Hire for Capability, Train for Talent

A lot of companies mistake the ability to do one thing well with the ability to be a great employee or all-around rock star team member. But the fact of the matter is that usually, before getting to your company and learning your style, approach, and the inner workings of your company, most people won’t know that much about how to be really amazing inside your work culture. Work to identify people who have some excellent core competencies, but who are superior at learning and growing with your team. You’ll get stronger talent than you expected, and often from unexpected places. That’s why Kazi relies on our unique expectations scan, which can help identify these kinds of skills in a latent phase

Remember that Recruitment is just another numbers game

At the end of the day, all the techniques in the world won’t change the fact that hiring is, really, a numbers game. And in order to meet the right people, you will sometimes have to go through a lot of other people to get there. What’s important about this is to make sure you approach it with the right attitude, and not to get discouraged, distracted or dispirited.

Even companies like Google or Apple still have to look through dozens of candidates for any one post to find the right person. Also important is to make sure you define your objectives well enough that you can recognize the right candidate when he or she comes across your desk, even amid all the hundreds of other applicants.

Don’t be afraid to offer high compensation

Rockstar employees know their worth. They’ve often come from lots of other high-powered jobs, and know what the market offers. If you’re going to commit yourself to hiring the best talent, be prepared to shell out for it. This is a combination of setting high benchmarks on your job listings to attract the right people in the first place, and also being willing to contend with people who are often very good negotiators.

But remember, sometimes what’s most interesting or valuable to a particular candidate won’t just be more money, but could be more flexibility, or some other perks. Understanding their personality is key.

Remember your internal talent pool

The most reliable pool of talent you have is the one that already works for your company!. When you’re small, it can sometimes seem like you want to grow the company with outside people, to increase your headcount if your workload is increasing. But your existing team already knows each other and works together. You’ve already gone through talent and personality assessments with them – maybe with the Kazi questionnaire – and they have experience with your culture, your work, your clients! That’s a lot of stuff that you will have to get other employees up to speed on. Sometimes, of course, it’s not possible, especially if you need a special skill set, but it’s usually worth looking into promoting from within! Save time, save money, keep the team together.

Understand the deliverables for the position really well

Good talent knows the right questions to ask in a job interview. In fact, for the top candidates, it’s as much them interviewing you as you interviewing them. You’ll need to have really sharp answers to questions about the expectations, deliverables, and work products expected to come out of the position you’re talking about. How much work? How quickly? Delivered how? When you’re starting a small company, and working with a startup mindset, it can be common to just think about “winging it” a lot. And maybe that works, or was necessary, when it was only two or three of you. But you’re hiring with the big boys now, and you need to understand and communicate your job expectations properly if you want to compete.

Staying on top in the War for Talent is a complex and ongoing process. And at Kazi, we know you can’t manage it alone. That’s why we are here to help you navigate this quickly-changing Human Resources environment. If you have an existing HR challenge, or just want to hear about how Kazi can improve your hiring and retention processes, drop us a line today, and we’ll be happy to talk about it with you!

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Getting the Description Right

Sometimes, it’s best to start with the most straightforward, and back-to-basics part of the process: the job description. This can sound rudimentary, but there’s a reason it’s the foundation of the right candidate. Getting the job description first of all makes sure that you and your team get your heads around the role properly. You can’t hire for a position that you yourself are unclear about it. This kind of planning and thinking clarifies your needs, and helps telegraph to potential candidates that the position is meaningful, and with a team that knows what it’s doing. Real professionals recognize and respect that. When your description is on-point, both you and your applicants are starting from a stronger foundation.

Innovative Candidate Assessment

Once you’ve put your job description out there and gotten your first batch of applicants narrowed down, you need to start separating the “wheat from the chaff,” as it were. In the past, some companies and organizations have tried multi-directional and highly expansive tests – like Google – where others look for much more specific job-knowledge skills – like government agencies. But in the fast-moving corporate environment that dominates the experience of many younger and tech-focused companies, the nature of the job itself can often be subject to change from month to month, or even day to day. For that, you need to get more of a sense of how the candidate functions in different situations and with what kind of work focus. This is at the core of why we developed our Kazi Expectations Scan for potential candidates. Rather than focus just on personality or job knowledge, it mixes both to provide a more rounded understanding of the candidate’s best ability and work style

Get out of the Interview Room

We’ve all heard the metaphor that dating can be like an interview? Well, it works both ways! Interviewing can be like going out on a first date. And few situations are more constructed and artificial as a first date – or interview – atmosphere. Most of a company’s time spent with an employee is in a more natural, working situation, not a highly rigid question-and-answer session. Often times, people function very differently in each of these, and being able to shine in an interview might not be a reliable indicator of someone’s work style. Kazi’s Expectations Scan incorporates knowledge about how your candidates like to get down to business, but it’s always a good idea to deploy this knowledge quickly. Try to incorporate job tasks, or a day in the office, along with your interview work, to get a sense of how the candidate behaves at work. The results could be surprising!

Broaden the Interviewer Pool

Everyone on a team has a unique and valuable insight into the workings of the company and the nature of the projects. And yet, often, the only people who assess whether a candidate is right for the team are those within the HR department. Consider integrating the input of people on the target team about their new potential candidates. You can even combine this techniques to get the candidates out of the interview room and collaborating with the target team. By broadening the the scope of internal team members who can weigh in on a candidate, you develop a much richer and deeper understanding of what your candidates are really like. The Kazi Expectations Scan can help you design the proper kinds of tasks and work projects to get the information you need, and your team can help answer your questions. Don’t underestimate the value of diverse input!

Getting the right candidate for the job is a perpetual challenge, but one that, at Kazi, we’re determined to help you overcome! By deploying the right kinds of assessment techniques, and expanding your definition of what constitutes useful information to understand your candidates, you can dramatically improve your ability to attract and hire the best job applicants to your company. Drop us a line today to see how Kazi can help you!

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