By: Susan Boydell | sboydell@barlowmccarthy.com
We have all been there. You are hiring for a new or open role and the resumes start rolling in. As you review the resumes there is one that rises to the top. The candidate has all the right experience and education, they have a rockstar resume! It comes time to interview, and you are feeling really good! There are a few red flags, but you keep going back to all that great experience and education. They’re your pick; however, just a few weeks on the job and you are beginning to have doubts. A month after your rockstar resume candidate started you know you’ve got a problem on your hands.
So, what happened? And how do we prevent it from happening again? Hiring good talent isn’t easy. Rockstar resumes and slick talking interviewees can cloud our judgement. How do you look past all that fluff to find talent who is going to excel in your role? It really comes down to the interview. Here are a few ways to prepare for a solid interview with the goal of finding the best talent for your position.
- Recognize the resume for what it is. A resume is a document created by your candidate to get themselves hired. In the case of a liaison, we are looking at a salesperson writing a sales document to sell themselves.
- Hire for skill and culture fit not just work history outlined on a resume
- Pay attention to dates and note any gaps or excessive moving around
- Be mindful of a hidden desire to steal talent from your competition (there is probably a reason they are available!)
- Don’t make a decision based on the resume alone, keep a level head and try not to pick favorites prior to interviewing
- Build a solid interviewing process and stick to it. Your interview process should follow the same roadmap for all your candidates, even the rockstar resume candidates.
- Your process should follow a logical order. I like to start with questions where they describe their experience and then move to specific questions that help to uncover their ability to adapt to the current role.
- Outline your baseline questions. These are the questions that you will ask every candidate.
- Build in some probing questions that push them to provide specific examples. When they tell you they did XYZ, ask them HOW they did XYZ. Those answers may be some of the most important you receive.
- Make sure your process focuses on uncovering how well the candidate can perform your job and whether they are fit for your team and organization. It’s not about explaining every detail of the job role and asking if they can work under those circumstances. They will likely say yes and yes doesn’t mean they can.
While everyone’s interview process will be a little different, creating a consistent process is foundational to your success. Consider it your “hiring the right talent plan.” Look for our next blog where we will dig into asking smart questions and honing your listening and observation skills to reveal the right candidate. The key is flipping those great hires from a lucky happenstance into a regular occurrence due to smart questions and a consistent process.
As a physician relations leader and now a consultant helping our clients make good hires, I have spent a lot of time performing and perfecting candidate interviews. Is it an area where you need a little help? I would love to learn more about your process and offer assistance. Simply reply to this email and I will be in touch!