoubtedly be difficult to identify how to choose the right candidate for the job, but below we’ve identified key areas of focus to help identify potential candidate fit.

Understanding Candidacy for a Job

Identifying the right for a role within your company starts with defining the role itself. This effort should not only involve management and leadership but should also incorporate feedback and solicit input from any stakeholders who interact with that role. This could be customers, co-workers, vendors, colleagues in other companies, etc. In addition to the this, when experiencing turnover, exit interviews can help determine some of the gaps and further areas of consideration surrounding the role. The point is to solicit input from a variety of sources and don’t simply rely on existing job descriptions or a small group to identify. Considering what the collective believes success in the role looks like and what qualities are essential will help to paint a more complete picture of the role and the needs surrounding it.

These efforts can also help to determine the type of personality desired candidates. Consider the broader team or department and what type of person might fit into the culture you’ve been creating. Combined, these efforts can help identify the goals of the role, skills necessary for success, as well as personality traits that may be helpful. From here, turn what you’ve learned and know of the duties and personality requirements of the role into a formal job description. A proper job description is perhaps the most overlooked aspect of recruiting and hiring. If the job description differs greatly from the reality of the position, then you will be attracting (and potentially hiring) the wrong types of candidates for the role which can be costly over time.

Identifying and Recruiting an Ideal Candidate for a Job

Before engaging with the recruitment process, ensure that you’ve defined the role clearly and outlined the goals of that role succinctly before trying to find the right candidate. Otherwise, you won’t know what you’re looking for as your target hasn’t been well-defined. Often, the right candidate has relevant skills and experiences mixed with essential soft skills such as communication and teamwork, the importance of which cannot be overlooked and identifying these at the beginning of the process is vital.

Furthermore, the ideal job candidate will align with the company’s culture and values. A good culture takes a long time to build and a short time to tear down. Don’t let the wrong hire change your carefully built work environment.

Recruiting the types of candidates you want requires both passive and active participation and engaged candidates are interviewing companies as much as they are being interviewed. Help candidates in their journey as well by ensuring your company’s culture is widely publicized, ensure your values and mission statement are accessible, and provide testimonials from past and present team members. This can help the right candidates self-select when they feel they fit your company and potentially save you valuable time and resources through the interview process.

When actively recruiting, consider that the ideal candidate for a job might come from an apprenticeship or have taken a non-traditional route or pathway. As technology continues to expand learning opportunities, ideal candidates may be better identified by what they have done or accomplished, rather than the degree they hold. Having a clearly identified job description as well as a view of what success in a role looks like can provide confidence in the process and help to identify areas of recruitment that may have not been previously considered, opening up opportunities and a candidate pool others overlook.

Assessing Candidates Effectively

When it comes to how to qualify candidates, yet again, an effective assessment starts with a clear understanding of the role’s goals and needs. Without these clearly defined, there will be no standards against which to measure applicants. As part of this process, it’s critical that businesses create structured and consistent interview processes so all candidates can be considered and compared in the same way.

Be sure to ask behavioral, situational, and technical questions during interviews and evaluations. Behavioral questions are often open-ended and may cover topics such as greatest strengths and weaknesses or stories of growth. Situational questions cover work scenarios that the candidate might run into while in the position. Technical questions would cover any task, product, or program-specific knowledge.

It’s important to listen closely to both the answer and the manner in which it is being answered (i.e., are they communicating with diplomacy and tact?). Watch out for the following red flags:

• The candidate hasn’t researched your company or doesn’t understand what the role entails
• The candidate exhibits poor communication, such as muddled answers, interrupting, or heavy exaggeration
• The candidate blames others for their past failings or mistakes when giving work examples
• The candidate overstates their accomplishments or uses fancy language to bolster a simple task into something impressive
• The candidate does not provide references, the ones provided can’t be reached, or the people are inappropriate as references

Don’t forget to evaluate company culture fit during interviews. This means being attentive to communication styles and asking more personal-related questions. Involve others in the hiring and interviewing process. By including those who will be working closely with this person in the hiring of the role, you can better evaluate a candidate’s fit among your workers.

Finally, use assessments—an important part of the hiring process. Assessments may evaluate the skills or knowledge of prospective candidates. Effective assessment tools are both valid and reliable; you can’t depend on a hastily created assessment. To be reliable, it has to be consistent and stable over time, which can be shown through statistical analysis. A valid assessment means it measures what it is intended to measure.

Internal vs. External Candidates

When it comes to hiring the ideal candidate for a job, you might already have them under your roof. The choice between internal or external candidates for a role is a tricky one. Existing employees already know your company’s processes and offerings and fit into the office culture. If they need professional development such as leadership training to be considered for a role, you already know them as a worker and know their work is worth investing in. At the same time, internal candidates might suffer from institutional thought and not bring needed innovation or creativity necessary for a role.

External candidates are always an option, but they have pros and cons as well. One big benefit is that new hires can bring with them new and creative thoughts and spark change which can help move your company forward. This is important as 39% of leaders in a Dale Carnegie study said that having team members be open to change would help productivity. However, a poor or long onboarding process could negatively color this new employee’s view of the company and some of the potential benefits can be lost. In addition, in contrast to an internal hire, external candidates may take time to adjust and integrate into the company culture.

Choosing the Right New Hire

Hiring the right (or wrong) candidate will have lasting impacts on your business for years to come. Success in hiring starts with clearly and adequately defining and identifying the goals of the role and skills necessary for success. Doing so will allow for better identification of someone’s candidacy for a job.

Whether an outside hire or an existing member of your workforce, the “perfect” candidate may not exist. However, identifying role fit from both the organizational side as well as from that of the candidate can help lead you to the “best” candidate and contribute to short- and long-term success. Courses from Dale Carnegie can help support this journey and build essential soft skills among new hires in a global workplace where effective interpersonal skills are essential. Explore our course listings and find your local branch by visiting dalecarnegie.com